TIM

So we see this guy waiting for the Port Townsend Ferry with us. We left a forecast for snow just a few hours ago and this guy is on a motorcycle with a surfboard attached. We acknowledge each other with eyes because he sees our paddleboards up top. We guess to each other in the warm truck cab that we are very likely headed in the same direction.
A few days later we are pulled off at a wild viewpoint along a roughed up dark Pacific cliff. There’s our guy. We offer him a drink and he would like hot coffee, black please. Kind of Brit accent. Young (duh).
We get to talking to young Tim from Capetown, Africa. Got an Irish Visa though his mom was only Irish through marriage, if you can say that. Oh. I did.
Motorbikes around Ireland, then to work a bit in Vancouver in film industry before heading down the Washington, Oregon and California coast, accross the Baja Peninsula and on to Argentina next year.
I remember an old friend that did a transcontinental motorbike ride who mentioned the tedium of trading tales of the road for drinks…..Wait. NO. That was the guy who walked his burro down the spine of the baja. He must have been WAY thirstier.
In any case, I tried not to pry.
But by the time we were about to come in to Bodega Bay we were noting three finning whales, no, wait, SURFERS way down below and looked up to see Mr.  Capetown’s bike parked right near the road, some clothing hanging, tentlike under a shrub and Honk, honk, honk! There he was again. We were just ten seconds shy of REALLY getting to know him as he had just gotten back from surfing on his extremely short surfboard.
So we buy him a bowl of hot tortilla soup at a Bodega Bay Restaurant and find this will be his first hotel stop in nine days, though he usually tries to go for a week boondocking and camping.   He smiles and his longish wet hair dries as he tells his plans.  Next year he plans to go all the way to Argentina. We told him to call us if he gets into trouble while on the Baja and gave him a card which he will likely never have to use. Just seems like the kind of kid who bounces.