Day One: Vancouver Chinatown to Birch Bay WA. Our embarking day was full of urban map-reading, bicycle adjustments, the procuring of a steel flask (difficult because it's no longer drinking season in Canada), navigation of complicated but pleasant city bikepaths, and frequent water breaks to get outta the blazing 95 degree weather. So the sun was already dipping as we crossed the border back into the USA. There was such light traffic at the immigration turnstiles that we just pedaled right up to them. A nice mustached patrolman sent us towards a more appropriate separate building with a desk and a bike rack. Just over the border, a grand peace arch monument celebrates the century that there was no US-Canada border - 1814 to 1914. Past that, helicopters swooped about and idle cranes marked the construction site of what apparently is a new and improved border fortress. It's a new age at the 49th parallel. If I were a bolder photographer I would have asked to take a portrait of the beautifully dressed Indian family that sat at a picnic table in peace park and served, for us, as the first faces of America. They sat in silence but issued warm waves as we passed. Blaine WA supplied our dinner ingredients. Micki at the Birch Bay Horizon camp hostel supplied our bed. The kids at the camp supplied our morning wakeup call. Tomorrow, I'll put on gloves. My hands are my only sore spot and plus, it'll give me something to do while ilana is putting on hers.