By the time we got up this morning, both Ries and Shiela had been at work for some time. They are incredibly industrious people!

It had been raining overnight, but was looking like a better day, so we left our wet weather gear on the bike. We said our farewells and headed off.

We only had a short ride today to take us to Jim and Terrie Binnion's home in Bellingham, so we decided to first ride across to Deception Pass. On the way we stopped in Anacortes (named after Annie Curtis, apparently) for coffee at the Cheescake Cafe, which proudly describes itself as "the Home of the Wedgie", which is possibly why there weren't many customers there.

Deception Pass is a narrow straight between Whidby and Fidalgo Islands which is blocked by a third island, really just a large chunk of rock, that holds up the middle bit of the bridge between the two. One hundred and eighty six feet below, the tide surges violently through the restricted passage.

From there we rode north, taking the opportunity to ride Chuckanut Drive again, this time while the road was dry.

We arrived at Jim and Terrie's not long after lunch and well before they were expecting us. Their dogs must have known we were coming, for they greeted us with great enthusiasm. Jim took us for a tour of his studio and workshop where we met his daughter Joya, and Chip who were working in the studio.  Jim is one of the world's leading experts in making mokume gane (that's Japanese for "woodgrain metal"). He had recently returned from teaching a course in San Francisco and had lots of examples to show us that illustrated some of the many ways of producing this. Essentially he fuses layers of different metals together to form a billet, then deforms, stamps or carves part of the metal away to reveal the different layers like contour lines on a map, then rolls the billet flat. In some cases the pattern is enhanced by etching one of the constituent metals away. The result is astoundingly complex and beautiful patterns that make exquisite jewellry. To see his work go to http://mokume-gane.com/index.php

Jim was barbequeing a brisket for our dinner that night in a wood fired smoking oven, and had started cooking it well before we arrived. He explained that what we Australians call barbequeing is only grilling, and that barbequeing is really the process of cooking meat for a long time at low temperature. The most important thing is it was absolutely delicious - and the wine was good too. We chatted away, and all too soon it was late.

Apart from two Alsatian/Malamute dogs they have a remarkable green-eyed cat. The eyes communicate well. It can open doors and poses for photos on demand. Once the light was out it came into our bedroom jumped on the bed, walked all over us and tucked us in. When it was happy we were settled in, it left for the night.