This is Work?

This is Work?

We started yesterday in a similiar fashion as the days before with a coffee and a work/brainstorming session at The Woods Coffee Shop on the waterfront in Bellingham. I use the word “work” loosely because the first hour was spent uploading the craziest adventure sports videos I could find on Twitter. While I was doing this Daniel and Bates met with  Sharmon of Moondance Sea Kayak Adventure and signed her up to start doing her bookings with SWAE! To make it even better she invited me to go out with her and a group of travel writers who had been flown into Bellingham by the tourist bureau to write stories about the area. They were planning on departing around 4:00 pm.

In the meantime we went and had lunch at this amazing little fish and chips place that served food out of an old double decker bus like the kind you’d see giving tours around Trafalgar Square. I finished by battered cod deliciousness  and then left Elliott to go meet Daniel and the good folks over at the Alpine, Institute. I was super excited because one: they are one of the best guide services in the world and two:  because I had been speaking with then back and forth on Twitter and was stoked to put a face to the person I had been having two sentence conversations with.

When we got to the Alpine Institute we were met by Emily Znamierowsk and Ruth Hennings who were super excited about what we were doing. It turned out that Emily was the person I had been talking back and forth to and was totally stoked about the power of social media and what was going on with SWAE Sports. AI’s director, Dunham Gooding, greeted us and then we got in to what it is that SWAE does and how we’ll be able to drive more traffic to their door. You could see a light bulb go on kin Dunham’s eyes and within 30 minutes they were starting to post trips on SWAE. RAD! Looking forward to working with these guys for years to come. I mean come on, John Krakuer once said that they are “the best all around climbing school and guide service in North America.”

So afterwards I jumped back on my bike and started peddling south to meet Sharmon and Moondance in state park south of town. She was so accomodating and even allowed me a small intro to the journalists about our bike trip and the launching of SWAE. We then unloaded the sea kayaks and proceeded to paddle around the bay. Let me tell you, its not as simple as I had thought but it was a blast to be out there on the open water and picturing orcas swimming below us. I was paired with this really cool guy name Michael McCarthy who writes for the Vancouver Sun and runs a website called the intentional-traveler.com. He had some interesting insight into intentionalism and a nice dry sense of humor, which is always refreshing.  After that, Sharmon greeted our arrival to shore with fresh local strawberries  and chocolate covered truffels – nice touch.

I met Daniel and Elliot back up on Chukanuat Dr  and we then biked about 20 miles through some of the most beautiful shoreline I have ever seen until we reached Bay View State Park. We decided that instead of camping there we should go up the street and see if it was alright to put our tents down in the backyard of this beautiful lawn that sat on a bluff overlooking the bay. We knocked on their door and this little old lady came out who was as hospitable as if her grand kids had just shown up. Not only did she let us stay, but she brought us out chocolate chip macadamia nut cookies to go with our meal. The perfect end to and amazing day.

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