Coast to Coast for a Cure 2010

The Clamstrip 180

2010-08-17T06:08:00.000-07:00

So we made it back to the UConn Health Center, and we had a great crew of people waiting for us! NBC 30 was even there to catch our return and interview us about our experiences (just read the blog!)

Here we are: Alex, Loreen, Arturo, and Stacy. I think Stacy's helmet is too small and mine too big. Check out the glove tan. Oh yeah... We ate and drank in front of our home (the health center, since we spend more time here than our actual houses) and celebrated our official return with classmates and other health center staff, including Dr. Bob Bona, who is intimately involved with ensuring money raised by Lea's goes directly to hematological research conducted at UConn and to the service of patients. It was a great time, and NBC captured the debauchery.

While the true end of this journey will be a final ride to Milford and Long Island Sound on Saturday August 21st with whomever would like to join us, I (Arturo) had decided a while back that I couldn't stop at Farmington, but had to keep going until I couldn't go any farther, until I essentially rode right into the Atlantic Ocean with the next services somewhere in France. It was a clean shot to Cape Cod, and just about as far east as you can go in this country, short of eastern Maine. I would keep doing this in the name of Lea's Foundation, continuing to bring support to the cause across the remainder of southern New England.

After a rest day in West Hartford, I set off at 5 am, hoping to make it the 135 miles to Buzzards Bay, MA that day. Hartford was just waking up.

I crossed the Connecticut River as the sun rose and made my way to route 44, which I would take to Pawtucket, RI.

As I passed through East Hartford, I noticed people weren't really smiling or nodding when I did, and I wondered if I had finally left the zone of friendliness. Was Connecticut really the worst? Stopping at a gas station for a quick bit of breakfast, I got to talking to the clerk. After telling him what we had just done and that I was continuing it to the Cape, I headed outside to eat my microwave breakfast sandwich on the curb. As I'm eating, the clerk comes out with a plastic bag telling me to take these ten donuts with me, since I could definitely use the energy! The bag was full of kruellers, donuts, danishes, and maple buns. Connecticut had not let me down, but I wondered why we never got bags of donuts when there were four of us. Finishing these would be a task, but I strapped the bag to my bike and continued on.

As I left, I saw the clerk talking to a lady at the counter, who was staring at me, and as I waved goodbye to them she ran out and screamed "good luck! Stay safe!"

The remainder of Connecticut fully confirmed that it is a hilly freakin' state! On top of this, I decided to remove my front panniers in an attempt to give myself some more speed, but in transferring my tools and other important items to the rear, all I did was set up a terrible weight imbalance that not only made me very unsteady but slowed me down incredibly. I was wondering if I would make it to Buzzards Bay that day after all. By the time I hit Manchester, I was tired! How was I going to pull off 135 miles? Just keep going. Somewhere along the way, I found this guy on the side of the road, and secured him to the front of my bike.

Despite the hills and feeling slower than ever, passing through the woods and towns of eastern CT was nice.

At around 10:00, I made it to Rhode Island, but despite its nickname, I wouldn't be seeing any ocean here.

On the road to Pawtucket, it was nice to see this. A little premature though...

Passing through Pawtucket, just north of Providence, I was at the mercy of some of the worst and most hurried drivers I'd come across on this trip. On top of this, the shoulder slowly disappeared and road conditions were terrible, but eventually I made it across and was so close to Massachussets.

From Pawtucket, 85 miles in, I continued through Taunton, MA and on to Buzzards Bay. I hit 100 miles at 2:15 pm, which was pretty awesome. I was definitely hitting my second wind and was cruising at this point. Days off always throw me off at first. Give your body a chance to rest and all it wants to do is complain. But now Buzzards Bay (and beyond?) was well within reach. Once in Buzzards Bay, I got my first view of Atlantic water, and stopped at Barnacle Bill's to eat some great fish and chips and clam strips.

I was definitely getting tired, so I took a 15 minute rest after eating, hydrated, and then continued to find a way over the Cape Cod Canal. Heading out of Buzzards Bay, I passed this awesome railroad bridge.

I was planning to take the Bourne Bridge across the canal, which would have been doable for a bike, but must have missed it because I was suddenly on a shoulderless highway full of people trying to get over the only other bridge to the Cape, this one the interstate bridge. As I got on the on ramp for the Sagamore Bridge, I saw that cursed no bikes/pedestrians sign that always throws a monkey wrench in things. For a second I considered just staying on and hoping no cops would be crossing at that time. I am very glad I didn't. Instead, I headed down a bit trying to find a bike route over, and finally found the walkway on the other side of the roadway. Seeing the road, I realized if I'd stayed on there would have been chaos on that bridge. There was an awesome view of the canal. I never knew Cape Cod was really an island...

I was now officially on the Cape (!), and at 137 miles with a good amount of daylight left I kept going, planning on camping whenever it got too dark to continue. Passing through Sandwich, I saw a chance to go to the beach on the north side of the cape, facing Cape Cod Bay. I debated whether I should wait till the very end to see the ocean for about two seconds and then thought "what are you stupid?" It's beautiful there. A boardwalk led out over the salt marshes.

There it was, that other coast.

Leaving the beach, I found some discarded color-in kites that had been scribbled all over and then stuffed in a trash can. I had no choice but to hook the T-rex one up to my bike. How could I not? A little down the road, I gave the kite some slack and for a brief moment successfully had a kite flying off the back of my bike, riding across Cape Cod as the sun set. Now that's life.

Route 6A on the Cape is awesome.

It started getting darker, but since at this point I was already at around 142 miles for the day, I had to keep going to 150. Despite passing a number of spots that looked hidden and flat enough to pitch a tent, I continued until I passed it. At 151 miles, I came across a church and thought to ask there. No one was there that late of course, but across the street was a big house with a giant yard that looked almost like an orchard, and I figured I'd ask there since I could tuck away in one corner and not bother them. When I knocked, a 15 year old kid answered, and stared at me with the look of "oh God, who's this guy and why's he at my door at night?" After explaining what I was doing and him being genuinely excited, he told me he was the only one home. He tried calling his parents but since they didn't pick up and he couldn't give permission for me to camp on their lawn, I moved on down the road a little. A few minutes later, I found this old unmanned fire station.

At least it wasn't someone's private property, so I set up the tent so it could stay hidden behind the little firehouse, hoping I wouldn't be woken up like we had been by the forest rangers. I tucked into the tent listening to the cicadas and crickets, overjoyed to have just done 152 miles from Farmington to Barnstable, MA, and not even feeling all that bad!

The next morning I set off to complete the last 25 miles to Chatham, on the far eastern end of the Cape, intending to come back to Hyannis afterwards to catch a bus back to Hartford, probably by way of Boston.

On the way I passed this buffet. Even out here, so tempting.

With ten miles to go, I heard the bell go off in my head. My legs got stronger, I could see the Atlantic in my head. Can't go any farther than ten more miles...

I made my way to the Chatham lighthouse, which I figured way a good destination to end on, and when I got there, I caught this morning session of Cape Cod yoga on Coast Guard Beach. I didn't join in.

It was so great and in a lot of ways surreal to be here, and even riding on my own, people had been so helpful and supportive, giving donations, helping me out, or just shaking my hand for completing this journey.

Cape Cod is amazing, especially when you're biking it and camping along the way. The Lower Cape is beautiful. I'm sorry to say that, to me, the sound just doesn't come close. And after 3,834 miles, it felt damn good to be in that water.

It was crystal...

I don't know if you've heard about this, but there's been a bit of a scare recently on the cape. It seems over the last few years, and especially this year, there have been a growing number of great white sightings off the cape. I was talking to someone on the beach, and they said two years ago two were spotted off shore, while this year it's been almost 15 so far, including one 14 ft. great white two days ago in the actual bay, which is separated from open ocean by barrier islands except for two breaks in the sand bars. The probable reason? A seal boom. More on that later, but needless to say I didn't try to swim across the bay to the sandbars of outer Nauset.

Coming back from the beach, I found this discarded broken umbrella, and decided my bike definitely needed some beach style.

While looking out over the open Atlantic, I met two brothers, Carl and Justin Fasano, who had been coming out here for 40 years to their mother's place in Orleans. Throughout the country, people always see my Nevada license plate and say "Don't tell me you came from Nevada?", to which I answer "actually California". It's always a fun time, and after telling them that I was doing this for Lea's Foundation, they said they could at least offer me a warm shower at their place 5 miles up the road. I took them up on it, and said I'd meet them there in a little while. After spending some more time at the beach and talking to several people, I headed up to get a good shower before heading back to Hyannis to catch a bus to Hartford (you gotta know when to call an end to something, and a bike ride BACK to Hartford would be kind of anti-climactic).

As I was riding along the shore to their house in Orleans, one of the brothers, Carl, pulls up to me on his motorcycle, telling me he didn't think to mention it, but he's heading off cape anyway and could give me a ride to Hyannis, or even Providence since he lives just north of there in Franklin, Mass. He said we could just put the bike on his motorcycle trailer and be set. He also said his brother was about to take their pontoon boat out for a spin with a friend and his two kids, and that I should hop in. Obviously, I said sure. This made me think. The fortunes of biking, and traveling in general, are finicky and at times pretty hilarious. Had I been at that spot by the lighthouse 5 minutes earlier or later, I never would have met the Fasanos. I probably would have gotten some crab quickly, biked back along the same route to Hyannis, and simply gotten on a bus. Instead, I had made it as far east as I could go on my bike, and was about to go even farther east on a boat with some great people to see Cape Cod the way it should be seen and end the trip with a bang. The ridiculous nature of chance made me think about a day the four of us were riding out of Monticello, Utah, about to cross into Colorado.

We had stopped to use the internet at the visitor's center in Monticello, and as I used the computer Alex and Loreen went on to wait at a gas station. Stacy and I finished doing what we needed to do and as I pulled up to Alex and Loreen sitting at a table, I saw directly ahead, creeping towards the road we would take into Colorado, a mini monster of a storm. Alex was anxious to get moving, in the hope we could beat the storm to the road. In my mind, all I could think was, you can't race a thunderhead, but we'd try...

As we sped to make it past the point the storm seemed to be drifting towards, my tire was becoming extremely low on air. I had been having terrible difficulty with my tires the last few days, and the day before had bent my rim a bit riding on a low tire I kept re-inflating just so we could make it to Blanding, Utah. The same thing was happening again, but so as not to hold up the group and just wanting to make it past that storm without getting dumped on, I was pumping my tire up about every 10 minutes. Looking behind us at one point, I noticed Monticello had disappeared, consumed by a completely different cloudburst. Had we been there just 15 minutes after we left, that would have been us. Of course, we now also had a different storm chasing us.

The one up ahead actually began drifting more away from us, paralleling the road rather than smashing into it. We decided to eat a quick lunch when he hit the Colorado border, thinking it'd be better to eat while we're dry than get rained on AND be starving. We enjoyed peanut butter and jelly sandwiches under the welcome sign, and by this point a third storm had appeared to the south, so that now we were flanked by three thunderheads, rumbling all around us, yet so far we were still completely dry.

We were dancing with thunderclouds, not so much playing chess with them as a game of drunken checkers, stopping for various reasons as some darted ahead and others caught up, weaving and darting so dumbly that we were brilliantly elusive to them. Stacy, watching these storms close in, urged us on. "Hey guys, I know it's really nice to have lunch on the border and all, but maybe not when the storms are coming this way." Personally, I figured if they wanted to come get us they would, and if we were going to get wet we would, hungry or not. We quickly got started again and by the time it did finally start to rain on us, my tube was down to about 2 minutes between refills. I knew I couldn't keep this up, so I told Alex to go ahead and catch up to the others while I found a small shed where I could change my tube. Because it was my rear tire, it was pretty tricky changing it by myself, and as I lifted up the back of the bike with my head I wedged the front tire against a corner so it wouldn't roll away from me. All this as my feet sunk into a thick red mud that had formed in the floor of the half-open shack. It was a spectacle I'm sure. While the rain pounded on the roof of the shed, I slowly changed my tube, humming and enjoying the sounds and the shelter of that tiny shed full of chicken wire, rusty nails and mud.

By the time I had my bike all ready to go, the rain had passed, and the misfortune of having a flat when you least want one had turned out to be a blessing. The others, meanwhile, had bolted forward in an attempt to beat the rain and had probably gotten soaked. I got back on the road and, as I pulled up to a gas station, I heard Loreen yelling to me. "They have corn dogs for 79 cents!" This after I had gone on an unsuccessful corn dog quest in Blanding the night before. We ate a couple that had just been made and set off into the toenails of the Rockies...

Meeting the Fasano brothers like that just made me think again about all those things you really shouldn't spend much time thinking about. How a gap of seconds can result in such different ends, how the greatest people we know and the best of friends are many times the result of one in a million chance occurrences. As we set off on the pontoon boat "12 Lil' Pirates", which they called the floating living room, I just laughed.

A hell of a way to end...

At one marina we stopped at to fill up on fuel, a lot of the boats had to be stored dry, and this giant cat would lift them out of the water to take them to their shelf like a little valet service. It was pretty cool to watch.

As we approached Coast Guard Beach, where I had been earlier, we saw the reason the sharks were hanging around so much.

The sound was bizarre. It wasn't the stereotypical 'ar ar' of seals, more like hounds or low pitched crying coyotes. They filled the water too. I'd never seen so many seals like that in New England. I guess the great whites hadn't either. It's a seal buffet out there. I can sympathize.

Carl picked me and his niece Kayla up at a dock and brought us back to the house. I took a quick shower and their mother fixed me a great sandwich on a roll. I talked with her for a short while, and we got ready to go, since we needed to head out to catch the last bus out of Providence at 3 pm.

Kayla, me, Jackie and Ralph. Not pictured: Carl, a great guy. Carl and I drove to Providence and having a great conversation, we made it to the station with about 20 minutes to spare. We said goodbye and as a bus pulled in I got in line, which stretched around the corner. After waiting about 15 minutes, it occurred to me to ask the guy next to me if this was in fact the bus to Hartford. He said New York, and I said "So it probably goes through Hartford."

"No, this is the express. Others may stop but this one is only New York. I know because I travel a lot. " Oh. Good thing I asked. Moving on down the row of buses, I finally found the right one, lucky I wasn't thwarted by my instinct to blindly jump in the line where everyone else was.

As I sat down in my seat on this nearly empty bus (why's New York more popular than Hartford, huh?), I saw a glimmer between the seats. I reached in and pulled out this quarter. I had never seen this one before, it was brand new, and noticing what state it was I just laughed: California. Beautiful...

The Litchfield Hills Stole My Spiritual Milk Money... and other stories from the eastern brow ridge of America and the last leg of this endeavor

2010-08-12T14:24:00.000-07:00

A lot has happened since our last posting, but the Allegheny Mountains were not our friends in terms of finding access. Sorry it's been a while, but to make up for it, here's a brain dump of our memories to catch you up!

So remember how we got a room paid for us by an Indian physician/motel clerk in Boardman, Ohio? Well he told us to come back at 8 when the owner would be there, and he would ask him if he would be willing to donate or pay for it himself if he said no. When we did return, he asked to see Alex and Arturo's IDs. "Where does it say you are medical students? Do you have proof?" We didn't. "But you can ask us questions". This began a high stakes impromptu gross anatomy quiz through the bullet proof glass of the motel counter, which we're happy to announce we passed (inferior epigastric, baby!). You can forge a medical student ID, but you can't fake anatomy. So he ended up paying for our room. He was an awesome guy, and as it turns out he has a different business and was just covering for the owner (who was three hours late and who he ended up cursing out in Hindi).

Before all this, though, we decided to get dinner at Golden Corral, honestly one of the most amazing buffets in all the land.

Where chefs carve amazing thick slices of brisket for you...

And fountains flow with chocolate.

Unfortunately we overwhelmed ourselves like dogs with bottomless bowls, and Loreen may or may not have refunded a little mac and cheese in the motel parking lot. The former/future physician ended up buying us a room that night, and the next morning we prepared for our ascent into the Appalachians. But Ohio didn't let us go without a fight, and a few incredibly steep hills helped to usher us out and into Pennsylvania. The welcome signs are sometimes subtle, but the lottery always lets you know when you've entered a new state...

Although the hills were steep and grouped one after another, they weren't as bad as we had expected. Still, the heat was once again rising after a bit of a break in Ohio, and the Alleghenies are no joke. Around New Wilmington, we once again entered Amish country, and talked to some people along the way.

We then found an Amish bake stand and got some elderberry pie and an amazing pumpkin roll. Loreen also bought some maple syrup at another stand.

After the quick dip through Amish country, we pressed on through Allegheny towns like Emlenton. This is oil country, and as it turns out there's actually a gas boom going on from New York to West Virginia, with thousands of drillers descending on the Appalachians. This definitely worked to our disadvantage when trying to get motel rooms.

In Shippenville we came across this interesting statue of a, uh, polar bear cupcake dog balancing a teacup on its head? Oh of course. The official symbol of Pennsylvania. It's on the quarter.

Finally, we made it to Marienville, PA right as the sun was setting. This was where last year's riders stayed, but since we wanted to keep our schedule, we actually had to knock a day off between Springfield, Ohio and Marienville. Four hundred-mile-plus days in a row got the job done, and we were pretty happy to have 'lapped' the route from last year. In Marienville, all the motels in town turned us down for donations, so after eating as quickly as possible (Hot Pockets, hot dogs, and pepperoni balls!) we headed into the darkness and found a dirt road just inside national forest land. A few hundred yards in, the road stopped at a gate next to a sign for a wild turkey preserve. Lacking other options, we pitched our tents behind the gate, because who comes to a wild turkey preserve at 2 in the morning in the rain?

We slowly woke up to what sounded like an alarm going off outside our tents, complete with snooze. In a half-dream, Loreen thought "stupid car alarm", until she remembered we were in the middle of the woods. We realized there were also blaring lights shining on the tents, and we stuck our heads out to see a giant truck in the darkness with huge floodlights on, honking to wake us up. BEEP, BEEP, BEEEEEEP, BEEEEP, BEEP -pause- BEEEP BEEEP BEEP BEEEEP BEEEEEP BEEP. After hustling my shoes on, I went up to the driver's side praying they didn't have guns, and it turned out to be a pair of pretty unhappy forest rangers. They said we weren't allowed to camp there since it was an access road for the forest service that needed to be clear in case of emergency, that we needed to "vacate immediately" and that maybe we could find something a mile down the road but maybe not. They stayed there with their lights on us as we shoved our soaking tents into their bags in the rain, and the truck trailed behind us down the dirt road before speeding off and leaving us to the darkness once we hit the main road. Since it was almost 4 am at this point, we decided it was pointless to find a new spot to camp, so we rode a half mile back to a gas station and had coffee and breakfast waiting for a little light as dawn approached. Around 5 am, the mist rolled in and it got really cold. We had been told by other riders to just dump our cold weather gear once we hit Kansas, but we were definitely happy we hadn't. We started off once it was light enough, destined for Galeton, PA about 98 miles away.

The mist was pretty awesome. During the day we happened upon a couple of Llama ranches. OK, really they were alpacas, and man they looked goofy, like giant poodles with bowl cuts. Sorry alpacas, we call em like we see em. You're really soft though.

In towns like Port Allegheny the signs of mining and the industry of these mountains poked up.

Just past this mill, we saw this car show in the town park. There were some really amazing ones, and while we were wandering around a woman had us come to the central gazebo to get our names and what we were doing. A little while later they announced that we were in the crowd and to shake our hands if you saw us.

Stacy's vote was for this '67 Camaro SS. The tiger in the back sealed it for him.

We needed to continue on through Coudersport and on to the small town of Galeton. After a major climb coming out of Coudersport, we reached the Potato City hotel/restaurant at the very top of the hill (Denton Hill, if it has a name you know it's not good), which we decided to ask for a room despite being 13 miles short of Galeton. Although he said he couldn't at first because there was a big festival going on and only had two rooms, our pathetic desperation and tiredness from our 3 am truck alarm wake up call eventually got to him, and he ended up giving us two rooms with a shared bathroom. Potato City rules!

Some other cars from the show passed us earlier in the day only to show up at Potato City.

The next morning we started off towards Towanda, and being 13 miles behind our plan we knew we had to make up a little mileage, fortunately it was just a giant downhill to Galeton. Unfortunately it was all a giant downhill, and it was freezing! We survived.

Somewhere along the way we passed this dinosaur:

I guess this sign is telling us we need to take a southern bend now...

We reached Towanda in fairly good time, and this is where all the drillers made it impossible to find a motel room. It sits on the banks of the Susquehanna, which eventually runs into the Chesapeake. Since we were on the Allegheny River not long before, which is one of Pittsburgh's "three rivers", leading to the Ohio and eventually the Mississippi, somewhere after Coudersport we must have crossed the Eastern continental divide- that is, the ridge where drainage to the Atlantic and to the Mississippi/Gulf of Mexico split. I suspect it was Denton Hill.

In Towanda and (again) with no place to stay, we turned to our next hope for a roof (we were sick of getting rained on) and called churches. After a few calls, Father Martin Boylan at St. Paul and Peter's was kind enough to offer us the rectory's covered porch, complete with fan! He also let us shower, watch TV if we wanted, and brought us cherries, chips, water, and a bounty for breakfast the next morning.

We chatted a little while into the night, and the next morning we were off, but not before we could get a picture (a lot of times I don't get pictures of the best people and occurrences because you get lost in the moment, you know?). Thank you Father Martin! He gave us the number of the church in Honesdale, where he used to be, if we needed another place when we got there.

Somewhere along the way, we found a bizarre outcropping of a green/black/reddish glass-like mineral. Loreen and myself being amature xeno-geologists, the identification was simple: Kryptonite. We took a little bit and kept it in our bags, so even Superman couldn't stop us now...

Out of Towanda, we entered what are called the Endless Mountains. Quite right. We did catch this view at the top of one, and right down on the left bank of the river is where Marie Antoinette had a retreat built in order to escape the French Revolution. She missed the flight, but some servants, workers etc. were there, eventually blending in to the surrounding cultures.

Through all this, have you noticed no mention of any great disasters? Now bikes sawed in half by a rogue mining machine, no tragic events fording a river, no stitches? Oh wait. Stitches. Despite us having surprisingly good luck through most of Pennsylvania and not mentioning it to keep it that way, as we neared Carbondale, Alex fell with his bike getting started up a hill (you have no idea how easy that is, which really sucks if you can't clip out of your pedal in time). He slammed his knee a bit but just wanted to push on, but as he zoomed up the hill I noticed a fairly big gash along his calf. "Uh, Alex you've got a pretty bad cut, maybe we should get a bandaid on it". Stopping, we saw it was pretty deep, and as we were sitting on the side of the road with Alex contemplating if he should just keep riding with such an open cut a car pulled over. Keep this is mind: when we're changing tires or resting on the side of the road on top of hills or anything else that doesn't need help, people always stop and ask if we need it. Every time we crash, sprawled out on the side of the road applying zip ties to our latest piece of broken equipment and licking our wounds, people just keep zooming by. An interesting phenomenon, so you can understand our luck when the woman who pulled over within 2 minutes of us stopping was an off-duty EMT who, after looking at the gash, said it would probably need something and offered to drive Alex with his bike in her car to the hospital in Carbondale, about 15 miles away. They went and the remaining three set off to find him there. Why they built the hospital at the top of an insane hill in town we don't know, but we did find Alex enjoying a turkey sandwich and Wheel of Fortune while he waited to get it stitched up.

The staff was awesome and really supportive of our ride, and the charge nurse even offered her empty cabin a while north of Carbondale. Unfortunately it was out of our way, otherwise we would have been all over it since all the motels we called weren't having it and dusk was lurking. Six stitches and a teen Jeopardy tournament later (they just throw them softballs man), we endeavored to make it to Honesdale before the darkness took hold and the road became terrifying. We failed. Someone put a ridiculous series of hills on the east side of Carbondale, and we eventually had to stop in a field since the batteries in all our lights were all nearly dead and the roads in PA are more accurately mini canyons of potholes, gashes, and just straight up abysses. The field happened to be right by a prison and may or may not have been prison grounds, but we made camp and hoped not to awaken to police lights and a tactical team surrounding us. Thankfully it was someone's property and as we were getting ready for bed the owners came by and said we could camp wherever we wanted and thought what we were doing was great. A break.

The next morning, we continued through Honesdale towards the New York border. We crossed the Delaware River into Narrowsburg, NY, and were now officially back in the hood! By noon we stopped at a gas station in White Lake outside of Bethel and got some good cheese steaks and subs. If it rings a bell, this is where Woodstock took place, and a guy we met at the Marie Antoinette overlook told me there are still a bunch of old hippies who never left Woodstock, and that it can be a pretty weird place. We were just passing through though, and there were just a few signs of what happened almost exactly 41 years before.

Arturo got a psychedelic lizard dude at the gas station since his bike had gone too long without some new bling.

Again, where the DOT fails in informing you of entering a new state, the lottery always picks up the slack.

We passed through a major Hasidic community in Woodridge and Fallsburg, NY, in the Borscht Belt of the Catskills. I really wish I'd gotten a Knish...

It was beautiful as sunset approached, but we knew we wouldn't make it to New Paltz before dark.

We did come across this beauty, which I am comfortable saying is the last pay phone in America, hidden somewhere in the sanctuary of the Catskills.

We unsuccessfully tried some motels along the road in Kerhonksan, and Loreen's sister Nan, brother in law Ronnie, nephews Alex and Zachary, and boyfriend Steve met us. Since there was no camping anywhere nearby, Ronnie and Nan were incredibly generous and paid for our room part way up the mountain towards New Paltz. They also drove us to New Paltz and got us a great dinner. Thank you so much guys! You were amazingly supportive!

The next morning began right off with a long moutain to get over before New Paltz. Stacy's chain began acting up, skipping, snapping and catching, each time painfully jolting his knees. We tried the few fixes we knew to help, almost made it disastrously worse, and finally made it somewhat rideable as long as he kept in one gear on the rear cassette and just shifted with the front derailleur. Stacy made it over the mountain in two gears.

The bike shop in New Paltz wasn't open for another hour and since we were trying to make it to Alex's house in Woodbury, CT for a BBQ at 4, Stacy said he could deal with it and just keep going since there probably wouldn't be anything like that mountain. He was right, it was way worse. Heading into Poughkeepsie we crossed the Hudson on an awesome pedestrian and bike walkway that must have cost millions to build. It's awesome to see resources put into amazing things like that! Straight down that river to the center of the universe...

We met this 69 year old on the walkway who said he'd done some shorter bike touring before, then told us about his father who used to swim across the Hudson every day and also down river 15 miles. Would put us all to shame. We continued through Poughkeepsie, and taking a shortcut (is that ever a good idea?) we hit an absurd mountain that just wouldn't quit. We were soaked with sweat, and Stacy said he hadn't been that wet since he biked up Monarch Pass, Colorado wearing his windbreaker and wind pants because he was too lazy to take them off. We thought we were all set once we left PA. The Taconic Mountains had other ideas. So would the Litchfield Hills, and with every climb as we literally raced to make the BBQ, now by 4:30, then by 5, the hills got worse and just kept coming. We entered Connecticut with little fanfare, but it was so good to be back!

In all honesty though, we all agree that the day from Kerhonksen to Woodbury was in the top two or three of worst hill days of the entire ride. New York and western CT may have worse climbs than the Rockies. Not as high or as long, but steeper, sustained, and humid as all hell. This on top of the fact that Stacy was still working with basically two gears (remember "the hills can't be any worse"?). It just wouldn't let us have it easy till the very last mile. At least on one of the hills, I did manage to pull an apple off a tree while riding, and the part that wasn't rittled with worm holes was amazing. One of the best apples I've eaten, but maybe circumstance played a role too.

In New Milford, Loreen's sister Nan and brother-in-law waited on the side of the road, cheered and hooted, and gave us Powerade and water. Again, so awesome! We made it to the BBQ at exactly 5 pm, and a crowd cheered us as we made it up Alex's illegally steep driveway (they needed to get special permission from the town). We had a great time that night, and drank some home-made wine and good beer, ate great Filipino food, and had a lot of great conversation. A lot of Alex's family was there, and Stacy's mom and girlfriend Carla also came up, as did Nan, Ronnie and Steve, our superfans! Even though we still had 30 miles to go, it was definitely good to be home.

The next day we started by 7:30 to make it to the Health Center by noon sharp since we were going to have people greeting us there. The hills were not terrible, and we were making great time. Before we knew it, we were basically home.

At this point, let me explain something about this ride. As we've slowly pushed east, we've kept our eyes out for signs we're getting closer to home. In Missouri CVS reappeared. Later, Dunkin Donuts. Indiana brought us Popeyes, Ohio White Castle, New York Stop and Shop. The trees became familiar, old stone walls appeared in the woods, eastern accents rang in our ears. Like slowly coming out of a dream, our waking world returned piece by piece until all things around us were in their usual place, like we'd never left. Had we even gone? Had someone just painted these tan lines on in our sleep? Planted these memories in our minds? This is hard to say, but we are not so much philosophers, so to us the point is moot. In any case, when the churches started looking like this, we knew we were in CT.

So far, the lizard was enjoying the ride.

When we saw this sign, holy crap. Smooth sailing...

To be back where there are really good delis...

We stopped at Loreen's SCP site on route 6 in Bristol. Stacy tried the blood pressure machine. A bit high. Too many gas station burritos?

Crazy Bruce's! Almost there!

Wow...

Back for real.

Since we were over an hour early, we stopped at Truffle bakery on route 4 in Farmington. After we told them what we had just done, they gave us this amazing brown sugar chocolate chip coffee cake to enjoy. Seriously go here, they have amazing stuff and donated to help us!

We chilled in the hope that, barring a meteorite smashing us in the last mile (entirely likely given our luck), we had really made it.

Yup, we did...

At least it's getting interesting...

2010-08-05T07:16:00.001-07:00

We left Vandalia, IL for Terre Haute, IN hoping to make it before dark, trying to avoid the unpleasantness of night riding on increasingly busy roads. But having gotten to bed late (for us), we finally managed to get rolling around 9:00 am. As we left Vandalia, we came upon this dragon. He was pretty awesome.

Fortunately for us, the rest of Illinois was flat or fairly rolling with mostly a lot of corn and soybeans. Outside of Marshall, IL, while taking a rest on the side of the road, Loreen saw a little crayon-written sign in front of a house advertising ice cream sales. As she looked around, a man came out and said they'd be happy to just give us popsicles and water. The two little girls whose stand it was were extremely happy to see us, and had to show us the new kittens.

As we talked to the family, we learned they had lost a niece to leukemia in 1995, and he brought out a picture of her, full of spirit and happiness even after endless rounds of chemotherapy. The little girls gave us a quarter each and the rest of the family gave more. We are always amazed with how people who meet us on the road are so generous in helping both us and giving to the cause however they can. After continuing on, as we approached the Indiana border, we noticed a storm closing on us from the North. As it began to dump on us, one cloud began to creep suspiciously toward the ground, and for about ten minutes our eyes shot back and forth between the road and what in our minds was a growing tornado.

Fortunately the funnel lost its steam and we left the rain behind near dusk as we crossed into Indiana and made it the last 5 miles to Terre Haute.

After explaining our ride and our need for occassional showers and dry places to several hotels, we finally got a room donated by the Best Western, which to us is a sort of Holy Grail because we've been rejected from all ~30 we've tried across the country. Thankfully, the girl at the desk was named Leia, and that's why she gave us a room (just kidding, she was just awesome). Even though by this point is was already about 9:30, there was no question we had to go to the "8 Chinese Buffet" next door, and it was amazing! There were giant slabs of steak, sushi, frog legs, lychees, crab legs, oysters, roast beef you carve yourself, countless soups, and all the other standards of a chinese buffet.

We finally stumbled back to the hotel around 11:00, hoping to get as early a start as possible without going on no sleep, but it was becoming clear we were getting locked in a cycle of late entries and late departures, especially since most of our days between St. Louis and eastern Ohio were going to be above 100 miles, and all of them above 90. We left Terre Haute the next morning at 9:30.

Cliff after cliff, mountain after mountain, or barn after barn, life on the road definitely has a lot of redundancy despite its beauty.

In a rural stretch between Terre Haute and Indianapolis (Indy), we came to the crest of a hill and found a terrible accident in which both cars had flipped, and an elderly man was trapped in his smashed car as it lay on the driver's side. There was a crowd of about ten people but it was clear it had just happened within the last ten or so minutes. We stopped and asked if anyone else was hurt or still in one of the cars, and with our absolute lack of knowledge at least asked the man in the car if he could move his toes, squeeze a hand if he could understand, and to just relax since he was trying to move around. We kept talking to him for a little while just trying to calm him down and looking at the gaping gash on his forehead. Although we would not attempt to do anything we're not trained to do, we did figure that despite having only one year of medical school, we may still be some value among a group of random people stopping on the road. We tried to make sure the one guy holding the man's hand knew not to let him move until the ambulance arrived. Beyond that, however, we were really more klutter around the crash, so we decided to move on, hoping the ambulance would arrive soon. Since it was fairly rural Indiana, however, we finally saw one zooming down the road about 20 minutes later. The shortage of medical care in rural areas has definitely been a theme of this ride, but we hope the man in the car ended up ok.

About 15 miles down the road, we came across this guy:

He's riding a lawnmower from Santa Monica to New York as a sort of promotion by Sears to "test the durability of the mower". We were told we might catch up to him back in Effingham, Illinois, but had forgotten about him or figured we diverged paths. As we passed what at first looked like just another guy mowing along the roadside, something about his mower made us wonder. We learned he was actually an actor who had auditioned in New York, and was keeping track on the website craftsmanacrossamerica.com. He had run out of gas and was waiting for his support vehicle, a large RV with Craftsman Across America all over it we saw a little later on down the road. He asked if he could film us and Arturo gave another roadside interview about what we're doing, and how people can help contribute. We did learn that he's averaging about 7 mph, which means there is at least one motorized vehicle in America we're beating! If you're interested, the verdict on the mower: pretty good, but the front tires need replacement about every 200 miles.

Passing through some towns as we approached Indianapolis in an attempt to blow through in the most direct way to Greenfield, construction got terrible, traffic got evil, and the decay of crumbling business took hold at some points.

Finally, we made it to Indianapolis, and while we saw some previous years had made their route longer just to avoid it, we decided to barrel right through it to Greenfield about 20 miles east.

Once we made it through downtown, though, the hand of disaster struck again. Loreen noticed she couldn't clip out from her right pedal (which believe us is never a good feeling), and after finally snapping it out, realized the cleat had actually ripped off from her shoe and was still in trapped in the binding of the pedal.

As we tried to pull the cleat out with Arturo's Leatherman, a biker came up to us and started asking us about where we're going, how long it's been, where we're staying and this and that. Meanwhile we're trying to figure out how to get that cleat out and what we're going to do about Loreen's now useless right shoe. Then we learned he was a professor at the IU School of Medicine and had done a cross-country ride the year before, and once he actually realized what the problem was, he tried to help us figure out what to do, even offering us a place to stay a his house 5 miles north of Indy and baskets for her pedals or other possibilities. Being behind as we were, however, we really needed to press on, and Loreen kept riding without clipping in. She quickly realized she couldn't ride like that because the hard plastic of the shoe soles made her feel slip around too much, so we stopped at a K-mart and she bought a $10 pair of Keds.

The next day while riding with them (yes, she was still riding with them), she got fed up with THEIR soles being too slippery, and at that point moved on to the flip flops. The moral: Loreen is a badass.

Just before the Ohio border in Richmond, IN, we did find a bike shop that helped fix some of Loreen's bikes problems (did I mention that all along the descent of our bikes into old age had continued to plague us?). She also reluctantly bought a new pair of biking shoes, and we eventually continued on, crossing into Ohio!

Then Alex's tire exploded. Its fibrous entrails spilling out from the large puncture, but lacking another spare (which we tried to get at the bike shop, where they didn't have the right size), we had to emergency patch the tire with duct tape and one of our business cards so he could hopefully make it the 40 miles to Springfield, our destination and the nearest bike shop.

They're just so handy. We called the bike shop and learned they closed at 8, so Arturo raced off to beat the clock. He did, and we got hooked up with a sweet deal on a couple of hard case tires, which are woven with kevlar and are supposedly puncture proof. The rest of the crew made it in as dusk set in, and after some searching, we received a donation from the Courtyard Inn in downtown Springfield, Ohio. Thank you!

Arturo rides his bike everywhere now. We have clearly lost our minds.

The next day we rode the 103 miles to Danville, Ohio with fairly little hassle. There was a nice little rain in Delaware, Ohio that help cool things off a bit.

Other than that, there were some flat tires, some hills, some heat, but we actually made it with daylight to spare, and found this awesome bike path that bypassed the hills for the last 8 miles! Man it was nice...

When we made it into Danville, a tiny litte town (technically a village), we went to this little place and asked if we could use their tables to eat our cold Campbell's soups, cookies, and canned fruit. We must be incredibly pathetic to the outside world.

Trying to figure out where to camp for the night, we considered an abandoned barn, but were thwarted by a huge, thorny field. Then we asked the owner of the burger place if the town park would be ok, and he offered to call the police officer on duty to ask, but couldn't see why not. When they called back, he said they'd have to call the mayor. Suddenly and unwittingly, we were trapped in the pit of bureaucracy in a tiny village on the edge of Ohio's Amish country. Eventually we were told we couldn't use the park, but that we could camp by the bike trail, and we set up under a little shelter, which was lucky because that night it DUMPED.

The next morning was again a little late getting out of town due to having to dry some shorts and fix some tires. We stopped at the gas station in town for quick breakfast. We were definitely entering Amish country...

We all ate amazing donuts at the gas station that the Amish made every morning. Really they were cakes disguised as donuts.

As we continued on through this finger of hills in east-central Ohio, the Amish presence became more and more evident. We thinks it's awesome that they manage to maintain their tradition the way they do, and from the people we saw, they really seem like great, helpful and warm people! It is a little odd seeing them in Walmart, but hey, who CAN resist?

Coming to Navarre, we started hearing the ominous booms of rolling thunder, and a short while later it began to rain on us, but we decided to try to continue on to Canton to eat lunch. We barely made it out of Navarre before the rain suddenly became so intense the streets flooded instantly and we could barely see 10 feet in front of us, while lighting crashed all around and overhead. We had to wait it out in a McDonald's, which was freezing since we were soaked, but eventually the most severe weather moved on.

Winding through every corner of Canton, Ohio in a convoluted zig-zag, we realized we had definitely entered northern Ohio: post-industrial, boarded up, and overcast, with weeds growing from abandoned brick walls. Downtown was pretty nice though.

Then Loreen's tire exploded. No it was just a regular flat, but Alex's zip-tied pannier also snapped off again. We had been riding with a biker named Scott for a few blocks, who had just finished the Pan-Ohio ride from Cleveland to Cincinatti.

He called his stepdaughter to bring some really burly zip ties and, we hooked them on while we talked to him some more. While our target for the night was Youngstown, he suggested that since we'd be arriving pretty late at night and Youngstown is pretty rough, we'd be better off going to Boardman, about 4 miles short of Youngstown and a few miles from the Pennsylvania border. That became the plan, and as the complete darkness took hold we tried to make it to Boardman without getting ourselves squished. This time Alex zoomed ahead to see if he could find a place to stay.

Unfortunately, we found out that there's a huge dog show going on in Canfield and all the hotels in Boardman are sold out. Being past 11:00 pm and desperate after a long and exhausting day, we decided we had to suck it up and pay for a room for the first time of the trip, in the one place with any available rooms. At least they were able to offer us a discount at the Holiday Inn, but this far along and with our own money quickly evaporating away, it definitely stung. On the bright side, we've met our lofty goals trying to make up for lost time, and after all the setbacks and frustrations that meet us every day, it's pretty awesome to say we're still making it, and that no problem's been too big. Having done 108, 97, 99, 113, 103, and 112 miles in that order since St. Louis, you'll understand when we tell you how glad we are that today is a rest day! Because tomorrow, we enter the Appalachians...

We had complete failure trying to get another hotel this afternoon, until we finally came to our last hope. The clerk said the manager would be back at 8, but that he was pretty cheap, and if he said no he would just buy us a room with his own money! We learned his son plans on entering medical school and that he is a physician himself: a critical care specialist with a fellowship in sleep medicine who earned his medical degree in India but completed his residency at UMDNJ in New Jersey and fellowship at BU, but is awaiting getting his license in Ohio because they are giving him a hard time. In the meantime, he works the desk at the Town and Country Motel in a run-down section of Boardman, Ohio. Pretty amazing.

"Of Course it Did" or the Ebb and Flow of Disaster and Delight

2010-07-31T04:31:00.000-07:00

The people in Missouri have been giving Kansans a run for their money! We didn't think people could get any nicer or more personable to four fools crossing the country on bicycles. But then there was Missoura.

We left from Sedalia just before dawn and rode to Jefferson City (Jeff City) to catch the Katy Trail, the longest rails to trails project in the country and an awesome, shady, quiet (but insanely humid) break from the roads. The surface is packed gravel, and knowing this and the fact we wouldn't go as fast as possible we came in a little skeptical, but the trail was no problem, only one tire exploded (gunshots on the Katy Trail??), and we made it to just outside St. Louis, with a overnight stop in the German town of Hermann. We camped in the town park and were dripping with sweat all night. You do not know humidity, it's been the worst in a lot of people's memories. The next day we headed to Chesterfield, Missouri, a western suburb of St. Louis 20 miles from downtown. Patti O'Mally (remember the Wells Fargo regional VP?) called the St. Louis branch asking for one of the branch managers to see if we could get a place to stay. When Elizabeth Mannen, a financial analyst taking his calls told her he was out of town, Patti O'Mally proceeded to spew our story in a convoluted arc, at the end of which Elizabeth simply said, "well, he's not here, but I'll take them." This is how we met Elizabeth.

The surface is packed gravel, and knowing this and the fact we wouldn't go as fast as possible we came in a little skeptical, but the trail was no problem, only one tire exploded (gunshots on the Katy Trail??), and we made it to just outside St. Louis, with a overnight stop in the German town of Hermann. We camped in the town park and were dripping with sweat all night. You do not know humidity, it's been the worst in a lot of people's memories. You can see what it's done to my camera, so my apologies, it needs a cleaning.

Hermann on the Missouri River as we headed out around dawn.

The next day we headed to Chesterfield, Missouri, a western suburb of St. Louis 20 miles from downtown. Patti O'Mally (remember the Wells Fargo regional VP?) called the St. Louis branch asking for one of the branch managers to see if we could get a place to stay. When Elizabeth Mannen, a financial analyst taking his calls told her he was out of town, Patti O'Mally proceeded to spew our story in a convoluted arc, at the end of which Elizabeth simply said, "well, he's not in town, but I'll take them." Patti was stunned, and this is how we met Elizabeth.

So beyond awesome, she made us amazing salmon with orzo, gave us beers and took us to eat frozen custard, Missouri's delicious obsession. We talked with Elizabeth all afternoon and night and had a great time, it's just incredible the people we meet and what they want to do for us. She also made us a giant breakfast, and said we ate 4 pounds of salmon and then a dozen eggs plus bagels and so many potatoes. She said she wishes she could follow us and cook for us the rest of the way. Trust us, we do too. If you're reading Elizabeth, we're doing great and promise we definitely haven't been eating gas station hot pockets, pop tarts, beef jerky and taco bell (lies).

The next morning we finally headed out around 7, having gotten to sleep around 10:30 (crazy late for us), and made it to downtown as a downpour began. Still, we got to enjoy the Gateway Arch for a little while at least. Stand on your head, hold a chain is both hands, let it hang and you have yourself a little Gateway Arch! Look you didn't even have to come to St. Louis. Actually it really is amazing, one of those things that changes the character of a city so much that people at the time must have said "what??" (to put it politely) but now is so simple in its form that it's iconic. As the torrent came, we had to make it north along the Mississippi, and while on a map it looks pretty straightforward... The Mississippi had other ideas. The street running along the riverfront was on and off flooded by the river, we discovered this after walking our loaded bikes down about 80 steps from the hill where the arch and the rest of the city is located. Arturo thought it might be a good idea to just ride across the river. It wasn't. But he didn't get much wetter than we already were.

Finally after winding through abandoned warehouses north of downtown and talking to workers at the loading docks, the managed to make our way across the river to Illinois, avoiding East St. Louis proper. While it would have been great to include a place that is definitely extremely American, especially in recognition of the extent to which leukemia and other cancers disproportionately affect many impoverished and industrially exposed communities, anyone we told we might head through East St. Louis would literally always say "do you want to die?". East St. Louis is infamous as one of the roughest cities in the country, a place where daytime muggings, carjackings and murders are common. This ride is absolutely for its citizens too, but crossing on bikes may have been, well who knows.

Anyway, just north of East St. Louis we entered an industrial waste zone, and the best way for me to describe what it looked like is a hellish landscape.

But having seen the farms, we had to see the industry, and the workers in these places do incredibly dangerous things in the roughest conditions to support their families. It was definitely a chang of scenery. Of course once past that, Illinois is a lot of corn...

That's the story so far, but we didn't mention that during the entire ride from Elizabeth's house west of St. Louis to Vandalia, Illinois, the day was filled with a huge series of misfortunes and near-disasters, which we figure were just balancing how amazingly we were treated by Elizabeth. Let's summarize: As we were entering downtown, Loreen wanted to use the bathroom at a Del Taco, but going over a grate into the parking lot Loreen punctured her tire with glass AND got a pinch flat. While fixing it, the rain came. Fortunately it was a quick shower. At the Arch, the real rain came, and that one was not a joke. As mentioned, we couldn't find a way to get down to the river except an extremely long cascade of steps, and halfway down Alex's pannier (saddle bag) snapped off, one of the clips already having broken in a crash. We secured it with zip ties and tried to continue along the river, were thwarted by its waters, and had to ask around to find an alternate route to the McKinley Bridge. On the otherside of the bridge, riding on the highway by Venice, Illinois, Arturo's tire exploded hitting a nail or something, ripping his tire up something aweful. We replaced it with one of the foldable tires we've been carrying and continued. A good while later, a sudden stop was made, and since we were all close together our train crashed into itself, and Alex went flying with the supporting struts for Stacy's rear fender getting sheared off and Alex's pannier once again snapping off. Alex hit his knee in the fall but was more shaken up than really hurt thankfully. We zip tied Stacy's fender clamps on and re-zip tied Alex's pannier. The zip ties did not fit on his knees. We should have tried duct tape. Continuing on, Loreen's brakes were constantly rubbing, and at one point heading up a ramp she almost completely stopped, lost her balance and fell, banging up HER knee. We released the rear brakes entirely after repeated attempts to reset the tire and loosen the brakes so we could just deal with it later. It was about 5 pm by this point and we still had more than 30 miles to go. Fortunately the rest of the ride was pretty uneventful, just full of corn. We came into Vandalia after dark, finding a Holiday Inn Express. Unfortunately the manager said they weren't able to donate at that time, but just as we were leaving, Jeff, who we'd been talking to in the lobby for a while as we were waiting, said he'd spring for a room for us because of what we're doing and so we didn't have to ride in the dark any more!

An awesome guy, booming and towering over all of us, heading from Phoenix where he's been doing contract work back home to Michigan. He's a lot of fun to talk to. So at the end of that ridiculously miserable day, we got an amazing room and managed to get a good night's sleep. The balance is maintained and next stop Indiana!

The Midwest, with some of the nicest people you'll ever meet

2010-07-27T15:24:00.000-07:00

In Great Bend, we finished early, so we had time to go around town and do laundry (which was much needed) and get a good rest before heading off to Abilene, Kansas.

We headed towards the northern part of Kansas and followed the major road I-70 so that we'd hit some large cities on the way. But compared to the stereotypical flatness of Kansas, the roads of northern Kansas are a little hillier than advertised.

You gotta love the farmlands.

After going about 100 miles, we made it to Abilene! Alex went downtown to Sonic while the others went to a motel. He talked to a nice lady named Patti O'Malley, who just so happened to be the Regional Senior Vice President of Wells Fargo (kind of a big deal). She told him, "You know what, I have a cabin at my place that you can go to, so just throw your stuff in the back of my car and I'll drive you there." He promptly accepted the offer.

Alex went to her compound. There were three houses, including a cabin (that was Alex's for the night). He definitely enjoyed the jacuzzi, and I had my own ATV to get around.

Patti O'Malley is big into living organically. Here's a picture of her chicken coop (she even had peacocks on her farm, which Alex tried to chase around to take a picture of). The signs are of companies that Mrs. O'Malley helped found. She grew up in New Canaan, CT, went to school at UCONN - such a crazy coincidence! She had to show Alex her credit card with Jonathan the Husky on it to prove that she went to UCONN.

The offer was given to the other riders to stay at Mrs. O'Malley's compound, but they were settled in the motel and didn't want to head over.

Mrs. O'Malley gave Alex a bunch of herbs - oregano, basil, mint, chocolate mind, lavendar, and aloe - to have some fresh scents on the road (because we're obviously not smelling very fresh throughout the day). However, Alex forgot them in the morning! She made him a delicious breakfast with organic eggs and toast with raspberry pomegranate champagne jelly. It was amazing!

We all met up at a hotel and had breakfast at a diner in Abilene. Before we leave Abilene though, we have to mention that it's the birthplace of Dwight Eisenhower.

Eventually, we made it to Topeka. We were biking on Route 75, and on the other side of the road we saw a local NBC news van. The guy in the car asked us, "Are you guys biking for a charity?" And Arturo replied, "Yeah, we're biking across the country."

So he got out of the news van with a video camera, and Arturo gave an impromptu interview. It kind of caught us off-guard, so I wasn't able to take a picture of it - but I wish I did!

The Days Inn in Topeka donated a room for the night.

After having a complimentary breakfast (always a plus), we went to downtown Topeka to see the capital building.

We started heading towards Kansas City. During one of our breaks, Arturo took this awesome picture. These random views are the kinds of things that you miss during a road trip across the country.

When we got to Kansas City, we stayed at a Holiday Inn just southwest of the city. There was a Green Mill restaurant attached to the place, where they had a special for $10 for a large pizza with two toppings. We took full advantage of that special. And by the way, they have fantastic deep dish pizza.

Near our hotel, there was a bike shop, Turner's cyclery, where the owner tuned up Loreen's bike for free! He was amazingly generous, and even gave us some cool key chains to go with Arturo's expired Nevada license plate.

Just south of Kansas city are some pretty ritzy suburbs. This entire shopping district had some interesting architecture. We also crossed into Missouri, which was uneventful, because we merely crossed a road called State Line Road.

We saw an awesome fountain in the art district of Kansas City, and with the hot, humid weather, we had to indulge ourselves by going in.

That pretty cool building in the distance is actually a Cheesecake Factory. Loreen took a trip there to pick up some of her favorite Red Velvet Cheesecake.

We stayed at a Holiday Inn Express in Kansas City. Stacy and Arturo went to the movie theatres to see Salt while Alex and Loreen (who were kind of upset that Toy Story 3 was not playing theatres in Kansas City) went to the pool to relax.

Alex took a stroll through the sculpture garden.

And a tour of the Sculpture Garden isn't complete without a picture of one of the giant shuttlecocks.

The next day, we reluctantly left Kansas City (it's just so neat here!) and headed east.

We stopped by at a restaurant in Warrensburg, Missouri, and a woman saw us with our jerseys on. She asked us what we were doing, and we explained our bike ride for Lea's Foundation. She told us that her son struggled through three bouts of leukemia, but he passed away. She thanked us for what we were doing. Later on, we realized that she paid for our meals without telling us and left the restaurant.

Sometimes rides get tough. I'm constantly dirty, sweaty, and gross. I miss my family and friends. I'd like to lie down in my own bed, and I'd like to have the familiar comfort of being at home. But when I meet people who have had loved ones who passed away from leukemia, or people who have had leukemia themselves, and I see how grateful they are for what we're doing, I know that I can keep on going.

Tonight, we're staying at the Comfort Inn at Sidelia, Missouri. It's 6:30, and we're trying to get up early to beat the heat, so I'm embarassed to admit that it's almost my bedtime. So good-night everyone!

Kansas didn't even greet us!

2010-07-22T12:38:00.000-07:00

We woke up from the Travel Inn of La Junta at 2 AM, and left really early to start biking before the heat came. Out of La Junta, we saw a huge thunderstorm towards the east, but luckily by sunrise the clouds dissipated and the storm subsided.

About 50 miles into our ride, we passed by Lamar, Colorado. We've been looking for a theatre because we really want to watch Toy Story 3. However, when we finally found one in Lamar, we had to continue biking.

Considering the "Welcome to Utah: Life Elevated" and "Welcome to Colorful Colorado" signs, we were expecting some sort of greeting from Kansas. The first sign that we saw in Kansas that gave us a clue that we were in Kansas was a sign that said "Kansas Department of Transportation: Road Work Ahead: Give 'em A Brake. A little anticlimactic, but we'll take it.

About 12 miles past the Kansas border, we arrived at Syracuse, KS. The first thing I noticed was the Hamilton County Fair and Barbecue sign.

We had to check out the fair! We figure that if you're biking across the country, you might as well check out the local events to get a taste of the area. Alex and Arturo had some fantastic BBQ with funnel cake.

In Syracuse, the pastor of the First Covenant Church (who is a graduate of Dartmouth, so he and Loreen had a bonding moment talking about New Hampshire) allowed us to take showers at his home. Then, he opened up a school that he owns for us to spend the night.

That night, Kansas was exceptionally hot and very muggy, so we slept on the floor of an air-conditioned classroom.

We left Syracuse, and soon passed into the Central Time Zone. About 50 miles into our ride, we made it to Garden City. We got there around 11:30, which is when the Pizza Hut buffet started, so we took advantage of the timing and ate our weight in pizza. (Later, it was rather uncomfortable to bike on such a full stomach, so we're now questioning our decision to eat such a huge meal in the middle of a biking day.)

We stopped by at a bike shop and picked up some essentials and tuned up our bikes. Then we got a little side tracked in Wal-Mart (which tends to happen considering how much stuff Wal-Mart has), but we eventually left the Garden City and headed towards Dodge City.

The winds in Kansas are pretty strong (one lady in Syracuse, who really loved answering questions with stories, said "'The winds always blowing in all directions in Kansas. Sometimes it's in this direction; other times, it's in this. If it's not blowing, I'll tell you what; you're probably scared. In the winter time, the snow blows like this" - she moved her hands across horizontally.) We have to agree with her, the winds are pretty strong, but luckily they were blowing generally in our direction.

So the winds helped us get through the last 50 miles into Dodge City, Kansas. The Days Inn kindly donated a room to our cause. They were probably the most comfy beds that we've slept on during this trip. After a 100 mile day, we decided to go to bed early to rest up.

After getting up at 4 o'clock from Dodge City, we left and started heading towards Great Bend. On the way, there was a 3 mile stretch of wind farms.

At Kinsley, Kansas, we almost missed this sign, but luckily one of us spotted it. We're halfway home!

Kansas is chock-full of silos and grain-elevators. Apparently, the wheat harvest has just finished, and they're preparing to start the corn harvest soon. So as we're biking across Kansas, we see the completely cut down wheat fields and waiting-to-be-cut-down corn fields.

The winds were blowing in our direction, so we biked 87 miles in six hours (including breaks and stops, which is pretty fast considering that we're carrying all of our gear on our bikes). When we made it to Great Bend, we ate at a Chinese Buffet (we learned from our Pizza Hut experience to eat buffets after we're done biking), and the Days Inn donated a room to us.

It's only 3 o'clock in the afternoon and we're completely done for the day! Unfortunately, the movie theatre here isn't playing "Toy Story 3"so we'll have to wait for another time.

No more mountains?

2010-07-19T15:05:00.000-07:00

When we arrived at Valley View Hot Springs, Loreen made us a delicious stir-fry (with vegetables (?!) which we haven't eaten in a long time). We went to the hot springs late a night, and Alex, who went to a tiny school in Waterbury, CT, coincidentally met a woman who also graduated from that school.

The hot springs were so removed from the light pollution of civilization that you could look into the sky and see the streak of the Milky Way. Pretty awesome.

The next morning, we weren't exactly excited leave the hot springs, so we spent most of the day there. There was a dirt road for about 7 miles getting out of the place (which is impossible to bike on with our tour bikes), so Arturo's friend Alexa helped shuttle them down to the paved road.

We started towards the Great Sand Dunes National Park. We were in a valley surrounded by mountains.

We also passed by signs for the Colorado Reptile Park. However, since we left late from the hot springs, we weren't able to go. People informed us that there are tilapia farms in the area, and to dispose of the extra fish parts, they started growing crocodiles to eat them. Eventually, this endeavour became the Reptile Park.

Everything in this part of Colorado is so "crunchy." For those of you who haven't heard of this term before (only 50% of the Coast to Coast riders this year have), crunchy refers to upper-middle class people who enjoy alternative lifestyles. The root of crunchy actually comes from a description of granola.

We came across a solar panel farm, which I think fits the crunchy atmosphere.

We set up tents at Oasis Campgrounds, which is about 3 miles down the road from the Sand Dunes.

Sunset from our camp site.

Arturo went to the University of Colorado, and lived in Colorado for quite a bit, so quite a few of his friends came to visit us at the Sand Dunes. Andy and Julie came with baby Remy (pictured below), and they made us a delicious salad (once again, we're having vegetables!) for dinner. At the dunes, we met up with Susan and Justin.

We loved playing with Remy, and we wanted to take us with him, but I don't think his mother would have appreciated it.

The sand dunes are a pretty cool experience. There are these massive sand piles on the west side of these mountains. These are the biggest sand dunes in North America (about 700 feet tall). We took a rest day at Oasis and explored the area.

The dunes at sunset.

We left Oasis early the next morning, and went over La Veta Pass. Little did we know, it's actually the last pass of the Rocky Mountains that we'll go through. I'll definitely miss these downhill signs.

We eventually made it to Walsenburg (the court house is pictured below). A motel kindly donated a room to us.

This morning, we left Walsenburg towards La Junta. We traveled about 73 miles without any services, and considering that it was hot (about 100 degrees), we were scared about running out of water. We bought about 5 extra liters of water and carried them with us just in case.

Here's Loreen biking past some farm. Notice how there's no mountains in the distance.

About 36 miles into the ride, we saw a Christmas tree, which was bizarre because there was nothing else in the area.

Today must have been the hottest day that we've biked since we started. Who knew that western Colorado was a desert?

Trees are a sign that we're near civilization.

Loreen biking into La Junta.

We're staying in La Junta today. They have a nice downtown area with shops and a movie theatre. The others are going around town looking for a place to spend the night.

Over the Continental Divide

2010-07-16T08:47:00.000-07:00

At Montrose, we had some McDonald's, went to the library, and stocked up in WalMart, and headed off to Cimarron. We asked a few people in Montrose what kind of services are available in Cimarron, and the vast majority of people didn't know what it was.

So we climbed up one more hill and found our destination. There was a post office and a gas station, and that's about it. The owners of the gas station let us camp by a creek for free.

The next morning, we left Cimarron, and passed by some pretty cool canyons.

After the climbing a hill, we went biking along the perimeter of Blue Mesa Lake. It's a pretty enormous lake (I'd say about 10 miles to bike from one end to the other), with a pretty blue hue during the day.

We eventually made it to Gunnison, which is quite the bike-friendly town. There were three bike shops, and one of them, Rock and Roll Sports, had a neat statue of a biker. We ate at Pizza Hut, where each of us ate 1/2 of a medium pizza (we're burning lots of calories, so I just tell myself that I earned it).

From Gunnison, the ride to Sargent (at the base of Monarch Mountain) was about 30 miles. It seemed like it would never come, but at least we got some nice views as the sun started setting.

We camped at Sargents, got a good night of rest, and prepared to climb over Monarch Pass.

Monarch Pass is a 2,700 foot climb over 10 miles. It wasn't the worst hill that we climbed over, but it felt good to finally reach the Continental Divide. Everything from now on (generally) should be downhill.

We're making good time. For the first four weeks we were climbing to reach the top of the Rockies, now for the next four we'll be going downhill towards home!

At the top of the mountain there was a Porsche car show? They all had numbers from 1 to 900ish, so we assume that they belonged to some exclusive Porsche club. It was quite a sight to see.

After coasting downhill for 30 miles, we made it to the Valley View Hot Springs. It's a great hot springs at the base of the mountains, and the warm water felt great on our sore muscles.

Here's a view of the setting sun near our campsite at Valley View. It's a clothing-optional resort, so we're not going to post any more pictures for privacy issues.

Today, we're going to the Sand Dunes National Park. Apparently, sand from somewhere gets blown over the Rockies and gets deposited between mountains. They're the largest sand dunes in North America, and it's bizarre to sit on sand dunes when the mountains are right next to you.

But I gotta pack up and get ready for the day ahead of us.

Colorful Colorado!

2010-07-13T14:51:00.001-07:00

At the visitor center of Monticello (where we did our last blog update), when we were leaving, we saw that there was a sign with pictures of about 30 people. These were pictures of people who all had leukemia, and they believe that there's a cancer cluster caused by pesticides in the area.

When we left Monticello at 12, we saw rain clouds ahead and behind us. (Afternoon showers seem to be the norm around here). We left, and enjoyed the sandwich between thunderstorms for a little bit. After 17 miles, we finally reached our next state, Colorado! We had a quick lunch next to the sign (you can actually see the approaching rain clouds coming from behind in this picture).

As we went into Colorado, it started raining on us, so we put on our plastic ponchos for a little relief. Luckily, there was a gas station about 12 miles into colorado.

We ended up staying in Dolores, which is a pretty trendy town. We had dinner outside of a grocery store, and across the street we heard some life music at a cafe. That night, we camped at the park, and were surprised to have the sprinklers go off at 1 AM. We had to get up and move our stuff (which was already pretty soaked).

DOLORES TO TELLURIDE

From Dolores, we climbed up a 50 mile hill (that's not an exaggeration) that climbed an altitude of 3,000 feet. It wasn't a steep hill; it just kept on going, but we eventually made it to the top. There were some pretty neat ranches as we climbed.

The road followed the path of the Dolores River, which looked gorgeous in the rising sun.

We're almost in Telluride!!!

We finally made it to Telluride, which is a bourgeois-hippie ski town (former gold-rush town) full of coffee shops and restaurants, surrounded by mountains on three sides. They had a bike shop, where we stocked up on chamois cream and had our bikes tuned up. For our first night, the Aspen Inn donated a room to us, and the room had a queen-sized bed and a king-sized bed. We want to thank Heather White and her husband Bruce for helping us out. The rooms were so comfortable, and we got some much needed rest.

REST DAY IN TELLURIDE
Considering our aching knees, we decided to take a rest day in Telluride. After we thanked the Aspen Inn for donating a room, we decided to ride the gondolas over the mountains.

After our scenic view of Telluride, we got another hotel donated for our rest night! The Ice House had very comfortable beds. We had dinner at Smuggler's Brewery (which is the only brewery in Telluride, by the way), and then went to The Sweet Life to have some ice cream and fried Oreos.

On a side note, we constantly discuss how our cholesterol would be affected by this trip. On one hand, we're exercising a ridiculous amount, so that should help lower our bad cholesterol and raise our good. On the other, we're also eating ridiculously horrible food like fried Oreos, so it might go up.

BYE-BYE, TELLURIDE!
We were reluctant to leave the enjoyable ski town (everyone there seemed so happy!). Before we left, we checked out the real estate in town, and the prices for houses averaged around 2 million dollars per house. So I'll probably never be able to live there, but I'd love to visit, especially during the winter.

On the way out of Telluride, we had a nice 16 mile downhill to Placerville.

Then we climbed up a 12 mile hill to the Dallas Divide. Here's a picture from the top.

From the Dallas Divide, we went down to Montrose, which is the first commercialized haven that we've reached in a while. There's a Target, Wal-mart, and McDonald's, so we're enjoying the fruits of American capitalism while we still can.

We still have another 26 miles to go before resting tonight in Cimarron. Wish us luck!

2010-07-10T09:18:00.000-07:00

Heading out from Escalante, we took route 12 to Boulder, and the signs most definitely have it right. Streaked canyons bubble up as the road snakes and rolls across, the colors are insane! It was definitely our best ride so far...

Here's Stacy about to head up another monster incline around the corner. Any canyon you're in you have to get out of, so we basically had to make it to the top of those cliffs eventually...

But waiting for us on the other side... the magical Escalante River, with waters perfect for our aching limbs and feet. We really, really needed this river, and even though we sloshed around for only a short while, it regenerated us for the next stretch, getting up onto the hog's back, a knife edge dropping off into amazing canyons on both sides. The inclines at points were some of the hardest we've hit yet, and the heat in the canyons leaves little to the imagination.

Here we are on a nice easy stretch up to the hog's back. Eh, kinda pretty.

After the hog's back and another 12 miles, we descended to Boulder, Utah, a little hippie hamlet separated from the world, now dotted with a few bed and breakfasts, yellow rock domes, and horses. A very nice motel owner let us camp in her back yard (the 'motel' was basically a house, covered in so many trinkets and windchimes and shells it might have been sinking into the ground). We even had an inflatable pool! All that meant for us though was mosquito city... We enjoyed our delicacies of cold chunky soup and canned fruit, and Arturo had a beer as dusk came.

The next day we had to get up early to take on Boulder Mountain, a 2500 foot climb up beautiful aspen stands and vistas of canyons and distant ranges. Elks were screaming and squealing at us from a distance, and Arturo broke some hearts for sure with his Elk calls. We spilled some red jelly on a rock here and wonder if German tourists will think it is some kind of sacrifice alter.

On the other side of Boulder Mountain, we descended back into canyon country and passed through Torrey and Capitol Reef National Park, an incredible ride through the steep-walled red-yellow-grey-white canyon that route 24 passes through. And it was all downhill!! You have no idea the joy we feel when that happens.

That thing hit us. Hard. But the beauty of Utah rain is it's gone in 20. We were dry again by Hanksville, 10 miles away.

Hanksville was an interesting place, and had this little yard of decaying boats. This is a solemn place, where Lake Powell houseboats come to die. The closest one had a slide coming off the top on the back!

There were also junked demolition derby cars, dinosaur graveyards, and this, a hollowed out rock with a convenience store inside. Loreen and Stacy also got amazing peanut butter cup/cheesecake mix milkshakes across the street at Stan's Burger Shak. Had it been open at 5 am Alex said he would have gone for a burger and shake again.

The little (huge) joys. Heading from Hanksville to Hite on Lake Powell was great for the first 40 miles. We were sprinting down a canyon and making awesome time. Then we realized there were some crazy (CRAZY) hills we had to make it over right around the lake.

Fortunately it was worth it...

This is us crossing the Colorado River as it first becomes Lake Powell, which is an insanely long reservoir bounded by amazing red cliffs and canyons throughout its length.

There was a fee to get down to the lake, but having just done those hills in 102 degrees, there was no way we could refuse. It was worth it. However Arturo may have weird squishy parasites crawling in his legs. We did also watch Discovery Channel's "Monsters Inside Me" though.

This was by the only convenience store across from the Ranger's station in Hite on the Lake. It was sooo hot.

The next morning we headed out before dawn after having slept around a fish cleaning station due to its shade, bathrooms, and water spigots. Another beautiful ride. We continued to Blanding Utah, where we got poured on and ate Subway (!), and now are in Monticello, Utah about to cross into Colorado. Wish us luck, fortunately the worst really is behind us.

I might stay in Utah forever

2010-07-06T11:22:00.001-07:00

CEDAR CITY TO PANGUITCH
When we arrived in Cedar City, the bike shop (which we direly needed for tune-ups) and library were closed, so we made the decision to have a rest day. Pastor Scott at the First Baptist Church let us stay in the gymnasium for two nights, and he even left out pastries and food to refuel.

At Cedar City, there was a pretty impressive Shakespeare festival. They have an Elizabethan stage (which, if you want to watch Shakespeare, it's gotta be on an Elizabethan-style theatre). Everyone was tired, but Alex saw "The Merchant of Venice." Although Shakespeare makes for rewarding (yet arduous) reading, it's definitely meant to be watched for enjoyment.

We left through Canyon Road up towards Cedar Breaks, which is a 5,000 foot climb over 20 miles (the highest climb we've ever done. When we left the city, the canyons were breath-taking.

Off in the distance we saw Zion National Park. We were thinking of dipping south out of Utah in Arizona, but we decided to go through Utah to avoid the heat of the desert.

We climbed 5,000 feet and enjoyed the view from Cedar Breaks.

Everything in Utah looks idyllic and perfect; the geologic formations, the trees, fields, and lakes.

In Panguitch, we spent the 4th of July. It's a small town, and a motel kindly donated a room to our cause. We lit a few sparklers in the parking lot to celebrate the holiday, but that we needed to rest up to spend the next day in Bryce Canyon.

PANGUITCH TO BRYCE CANYON

I've always rolled my eyes when people start talking about the "sublime," but Bryce Canyon is best described with that word. We took a short 25 mile ride from Panguitch to Bryce Canyon, and here we are at the entrance of the national park.

We had lunch by the cliff, and relaxed for the afternoon.

The view from "Inspiration Point" at Bryce Canyon is aptly named. Apparently those column-like projections are called hoodoos. 200 days each year, the canyon reaches freezing temperatures (it was 33 degrees Fahrenheight when we left in the morning... too cold!), and somehow the freezing and thawing cycles chip away rock in these amazing structures.

At Bryce, we stayed at Ruby's Inn campgrounds. They donated a place for us to set up tents.

BRYCE CANYON TO BOULDER, UTAH

As I'm writing this blog, we're in Escalante, which is somewhere between Bryce Canyon and Boulder, Utah. Near here, there's the Escalante Petrified Forest, which we sadly don't have time to visit.

The irrigated fields of Henrieville.

Loreen paving the path for us up a big hill.

Escalante National Park is surrounded by amazing rock formations. I can post so many pictures, but I'd probably bore you to death.

It's lunchtime, and I need to refuel so that we could head up a 2,500 foot hill to Boulder, Utah. Thanks for reading the blog!

When Stop Signs Don't Work...

2010-07-03T09:33:00.001-07:00

Try this!

It's been too long since an update!!!

2010-07-03T08:22:00.000-07:00

First off, we'd like to apologize for not having updated our blog for a long time. We've been arriving at our destinations around 4 or 5 in the afternoon, and most of the libraries (which we're relying on to update our blog) close earlier than that.

FALLON TO AUSTIN, 116 MILES IN A NIGHT (AND DAY)
In Fallon, we took a rest day, because we knew that we'd be too tired to ride 116 miles through the desert. Since we were spending the night at the Super 8 Motel, which is connected to the Bonanza Casino, we had a few complimentary drinks (The Coast to Coast team suggests White Russians as our choice casino beverage) and gambled a little bit.

The next night, we got up at midnight, and left towards Austin at 1 AM. About 20 miles into the ride, there were these salt flats, and we decided to do something in memory of Lea Economos.

Watching the sunrise in the desert may be the most beautiful thing that I've ever seen. It was a little forboding though, because I knew that it would only mean that it would only get hotter as the day progressed.

About 50 miles into our ride, there was one stop in Middlegate, NV. The population sign had a crossed out 18, which was replaced with the new population, 17. It had a great little diner where we had breakfast and prepared for the last bit of our ride.

We're not quite sure why this tree has lots of shoes in it. But it does.

We made it to Austin!

In Austin, we were resting in a convenience store, when we met a biker from Austin, TX. He was a student of the University of Texas, and a group of 50 of them every year bike from Austin, TX to Alaska to raise money for a cancer foundation. (Kind of a weird coincidence that we met the Austin, TX kids in Austin, NV). Check out their website and cause at www.texas4000.org.

We didn't have a place to stay, but the Texas 4000 for Cancer riders let us camp with them at the Austin Baptist Church. They were incredibly nice people, and it's awesome meeting such a large group of people who are riding for a great cause.

AUSTIN TO EUREKA

In the morning, the Texas 4000 bikers have a ritual where they go around the circle and say their inspiration for the day. They let us join, and considering how difficult some of these journeys get, it really helped motivate us for the upcoming day.

The ride from Austin to Eureka wasn't as bad as our previous 100+ day. Right before we entered Eureka, the Devil's Gate was a pretty cool rock formation.

In Eureka, we stopped by at the Emergency Medical Services building, and talked to the Mike. He's the only paid emergency medical person in the county (I talked to him being concerned about what happens to people in the event of an emergency, and he said that there are lots of volunteers to cover different areas). We didn't have a place to shower, so Mike let us into the brand new Eureka fire department to take a shower. However, while we were taking a shower, he was called for an emergency, and all of us had to run out with our stuff.

A nice lady named Debbie in Austin contacted her friends Christine and Lloyd in Eureka. They contacted the county and let us stay in the park in Eureka (and made sure that the sprinklers would not go off on us!). It was a pretty Edenic campground for the night.

EUREKA TO ELY

Route 50 is known as the Loneliest Road in America, and we have to say that it lives up to its reputation. Word on the street is that there's some "Death Ride" that some crazy bikers take through Route 50 in one day.

Ely was the first major town (and the main criteria for being a major town in our eyes is "Does it have a McDonalds? And it did!) that we saw in a while. We stayed in a little Motel.

ELY TO BAKER

Ely to Baker was a nice ride because we rode around the perimeter of Great Basin National Park. We didn't have time to stop by and check it out, but it looked absolutely beautiful from the distance.

In Baker, we stayed at a campground which had showers and laundry, so that was a huge plus. We also stopped by at the Lectrolux Cafe (see the picture below). It's a really cool, artsy, New-York-trendy-meets-small-town-Nevada cafe. Last year, the Coast to Coast riders were caught in a rainstorm and slept on the gift shop floor of the Lectrolux.

BAKER, NV TO MILFORD UTAH

About 10 miles after leaving Baker, we finally saw a sign for Utah!!! We find the "life elevated" slogan to be uplifting, but considering that last year's riders were telling us that riding through the hills of Utah is really difficult, we find the double entendre of "life elevated" to be a little scary. Arturo took the "life elevated" saying a little too seriously.

I really appreciated this prankster's work. There are a lot of cattle-crossing signs in Nevada and Utah, and for a good 20 miles, someone decided to put the cows on skateboards.

On the way to Milford, there was dust cloud that we saw from 10 miles down the road. It looked really scary, and we wrapped our noses and mouths with shirts so that we wouldn't breathe in any dust. I was really scared, but it didn't end up being that bad. I just wish that we saw some cows on skateboards.

The scenery in Utah is pretty spectacular. I'm a big fan.

In Milford, the Oak Tree in was nice enough to donate two double bed rooms to us! The manager who worked there was incredibly nice, and even told us about the hot tub (which we made good use of). Utah has been pretty windy for us (and the wind blows westward against us), so it felt great to have our own double beds for ourselves.

MILFORD TO CEDAR CITY, UTAH

We love Penny's Diner in Milford, Utah! They have great food, and we really enjoy their retro aesthetic. The Oak Tree Inn even gave us free breakfast at this diner, which gave us enough energy for a pretty rough day ahead of us.

Heading out of Milford.

Our ride was only 56 miles. We've done more than that before, so none of us were worried about getting to our destination. However, there were 45 MPH winds blowing against us, and when we got to Cedar City people told us "You didn't hear about the wind warnings today?" That was the first time that I had to actively pedal going downhill, and it was a brutal day on our knees.

But we eventually made it to Cedar City! It was difficult to get a hotel to stay at because there's a big Shakespeare Festival in town, but we called the First Baptist Church, and the reverend Scott let us stay in our own building for the night. We can't thank him enough for the generosity.

REST DAY IN CEDAR CITY!!!!

We're taking a day off in Cedar City, since we have a big climb to Cedar Breaks tomorrow. We're probably going to check out the Shakespeare Festival (they have an octagonal Elizabethan theatre, which is insane!), but most importantly, take a good day of rest.

Into the Desert

2010-06-25T16:14:00.000-07:00

Thursday we crossed into Nevada and got a camp site donated at Zephyr Cove on the eastern shore of Lake Tahoe. So far, people we've met have been incredibly generous towards the Lea's Foundation cause, from handing us $20 from their motorcycles to offering us showers and of course donating lodging. We've also met many people along the way who are or have been deeply personally affected by leukemia, lymphoma or other cancers.

This is the Harrah's literally at the state line of Nevada at the southeast corner of Lake Tahoe (the green sign under the speed limit). They just couldn't wait.

We spent Thursday afternoon at Zephyr Cove, we dipped in the water but it's snowmelt! The sand was toasty warm though. The chipmunks at Zephyr cove are insane, and at times we felt like we were slowly being surrounded by those little dinosaurs from Jurassic Park. We did not feed them, but man they tried. At night, we made a pathetic attempt at a campfire and ate our ill-advised 3 cans of beans and some toasted marshmallows. Stacy, in his infinite wisdom, opted for a burger and fries down the road. In the end, however, there were no major bean-related incidents.

Stacy made some friends who wanted him to throw eggs at a boat with them. Stacy respectfully declined after finding out they didn't have any eggs.

This morning we headed out from Zephyr Cove around 6:45 and passed through impressive little spire. We headed up over the last remaining shadow of the Sierras and coasted 2,200 feet down for 10 miles into Carson City, NV. It's difficult to explain how awesome that ride was. I think Stacy put it best when he said he felt like Batman. After having his seat adjusted in South Lake Tahoe and having the fitter say he can't believe Stacy made it over the mountains, he is a new man.

Carson City may send some mixed messages, but it's people were supportive and kind! Thanks CC.

On the way out from Carson City, we happened upon this little gem. No words, but we all agree we'd love to commute in it.

We rode the 60 miles from Carson City to Fallon in great time, passing through sagebrush landscapes dotted with oases of casinos gun shops. Oh Nevada, we love you. The weather has been great for us, and Ed, a manager we were talking to at Carl's Junior, said the weather should be overcast and kind of cool most of the week. Maybe we'll get lucky!

Arturo came across this on the side of the road coming down into Carson City and decided to blend in a bit. Definitely a local. We've now made it to Fallon, Nevada and Super 8 generously donated a room for us. We plan to hit the sack pretty soon since tomorrow is 118 miles to Austin and we intend to leave around 1 am in order to avoid at least some of the heat. Wish us luck! We'll update you all the next chance we get.

Over the Mountains and to Lake Tahoe

2010-06-23T18:14:00.001-07:00

Day 3 - We left from the Wilkes' house early in the morning towards Placerville. While on the Great American Bike Trail in Sacramento, we got a little lost because of construction, and the nicest person, Bobbi, helped us find our way. She even paid for some seat adjustments for us, and gave us recommendations to a great Mexican restaurant.

When we finally made it to Placerville, it was getting dark, and the only thing we saw was a Home Depot. We asked them if we could camp in their parking lot during the night, and they said sure.

So we started setting up our tents behind the cliffs sheds in Placerville.

Day 4 - We left early from Placerville, and then got some breakfast at a nice diner named Sweetie Pie's. Along the way, we found a little convenience store with an aptly named cafe.

Going up the hills at the base of the Sierra Mountains.

When we finally made it to Cooks Station (which is the only stop up the Sierra Mountains), it was closed! Luckily, the Pirnie family bought us some great food in Somerset so that we could eat for the night.

Day 5 - Up to Kirkwood

As we started climbing up the Sierras, the views became phenomenal. Arturo climbed up some rocks and took a picture of us.

Kirkwood is a beautiful town at the height of the Sierras (population during the summer of 20 residents). We ate at a little inn, and a nice couple let us shower in their place. It was much appreciated.

Day 6- To Tahoe

We climbed up the last bit of the Sierra Mountains (almost there!)

Here we are at the top of Carson Pass. Elevation 8500 feet.

And then it felt nice to ride downhill for a good 1500 feet of elevation.

A view on the other side of the mountain.

And we're finally in Lake Tahoe!!! The Tahoe Valley Lodge donated us a room (which is so nice of them!), so we're camping in Tahoe for the night. Tomorrow is our first rest day, so we'll spend it enjoying the scenery that this place has to offer.

115 Miles Down, A Bit More To Go

2010-06-19T22:42:00.001-07:00

Day 2- The beginning

After a good night's sleep at Kristin's house, she walked us down a few blocks to the beach. We're finally at the beginning of our coast to coast bike ride. We cristened our bikes with fine Pacific sand

It was really cold in San Francisco. At least when we were there, it was really, really cold.

The Golden Gate Bridge. According to the sign, there's no turning back anymore.

After 45 miles, we finally made it to Villejo, and ended our first day biking. In town, Relax Inn donated a free room to Coast to Coast (the place definitely lived up to its name). We also had our first visitors; Loreen's boyfriend Steve came with his sister, and then we had dinner and called it a night.

(We later learned that there's a huge Pirate Festival going on in Villejo this weekend. We're not exactly sure what that entails, but if we had known, we would have taken a day off to check it out! Maybe not)

Day 3 - "California reminds me of Disney movies"

Loreen's boyfriend Steve is very savvy with bikes, so he helped us tune things (and by my use of the word "things" you can tell that I'm not very savvy with bikes), and we set our for our next journey from Villejo to Davis. A little before we hit wine country, the views of the hills and farms were spectacular.

Davis is a green, chicken-loving, co-op worshiping, Burger-King-needs-six-months-of-firey-city-coucil-meetings-to-open bike Mecca. As we approached the city, we started noticing signs that we were approaching a "bike-friendly" habitat. As we passed by a farm, we saw this unique pinwheel.

We got to Davis, and and after 76 miles, we were all pretty tired, and couldn't wait to get to our final destination.

Tonight, we're staying with the Wilkes family. Dr. Wilkes is an alumnus of the UCONN School of Medicine, and he and his wife hosted every Coast to Coast team for the past 5 years. They had a barbecue for us (which is nice considering that we've only been eatin PB&J sandwiches and Fig Newtons), let us use their pool, and gave each of us a bed to sleep on. We also got a tour of the UC Davis campus, and and then went downtown to have some frozen yogurt.

Now, we're getting some much needed sleep, because we'll be climbing the Sierra Nevada mountains over the next three days.

Day One in San Francisco

2010-06-17T22:23:00.000-07:00

After months of preparation and fundraising, we're finally in San Francisco! We left Hartford at 10:15 in the morning, and arrived at San Francisco at 3:00.

We took the BART to Citizen Chain Cycles to pick up our bikes.

The great people at Citizen Chain cycles in San Francisco put our bikes together at a very reduced price. They're the best bike shop in San Francisco!

All geared up and ready to go.

Here's Alex posing with a buffalo in San Francisco. No explanation necessary.

Biking through Golden Gate Park, and seeing the botanical gardens.

Loreen biking with the Ferry Building in the background. It was actually much cooler than it looks in the picture.

The first Coast to Coast 2010 hosts, Kristin and Katie. Alex has known Kristin since kindergarten, and she was nice enough to let us stay at her place in San Francisco. Katie, by random chance, also knows our classmate Christian. Small world, huh?

We've been up since 5:30 Eastern Time, and now it's 11:00 Pacific Time. We're ready to go to bed and prepare to leave for Villejo tomorrow.

Coast to Coast Kickoff!

2010-06-12T09:18:00.000-07:00

One of our biggest supporters, the Dean of the School of Medicine, Dr. Laurencin, threw us a Kick-off at the Health Center. Ever since we introduced ourselves at the Valentine's Day Ball for Lea's Foundation, he's been a tremendous help to our cause. He's treating the top four fundraisers of our class to dinner, and he connected us to the UCONN Foundation so that we can get more publicity in the UCONN community. (There's also an article coming soon under the UCONN Foundation. We'll keep you posted!)

Also, Dr. Laurencin's blog has featured the Coast to Coast riders twice, and at our Kick-Off he mentioned starting some "interblog" communication throughout the summer. As a start of this communication, here's a link to Dr. Laurencin's blog, featuring a nice entry describing Coast to Coast dated May 18th:

http://libraryweb.uchc.edu/vp/archives/2010/05/index.html

Here we are debuting the official 2010 Coast to Coast Lea's Foundation jerseys. Pretty nice, huh?

We had a raffle in the cafeteria. We would like to thank the companies that donated items to us!

EMS in Manchester gave us two kayak rentals. When I handed the kayak rentals to the winner of the raffle, she was ecstatic that the rentals come with paddles, life jackets, and the EMS employees will even tie the kayaks onto your car!

Coach handbags at the West Farms mall gave us some pretty nice bags. The managers of the store pooled their money together to get us some nice items for our auction.

Also, Max's Oyster Bar (probably my favorite restaurant, with the most amazing Happy Hour deals) gave us a $50 gift certificate.

Here we are getting ready for the raffle.

This is a picture of us chatting with Ms. Dieli, who won a Coast to Coast jersey from our raffle!

Final preparations! And thanks to bike shops!

2010-06-11T13:38:00.001-07:00

The school year is wrapping up, and we're tired after 10 months of our first year of medical school. However, in under a week, we're trading our mental exhaustion for that of the physical kind. Two days after our final exam, we're flying to San Francisco, and making our way back to Connecticut.

We've been spending a lot of time making sure that we have everything for our bike trip. Panniers, bike conmputers, bike racks, Camelbaks, panniers, lights, helmets, shoes, clipless pedals, chamois cream (look it up if you don't know what this is; it may be the most important thing that we take with us!), bike shorts, chains, wheels, tents, etc. Hopefully we're not forgetting anything!!

Here we'd like to give a shout out to some bike shops that generously donated to our cause.

Benidorm Bikes in Canton, CT, has been involved in Coast to Coast since the first ride 4 years ago. When we stopped by, we saw a newspaper cutout of the first-year riders, Ben and Jeremiah, posted on their wall. They gave us most of our supplies at a discount, and were a tremendous help by giving us advice on what we need on our trip.

The owner of Benidorm even showed us a broken bike helmet of a Coast to Coast biker two years ago. It had a huge crack along the sides, and just from looking at it, you can tell that the helmet saved her life. It shows how important it is for everyone to wear helmets while biking!!!

Zanes Cycles in Branford, CT, has donated bike shorts, bike computers, air pumps, and Camelbaks. Thanks to our amazing classmate Kate Dannheim who contacted the store and got us these donations! Kate was also one of the captains of our fundraising teams, so we can't thank her enough!

Biker's Edge in Bristol gave us helmets and bike shorts. It's a really nice bike shop right on Route 6.

The Bike Shop in Manchester, CT, gave us tubes, water bottle holders, and presta valve converters so that we can fill our tires at gas stations. The owner, Mr. Johnson, has a wife who works at the Health Center, and his daughter is a 3rd year medical student.

We're almost there! (And by "there," I mean "starting the journey.") We've spent a lot of time preparing, and we would be ill-prepared without the help we received from bike shops. Thank you guys so much for helping our cause!

WTIC 1080 Interview

2010-06-02T17:51:00.001-07:00

Coast to Coast recorded an interview with WTIC AM 1080 this afternoon. It'll air on Sunday, June 6th early in the morning.

BBQ and Beer Brewing Contest

2010-06-02T17:31:00.000-07:00

Coast to Coast had a BBQ and Beer Brewing Contest last Saturday. We would like to thank Dr. Belniak for letting us throw the fundraiser at his home.

Congratulations to Jared and Steve for winning our beer brewing contest, and Erica for her amazing Coast to Coast cake!

BBQ with a beer brewing contest!!!

2010-05-20T17:00:00.000-07:00

BBQ & Beer-brewing contest
102 Taine Mountain Road, Burlington, CT 06013.
May 22nd from 1-4pm at Dr. Belniak's house (Mary's Dad).

There will be:
music
HOME-BREWED beer to taste and judge
baked goods
burgers
drinks
fun
pool
HOT TUB

Generally, it will be awesome, so please come and support the Coast to Coasters! Since this is at someone's home, we just ask that you buy a ticket from us ahead of time so we know how many are coming. There are a limited number we can sell, so contact us ASAP!

Tickets are $15, and can be bought at breaks between classes from Loreen, Alex O, Stacy, or Arturo. If you want to come, send an e-mail to aocampo@student.uchc.edu to reserve a spot!!!

Thanks,
Loreen, Stacy, Alex O, and Arturo

PS--HERE ARE THE BEERS TO LOOK FORWARD TO:

Clarke Nelson's Explosion Ale
It's is a Brown Porter Ale that's as smooth as silk. This batch blew the airlock on the carboy and splattered all over the ceiling.

Steve and Jared's Old Castle
It's a nut brown ale with a nice maltiness and some flavors of brown sugar.

Talcott Glen Brewing Company's (Isaac and Russ') Snake Mountain Hefeweizen (Bavarian Hefeweizen) We could spout off phrases like, "lingering wheat aroma", "strong head", and "hint of orange". We could talk about the yeast imported from Germany. We could tell you how good our beer is. Or, you can just drink it and enjoy it.

Class-wide Fundraiser / Update

2010-05-12T18:13:00.001-07:00

Since the Coast to Coast fundraiser benefits the entire UCONN community, there is now a fundraiser for our entire class. We have decided to divide the class into 13 teams, and with a little bit of healthy competition, we will reward the team that raises the most amount of money (per person on the team so that there's no advantage for having a larger team). Also, the four top individual fundraisers in our class will have dinner with Dr. Laurencin wherever you want to go. More prizes will be announced... we promise!

We all appreciate your support guys!!!

Also, one of our Coast to Coast riders, Arturo Montano, wrote an entire puppet opera, "The Farflung Empire of the Soul" (including music with accompaniment and script). It was amazing, and with help from a bake sale featuring UCONN bakers, it was a huge success.

FREE ICE CREAM AND KARAOKE

2010-03-21T08:05:00.000-07:00

Next week, we're having two events. On Tuesday, there's a FREE CONE DAY in Ben and Jerry's at 5 South Main Street, West Hartford, CT. Come get some free ice cream, and donate how much you want to the cause.

Also, on Thursday March 25th at 9 PM to 11 PM, we're having a karaoke fundraiser at Butterfly Restaurant at 831 Farmington Avenue, West Hartford, CT. There's a cover of $10, so come and have fun on Thursday night!

We would like to thank Ben and Jerry's and the owner of Butterfly Restaurant for helping us!!

Continuing the tradition

2010-03-21T06:54:00.000-07:00

Every summer, four first year UCONN medical students bike across the country for leukemia research. It's a great cause, and the four of us, Loreen Fournier, Stacy White, Arturo Montano, and Alex Ocampo, are so excited to carry on the tradition.

Yesterday, we bought our one-way tickets to San Francisco. On June 17th, we'll arrive in California with our bikes and gear, and from there we'll spend the next eight weeks biking back to Farmington, CT.

Right now, we're in the process of fundraising. We're mailing letters to family and friends, and we're planning a bunch of events throughout the spring. Our fundraising goal is $50,000, and we hope that you guys can help us reach that goal! The funds we raise will benefit the Lea's Foundation Center for Hematologic Disorders at the UCONN Health Center.

We'll keep you posted on fundraisers and updates!

Check out some blogs from previous Coast to Coast teams:
http://coasttocoastforacure.blogspot.com/
http://coasttocoast2008.blogspot.com/
http://coasttocoast2009.blogspot.com/