This travelogue report covers my service visit on Thursday, August 27th, at the BMW motorcycle dealership in Ferndale, WA, followed by an overnight stay with a local rider. Since the visit at the dealership took nearly the entire day, I did not travel very far afterwards.
The service manager picked me up at the Super-8 motel around 9 AM and brought me to their shop, where I settled in for the long wait. Other customers came into the store and were willing to chat. That helped to pass the time.
In Washington new motorcyclists can take the written driver examination from a test administrator authorized by the Motorcycle Safety Foundation in order to obtain their motorcycle endorsement on their Washington driver’s license. Coincidentally, Thursday is the day each week that the test administrator visits this BMW dealership. Nearly a dozen young men came to take the test while I was there.
At 2 PM PDT, I took this first photo of my motorcycle through the window in the service bay as the mechanic was performing a routine oil change and valve adjustment.
Later that afternoon, Doyle, another rider, came into the BMW dealership for something regarding his scooter and we got into a lengthy and very interesting conversation. Although I can’t recall the details of our discussion, he and I hit it off quite well.
He even invited me to stay in the extra bedroom in his nice home on a spit of land, called Sandy Point, to the west of Ferndale, that juts out into the Strait of Georgia and has a clear view over the sheltered waters between Vancouver Island and the mainland.
This map shows the route from the dealership to Doyle’s home.
After sitting around outside chatting over beers, he prepared delicious steaks for us on his outdoor BBQ grill. While he was busy, I took the opportunity to take some photos along the beach outside his home. The first shows the view towards the north. The other shows the view southward with the tip of Lummi Island just visible about three miles away due south beyond the trees. More towards the southwest, Orcas Island is visible nearly ten miles distant in the San Juan Islands archipelago. The highest point on Orcas Island is Mount Constitution (El: 2,407 ft / 733 m).
We sat inside around the dining table to chat while enjoying the steaks. As the sun was offering a beautiful sunset, I took several photos to create this sequence of panoramic views, starting at 7:49 PM and at nearly ten-minute intervals. Quite the show!
This next photo, taken the next morning, shows Doyle and his very friendly dog in the kitchen.
This photo shows me and my motorcycle loaded up and ready to depart.
I really appreciated Doyle’s hospitality and look forward to seeing him again in the future. Perhaps by then he will have a motorcycle more suitable for long-distance touring and also the interest in doing so.
That concludes this travelogue report for August 27th. The next day, I resumed my journey and headed towards my cousin’s farm near Arlington, Oregon.
Don
