Welcome to our website.

This is the travel journal of Elliot and Stephanie Whitehead, who decide to step out of their usual lives, and travel for six months on their tandem "Darth".

Elliot works as a business manager for a pharmaceutical company and Steph is a GP.

We decided to gain a new perspective, to rediscover ourselves, the world and its people.

We packed all our possessions, rented our house, and sold our cars.

In exchange we settled on a tandem bicycle for transport and 4 pannier bags for our possessions.

Vancover to San Diego : Journey 1
Our first leg of the journey starts in Vancouver, British Columbia and we head South for 2000 miles following the pacific coast down to the Mexican border.

Marin County, Home of the Mountain Bike

Journal Date: 24 September 2006

Location: Corte Madera

The next 60 miles to San Francisco and the Bay area took several days. We had a beautiful ride into Port Reyes, rescuing a sickly snake en route. It was obvious we were approaching a prosperous conurbation as evidenced by the large number of highly expensive sports cars out for a Sunday drive. Cars were not the only vehicles on the road. Cyclists were everywhere. Stunning state of the art bicycles that weighed only ounces, ridden by glamorous, athletic people in designer lycra, testified to how seriously these guys took their cycling and posing. This route was the place to see and be seen by the beautiful cycling people of the Bay area. Not feeling that beautiful myself, I was not comforted by the thought that no one else on the road that morning had been denied a hairdryer for several weeks, or only had two changes of clothes, but somehow that knowledge didn’t help me to feel any better. We passed through Marin County, birthplace of the Mountain Bike. We were amused to see a swarm of about fifty teenagers on mopeds taking over the road, closely tailed by a police patrol car. The posse was eventually rounded up in an empty parking lot where the cop got out of his car to give them a talking to. The policeman was fighting a losing battle, when behind his back one of the moped riders took a pee against the patrol car wheels in full view of his comrades. Navigating through the various neighbourhoods became more problematical and we got lost several times. A few arguments later and after Elliot had confiscated the maps, we were rescued by a nice Mountain Biker called Eric. He recommended and escorted us several miles to a motel, leaving his phone number in case of further problems. (I assume he meant bike rather than domestic). We spent a couple of days in Corte Madera, just south of the Golden Gate Bridge, enjoying the sunshine whilst Darth underwent a service at a local bike shop and was refitted with new tyres and seat posts. Finally we set off for the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco….