Seattle orientation

Okay, so I still havnt recovered from the disaster last night, I might get a new application to write blogs, or just save more often. Anyways, here is a short version of what I wrote last night.

I left Logan Airport in Boston at 8 am eastern on Saturday, had a layover in Minneapolis/St. Paul, and arrived in Seattle at around 1pm pacific. I was picked up by a fellow team member named Kyle from Purdue, and we drove back to the hotel with two other team members, Kent from Texas A&M and Alex from Drake. Kent is another cyclist, but Kyle and Alex are crew members. The crew are the guys who make sure we are where we need to be when we need to be, safe, fed, etc. They drive the support vans that carry our equipment and pretty much do everything it takes to get us across the country besides riding the bike; they are the real heroes of the Journey of Hope.

Once at the hotel we got our team apparrell and I had to immediately shave my mustache. It was the first time since 2009 that I had no facial hair of any kind. We then went to the Alpha Delta chapter of Pi Kappa Phi at the University of Washington for dinner, introduction to orientation, and a ritual.


After that we went back to the hotel and myself and my three roommates (Kent, Wes, and Kenny), reassembled our bikes after shipping and then went to bed.

The next day we went to the original REI store for shopping, orientation training (safety, cycling rules of the road, crisis management, etc.), lunch, and more shopping/looking around. The store was massive, and had biking and hiking trails around it, in addition to a waterfall in the mini forest surround the building (which was in the middle of downtown Seattle).

We then went to Gas Works park to have our first friendship visit, with a group called The Arc that primarily supports people with Down syndrome. It was a lot of fun, it was really cool how interested the people I met were in what we are doing. We had some good food including cranberry frozen custard and hung out around the park. We saw some people twirling ropes and batons with fire at the ends:

And in the parking lot we saw the craziest looking pickup truck from Montana, presumably belonging to the fire weilders:


I haven't been to the website yet but I can only imagine the kind of stuff they sell. I took a picture of the bumper stickers, but there is some profanity, email me if you want to see it.

This morning we woke up at 530 and did a practice pack (30 mins to get everything out to the vans and the vans packed). We then had breakfast and walked our bikes over to the Seattle Sky Needle (or Space Needle, I don't remember the name) for skills assesment. We had to do various tasks on the bike such as clip in to the pedals without swerving, navigate through cones, pick up a water bottle off the ground with our feet still clipped in and moving, changing a tire, and riding in a paceline.

After that we drove out to Kerry Park Viewpoint, overlooking the Seattle skyline, for our team photo:

The video above is of the view and the picture below is of me in my uniform:


Jeez I just lost a whole lot of this blog post again because the application crashed. Oh well.

Anyways, we went out in the afternoon today on a ferry to an island across the bay, but we ended up turning back due to time constraints once we made it to the island. It was still fun though, the ferry was the main attraction. It was huge, and the captain gave me a thumbs up back when I gave him a thumbs up from the passenger deck for a good job docking the boat, so that was cool. Two videos of the ferry ride:


When we got off the ferry we had about three hours to walk around Seattle and see the famous Pike's Place Market. We saw some guys throwing fish, and ate at a restaurant by the water. After we went out to look at the water and saw the most amazing cloud formation, with pillars of light and mist surrounding it, falling down from above the cloud to the surface of the water. I didn't even attempt a picture because I know a camera wouldn't do it justice, especially my phone camera.

So that's what I've been up to. Tomorrow we have our first training ride, just about 25 miles. I'm really excited to get on the bike. The next day, Wednesday the 9th is day one of our cross country trip, and on day two we climb up a mountain pass.

This ended up as a fairly long post, I don't know if I will be able to be this detailed in the future. I'm torn because I want to take pictures and videos and post blogs, but I want to spend enough time absorbing the information and not thinking about home and people reading my blog (no offense).

Also, I tried tagging my location for this post but it will probably say the middle of the bay because that's where I started writing this. Rest assured that I am not on a boat in the middle of the bay 6 hours before I need to wake up.

Also I am calling it the bay because I do not know what it is called.

Also email me with any comments, and can someone tell me if the pictures and videos aren't working, and also if anyone knows if the videos have been posted to my YouTube account that would be good to hear.

Thanks for reading,

- Joe Fox Jr.

Damn, ok the videos aren't working. Sorry. Maybe when I have a wifi connection it will work. I'll figure it out.

- Posted from my iPhone

Location:Seattle Ferry Terminal,Seattle,United States