Bikes arrive, beat up, broken, and lost!

The bike boxes beat up, parts broken, and gear lost, don't ask me, ask UPS! The good news first, the bikes did arrive at Rosemary's house in Marblemount, Washington when UPS said they would, last monday. The bad news is, they went through a war to get there. I thought the war was in the Middle East, not the Middle USA. The boxes were bad enough that the driver was ready to ship them back, for new ones I guess. But, these bikes aren't from a company Rosemary explained, and I need the bikes. After opening the war-torn boxes, she notice many problems right away. Bonnie's bike has a broken plastic piece and her front brake was damaged. My bike box had a foot hole in the bottom of it and funny that, I am missing a shoe. So much for going the safer way and putting all our trust in UPS, instead of the friendly skies. After talking to Rosemary on the phone and her e-mailing me many photos of the damaged goods, I marched into the UPS store we shipped from. No questions asked, we will get the money for all damaged and lost items, but no extra money for headaches and stress. This is at most a small set back, I believe we can fix all problems ourselves and not be delayed our start. Which is real good because day one is to bike around the San Juan Islands, and it's also my birthday. Can you think of a better birthday present then starting an adventure of many months with your best friend? For some maybe, but I can't. Many thanks to Rosemary, (Bonnie's sister) for all her time and effort to make sure we recieved all the infomation and photos to make a case at UPS. I guess it wouldn't be much of a journey, if everything went perfectly from start to finish, problem being we haven't even started yet. All in all, we are both very excited to get rolling and hope you'll follow us, through our blogs to the end. Just another day at the office, for an adventurer.