Trail Ridge

Colorado was filled with some beautiful rides, however, there is one that stands out in particular. Our ride through Rocky Mountain National Park. We went over one of the highest paved roads in the world, an elevation of 12,183 feet. 

As always, it started out like any other morning. We woke up... rather I woke up, turned the lights on forcing everyone else to get up, got dressed, ate breakfast, did bike maintenance. I stress did bike maintenance because my back wheel had a little bit of a wobble in it. I wasn't sure what to do because this had never happened to me before. I remember thinking I might have to ride in the van today until I can get this fixed, but it was such a monumental day to ride. So I asked a couple of my friends who didn't know what to do, so I really started to look at it, tightened the hub, it seemed to do the trick, and called it a day. I was a little worried about it because in the second half of the day we were going to plummet down a mountain and if anything were to happen with my bike it could have ended catastrophically. Needless to say nothing happened. 

At route meeting, as we do every morning, we discuss the route and anything we should watch out for. This route meeting was a bit more intense. The leaders put the fear of God in us. I'm not sure if they meant to, but they acted as if this would be the hardest, scariest day of riding that we will ever do. They also told us that because we were riding through a national park that we would have to be on our best behavior. We also changed the route last minute so that freaked some people out as well. I didn't really mind that, I knew I'd find my way. 

Oh well, we were on our way. It was a bit chillier than usual but nothing we couldn't handle. About 6 miles in I was riding with Stephen and Kevin when we see Ross and Daniel coming back the other direction. We asked what was going on and they said, "Google Maps said it was this direction." Patrick who was just slightly in front of us turned and followed them blindly, along with everyone behind us. Stephen, Kevin and I didn't. I don't like to follow people blindly, as I've done that before and it just added miles to my trip. We looked it up on Google Maps only to find out that we were going the right direction. So we trekked on. Just shortly up the road we ran into an elk in someone's yard. Yes that's right, an Elk, just chilling on the side of the road. Of course we stopped to take a few pictures with him. It was insane how comfortable it was with us so close to it. 

Anyway, after a few shots, we left the beast alone to chomp on some more grass. Then we started making our way into the Rocky Mountain National Park. We were a little worried that we weren't going to be able to get in because Ross and Daniel had our permit. We gave it to them because they were in front and figured they would get to the gate first, but they were stupid and made everyone go the wrong way. It wasn't a problem, though. The park ranger was really nice, believed that we had a permit, and let us go. 

A few turns of the winding road and there it was... The Climb. Once it started it didn't stop. We made the best of it, though. We were going slow so there was plenty of time to talk. It was a really foggy day, which was a little disappointing because you couldn't see any of the magnificent views that were apparently out yonder. We stopped at one scenic overlook and all we saw was this... 

We climbed. Then we climbed. Oh, did I mention we climbed? We climbed for 25 miles! At one point the fog was so thick you couldn't see more than 15 feet in front of yourself. Finally, I don't know how far along we were but the clouds broke a little bit and we saw a mountain. We got so excited, we all stopped to take some pictures. Right around mile 30 we stopped to eat lunch. At this point we are roughly 11000 feet above sea level. It was cold. There were 5 or 6 of us that hopped in the van to get warm. I'm not one for stopping too long so I ate and ran. I was the first to the summit, 12183 feet of summit! In all honesty it was somewhat anticlimactic. There wasn't a marker or anything announcing that you were at the summit. You didn't know until you started going down the other side. 

On the other side there was a restaurant, an information center, a gift shop, and some bathrooms. I stopped to use the bathroom, got a hot chocolate, and just to relax a little more since I cut lunch so short. A nice chunk of the group caught up to me at this point. I waited for people because after I left it was going to be downhill for miles and I didn't particularly want to ride along on such a monumental even in our ride. After a few of us were ready we all rolled out together. I was in front of Tim, I chose this carefully because he had a GoPro and would be filming the descent. The ride down the mountain was incredible. It wasn't the steepest hill and I wasn't going the fastest I had ever gone, but for 10 miles I didn't have to pedal, I was able to coast the whole way down. There was switchback after glorious switchback that made for a fun and interesting descent. 

The rest of the ride was relatively uneventful. I saw a moose and it rained. 

The "high"lights of Colorado

I'm not even going to bother apologizing this time. I'm not sorry for not posting, I was biking across the country enjoying every second of the experience. I didn't want to take the time out of my day to blog. That being said, I'm going to write a few posts catching everybody up on the happenings from Colorado to the Oregon coast. 

I title this post 'The "high"lights of Colorado' not because I got high, but a vast majority of the team participated in recreational marijuana while we were there. I stress, I did not partake in the activity. Anyway, I remember being the first one to the Colorado border. It was the first really cool border crossing that we had seen. Two giant timber poles sticking out of the ground with two timber cross beams, and a giant wooden sign welcoming us to the state of Colorado. In no time we were up on the sign taking pictures, waiting for everyone else to get there. We were all taking turns getting on top of it, groups of 2-5 would be on it at once. After everyone got there, we took a group shot and carried on our way.

I'm not sure if I said this before, but I had certain expectations of Colorado, but eastern Colorado is nothing but the same cornfields, wheat fields, and other flat farmland. I can't remember how far we rode that day but the fields didn't end. I do remember we stayed just outside of Akron (Colorado not Ohio). We were 5 miles off of the main road and boy do I remember that road. Literally every 20 feet there was a crack in the road. Not just a crack that you drive over and don't think anything of it. A crack that went the entire way across the street, was 2 inches wide, and even dropped an inch or two. We felt every bump on our poor little bums. The church itself was literally in the middle of nowhere. I remember looking forward to looking at the starts but 1) it was too cloudy and 2) we decided to wake up at 4AM the next morning. The decision to wake up early caused a real scene that night. Some people just aren't morning people and they made that apparent with the 4AM wake-up announcement. I thought it made perfect sense. It had been extremely hot the last few days, was going to be the same temperature the next day, and we just crossed into Mountain Time, so to our bodies it would have felt like 5AM. 

I remember waking up before the sun was up. We always wake up early but rarely do we beat the sun. It was totally worth it, though. We were ready to ride when the sun was just above the horizon, it was a little chilly, but I would much rather be a little chilly in the morning that to be extremely hot in the afternoon. 

We had 100 miles into Denver that day and it was probably the easiest century I had done. We had 2 lunches that day and with that and the fact that we got up so early it felt like 2 different ride days. We were able to relax at lunch and take our time as opposed to pushing ourselves to beat the heat. We did run into a shower for all of 5 minutes. Just enough time to make me stop on the side of the road, put my phone in my bag, put on my raincoat, only to have to take it off 5 minutes later. 

We made it to Denver by early afternoon. There were 4 of us that decided that we would go to a bike shop before we went to the host. Therefore, we pulled out Google Maps and looked for the nearest bike shop. That is when Patrick got angry. I don't know what snapped, but he started to get furious and he took it out on Google Maps. According to him, "It's the worst," "It's only good by default because there's nothing better." I don't know about you but I personally love Google Maps and pretty much everything else Google related (no I'm not getting paid by Google). We found a bike shop, all bought new chains as the original ones were wearing out after 2000 miles. From the bike shop Chloe was going to go back to the host and Patrick, Taylor, and I were going to a hotel where Taylor's mom was going to be staying while we were Denver. However, Taylor screwed up put the hosts address in her phone and lead us there first. What started out as a short 100 miler turned into a long day.

Once we finally figured out where we were going, we navigated to the hotel, immediately showered and laid in a nice comfy bed, surrounded by pillows and watched TV. None of us had watched TV since we left for the trip. We had seen a movie or two while at the hosts but never did we have the chance to just flip through the channels... especially in a bed! 

We were in Denver for two days and a lot happened so I'm going to skim over it a bit. We had a build day the next day. We helped an older woman fix up her house. We did some painting, I installed a new front door, some insulation around the back door, a house number placard , and a few other miscellaneous items around the house. It was fun and the owner of the house was so thankful. That night, however, Chloe, Patrick, and I, on a whim, decided to go to the Zac Brown Band concert at Coors Field. We were going to try to scalp tickets but couldn't find any good prices. As we went to the ATM to get some money a gentleman noticed I had a Pittsburgh shirt on and asked if I was a Steelers fan, I looked at him with a dumb look on my face and said, "of course I'm a Steelers fan." Turns out he was from Western PA and was also a Steelers fan. His fiancee, however, was from Ohio and was a Browns fan. He admitted that he didn't know how it was going to work between them, but he said he loved her regardless. Anyway, they asked about our tan lines so of course we told them all about what we were doing. I went ahead and got my money out of the ATM while we were chatting and then one of the ladies of the group we were talking to proceeded to take money out as well. When she was done she turned to us and handed us $40 telling us that we were doing good work and to enjoy the concert, and that we did. Rather than scalping tickets, we just bought the cheapest tickets we could at the ticket office, which turned out to be the best seats ever. Sure they were far back from the stage but with the giant screens, you don't need to be that close. What we did have was the perfect view of the sunset over the Rocky Mountains. As the sun faded, being that it was Independence Day weekend, there were fireworks going off all over the place. There weren't fireworks at the concert, a little disappointing, but it didn't take away from the night. 

The next morning we left for Boulder. It was a short ride so we were going to get in early and I was hoping to see my friend Sam, but it turned out that he was going to be gone for his birthday / Independence Day weekend. The ride was uneventful but the evening was anything but. It was laundry day so I helped out with laundry even though it wasn't my chore that week, I went to church, we climbed a mountain, and saw a great firework show at the University of Colorado - Boulder football stadium. 

There's still more to Colorado but the Rocky Mountains deserve their own post. 

A Trip Through Kansas.

So I'm not sticking to my one week blog post as promised. Some of it is contributed to not having WiFi the entire way through Kansas, but a lot of it is contributed to my laziness. I have a lot to catch you up on so put on your seat belts, it's going to be a wild ride.

Kansas isn't even in the running for the worst state. In fact it has been my favorite state thus far. No it wasn't the most scenic, but it was beautiful. There were blue skies for days. We only had one night of rain in the whole week that we were there, but we didn't have to ride in any rain so I consider that a win. There were a few days where the temperature was in the 90s and even one day where it surpassed 100°. It was hot but we were smart enough to wake up early, so we could get out and beat the heat.

Manhattan, KS was my favorite town. We had a build day where once again we didn't have enough to do, but it was really cool because we got to 1) Build lemonade stands for all the kids from the Habitat house recipients from years past and 2) the house that we did work on was dedicated to the family. It was an experience I'll never forget. Handing over the keys to a recently widowed mother of 5.

Manhattan was a college town so there was plenty of nightlife and it was Taylor's birthday. We had a great night. We started out at one bar where they only served shots, I was bored and just wanted to dance. After being there for what felt like an eternity we went to another bar where we just sat down to drink. Right when I was about to set out to find a bar where we could dance I heard some music coming from the back room. We walked back and there was a light up dance floor surrounded by TVs. Bike & Build took over the joint. We were bouncing off the walls to the nights end. This is where the rain comes in. We set out in what we thought was a break from the downpour that happened 5 minutes earlier. We got two blocks away from the bar when we the sky started dumping on us again. The thunder and lightning came soon after. It was slightly terrifying, but what could we do? Our options were to go back to the bar soaking wet, or book it back to the host. I made the executive decision to book it back to the host. Taylor, a little tipsy, was not happy. She just kept repeating, "I have to pee," and ,"why is it so cold?" Needless to say we got back to the host a little wetter than we would have liked, but nothing a dry towel wasn't able to solve.

Making our way through Kansas was a blast. Sure they weren't the most interesting rides, they were mostly flat with a few rolling hills, but like I said before, the blue skies went on for days. There's just something so intriguing about wide open land like that and the people were so nice, the support was overwhelming. Not to mention that there was a water park in every town we stopped in. If there's one thing Kansas does right (which I can vouch that there is definitely more than 1) it's the water parks. Almost every town we stopped in had a new water park complete with slides, diving boards, and lazy rivers. It was a great way for all of of us to even out our ridiculous tan lines.

I still have some more to talk about but unfortunately I need to run. The Colorado stories are soon to come.

The battle of worst state

Since the beginning of the trip we've been talking about all of the bad things that may going to happen like the severe storms, the terrible roads, the first time that we want to quit, and we would say that all of those things would happen in Kansas. We really didn't have a reason for it, we just assumed that Kansas was going to be the worst state. Nothing but corn fields, cows, and flat! If today was any indication of how Kansas is going to be, it might just be the best state we've been to thus far. We had a short ride today from Kansas City, MO across the state line into Kansas Citu, KS and made our way 43 miles to Lawrence, KS. We had the wind to our back, a nice 73° and overcast, and smooth roads the entire time.

So which state is the worst. I think it's a little premature to say being that I'm still less than halfway through the trip, but Missouri and West Virginia are on the leaderboard at the moment. They were both beautiful states that had a lot to offer but WV had the WORST roads that I had ever ridden on. We usually call out potholes so riders behind us can avoid them. It seriously would have been easier to call out smooth road since we were hitting potholes left and right. While in MO we were on the Katy Trail for nearly 200 miles. Although the gravel isn't ideal for road bikes I could have gotten past that with all the natural beauty around us. However, the gravel was a different story. Out of the week we were in MO, I had gotten wet all but one day. There was so much rain that we literally had to ride through a foot and a half of water. It's terrible for our bikes but it was either that or walk through it. Either way it was a crappy situation.

I really don't mind riding in the rain, its the aftermath that I hate. Nothing dries, so we have to let the wet clothing that we have fester in our bags for several days until we do laundry. The shoes don't dry overnight and there is nothing worse than sticking your nice dry foot into a swampy shoe.

Needless to say I haven't decided yet regarding the worst state. I'm leaning towards Missouri right now, but I really need to sit down and evaluate their list of cons. I also want to wait to see what Kansas truly has to offer.

Bloomington, IN

So I've been meaning to write about this day for a while but I've been a little busy biking across the country and all so here it is:

With only 37 miles to go, we were able to sleep in to 7:00am, which was incredible after the century the day prior. We were heading into Bloomington, Indiana, home of the Indiana University Hoosiers. It was another scorching day topping out at 90°. The ride itself wasn’t very eventful. We were told during route meeting that the first half was flat, while there were some hills in the second half. We stopped for lunch in Nashville, IN under a beautiful pavilion in the town center. It was a quaint little town with a variety of unique shops lining the streets.

Immediately after lunch the hills started, almost exactly halfway through the ride. They weren’t anywhere as treacherous as the ascents in the mountains, it was just slightly unexpected after only seeing flat land for 20 miles. A few miles from the host the directions started getting a little funky. A lot of us missed the turn onto Morningside Dr. because it was unmarked, but we all made it nonetheless. Indiana University had set us up with an activities room in one of the residence halls on campus. They were nice enough to provide us with towels and gave us access to three apartments within the building so we could shower. The apartments were massive compared to the closet sized dorm rooms that I had in school. 

As I said before, the ride itself was uneventful, but the day was quite the opposite. Indiana University didn’t provide us with a meal so we had to work our Donation Magic. Throughout the evening, we DMed 60 Jimmy John sandwiches and several burritos from the Laughing Planet. Apparently the Laughing Planet is a great little café that has live music throughout the week. Unfortunately we were there on a night with no live music. But the town of Bloomington was amazing, it has a great little downtown with a lot of shops, food, music, and bars.
The most exciting part of Bloomington was by far the rock quarry. We heard from a Bike & Build alum that did CUS ’14 that if we were willing to take a 16 mile detour that we wouldn’t regret it. A lot of us were already back at the hosts and weren’t really sure if we felt like riding another 16 miles, yet we really wanted to go to the quarry. So we put our heads together and took an Uber instead. Chad, the best Uber driver anyone could ask for picked us up at our host and drove us to a dead end road facing into the woods. We confirmed we were in the right spot before we just started wandering through the woods, but after confirming that’s exactly what we did. There was a trail that we followed that led us straight to it. We saw the water and we started giggling like little school children, we were so excited. But upon emerging from the brush, we noticed we were on the side with a 65 foot drop. There were several people already there on the opposite side where the drops were only 25ish feet high. As we were looking over the ledge, of course the locals started to antagonize us trying to get us to jump from the 65 foot ledge. Most of us laughed it off, but there was one that said he wanted to do it… and that he did. He took off his shirt, set his backpack down, looked over the ledge, and within 20 seconds jumped off the ledge. Upon emerging from the water, which felt like an eternity to us bystanders, we all cheered so loud mostly relieved that he was okay. The rest of us were chicken to jump from that high so we instead decided to walk around to the lower shelves. 

There were only 6 of us at first, but then another group Ubered a ride, also from Chad! We spent the next couple of hours swimming and jumping. For several of us, it was the best adventure outside of biking that we had on the trip. After getting back and settling down for the night, we put on the movie ‘Breaking Away’ that was filmed in Bloomington. The opening scene was actually at the same rock quarry that we had gone to, so it was a lot of fun telling everybody that didn’t go, “Oh, Oh, I jumped off of that,” and, “I was there!!!” It was just a great way to end the day. I can’t say anything about the rest of the movie because I fell asleep 30 minutes in, but from what I’ve been told, it’s pretty good. 

Bloomington was a great place and I can’t wait to find more surprises that this country has to offer in the next 3000 miles!

Road Rage and Road Kill

As you can imagine having traveled over 1000 miles on some back country roads, we have passed a few dead animal carcasses. The majority of them have been raccoons, however, I have seem some interesting things. The most surprising has definitely been the amount of turtles. Poor little guys weren't able to get out of the way even if they wanted to (I assume some of them were depressed and they didn't see any other options). The other day I saw a bloated deer, it looked so big and stretched out that if you would poke it, it would pop. So of course I tried to convince my friend Taylor to poke it, but she wasn't having it. I've also seen a ton of squirrels, frogs, birds, and unfortunately a skunk. One skunk in over 1000 miles is pretty good, but its still terrible. Just think of how long you can smell it while riding past it in a car, well try it on your bike. It takes 10 times as long to get out of the smell zone.

As for road rage, not every driver is polite about us being on the road. We've gotten honked at, yelled at, called some colorful things, but my favorite was when we got an empty bottle thrown at us. Yes, that's right, someone through their trash at us! We were just riding along when someone yelled out the window, "Get off the ****ing road," (I'll let you fill in the blanks, I'm trying to keep this blog PG). We were in a line of 4 people. He screamed it at the last person in line, and then as he drove past, when he got to the leader, that is when the bottle came flying at us. Fortunately it didn't hit anybody, it's just frustrating that people are so rude. It's not like we were even in their way, he easily got around. It was really awkward when we passed them again while they were stopped at a stop light, so it's not even like we were holding them up. Oh well, for the amount of cars that pass us each day, I'm thankful for the patience of most people, the fact that I can only remember one real road rage story in 25 days says that the majority of people are understanding.

Build Days

I don't have much to say about the first two build days, they were kind of lame and there wasn't enough work for 30 people. I actually felt bad with the condition we left the first house in. All we had to do was paint the exterior of the house. In the morning it was fine. We were able to put a brush in everyone's hand. However, after lunch there were a lot of people standing around because we didn't have enough ladders to reach the second story. Then we ran out of time to finish the house. Although we did help, because the job wasn't complete, the house appeared to look worse than when we started.

The second build day we poured a foundation. We were able to make an assembly line of wheel barrows and to transport the concrete. There were just a lot more people than necessary, but it was still more fun than painting.

The third build day in Cincinnati was incredible. It was what I wanted to do the whole trip, just hammer in some nails. We teamed up with Habitat for Humanity while they were building 4 houses right next to each other. We were working on 3 of those houses, putting up siding, assembling scaffolding, building stairs, and building a roof. I was on the roof crew with our fearless leader Ken. He was a great guy that really knew what he was doing and was more than willing to explain. He also made sure we were all being safe because "Safety is Sexy!" It took a little while to get started, we had to arrange all of our tools and materials on the scaffolding. I probably climbed the ladder 30 times within an hour, but I was more than willing. Once we got started we were like a well oiled machine. We put up the gutter board and progressed with the sheathing. It was interesting to be on the construction side of things for once. I've structurally designed roofs before but never have I built them. It definitely gives me a new perspective that will make me better at what I do.

I'm really looking forward to the build days ahead.