The REAL Adventure Begins...

When originally planning this trip I had split it into four separate phases to not get overwhelmed with the scale of the logistics (I was responsible for logistics and Ken was responsible for bike prep). Phase One was departure from Virginia to getting on the plane in Vancouver - Phase Two was getting off the plane in Seoul to the ferry ride to Russia and clearing the bikes in Vladivostok - Phase Three was travel through Russia, Mongolia and Kazakhstan to entering Europe through Estonia - Phase Four was traveling throughout Europe to getting the bikes on a boat and us on a plane in Great Britain. 

Phase One is now complete as we get on a plane to Seoul tomorrow morning and the bikes fly out on Korean Air on Monday.  Now things will get much more interesting as we will be be entering Phase Two where we must navigate through customs to clear the bikes in Seoul, ride around and across South Korea to the ferry in Dongue, take a 22 hour ferry ride to Vlad, then finally go through the process of clearing the bikes through customs in Russia.  All this must happen on schedule as we have reservations on the DBS ferry for Sunday, July 27th.  The ferry generally is sold out during the busy months of July and August so we need to make that ferry on Sunday

We had a bit of a scare last night when I received an email from United that our Sunday morning flight from Vancouver to San Francisco had been cancelled.  After 2.5 hours on the phone this morning with United customer service, we were booked on a Canada Air flight a half hour later than our original United flight.  All is good again.

We lose a day while traveling west so will not arrive in Seoul until Monday afternoon local time.

Let the adventure begin!

Hunter S. Thompson.