44 Days Across America

Prologue

2007-04-15T18:09:00.003-04:00

I've lived in New York City for a little over seven years now. On weekends, or early weekday mornings, I bike out of the City over the George Washington Bridge with other area cyclists heading north towards towns like Piermont and Nyack to take in the relative calm and solitude of the Hudson River Valley for a few hours. However, one summer ten years ago, I had the incredible fortune of spending it with a good friend, on a bicycle, usually in the middle of nowhere, plotting and plodding our way across America.

I kept a daily journal of our trip and have compiled an abridged version of those tales here with a few recollections looking back now on something that no sooner had it finished did it feel like a dream. Thanks to David for being my riding partner on this seven-week adventure.

(Left Photo: Tim, Doug and David at the Bon Voyage party in Cincinnati. Right Photo: David sorting our fifty pounds of gear.)

Driving West. Friday-Sunday, June 27-29.

2007-04-15T18:09:00.001-04:00

David and I spent a number of weeks staring at a huge map of the United States debating the best route to bicycle across the country. In the end, we decided to begin at the Pacific Ocean on the western side of Olympic Peninsula of Washington State and bike eastward ending perhaps in Maine or at the tip of Cape Cod, MA (location to be determined en route). Our biggest challenge then was figuring out how we could get to the starting location. Luckily, some friends of ours, Rob and Remus, were excited by the thought of driving across country from Cincinnati to the Pacific Northwest.

Our road trip west began on Friday, June 27 at 7:30AM from Ft. Wayne, IN. David and I drove up from Cincinnati to Ft. Wayne the night before in order to store my car in Indiana for the duration and sort our gear. When Rob and Remus arrived that morning we loaded up the car, strapped on the bike rack and bikes and pulled out of the driveway headed for Chicago. Initially, at any movement of the car, David and I looked nervously back at the bikes; however, after we made it through downtown Chicago traffic, we were pretty confident that they wouldn’t fly off. After a brief stop in Chicago, we rolled into Wisconsin, then across the Mississippi River into Minnesota—and on and on.

The main sightseeing stops on our trip out were to be the South Dakota Badlands, Mt. Rushmore and Devil's Tower. One slight catch—we hit all of them in the middle of the night. At 1:30AM we were peering out into the Badlands through the insufficient light of the car’s headlights. With Rob’s comment, “It looks like the Grand Canyon, only upside down,” we turned around and headed back out onto I-90 again. Naively assuming that the National Parks light Mt. Rushmore 24/7, we headed to Rapid City, SD. As the four of us were standing in the parking lot staring at two mountains and describing how we could make out the Presidents’ faces in the dark, David said, “Yeah, I can see them, uh, which one is it—the mountain on the left or the one on the right?”

Following our middle-of-the-night sight-seeing adventures in South Dakota, the rest of the drive out West was pretty uneventful. We crossed into Montana as the sun was beginning to rise and illuminate the “Reasonable and Prudent” part of their speed limit signs. We crossed the 700 miles of Montana in a reasonable and prudent couple of hours.

We finally reached the Pacific Ocean in Forks, WA—way out on the Olympic Peninsula. After dinner we made a few phone calls back home to let everyone know that we had arrived safely (the trip pre-dated inexpensive cell phone calls, although we did travel with one) and then pitched our tent at a campground near the ocean for what would be the first of six weeks camping across the States.

(Photo: Tim, Remus, Rob and David crossing the Puget Sound en route to the Pacific Ocean.)

Day 1, Monday, June 30.

2007-04-15T18:08:00.005-04:00

Mora, WA to Sequim, WA
Daily Mileage: 101 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 6 hours
Average Speed: 15 mph

It was cold, gray and the crack of dawn as rolled I out of the tent and tried to ignore the aches that come from sleeping on the hard ground. Even so, I was excited to begin the trip that we had planned and talked about for so long now. We packed up the tent and drove the little ways down to the beach. After unloading our gear from the car and fitting it onto our bikes, we walked to the water—a rocky and rough beach—for a couple photos to prove that we actually were at the Pacific Ocean. Afterwards, Rob and Remus hopped in the car and drove away. This was one of the strangest feelings I’ve ever experienced—our friends leaving us stranded on a beach, thousands of miles from home, with only our bikes to get us back there. It was at this point that I realized we were actually going to have to bicycle clear across the country in order to get home.

Breakfast in the morning consisted of our remaining Pop Tarts purchased at the Wal*Mart in Wisconsin. We both ate them in near silence while sitting on a rock staring out at the gray ocean. David and I eventually suited up for our first day on the bikes and while it began a bit rainy, the clouds soon disappeared and the sky turned into a wonderful blue. We saw some beautiful scenery as we crossed back over the peninsula and had our first run-ins with huge logging trucks spewing bark chips. We didn’t eat much food today, either because we were too excited or because we didn’t yet know how many calories it would take each day to bike so many miles. For dinner we stopped at the 101 Diner before finding our campsite with the help of Ranger Bill. One of the nice things about rolling into camp on bicycles is that you can often get a location away from the cars and RVs—our spot this evening was in a nice wooded area overlooking part of the ocean.

(Left Photo: Tim and David on Rialto Beach/Pacific Ocean at the start of the bike trip; Right Photo: Tim with the bikes just prior to Remus & Rob’s departure.)

Day 2, Tuesday, July 1.

2007-04-15T18:08:00.003-04:00

Sequim, WA to Fort Casey, WA
Daily Mileage: 30 miles

Well today was quite interesting. David’s rear tire flatted four times in the first 18 miles of our day and 12 miles from the next town, Port Townsend. After we learned that there was a bike shop there, he decided to hitchhike all the way into town while I rode in on my bike. It probably took us about 30 minutes before we were able to successfully flag down a passing pick-up truck. This was the first time that I ever tried to hitchhike, and we started by flagging only those vehicles that looked harmless (whatever that means, maybe no gun rack?). We quickly had to lower our standards in order to get people even to acknowledge us. Finally, this nice woman in a pick-up truck stopped and agreed to drive David to Port Townsend. I rolled into town about twenty minutes later, and when I couldn’t find the bike shop, began to panic a little realizing for the first time that we had no way of communicating with each other, let alone if he was abducted. Finally, after several loops through town I spotted the small oceanfront bike shop and David hanging out by the front door.

We bought another bike pump because the one we were carrying couldn’t pump to the 120 p.s.i. necessary to inflate our tires. Thinking that low tire pressure was the culprit, we pumped up the tires and headed around the corner to this hole-in-the wall pizza place for several slices. We dropped a few postcards in the mail that we wrote over dinner and then ran to meet the departing ferry. Our campsite was on the other side of the Sound, just up the way from the ferry terminal, so we didn't have to travel too far. As we rolled into camp, David got another flat tire, at which point we both sat down and brushed the inside of the tire until we found the small piece of glass that had caused all of our problems. We camped that night in a special hiker/biker area near an old fort.

(Top Photo: David by the "Welcome to Washington State" sign, taken as we were leaving Washington; Bottom Photo: David fixing one of the five flat tires we had today.)

Day 3, Wednesday, July 2.

2007-04-15T18:08:00.001-04:00

Fort Casey, WA to Marblemount, WA
Daily Mileage: 90.04 miles
Daily Time of Bike: 5:52 hours
Average Speed: 15.3 mph
Maximum Speed: 33.6 mph

We awoke today to blue skies and sun, and amazingly, one of what turned out to be many over the next six weeks. After pressing the snooze button several times, we finally rolled out of the tent at 6:00AM. It took us an hour and a half to tear down camp, so we were on the road by 7:30AM. We took a wrong turn that brought us into the little town of Coupeville, WA for breakfast. After splitting an entire box of Grapenuts, a half gallon of milk and a bagel, we were ready to hit the road again.

The pre-lunch highlight was Deception Pass, a bridge hundreds of feet above the ocean with spectacular views (at least from what we had seen up until this point). Not long afterwards, we arrived in Anacortes, WA (the recommended starting location for the trip according to our biking maps) and made the turn onto Route 20 East. It was a foreboding sight though to look ahead at this straight road running directly into the mountains, knowing that within a day we’d be in the thick of them.

Burlington served as our lunch spot. By this time the traffic had lessened a bit and the road went from four lanes down to two. We pulled into a large fruit stand by the side of the road and ate lots of fresh fruit. Now, of course it’s not the best idea to eat a bunch of fruit on an empty stomach when you’re starving, and we paid the price for it the rest of the day.

We set out in the morning knowing that for the next couple of days the terrain was only going to get steeper and that would mean two things, great scenery and lots of biking uphill. A few miles before Marblemount we stopped at this quaint little shack surrounded by picnic tables as in a large field at the foot of the mountains. We ate some homemade raspberry ice cream and chatted up the locals for a while. One guy told us that we couldn’t miss the campground in Marblemount because of all of the rabbits, hmm.

When we arrived at the campground, we understood exactly what that man meant. There were hundreds of rabbits everywhere. We had to step around, over and sometimes part seas of them. Some were as large as dogs and were as tame as house pets. One had a stomach so big that it dragged the ground when he walked. Why did I not take a photo of all of the rabbits?! On a more logistical note, today was the first time that we showered since setting off on the trip.

(Left Photo: Look towards Canada from Deception Pass; Right Photo: Road leading into the Cascade Mountains.)

Day 4, Thursday, July 3.

2007-04-15T18:07:00.009-04:00

Marblemount, WA to Mazama, WA
Daily Mileage: 82.24 miles
Total Mileage: 302.3 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 7:30 hours
Average Speed: 10.9 mph
Maximum Speed: 36.8 mph

Today was the first of our many days spent in the mountains. We left the rabbit-infested campsite nestled in the foothills of the Cascades and proceeded up into the mountains for a day of agonizingly slow travel. It took seemingly forever to climb, especially after we’d breezed along for the first three days. It was a situation where just five extra pounds meant a noticeable reduction in climbing capacity, and we were carrying an additional 25 pounds of gear. We quickly exhausted our bike’s twenty-one gears and for hours on end my speedometer display alternated between 0 mph–2 mph–0 mph, as we trudged slowly uphill. It was one of those instances where if you slowed too much you were likely to topple over, and it took a great deal of effort to get going again. There were many times during the trip that I got a song stuck in my head for days or weeks on end, and today’s tune was “The Old Gray Mare”. On the first and third beats of each slow bar I would press down the alternating pedal, each and every foot up the mountain.

We took one sightseeing detour today to Diablo Dam. The loss in altitude down to the dam was more than made up for by the beautiful view of crystal-clear green water and the surrounding mountains. Later in our journey, we’d make fewer and fewer sightseeing side-trips like this one, having to bypass such hotspots as the actual Field of Dreams in Iowa and the Pennsylvania Little Grand Canyon, neither of which I’ve ever seen to this day. However, I think we made a good choice taking in Diablo Dam.

Back on the bikes, and just when we thought that we were approaching Washington Pass, we’d turn a corner and be forced to descend several hundred feet only to then turn another corner and bike upwards again. After six hours of ascending, we finally made it to Washington Pass (5,477 ft) and the view was worth it. We took a few photos and then suited up in our raingear for the chilly ride down the other side of the mountain. It started with a large hairpin turn, quite scary at 30 mph and in the frigid temperatures. We eventually coasted at speeds approaching 40 mph for 16 miles!!! David actually let loose and hit 40 mph a few times while I rode my breaks in many spots along the way. Growing up in Indiana, this was the type of coasting that you never could even imagine. We had to stop several times because our arms and legs were shaking uncontrollably from staying in a crouched position for so long after having spent the previous hours straining to get up over the mountain. David described it as a really great amusement park ride that went on way too long.

When we finally rolled into camp—our first with vault toilets (wonderful smelling things)—we put up the tent and unloaded our gear before biking a mile or so to the only restaurant in the area at a lodge nearby. Now, usually we wouldn’t just drop our gear and bike away, but we were tired of carrying it all day and had faith in the people staying next to us that they’d keep an eye on it (which they did, whoever they were).

(Left Photo: Tim at Diablo Dam; Right Photo: Tim by Washington Pass sign)

Day 5, Friday, July 4.

2007-04-15T18:07:00.007-04:00

Mazama, WA to Omak, WA
Daily Mileage: 62.27 miles
Total Mileage: 364.6 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 4:53 hours
Average Speed: 12.7 mph
Maximum Speed: 38.8 mph

We stopped for breakfast in Mazama, WA at a little country store & café by the side of the road. David and I both ate a pound of Grapenuts (which actually takes a while to do), a quart of milk, and half gallon of orange juice. From there we biked to Winthrop, a place made up to resemble a little frontier town, but really just a tourist trap selling the general wares ones sees at any place like it—taffy, fake rubber snakes, and replicas of the Declaration of Independence that smell like vinegar. In the spirit of July 4th, we purchased two small American flags to hang off of the back of our packs. (Postscript: David made it clear across the country with his, while mine disappeared somewhere in the middle of Montana).

From there it was on to Louploup Pass (4,080 ft). The climb was steeper than Washington Pass, but not nearly as long. Our descent down the backside of the mountain was more exciting than the day before and had a number of curves. It lasted over seven miles, and we held it at around 37 mph the entire way down. When our bikes finally started to slow down we found ourselves flying into the little town of Okanogan. We stopped at a little fruit stand to have some cold cherry cider and met three guys biking to Canada—one of a handful of run-ins out West with people biking somewhere. By the time we reached North Dakota though, where there are a few more roads to choose from, we stopped meeting people biking any great distance.

Our campground, or parking lot with some grass, was located right next to the Omak Stampede, “Home of the World Famous Suicide Race”—always the second weekend in August. We pitched our little tent on a small plot between two huge RVs, and at the recommendation of our neighbor, road off to have dinner at The Breadline (voted one of the best restaurants in the Northwest). When we arrived back “home,” we climbed in the tent and than lay awake as some kids nearby set off fireworks for most of the night.

(Photo: Miles of exciting coasting through the Cascades.)

Day 6, Saturday, July 5.

2007-04-15T18:07:00.005-04:00

Omak, WA to Republic, WA
Daily Mileage: 70.60 miles
Total Mileage: 435.2 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 6:23 hours
Average Speed: 11.0 mph
Maximum Speed: 34.0 mph

We started out from Omak at 9AM after eating way too much for breakfast—we bought a pound of Betty Crocker cereal, three donuts, a quart of milk and a half gallon of orange juice trying to match previous mornings.

Our first days on the bike the weather was relatively cool and breezy; however, there was a noticeable shift the moment we crossed over Washington Pass. Now it was 90 degrees in the shade and drastic shift made it feel more like we were riding through the desert.

We stopped at a little town called Riverside to use the restroom, which consisted of a portable toilet standing alone in the middle of their town park. Riverside looked like so many of the other towns we passed through—population of 283, several small houses, a gas station/restaurant/convenience store and a cowboy shop. From there we rolled on to Tomasak, where we took a long break before attempting the two mountain passes we planned for today. We reached the first, Wauconda Pass (4,300 ft), after a brief stop in the “town” of Wauconda. This “town” was merely a convenience store/restaurant, and it weirded us out! It’s the type of place you’d see at the beginning of a horror movie right after someone’s car broke down in the middle of the night. This one couple just stared silently at our bikes for quite a long time before finally going inside—no questions, no pointing, just stone-cold staring. After eating a can of baked beans (we were on a baked bean kick for a few days) and Gatorade, we headed up for another six miles to the Pass. From there we coasted into Republic with little effort on our part.

Once in Republic, we stopped at a grocery store to get dinner and tomorrow’s breakfast. We really weren’t hungry but knew once we got to the campground would want some food, so David and I walked through the store twice before picking out some random things. While making our way to the campground located next to their fair grounds it started to sprinkle. We ran to the site as if we were going to throw up the tent and climb inside before it really started to rain. Instead, it occurred to us that we should hide out in the spacious restrooms until the rain let up. There was an overhang that we put our bikes under to keep them dry and then we ate dinner as the rains poured down outside. A tree limb fell and a huge lightning bolt flashed nearby that David felt through the metal pipe on which he was leaning. And then it started to hail. The pieces of hail were about half the size of ping-pong balls, but abundant. It was the first time that I had been outside during a big hailstorm, and it was really quite something. While we waited out the rest of the storm I shaved for the first time this week; man, does it feel good to not have facial hair.

(Photo: Tim eating dinner in the park restroom.)

Day 7, Sunday, July 6.

2007-04-15T18:07:00.003-04:00

Republic, WA to Ione, WA
Daily Mileage: 88.58 miles
Total Mileage: 523.8 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 6:56 hours
Average Speed: 12.7 mph
Maximum Speed: 35.0 mph

Today’s goal in my book was to get to Idaho; however, the primary objective was getting over the Cascades.

As we pulled out of the Republic fair ground we immediately began climbing our highest pass yet, Sherman Pass (5,575 ft). The climb was filled with all of our favorite warning signs: pull off areas, grade steepens and must use chains when necessary. We climbed it in a record time (for us) of two hours. Along the way we passed through seven miles of the 1988 White Mountain Lightning Fire area. It was incredibly depressing to see so many acres of black tree trunks. When we reached the pass, we were overjoyed to have climbed to our highest, and final, pass in the Cascades. After a few photos, we suited up to begin the 29-mile descent. It was cold, we were tired, and after a couple of miles I just wanted it all to stop. With my teeth chattering, legs shaking, and arms and hands clenching the handlebars, we finally rolled over the Columbia River signaling what we thought was the end of our journey in the Cascades.

We stopped at a huge grocery store in Colville to get a bag of ice. A number of people came up to ask us questions while we were lounging outside of the store. One guy asked us about our aero bars; another asked us if we carried a gun.

Back on our way again, we made the last push for Idaho. After several miles though, my back tire flatted (the worst type to change because you have to take all of the gear off of your bike just to get the wheel off). We repaired it with one of our patched tubes while hanging outside of the Beaver Lodge and in the meantime, it started to rain again. With our Idaho plans delayed for a day we decided to stop for the night in Ione. The last five miles of the Cascades that stood between us were the curviest we’d seen. Had the road surface been dry, it would have been the most exciting downhill of the entire Cascades. Once on flat land again, we turned north to Ione and pitched our tent in the city park amongst a pavilion filled with picnic tables overlooking the river. Time to sleep, and Kevin Cosner is filming The Postman near here.

(Photo: David celebrating at the top of Sherman Pass)

Day 8, Monday, July 7.

2007-04-15T18:07:00.001-04:00

Ione, WA to Beyond Hope, ID
Daily Mileage: 107.5 miles
Total Mileage: 631.3 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 8:06 hours
Average Speed: 13.2 mph
Maximum Speed: 32.2 mph

While packing up camp this morning, we watched as two elk with their big racks swam slowly across the haze-covered river next to where we had been sleeping.

In my journal, I wrote that had we known the road conditions that would greet us once we reached Idaho, we would have taken longer to get there. It was only 50 miles to the border and the excitement of our first new state propelled us forward; however, the tough headwind we faced for most of the day slowed our progress to a crawl at points. When we finally reached the border we took a photo of our first “Welcome to” state sign. We also turned around and took a photo of the “Welcome to Washington” sign as there wasn’t one greeting us when we began at the Pacific Ocean.

Our stopping point for the day was Beyond Hope, Idaho—the town just past Hope. There was a phone at the campsite where we stayed, so we took the opportunity to call home to family and friends. After spending eight days, 24/7 together, David and I enjoyed the opportunity to talk with some other people for a while, so much so that we stayed on that phone until way past dark.

David and I packed as lightly and economically as we could for the trip. With each of us carrying 25 pounds of gear, we were by far, of the cyclists we ran into along the way, the ones carrying the lightest loads. Some people packed upwards of 75 pounds of gear. During our first day in the mountains we even stopped at a post office to mail home a few maps and the small camping stove we brought along (all total probably less than a pound of stuff). We packed one outfit for on the bike and one for off of the bike, a roll of toilet paper that was only used once, and amongst a few other things a cell phone that we didn’t even turn on the whole time. The one thing that we neglected to bring, and quickly discovered we needed, were flashlights. Tonight was one of those occasions when it was pitch black by the time we found our spot to camp and, being out in the middle of nowhere, couldn’t see a thing. Somehow we managed to get camp set-up without poking out an eye with the tent poles and then quickly fell asleep.

(Photo: Welcome to Idaho sign)

Day 9, Tuesday, July 8

2007-04-15T18:06:00.007-04:00

Beyond Hope, ID to Libby, MT
Daily Mileage: 75.11 miles
Total Mileage: 706.4 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 5:39 hours
Average Speed: 13.2 mph
Maximum Speed: 36.8 mph

Since we arrived so late last night, no one was around to take our money for the campsite. We were hoping to avoid getting caught on our way out so we could save a little cash, but the lady was at our camp ready to collect as soon as we unzipped the tent door. We didn’t get on the bikes until around 10AM, partly due to the late night and partly, we told ourselves, because of the “faulty” alarm clock. Somewhere along the route yesterday we picked up a USA Today and decided to read some of it as a leisurely way to begin the day. It became, however, something we could use to shoo away the deer that wandered uncomfortably close to our campsite this morning.

It took us a while to reach Clark Falls where we stopped for a breakfast of yogurt and honeycombs. While we were sitting at the picnic table eating, these two bikers doing a trip from Wisconsin to Spokane came up and talked to us for quite a long while. When they finally left, and we were ready to hit the road again, I looked down to discover that my back tire was flat because the patch leaked. We were already mad at ourselves for not having done much riding this morning and now another delay in our departure from Idaho. Finally, we made it to the state line and were all too happy to leave the state, but even more excited because it meant we were entering a new state on our trip—Montana.

We took Highway 200 to Highway 56, where we stopped for lunch, only two hours after breakfast. We met a couple who were tandem biking from Baltimore to Seattle for the past ten weeks, and incredibly excited as they approached the Pacific Coast (as we would truly understand ourselves when we were within striking distance of the Atlantic). After a hearty lunch, we started up Highway 56, with fifty-seven miles to our day’s destination in Libby. Just as we were beginning to enjoy how much nicer the roads were in Montana than Idaho it began to rain. David hoped for a hard rain in order to wash his clothes, but fortunately, or I guess unfortunately, it was just a light shower.

Our campsite tonight is in Libby, MT at the Firemen’s Park next to a huge grocery store (where we loaded up on anything that looked tasty). For only $2, we thought it was a great deal to camp at the park; however, after only a few minutes of lying on the ground we discovered what it feels like to sleep on what was essentially a gravel driveway. We only packed sleep sacks for the trip, no sleeping bag or sleeping pad, so we could feel every single rock jabbing us throughout the night.

(Photo: Tim leaning on the Welcome to Montana sign.)

Day 10, Wednesday, July 9.

2007-04-15T18:06:00.005-04:00

Libby, MT to Olney, MT
Daily Mileage: 99.77 miles
Total Mileage: 806.2 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 8:13 hours
Average Speed: 12.1 mph
Maximum Speed: 36.3 mph

Today it rained pretty much non-stop. As an added bonus, it got colder as we ascended into the mountains and the traffic picked up as well. We began the day though with breakfast at this great little diner in Libby. They served the best hashbrowns, and their Huckleberry syrup was great on the pancakes. For dinner, that’s right I skipped right to the end of the day, we stopped at Pepper’s in Eureka, MT. The Mexican food was good, real refried beans for a change (not the ones was usually ate straight from a can); however, the server and cook tried to give us a hint that they were closing by whistling and singing, “On the road again.”

There were several times during the trip that either David or I would “bonk,” meaning our sugar levels would drop so low that we were completely worthless on the bike. For the last twelve miles of our day, from dinner to the campsite, David’s sugar levels plummeted. We pulled into the only convenience store along the way to buy a few King-sized Snickers bars. After 1000 calories, and plenty of sugar, we were set to make the final push of the day.

We missed the turn-off for the “highly visited” campsite and found ourselves looking at the map in a mosquito’s nest. We camped in this horrible mosquito-infested “campground” that didn't look like it still was a campground. Except for a small, extremely run-down mobile home and us, nothing else was around any longer. We set up camp in record time and were slapping mosquitoes all night! The outdoors, you gotta love ‘em.

(Photo: Serene lake with house that slid down the hillside.)

Day 11-12, Thursday & Friday, July 10&11

2007-04-15T18:06:00.003-04:00

Olney, MT to Glacier National Park
Daily Mileage: 108.33 miles
Total Mileage: 914.5 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 9:44 hours
Average Speed: 11.1 mph
Maximum Speed: 34.8 mph

Part I.
This day is quite unusual. It's been broken into several sections, and I'm writing this part of the entry around midnight of the 10th. We woke up at 10AM this morning and rode to Olney for a nice breakfast while watching the trains go by. Afterwards, we rode to Whitefish were we stopped for a while at Glacier Cyclery, an outdoors store to buy flashlights and camping towels (oh, and postcards). Next we rode to Columbia Falls, about 10 miles away. We stopped at their bike shop to get gel gloves since our hands are almost always numb with the ones with which we’re currently riding—they’re incredible. Then we headed around the corner for what turned into a long stay at Pizza Hut. Two medium pizzas and a lot of water got us to this site, Glacier National Park. We called home to let the family know where we were and that we are doing well. Now, we're sitting outside a closed cafe at 12:30AM waiting for our climb up and over Logan Pass where we hope to catch the sunrise tomorrow morning. Logan Pass is the highest elevation pass of our trip and coincidentally the Continental Divide. Hopefully, it won't snow and we won't see any bears. We received numerous warnings when entering the park about the bear population.

Part II.
We left Apgar around 1AM to begin our ascent of the “Going to the Sun” highway. We had our small headlamps, of which David’s didn’t work for the first ten miles—nothing like biking in the middle of the night with only one small Mag-lite attached to your head for two cyclists. The first twenty miles we moved at a moderate pace. We only stopped twice to use the restroom alongside the road for fear that bears would jump out of the woods. Then we came upon the sign that said no passing for the next twelve miles—this was when it became really fun, and incredibly scary. We were wearing every piece of clothing we owned, which isn't to say that was a lot. Our outer jackets were worn with the zippers down for the time being until the snow flurries started. We could see the stars really well for a while and then clouds rolled in. About ten to twenty times along the route we would hear huge waterfalls over the very small ledge that was the only thing separating us from absolutely nothing on the other side except hundreds, perhaps thousands, of feet drop off. David rode on the outside and I took the oncoming traffic lane. We only saw five cars during the entire evening so we deemed this arrangement pretty safe. It's a very strange sensation riding your bike in the dark with a small headlamp lighting your way, knowing that you could be swept right off the cliff at any moment if snow or rocks break loose.

Whenever we would faintly see or hear something we'd say, “I bet that's really beautiful!” We faintly saw a 500-foot waterfall, the “Three Bridges,” the “Weeping Wall” and many more above-the-clouds scenic views of the surrounding mountains. (Postcards will have to suffice as our tour guide for this journey through the West Side of the park.) As we neared the top and could barely see the Pass as we made our push for the finish; however, the finish was still five miles away. My flashlight had gone out completely for a second time; the first time I swapped the batteries out of my camera. We finally got to where we crossed from West to East and, wow, was the wind blowing. (Later we found out there were gusts of 50 to 60 miles per hour.) It was hard to maneuver our bikes with such a wind, but I think the excitement helped a lot.

When we got to the top, the Logan Pass was barely visible; although, the end of the road looked like we were biking right into Heaven. The clouds hung low and the sun was just starting to come up, so it looked like this blue cloud was just waiting for us at the end of the road. By this time the wind was really moving, and we struggled to get out a couple of pictures with the Continental Divide sign. Afterwards, we ran for the bathroom, hoping to find some hand blowers that would help us warm up a bit, but when we got there they were locked. So, we got out the sleep sacks (that didn't provide a great deal of protection from the wind and 30 degree non-wind chill cold) and balled up by the door of the visitor’s center. I fell asleep, but David kept kicking my numb feet to make sure 1 was still alive. When I woke up, I remember David getting the rainfly from our tent, at which point we curled up in both the rainfly and sleep sacks—absolutely no use.

Finally, a grounds keeper came by and opened up the restroom so we could sit inside; however, it wasn’t much better since they didn’t have heat. While David kept eating and running around to stay warm; all I wanted to do was sleep. We got to the top at 5AM (a four-hour ascent as planned and now it was about 8AM). The groundskeepers, even though they weren't supposed to, let us into their room that had a nice fire burning. After about five minutes we decided to make a break down the mountain. We hurried to reload our bikes and shove newspaper up our shirts to block a bit of the piercing cold wind as we descended. And then, still half frozen, we made our descent.

The descent was incredibly cold for the first five or so miles and the wind was horrible. I rode in the oncoming traffic lane and was prepared to hit the pavement at any moment if it looked like the insanely powerful wind blowing down the mountain was going to sweep me off the side of the mountain. We both had similar experiences with coasting down the mountain at 15-20 mph and being stopped dead in our tracks by the powerful wind, unable to continue until it died down. It whipped right over the mountains handing up terrible crosswinds. The only part of our bodies not well covered was our fingertips, and I still can't believe they weren't frostbitten! After a few miles the sun livened up the harsh landscape, and we began to thaw as well. More cars were ascending the road, and David and I were beginning to open the breaks up to coast faster. Near the bottom we were being blown forward, uphill at 20 mph. Once, on level ground with no straight drop-offs as before, we started taking pictures of this incredible landscape. We made a pit stop at the border visitor's center and then ate at the first, and only, restaurant we came upon. Now we're camping early (1PM) at a Kampground of America (K.O.A.). It's a bit pricey, but I made up for it by taking a 45-minute hot shower. The wind is still gusting really hard outside.

(Photo: Tim on the Continental Divide … freezing.)

Day 13, Saturday, July 12.

2007-04-15T18:06:00.001-04:00

St. Mary, MT (Glacier) to Rundyard, MT
Daily Mileage: 153.49 miles
Total Mileage: 1,068.0 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 8:12 hours
Average Speed: 18.6 mph
Maximum Speed: 44.8 mph

Today we started riding around 8AM. Right off the bat, we ran into four other cross-country cyclists at the gate to the K.O.A. They all started in Anacortes, WA on July 1st and now are headed to various points along the East coast. We also talked with two additional cross-country riders over breakfast. They started as solo riders, but now have joined forces. The younger of the two quit his job in Seattle, sold his furniture and is moving back to Massachusetts. The older man took 6-8 weeks off of work to do the trip.

We finished our breakfast outside of the grocery store, which is still at 4,000 feet above sea level (no wonder it was so cold last night—the wind was so intense it sounded like the ocean outside of the tent). After rolling out of the grocery store parking lot we immediately hit a large hill. I was really depressed at this because everyone had said that once you come off the mountains it's flat. Well the hill took us a while, but eventually we made it to the top. What we saw nearly made me cry—blue skies and the flat plains of America—now this was heaven! Little did I know that we still had several more miles left to travel before we hit level ground, but the last couple of hills were a great deal of fun with smooth pavement and a bunch of turns. When we reached Kiona, the road flattened and the huge wind we had battled for the past day was now at our backs. The tailwind was incredible and we were really flying. Then we hit Browning.

The town of Browning just happened to be having a big parade when we rolled in. The sag wagon for the other two cyclists we saw this morning was waiting in the stopped traffic, which gave us a chance to talk with him. He is from Ann Arbor, MI and the other guy is from Detroit. This sagger (the guy who drives the support vehicle) was the father of one of the guys and man, did he make it easy for them. He cooked, made reservations for the campgrounds, set up camp, and was pretty much their butler—needless to say we were a bit jealous. Once we made it through Browning we hit two patches of gravel—on a U.S. highway! We had to get off our bikes when we hit the gravel and walk them through it to spare us any future pain with compounded bike problems. Once we made it through Browning and turned onto U.S. 2 it was more incredible biking than any I've ever done in my entire life. To spare a lot of details, I'll just say we were cruising well about 30 mph for long periods of time (again with our bikes fully loaded). We were spinning so fast we had to quit pedaling, even after maxing out all of our gears. We were having such a great day on the bikes that we decided to shoot for a double century today (200 miles), but missed it by 50 miles.

The scenery is incredible! After being in the mountains for two weeks, flat land as far as the one can see is an amazing sight. (A tailwind makes it really nice as well.) As we made our last twenty-mile push of the day into Rundyard, I flatted about 14 miles out; however, it was a beautiful place for a flat tire though. I must say that we had flat tires in some of the most beautiful places this country has (at least on the route that we were biking). As the sun set it was turning the few clouds pink against an otherwise clear blue sky. The middle of Montana is an amazing place. It's as though you're standing on the top of the world and everything slopes down away from you. Montana's license plates say "Big Sky Country," and they're not lying. I always thought the sky to be big everywhere, but in Montana, it's the biggest anywhere around.

The last six miles of our day went quickly. It was getting dark and we were getting tired. We set up our camp in the town park for free. One catch—plenty of mosquitoes. We ran the quick set-up drill, locking our bikes close to the entrance and putting the rainfly on them as a security measure. We piled in and here we are.

Today was a great day—a beautiful blue sky, nice smooth and flat road, huge tailwind, and no need to turn around into it.

(Photo: David biking past the final mountains out West.)

Day 14, Sunday, July 13.

2007-04-15T18:05:00.006-04:00

Rundyard, MT to Malta, MT
Daily Mileage: 130.38 miles
Total Mileage: 1,198.7 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 7:23 hours
Average Speed 17.6 mph

Montana is known as the Big Sky State and man the sky is huge. We woke up in our mosquito-infested camp and tore it down quickly by 8:30AM. The train that ran about 100 feet from our tent kept waking us up throughout the night. It's amusing that a train can wake us up but none of the locals seem to notice it, while we can sleep peacefully through the sounds of the big city.

We started riding on the same roads as yesterday, this time without the great tailwind. Our legs were tight and tired, and our first goal was 40 miles down the way, Havre. We're still not sure how one pronounces this town (actually we're not sure how to properly pronounce a lot of the towns we ride through). We figure you just go with the furthest thing from the spelling and that's how you say it. Anyhow, we stopped for about an hour, had brunch and changed David’s front tire. We both were so tired that we just sat in the sun and watched as people went in and out of the grocery store—fascinating.

Montana is really huge, which is a bit depressing as we want to start flying through the states. However, the commercial truckers (no more logging trucks) are so friendly. They honk their horns and give a friendly wave, unlike the other motorists who can travel as fast as they like on these open and empty roads (at the time Montana’s daytime speed limit was “Reasonable & Prudent”), but insist on stopping right behind us to honk and yell obscenities before pulling around and flying off into the horizon. A railroad parallels US 2, and even the trains toot their horns and throw a friendly wave.

The second forty miles of our trip took us to Harlem, a town right on the edge of the Belknap Indian Reservation. We met up with one of the guys in the sag group again. He rode with us to Harlem, and me, trying to be a tough guy, pushed the speed in excess of 25 mph as though we were just out for a quick twenty-miler on a Saturday morning. We finally made it into Harlem and said our goodbyes, quickly resuming our much more reasonable pace.

Our third forty miles of the day began with a flat tire. We stood alongside the rode in a nest of mosquitos trying to remain calm about it all. Once the tire was fixed, we hopped back on the bikes and were pedaled the last leg of our journey at around 20 mph. The hills became more frequent and the trees, which we hadn’t seen since the mountains, began to reappear. Then in the middle of completely flat land, a random strip of mountains popped out of the landscape, literally hundreds of miles away from any other mountains.

When we reached Malta, we did a quick tour through town (it’s not that big of a place), and realizing that everything was closed because it was Sunday night, headed to the Subway/Conoco for some dinner. Following dinner, David and I made a few calls back home including one to our friend Jason, who was quite impressed with our accomplishments thusfar. Then we headed for T-Park—the facilities are horrible and the mosquitoes are even worse. We're really getting good though at setting up quickly in a manner we’ve dubbed “Mosquito Camp Mode.”

(Photo: The beautiful flat lands of middle Montana.)

Day 15, Monday, July 14.

2007-04-15T18:05:00.005-04:00

Malta, MT to Wolf Point, MT
Daily Mileage: 120.81 miles
Total Mileage: 1,319.5 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 7:04 hours
Average Speed: 17.0 mph
Maximum Speed: 37.1 mph

Mosquito Hell! I have never seen more mosquitoes in my life. My legs and arms are all swollen with bites. I can't believe the amount of mosquitoes in this area. We started this morning at the campground in Malta, with a breakfast of Hostess Fruit Pies, Pop Tarts and Gatorade. Then we started packing our bikes. The camp bathrooms were really in poor condition so we used the restaurant’s ones down the road. After stretching and fielding questions from travelers we started down the road.

Our first leg was twenty-seven miles, a slow, heavy twenty-seven miles. You knew it was morning by the way we were riding. It always takes that first leg of the day to resign yourself to sitting on your bike for another day and loosening up. We stopped in a really small town with a nice grocery to get some more Gatorade, cottage cheese and a Whatchamacallit candy bar (one of my favorite foods of the trip). When the mosquitoes started picking up we split.

Our middle leg for the day was to Glasgow. The wind kept blowing east, but U.S. 2 was winding all over the place, not giving us a straight shot east. We stopped at a rest area for water and met a couple with their daughter who are riding from their home in Seattle to Virginia. They left in late June and need to be finished by October 1. They were riding with a tandem and single bike and were traveling about 50 miles a day. While we were in Glasgow at the Pizza Hut, we saw members of the Michigan group ride through, as well as the Seattle family.

Today marks the beginning of week three—two whole weeks of camping and getting up to ride one hundred miles. The plains seem to be taking a greater toll on our bodies then the mountains. Our bodies are aching more and our butts (and other areas) are sore and chaffing. Hopefully these things will work themselves out.

We made it, barely, to this town of Wolf Point. My legs were really tight and tired. We ate for the third night in a row at Subway. During dinner we took a moment to look at the map to see where we've been and how large North Dakota looks, ouch. A really nice lady helped us locate a place to camp about two miles back up the road that we knew was open and had showers. As soon as we arrived at the campsite the mosquitoes swarmed us. With rain jacket and pants on, we hurried to set up camp while talking to this nice guy from Great Britain, now of New Jersey, who is camping next to us and also biking across the country. To end the day, I took a half-hour shower in water that reeked of sulfur.

(Photo: One of the many beautiful sunsets we saw in Montana.)

Day 16, Tuesday, July 15.

2007-04-15T18:05:00.003-04:00

Wolf Point, MT to 13 miles outside of Williston, ND
Daily Mileage: 124.6 miles
Total Mileage: 1,444.1 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 7:35 hours
Average Speed: 16.4 mph
Maximum Speed: 40.6 mph

We woke up to our tent being swarmed by mosquitoes—it was disgusting. Nothing like waking up to see the mesh rain fly completely covered black with insects. We could hear the other cyclist, whom we later found out was named Ian, packing up his tent. When we finally got up the courage to go out, because we really needed to use the restroom, we ran.

This morning breakfast consisted of Buttrey's finest yogurt, Grapenuts, and a whole lot of crangrape juice. We ate our breakfast on a small step in the vestibule to Buttrey’s. Finally, we packed up and went over to the McDonald’s to fill up our water bottles. To our disgust, we saw the older man from the sagged team ride past. They had already done 50 miles by 9:30AM!

A couple of miles down the road we saw an elderly man in his 70s walking a fully loaded bike on the shoulder of the road. We stopped to see what was wrong, and he said he was just taking a break. We found out later that day that he was making his way from Alaska to Boston—for the second time! He is much like the legendary 71-year-old woman riding her bike around the country. Supposedly, she started in Florida and is riding counter-clockwise around the United States so she hits the most ideal weather in each area. After our twenty-mile stop we met up with Ian. He just had his second flat of the day and was working on it as we rolled up. We talked with him while he was changing it and then asked if he wanted to ride with us. We ended up spending the better part of the day riding with him. He's in his 40's and has just quit his job as a medical mechanical engineer. He still is a British citizen though has had his Geencard for many years and has no intension of returning to the UK. He rides considerably smaller days than us, but is carrying at least twice the weight (probably about 70 pounds worth). He carries a laptop that enables him to email about 30 friends his journal entries. He said each time he logs on he get messages from more people that have been forwarded his journal and want to receive it as well (remember, this is 1997, just at the beginning of the “Internet Revolution” and well-before blogs that could easily be updated by cell phone).

The flats of Montana slowly moved out of sight and were replaced by the rolling terrain of North Dakota. As our day progressed the great big Montana sky that I love so much continued to get smaller. More trains honked for us today, which is always a great thrill. We saw a little pseudo badlands terrain on a backroad highway. Ian was beginning to slow and it was hard for David and I to not blast away with such a great tailwind, but we figured we'd make our mileage, so we might as well enjoy someone else’s company seeing as how for the past two and a half weeks it has just been the two of us 24/7. We also think Ian enjoyed the company as well. Our final stop together was at a brand new place eight miles from the border called "Welcome Stop”—I guess you have to be going the other way because for us it was the “Exit Stop.” Ian needed to cool off after the climbs we'd been doing, and it was a nice place to stop for a while.

As we headed out of the door the anticipation grew greater—eight miles to North Dakota! By this time it was really pretty hot. We had just come off a nice stretch of blacktop. By this time the roads were becoming like all roads within twenty mile of state borders—bad. This must be some kind of “how many of our citizens travel way out here,” thing. As we climbed each hill, we knew that one would bear the “Welcome to North Dakota” sign, when finally there it appeared. It sat high on the hill and looked beautiful. Ian was working to get up it so we went back down to cheer him on. When we were all at the top we took a bunch of pictures, and then we finally parted way. (This was one of the few state signs where both David and I could be in the same picture with the sign. Biking with two people lends one to be in the picture and one to take it.) It's a bit weird knowing that we will most likely never see this guy again. No address or telephone number changed hands, just a farewell handshake, a good luck, enjoy and take care. And then David and I were off.

We rode into Williston, ND and stopped at a Cenex (gas station) for directions when an “avid” cyclist approached David. This guy knew everything about bikes, gearing ratios and all—a bit over-the-top for us. We rode around town trying to find some place to eat when we settled on the local grocery store. We started with blueberry cheesecake and Gatorade, and then moved on to canned spaghetti and bread. With an occasional glance out of the window to make sure the bikes were still there, we sat reading Bicycling Magazine and watching Billy Madison from across the store. It was all right that we couldn’t hear the movie; we knew all the punch lines already.

We then left the Ecomart, or something to that effect, for our final leg of twenty-three miles. We changed time zones again when crossing the state line, so we just lost an hour. It took us much longer than expected because for some reason North Dakota has hills! Who would have known that North Dakota had hills? I always imagined it to be completely flat as well. We started with too little water in our bottles and finished by the moonlight. Very nice scenery, but we arrived at the camp after hours, so we picked a nice spot and pitched our mosquito camp. Today we had bug repellent spray so it wasn’t as bad as the past couple of nights.

(Photo: Tim and David with the Welcome to North Dakota sign.)

Day 17, Wednesday, July 16.

2007-04-15T18:05:00.001-04:00

Williston, ND to Minot, ND
Daily Mileage: 119.47 miles
Total Mileage: 1,563.6 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 8:42 hours
Average Speed: 13.7 mph
Maximum Speed: 33.0 mph

We were a bit concerned with where we camped last night (essentially along side a road) but got up early enough this morning that it wasn’t a problem. The only problem was that there weren’t any restrooms around and only one restaurant, Lund’s Landing. It wasn’t open yet when we walked up even though according to their sign they should have been. I’m sure that the same lady who took our order also cooked it because it took forever. We paid $6.00 for four eggs, an exorbitant amount per egg up until that point. I ordered water but couldn't drink it because it tasted like lake water, and smelled even worse.

Our first leg was fifty miles long through absolutely nothing! The map section was named 1804, and it was one hit after the next. Around mile marker 2530 David and I ran out of water, and for the remaining miles we continued to dehydrate in the summer heat. I had quit sweating and my mouth was incredibly dry. We saw this little girl getting mail, so we asked her if we could get some water. She took us to a spicket and to our amazement out came brown water. We didn’t want to be rude, so we filled our water bottles and left. I had a sip but decided to wait until the next town. When we pulled into the next town, we went directly to a grocery store to buy a couple gallons of Gatorade. It took us about two hours to feel like we were beginning to rehydrate after that experience.

The weather today was hot, blue skies, head wind, uphill, and we were pushing the pace. We had to travel another 70 miles to reach Minot, ND (our resting place for the evening), and boy did we feel every mile. The road got long and the wind stronger. We made several stops along the way and ate the rest of the food we had with us. Once we got into town we stopped at a Perkins for dinner.

We had a really tough day today, and camping is too far way, so tonight we’re staying at a Days Inn (our first hotel of the journey and the first time we haven’t camped for two and a half weeks). We looking forward to the continental breakfast tomorrow morning—you can be sure that we're taking full advantage of that.

(Photo: The hills of North Dakota.)

Day 18, Thursday, July 17.

2007-04-15T18:04:00.005-04:00

Minot, ND to Fessenden, ND
Daily Mileage: 90.92 miles
Total Mileage: 1,654.5 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 7:20 hours
Average Speed: 12.3 mph
Maximum Speed: 21.3 mph

We awoke to our wake-up call at 6:30AM, and then went quickly back to sleep for another hour. At 7:30AM we went downstairs for our first round of the continental breakfast. We ate as much as we could, then went back to the room, turned on CNN, and fell asleep listening to the problems with the MIR Space Station and the Versace murder. I woke up several hours later and went back down for more cereal and orange juice. I shave my face when I got back to the room (for what was only one of the few times during our trip), leaving what sort of looks like goatee. It was sure nice to sleep in a real bed last night, get a hot shower, and watch the news. It's too bead we spent some of our food money for the room.

Before hitting the road, we checked the map and decided to slightly alter our route through North Dakota in hopes of cutting off some miles by taking a diagonal path through the state.

Our ride today just started bad. We had a headwind constantly from the very beginning and it took a while to get into a groove that wasn’t interrupted by saddle sores. We took breaks every ten miles for about five minutes each, which seemed to break up things enough so the miles didn't get to be too unbearable.

Our first stop was at the Cozy Corner Café in Balfour. It was a great café that had a circular bar with built-in stools, wood booths, and appliances from the 1950's, including a huge malt machine. All of the cigarettes in the machine were “Generic” brand. This place was the genuine article—no retro-diner here. From the moment we stepped into the joint the place got real quiet. It was like a scene from an old Western movie when someone (usually with two six-shooters) walks into a saloon. Finally, one of the three elderly gentleman at the bar said, “Where you comin’ from and where you goin’?” And we were in with them from then on.

The day really started to get interesting around 8PM. As we were riding to Fessenden, we decided to adjust our schedule and start riding a mini-RAAM. The real RAAM (Ride Across America) occurs every year. It's an insane race from the West Coast to the East Coast. Some people do it in teams, and others do it solo. The whole idea is to see who gets to the other side first: Solo riders often ride for twenty-three hours straight without any sleep, falling into deep hallucinations. The total distance is covered in less then seven days. We decided to adapt this tactic to our trip just to get to Minneapolis—our first day off. We just wanted to keep riding until we got there.

We needed to check in with our relatives, so we decided to stop in Fessenden to call, stock up on food, regroup and go, but there our plans changed. While David was making his calls, I had a really nice conversation with these two married couples in their 40s. After I finished talking to them, I went inside the Cenex convenience store/gas station to ask the sheriff and farmers about the weather. We'd heard it was supposed to storm pretty hard and didn't want to be caught outside doing our RAAM in bad conditions. Well, after talking with them, they persuaded me that we should stay in their local park. They wouldn't charge us, and it had showers. As we were still deciding, the sheriff and his wife came outside and offered to let us stay in the vacant house that they were remodeling. We couldn't believe it—it was a house, in a neighborhood! The sheriff let us bring our bikes right inside, and after he got us towels (real towels, not the camping ones we had that supposedly absorb 97 times their weight but did so poorly). We took pictures of the place after they left—still elated that they were letting us stay in their house not even knowing who we were.

We changed into our “civilian gear” and then started to walk back to the Cenex when we ran into two girls driving around in a pickup truck who gave us a ride to the store. We picked up some food for dinner and started heading back “home.” We sat on a bench on the main street of town for a while, right outside of the bank, below the rotating time and temperature sign, and across from the Main Street Café and Saloon. When we had enough of the mosquitoes, we walked the rest of the way home to finish eating our Doritos, chips and salsa in the comfort of our own living room.

(Photo: The Continental Divide?)

Day 19, Friday, July 18.

2007-04-15T18:04:00.003-04:00

Fessenden, ND to Hope, ND
Daily Mileage: 111.76 miles
Total Mileage: 1,766.3 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 8:14 hours
Average Speed: 13.5 mph
Maximum Speed: 28.3 mph

We awoke in our nice, comfortable home at 1010 2nd Street NE. After brushing our teeth, we were off for breakfast at the Main Street Café. You might question why we’d brush our teeth and then have breakfast, but we learned early on that if you didn’t brush your teeth when you had the chance, you might not get to it that day.

From Fessenden we headed to Carrington. We ate lunch at various places, snacking here and there along the way. Our dinner was at some pizza place. We weren't too concerned with time today because we were doing the RAAM—finally. Our plan was to ride until we hit Minneapolis. Uh, we didn't make it. Around 11PM we pulled into Hope, ND. The mosquitoes were killing us on and off the bikes, our glasses were fogging over, and we couldn't see very well in the dark. We asked the sheriff where we could set-up camp, and he pointed us to the town's park. So here we are—big plans, little results up to this point. The alarm clock is set for 5:30AM, hopefully we're up and going by that time.

(Photo: David drafting behind a tractor hauling hay.)

Day 20, Saturday, July 19.

2007-04-15T18:04:00.001-04:00

Hope, ND to Roland, MN
Daily Mileage: 112.88 miles
Total Mileage: 1,879.2 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 8:29 hours
Average Speed: 13.2 mph
Maximum Speed: 23.7 mph

We started packing up camp around 7AM this morning, once again with mosquitoes all over the tent. We had breakfast at the Hope Café, and when we walked inside, the farmers that were all sitting around a table started talking to us. The waitress/cook took our order without letting us use menus (I’m pretty sure that’s because they didn’t have menus as opposed to her being rude and not letting us have them). We usually ordered the exact same thing for breakfast each morning and were able to judge the value of a particular place by the price of the eggs—here, they were the cheapest yet, $0.50 each. The breakfast was reasonable, tasted good, but it looked like I had cooked it.

Outside of the café we met Greg, an English teacher from Hartford, CT, and learned quite a bit about him as we rode the first ten miles of the day together. He’s a poet and is writing poems about his trip across the country. He and his partner (a word he used frequently) were also writing a book together. David and Greg talked about their views on a variety of subjects and then we were gone. We ended up stopping in Erie, ND, a small town in the middle of nowhere. I used the restroom and then we got some food and drink (candy and a Coke of course). To avoid the terrible mosquitoes we sat inside of the community center. When we finished eating, we played a little piano—something I hadn't done since we started the trip, and something that didn't sound quite as good as it did before I started resting on my hands and wrists for three weeks straight.

Next thing we knew we were catching up to Greg again. When we finally passed him we noticed the North Dakota headwind had finally died down. We sailed into Argusville, where we once again ran into Greg. I had to tighten a spoke, and David had to use the restroom. We were only a few miles from Fargo so we continued our pursuit. We had to cross into Minnesota and back into North Dakota before getting to Fargo. When arriving in Fargo we got directions to a bike shop and the Olive Garden. The bike shop was incredibly hip, so much that we want to order shirts from their store when we get home. We ate at the Olive Garden until we could eat no more. I think we were pushing the dress code though, but hey, in the words of Greg, that’s why being a tourist is so great, you can just leave and never see the people again.

We rolled out of Fargo around 7PM and made it to Hawley where I made a couple of phone calls trying to set up our Minneapolis plans. After fighting off the mosquitoes we started again in full rain gear—our third attempt at the RAAM. About ten minutes down the rode David got really agitated. Bugs, no light, and now tiny frogs flooded the street and hopped against our legs. We high-tailed it to the nearest town and found a church. Luckily there were a couple of women from the church in the parking lot who gave us permission to camp in back by the cemetery and use the restrooms inside. We left the bikes outside and went inside to cool off in the A/C and eat some chips. After a while we went back out into the night, braved the mosquitoes and set-up camp.

(Photo: The "Welcome to Minnesota" sign.)

Day 21, Sunday, July 20.

2007-04-15T18:03:00.006-04:00

Roland, MN to Long Prarie, MN
Daily Mileage: 126.93 miles
Total Mileage: 2,006.1 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 9:05 hours
Average Speed: 13.9 mph
Maximum Speed: 34.5 mph

Started the day at the ELCA church. We hurried to get out before anyone arrived for morning service as it is Sunday. We were on the road by 8AM after a brief truing job on my wheel. Road for about twelve miles to the next little town for breakfast. We ate at a nice café where we were able to write a couple postcards. Before we went into the café we met a father and son duo from Holland. They had started in Minneapolis and were doing a big custom tour of America's National Parks. We rode on for some time, making stops in the many small towns for food, drink, or restrooms. The best town today was Battle Lake. They have this bakery and we just about ordered one of everything they had. About a mile down the road we were stopping to eat more.

I love Minnesota accents, and the people here are incredibly friendly. One guy actually stopped his car in the middle of the road to talk with us. Another farmer and his family talked with us a lot at Subway. When we asked the girl at Subway about possible camping sights, she directed us to a good place, but then called her parents a couple of times to find us a nicer place.

When we finally arrived at the campground it was late—as always. David went into the office and immerged a while later with the owner. Come to find out, the owners are cyclists. We're staying for free because their motto is, if you pedal your way in, than you deserve someplace free. Wow! They have showers, nice bathrooms, and soft grass to sleep on. We made use of the free showers by shaving our legs, washing and doing a couple piece of laundry. It's great, and the water is soft as well. I think this was shower three or four of the entire trip.

(Photo: David with one of the many altered road signs we saw on the trip.)

Day 22, Monday, July 21.

2007-04-15T18:03:00.005-04:00

Long Prairie, MN to Monticello, MN
Daily Mileage: 99.65 miles
Total Mileage: 2,105.8 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 6:59 hours
Average Speed: 14.2 mph
Maximum Speed: 26.5 mph

Today’s plan was to get within striking distance of our stop in Minneapolis. We wanted to get as close as possible, camp, get a good night’s sleep, and then wake up at 4AM to ride Highway 10 right through Minneapolis; however, much to our disappointment, we found out as we began to ascend the ramp onto Highway 10 that bikes were prohibited. Also, in the process of trying to find Highway 10, we discovered that people aren’t really familiar with the names of the country roads in their own neighborhood and that AAA does some screwy things on their maps with roads that aren’t main highways. After three weeks of using maps to guide us across the country, we could recognize when something wasn’t exactly “as advertised” on a map.

We pulled into Monticello at 8PM. After calling our friend to confirm pick-up from the West Coast and fill him in on the past three weeks, we ate a nice dinner at Wendy’s (looking back we both didn’t eat meat at this point, so I’m not exactly sure what we ate). We had spent about forty-five minutes on the phone at the Super America and now were headed back for campsite directions. It started to pour as we sat outside of the store resting. We took this time to plan our route through the city, waiting for the rain to let up a bit so that we could make it to the park to sleep.

(Photo: Tim standing next to the first Mississippi River sign. We were surprised to run into the river this soon and more surprise that it was so small.)

Day 23, Tuesday, July 22.

2007-04-15T18:03:00.003-04:00

Monticello, MN to Woodbury, MN
Daily Mileage: 63.86 miles
Total Mileage: 2,169.6 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 5:07 hours
Average Speed: 12.4 mph
Maximum Speed: 23.9 mph

Today was originally planned to be only a half day worth of riding; however, by the time we finished, we had ridden over sixty miles.

We packed up camp and began our journey through the middle of Minneapolis. Our AAA maps left us with a number of questions when it came to the road names. We needed to find out if a certain road was the highway that we were looking for. When we stopped at a gas station to ask if the road was indeed the correct highway, David and I were met with, “So where are you going?” After explaining that we were going to Woodbury, the attendants told us, “You can't get there using that road.” Well aware of this, we again asked them for the road name. After they said, “Woodbury, that's a good fifty miles away,” David had to go outside because he was getting angry with them. Finally, to stop this back and forth, I just had to say, “Look we're biking across the country, we've traveled over 2,000 miles, so we’re not really concerned with another fifty. We just need to know if that's the road we're looking for.” Eventually, we found the right road and made our way through Minneapolis/St. Paul.

We took a direct route straight through town seeing all the sites along the way—the University, the downtown district and all the suburbs. Around three o'clock, we rolled into our friends’ driveway, and were really excited to finally see people we knew (and to have a day off of riding). They had an immaculately decorated home with huge windows in the back of the house looking out onto a golf course. As soon as we stepped in the house we were fed non-stop for the next day and a half. After washing up and changing clothes, we had a bite to eat and then hopped into their car for a tour of Minneapolis and a stop at the Mall of America. This was the first time we had ridden in a car since Rob and Remus dropped us off on the coast. All of this was culture shock to David and I who, for the past three weeks, had seen little more mainstream than the Subway restaurants where we ate dinner. The Mall had four floors of every name-brand store you could think of, an amusement park in the center, and an international airport next door. We walked around the entire mall, non-stop, in two and a half hours. We ate some delicious Cinnabon and bought a few magnets of the states that we had biked through already to send them home (my mom collects them on the refrigerator). When we left the Mall, we went to Dairy Queen for some ice cream and then headed home for more dessert. Best of all, that night we were able to have our clothes washed in a real washing machine.

(Photo: Crossing the Mississippi River once more.)

Day 24, Wednesday, July 23.

2007-04-15T18:03:00.001-04:00

Woodbury, MN—Day Off #l

We woke up this morning and walked upstairs to find a breakfast table that looked like it was cut straight out of a Better Homes & Gardens magazine. There was a little bit of everything: fruit, toast, eggs, cereal, and milk and orange juice poured into glass pitchers. Every bit of our stay was like this. Coming off of three weeks of sitting on a bike all day, eating refried beans out of the can while resting outside of a gas station, and sleeping on the hard ground each night, THIS was heaven.

The main item on today's agenda was getting our wheels trued. Since this was the halfway mark of our trip, we also took this opportunity to rotate our tires as well (especially since we could see the threads beginning to show through on the back tires). Afterwards, we washed, waxed and lubed up our bikes. Our aluminum Cannondale R500T bikes have worn the miles well, but even the best bikes show two thousand miles of wear. Later in the day, we went to Olive Garden for a good bit of pasta. We had a very relaxing stay with our friends and are looking forward to see more friends along way to the Atlantic.

(Photo: David and I cleaning our bikes as we enjoy the day off.)

Day 25, Thursday, July 24.

2007-04-15T18:02:00.006-04:00

Woodbury, MN to Winona, MN
Daily Mileage: 103.97 miles
Total Mileage: 2,273.7 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 7:39 hours
Average Speed: 13.5 mph
Maximum Speed: 34.1 mph

We woke at 7AM. I shaved my face and brushed my teeth for what ended up being the last time for several days. Breakfast was ready for us by 7:30AM. Once again it looked like it had been ripped straight out of Better Homes & Gardens. Good Morning America was on the television, the newspaper folded neatly on the table, massive amounts of food, and juice, once again poured in glass pitchers. We picked up all our freshly washed clothes and began to pack our bikes. The extra food our hosts gave us was packed tightly in our bags, we gave a round of hugs and handshakes, took a few pictures, we rolled out of the driveway for Day 25.

I felt really tight after our day off, and the first couple of pedals seemed like our first ever on the bikes. It took pretty much all day to get back into the groove. Early on we made a quick stop in Wisconsin. Then we proceeded to jump the Mississippi River again. This time however, it looked a little bit bigger than last, and for the majority of the day we traveled right along side it. It rained on and off throughout the day and was incredibly humid. We made it to Winona and ate at Subway, even though I was still stuffed from all of the great food we were fed the past few days. We made various phone calls and then camped behind another church—this time without asking. Today, we road through Red Wing, MN where Red Wing shoes are made; passed Wabasha, MN, the supposed setting for the Grumpy Old Men movies; and tried unsuccessfully to find a haircut for under $9.00.

(Photos: David and I leaving our friends’ home. The “Welcome to Wisconsin” sign.)

Day 26, Friday, July 25.

2007-04-15T18:02:00.005-04:00

Winona, MN to Marquette, IA
Daily Mileage: 95.05 miles
Total Mileage: 2,368.8 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 7:23 hours
Average Speed: 12.8 mph
Maximum Speed: 41.6 mph

Our day started abruptly at 4:30AM this morning. We were awakened by the sounds of an approaching storm. Now, I had no idea we had anything to be concerned with when I heard the thunder and cracks of lightening, but David, being the avid outdoorsman, informed me about ground currents. When lightning strikes the ground, its electricity can travel through the ground and electrocute people lying on the ground—news to me. We packed up camp and rode over to a diner open 24/7. After eating breakfast way too early in the morning, and finishing around 6AM, we went outside to wait out the storm. As people were arriving for breakfast, they found us sitting on the sidewalk by our bikes and a USA Today covering me as I tried to take a nap.

Meanwhile, David talked to a couple probably in their 60s from Columbus, OH would were tandeming from Anacortes, WA to Columbus, OH. I don't think the old guy was having that great of a time because his wife was constantly complaining to him. The beginning of their many hardships along the way came the first day in the mountains when they found themselves stuck in a bad thunderstorm. Half frozen, and extremely tired from climbing all day, they stopped at a ranger station and asked to be taken back down the mountain they just climbed (losing the entire day's work). Before attempting to climb again, they sent back all of their camping equipment to lighten their load (which still weighs 70 pounds!). Doing this has forced them to stay in hotels every night. It sounds like the lady didn’t have a good idea of what she was getting herself into before they started the trip. An aside, sometimes I think about the people we've run into along the way and wonder how their trips are progressing. Have they had the good fortune we've had? Will they make it to the other side of this continent? I wonder what adventures they're finding themselves in. These things I only can imagine, and will probably never know.

Today's highlight was getting our heads shaved. As we rolled across the Iowa border, we found ourselves in a little town no bigger than a couple hundred people. Sitting in his barbershop with the screen door ajar was Walt—one of those old barbers who you could tell by just looking at him knew how to cut hair well. He charged $3.00 for a haircut and $2.00 for a shave. We got out of there with freshly shaven heads for $5.00! (Looking back now, I’m not exactly sure with his prices how we ended up at $5.00. I think it might have been two shaves and a $1.00 tip.)

Tonight, we have camped behind a small restaurant. It's so unbearably hot and humid it's impossible to be comfortable in our tent. Our sleep sacks are just wet rags now, soaked with huge amounts of sweat. Noise from passing cars and trains insure that we're not going to be sleeping tonight.

(Photo: Tim showing that the “Welcome to Iowa” sign makes him smile.)

Day 27, Saturday, July 26.

2007-04-15T18:02:00.003-04:00

Marquette, IA to Lowden, IA
Daily Mileage: 97.32 miles
Total Mileage: 2,466.1 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 7:33 hours
Average Speed: 12.8 mph
Maximum Speed: 42.2 mph

Last night was one of the worst night's sleep to date. It was almost impossible for us to get any sleep whatsoever. We packed up our stuff and headed out of town. Starting to bike along the Mississippi River meant only that we had to climb out of the flood plain. It seems almost like being back in the mountains again. Once we were out of the flood plain, we began to battle the heat and intense sun. The heat index hovered around 105 degrees all day and there wasn't much of a breeze to make it any better.

We stopped every now and again to absorb convenience store A/C, but towards the middle of the afternoon the heat really got to David. I was biking in the front position today. (Usually, we ride about thirty to fifty feet apart.) When I looked back I saw David on the ground. He had fallen over and looked horrible. We coasted into the next town and amazingly saw a church right at the edge of the small town. By this point, I could see almost straight through David's eyes and he was looking extremely pale. After the church custodian saw David, he let us go inside to get some water and cool down a bit. When we both felt a little better, we went to find something for dinner.

There was a small pizzeria in the town, which happened to be the only restaurant in town. When we went inside we were greatly surprised to discover that it wasn't air-conditioned, just cooled with a couple of fans. A nice older lady ran it and was helped by a girl in high school. When we finished dinner, we inquired about staying at the church, of which the two happened to be members. We were sent to find the vicar, who in turn sent us to see the pastor. We were very fortunate to talk to the pastor's wife who was extremely hospitable and told us that we were more than welcomed to stay in the church basement for the night. She even let us grab a shower and relax a bit in the parsonage after we unloaded our bikes. We hung out in the air-conditioned church basement for a while before going to sleep—a nice peaceful, comfortable and relaxing sleep.

(Photo: David getting his head shaved by Walt the Barber.)

Day 28, Sunday, July 27.

2007-04-15T18:02:00.001-04:00

Lowden, IA to Kewanee, IL
Daily Mileage: 117.6 miles
Total Mileage: 2,583.7 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 8:57 hours
Average Speed: 13.1 mph
Maximum Speed: 28.2 mph

It seems we always sleep in or at churches on Saturday nights, which only means that we have to get up early to clear out before Sunday services begin. We were up and out of the church by 8AM this morning and back on the road. After stopping for some breakfast on the edge of town at a truck stop/diner, we made our way through that last bit of Iowa on our trip.

All through Iowa we heard about RAGBRAI (the Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa), an annual summer ride across Iowa that involves thousands of participants. Although it would have been fun to meet up with this group of riders, we didn't even think about it when we were planning our trip. Everyone in Iowa wanted to know if we were a part of RAGBRAI. They had heard about the trip and now they see us ride through town. We were asked more than once if we were part of the ride. Now, as nice as everyone is in Iowa, it got a bit annoying being asked about this all the time, but at least it was a change from the standard line of questioning.

Our last stop in Iowa was in the town of Muscatine, home of musk melons. We stopped at the Wal-Mart Superstore on the banks of the Mississippi to purchase one of these in addition to a collection of other exciting lunch items. After an hour at Wal-Mart, eating muskmelon and drinking gallons of fluid while playing video games, we departed for our next new state, Illinois.

By this time the Mississippi had become quite large. The bridge we used to cross the River was much bigger than any we had used previously, and once we were on the other side we had to deal with climbing out of the flood plane… again.

It was still hot and humid today. In one of the small towns we passed through, we stopped at the edge of some lady’s property and rested under a big oak tree. She came out to bring us ice water. After we talked for a while, she invited us inside to cool down in the air-conditioning. When she found out that we both had backgrounds in music, the conversation quickly turned in that direction. Then we left.

(Photo: David by the “Welcome to Illinois” sign. Note, road signs always look so much smaller in a car.)

Day 29, Monday, July 28.

2007-04-15T18:01:00.007-04:00

Kewanee, IL to Kankakee, IL
Daily Mileage: 131.63 miles
Total Mileage: 2,715.4 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 8:38 hours
Average Speed: 15.2 mph
Maximum Speed: 27.6 mph

We began week five of our journey today. Five weeks of biking, and it’s all we’ve know right now—wake up every morning, roll up our tent, pack our bikes, eat breakfast, and start down the road to see what new, interesting and sometimes annoying things wait for us. We traveled a great 131 miles today with much of today’s adventure lying in our destination city, and I will never forget it.

We rolled into Kankakee, IL late in the evening. We talked with a man filing up his tank as we were stopped at a gas station on the edge of town trying to find a place to eat and camp. He told us of a trio of cyclists last week that were also doing a cross-country bike trip. As they were cresting a hill in the early morning, an oncoming trucker was blinded by the sunlight as he crested the hill and ended up hitting and killing one of the cyclists. It wasn't exactly what we wanted to hear. Actually it's not something that we will rush to tell our parents. With this depressing, and startling news, we headed for the nearest Pizza Hut.

While inside the restaurant, we started talking to a young couple just finishing their dinner. They asked us the standard trip questions and then where we intended to sleep. We told them how we usually find a campsite after dinner, and then the gentleman, who happened to be a police officer, said he would go next door to the fire station and see if we could camp there. A while later he came back and said everything was all set. David and I couldn't believe it. We were camping at a fire station.

After dinner, we rode our bikes over to the station and introduced ourselves. Once we had our tent set up, we went back inside to chat with the firefighters. They were the nicest guys. We hung out and talked until 1AM. We got their address so that we could mail them postcards from the coast when we finally made it, and they took our addresses so they could mail us Kankakee Fire Department t-shirts (which I still have and cherish as one of my only mementos from the trip).

(Photo: David and I posing with the Kankakee Fire Department truck.)

Day 30, Tuesday, July 29.

2007-04-15T18:01:00.005-04:00

Kankakee, IL to Rochester, IN
Daily Mileage: 102.23 miles
Total Mileage: 2,817.6 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 7:39 hours
Average Speed: 13.3 mph
Maximum Speed: 23.3 mph

We awoke this morning behind the Fire Station. When we went inside to wash up and brush our teeth they told us that they had a run in the middle of the night, and we didn't hear a thing. After we packed our bikes and took a couple photos with the guys and their truck, we rolled down the street to the Blues Café—quite possibly the best breakfast spot of the entire trip.

The Blues Café was a true 50's diner. It was bustling with the morning crowd, conversation, and clanking dishes. Our waitress came over to take our order and was amazed at the amount of food we wanted. For the past two weeks, we've eaten the same thing for breakfast every morning: two eggs scrambled (David's are over easy), three pancakes, an order of hash browns (west of the Mississippi) or homefries (east of the Mississippi), toast and a Coke. Every morning when we walk into the diners of America we order the same exact thing. It’s a great way to judge the quality and cost of things as you cross the country. Well, on this particular morning, our server cut David off in the middle of his order thinking that he was done with only eggs and homefries—come on. She was even more amazed to discover at the end of the meal that we had finished every bit of our meal. One of the interesting things we heard across the country was that, “Our pancakes are plate-size.” Now, I know actual plate size can vary, but more often than not these people need to take a look at the size of the pancake and realize how much of the plate is showing around it. At the Blues Café the pancakes were plate size and you couldn't see the plate!

Once we finished our hearty breakfast and started to roll out of town, the excitement began to build as we approached our next day off. We were going to be stopping in Ft. Wayne, IN to stay with my parents for a day. One nice thing about Illinois and Indiana is that they're rather skinny states—only a couple hundred miles wide. I was getting even more excited as we made our way to the Indiana border because it’s my home state. The border eluded us since we were on country backroads, and there wasn’t a state sign greeting us as we rolled from one state to the next. Eventually, we saw a state highway sign that said Indiana and then we knew we had made it. Our destination today was Rochester, IN, approximately sixty miles from home.

When we arrived in Rochester we stopped for dinner at Taco Bell. By this point David and I weren’t eating meat, especially in Taco Bell. We went in and ordered a feast of tacos and burritos totaling $11.00, and that was without drinks! After feasting on our bountiful meal, I made a couple of calls trying to track down some place to stay for the night. I found out there was a church nearby that might work. The church was in the middle of town and when we arrived we circled it trying to find any signs of life inside. The ladies association was just finishing up their weekly meeting and invited us in for some dessert. They served us some delicious ice-cream cake and punch. Once they cleared it with the pastor, we were allowed to stay the night in the fellowship hall that was carpeted and air-conditioned, and we each had our own private bathroom (of course, one of them said “Ladies” on the door).

(Photo: Tim excited to see that it wasn’t too much further to Ft. Wayne.)

Day 31, Wednesday, July 30.

2007-04-15T18:01:00.003-04:00

Rochester, IN to Ft. Wayne, IN
Daily Mileage: 63.11 miles
Total Mileage: 2,880.7 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 4:35 hours
Average Speed: 13.7 mph
Maximum Speed: 26.2 mph

We got a nice rest last night and were ready to go home today. Even though the trip was sixty-three miles today it all seemed so close. We say that city miles don't count, and I guess mileage on the way home doesn't count either. (Maps tell you how far it is from city to city, however they don't tell you how far it is through the city. As in Minneapolis, it's fifty miles of city miles—doesn't count, but it sure takes a lot out of you. I guess we do it because you have things to look at and there's stuff happening.) I can't remember much about the trip today except the excitement of passing familiar landmarks. We were still twenty miles on the other side of town, but it was smooth sailing from there.

As we pulled up to my parent's house my grandmother, who happened to be spending a couple of weeks with them, opened the door. A bit surprise to see me with a shaved head, dark tan lines, and really dirty clothes, she hesitated to give me a big hug but did nonetheless. As I was walking over to my dad's office he came out to greet and give me a big hug, followed by some kidding about my shaved head. I hadn't seen my parents for about six weeks or so now, and have only talked with them on the phone. After washing up and changing, David and I took our bikes to the bike shop to get our wheels trued again. It's a very strange thing to drive a car after months of being on a bike. When we bike, we have everything we need on the bike—money, food, cell phone, spare tubes and keys. When you get in a car after a month and a half on the road you really need to think carefully about what you need to take and what you might need along the way. You can't just reach back to your panniers and pull out your driver's license. Following our stop at the bike shop we made a surprise visit to my mom's office. By the time we walked up to her desk she had tears in her eyes, I'm assuming it was because she was glad to see us and not that she had just hurt herself. (David still to this day says that the hug my mom gave him was one of the best he’s ever received.)

After driving around town for a bit we went to the grocery store to rent a couple videos. Once at home again, we just sat on the couches for a few hours and watched the flashing images on TV. From Minneapolis, we placed an order with grandma asking her to please make some of her amazing chocolate meringue pies and rice crispy treats (weird things that you crave from the road, but I would still place an order for them if I could). We spent the whole rest of the day watching videos. That was all.

(Photo: David and I posing outside of my parent’s home.)

Day 32, Thursday, July 31.

2007-04-15T18:01:00.001-04:00

Ft. Wayne, IN—Day Off #2

Our second day off during the trip was spent doing some of the same stuff we did the day before. We slept in really late, laid on the couches watching movies until the middle of the afternoon when our friends Doug and Jim arrived from Cincinnati. We were really glad that they were able to come up for the day. After running a couple of errands to the bike shop and Wal-Mart, we ended up at Don Pablos—our favorite meeting place at the time for chippies, salsa and margaritas! We must have spent a good two hours there. We talked about the trip, women, and other random things that fill the conversation when you haven't seen or talked to good friends for two months. It was great to be able to hang out again. The days are really long when you only can talk to one other person (and you've exhausted everything possible to talk with them about), and all the rest of the people you see want to ask you questions about your trip. Our stay in Ft. Wayne was nice and restful; however, we were now ready to get back on the road and complete the journey. Over the next couple of weeks we were going to be able to see more of our friends, and then finally, the big reunion for our finish in the Atlantic Ocean.

(Photo: Jim, Doug, David and Tim)

Day 33, Friday, August 1.

2007-04-15T18:00:00.007-04:00

Ft. Wayne, IN to Wayne, OH
Daily Mileage: 107.78 miles
Total Mileage: 2,988.5 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 6:31 hours
Average Speed: 16.5 mph
Maximum Speed: 26.7 mph

Today we awoke inside, in comfortable beds and cool. Breakfast consisted of whatever we could find around the kitchen. After showering and shaving we all took pictures together. When dad and grandma left to run some errands, David and I finished packing, stretching and stealing (uh, relocating) food. We headed for Monroeville, IN, which took us fifteen miles closer to Ohio. We stopped to eat some more food and figure out how we got lost so quickly trying to reach Ohio. Once we were on the correct road it was fairly easy going. I think we took pictures of three different Ohio welcome signs, as well as an Indiana sign (since we didn't see one on our way into the state).

The Adventure Cycling directions were a bit confusing until we got to Defiance, OH. We took a break at a Shell gas station because David needed to use the restroom. A really friendly man and his young son stopped to talk with us about the trip. He reassured us that our custom route to Fremont, OH would be all right. We politely told him we needed to be on our way after he invited us several times to come over and eat. The most frequent reply to our, "We started in Washington State and are biking to Massachusetts," is "No Shit." Each time someone says it they use a different inflection on the phrase. It's interesting how they say it—whether it's amazement, disbelief, or just the first thing that pops out of their mouth. We started to notice people doing this in Iowa.

Tonight, we're camping in some guy's backyard. While David and I were making phone calls, a car full of women stopped near the restaurant where we were standing. They began asking questions about the trip and then one of them invited us to stay behind her dad's house a couple of blocks away. The guy seemed pretty confused at us pulling up and setting up camp; however, after a while he warmed up to us. We were able to keep our bikes in a protected area and camp on some soft grass under a big tree.

Every morning when we get ready to pack up camp we follow the same procedure. To protect what little property we have from whatever/whoever might be out there in the middle of the night, we take off all of the gear from our bikes. Usually, we just leave it under the tent rainfly; however, if it has been raining, or we feel particularly uneasy about where we are, we'll bring it into the tent with us. In the morning, we change into our bike clothes and repack our sleep sacks, raingear (that we use as a pillow), and other little things such as flashlights, cycling computer, and water bottles. Next, we tear down the tent. This takes a good deal of work to roll the tent, rain fly, and footprint, as well as collapse the aluminum poles. Once we get it back into the bag, we bungee cord it to our rear racks and do a little bit of stretching. All of this usually takes an hour to an hour and a half, depending on how tired we are and/or how thick the mosquitoes are where we camp. Speaking of mosquitoes, since Illinois we haven't really been bothered by these pesky insects. Supposedly because of all the rain up north there is a lot of standing water that serves as the perfect breeding ground for them. Now people in the mid-west are complaining about the mosquitoes right now, but for David and I, they don't even faze us anymore.

One of today’s highlights included crossing I-75, one of the interstate highways that go directly through Cincinnati. Now, we both know how far north we are, but never the less, we felt a great sense of home.

(Photo: David, very excited to be back in Ohio.)

Day 34, Saturday, August 2.

2007-04-15T18:00:00.005-04:00

Wayne, OH to Brunswick, OH
Daily Mileage: 108.23 miles
Total Mileage: 3,097.2 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 6:48 hours
Average Speed: 15.8 mph
Maximum Speed: 33.2 mph

Today, we met up with David's brother, Steve, from Cincinnati. He was driving up to meet us and travel with us for a day or two. As we were wandering the backroads of Ohio, we ran into a road-closed sign. Normally, we bike right through “closed” roads because taking detours only lengthens our journey, and a mile out of our way is another mile we need to bike back. Right before we made our decision to take the detour in case Steve came upon it as well, he pulled up in his car. I’ve never met him before, but it didn't matter. Anyone that either of us knew quickly became like old friends. Steve brought with him a cooler full of Gatorade for us. We unloaded the packs from our bikes for the first time of the trip so we could travel a bit faster and talk about a weird feeling. Having carried twenty-five pounds on the back of my bike and now taking it off makes it feel as though I’m going to tip over any minute. David and I had a lot of fun blasting down the road as Steve drove just ahead of us so that we could draft off of his car.

We amazed Steve with our ability to consume large amounts of food. He couldn't believe how often we stopped to eat and how much we were eating. We had lunch at Subway, now a tired favorite. As we biked through the many small towns of Ohio, Steve was able to get a real feel for the type of things we've been doing all summer.

That evening, we stayed at a Days Inn about twenty miles south of Cleveland. The last couple miles of the day I heard a clanking sound coming from my headset that really worried me. I was afraid my headset had loosened and ovalized—an irreversible problem that occurs when the headset loosens and the fork knocks against it until it becomes oval instead of round. This condition ruins the bike frame and is a pain to deal with because the fork comes loose all of the time.

Steve drove us to the nearest mall for dinner once we showered and changed. We ate at Rio Bravo, another Tex-Mex favorite. Afterwards, we walked the mall and found a Cinnabon—amazing, cinnamony goodness.

(Photo: Steve and David.)

Day 35, Sunday, August 3.

2007-04-15T18:00:00.003-04:00

Brunswick, OH to (Kent), OH
Daily Mileage: 53.71 miles
Total Mileage: 3,150.9 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 4:04 hours
Average Speed: 13.1 mph
Maximum Speed: 38.5 mph

Pressing on this morning's agenda was finding a bike shop to inspect my headset. Trying to find one was a bit difficult though because it was Sunday morning and not many bike shops are open in the morning, if at all. We found one shop near where we were staying. Some guy answered the phone and then handed it to a lady who gave us directions to the shop. We piled into Steve's car with the bike and made our way to the shop. By following the directions, we found ourselves in a neighborhood, and then all of a sudden at the correct address. This run-down house had two or three vans sitting in the driveway, the shrubs weren't trimmed, the grass hadn’t been mowed in quite some time, and the screens on the windows were torn. We debated turning around and leaving right away but decided to stay because you never know, they might know a lot about bikes.

When I knocked on the door some guy answered it and then called to the woman. (We were never sure what the relationship between the two was.) The lady told me to bring the bike around to the carport. It was at this point that I started to realize that we were working with an amateur who knew enough to maintain a three-speed bike or a Huffy, but not one that was trying to get us to the ocean and had already made it over 3,000 miles. Little red party lanterns hung all around the backyard like they just had a party, three years ago. She clamped my bike to a rusty bike stand—now remember, our bikes were the dearest things to us during this trip. They got us from the west coast and were going to get us clear across the country. Imagine your new car that you don't want to dent, and imagine that if you dent it you'll be stranded far from home. She pulled out these big tools and proceeded to unscrew my headset. It was at this point that she needed to go back downstairs and get another tool. By this point, I had lost all faith in her bicycle maintenance ability and was ready to get out of there. Plus, David, Steve and I couldn't stop laughing long enough to talk because the sequence of events was so random.

With the home shop option shot, we went back to the phone book. All of our traveling was done with our hotel checkout deadline looming. We couldn't bring all of our stuff in Steve's car because there wasn’t enough room, so we had to get all of this done before noon. As we were driving the forty-five minutes to the next (hopefully) legitimate bike shop, we spotted another one that was open. They quickly took my bike into the shop and inspected it. I felt that I could really trust this shop with their articulate diagnosis and rust-free tools. They tightened everything back up and said the headset wasn't ovalized.

We packed the bike back in the car and high-tailed it back to the hotel to pack up and checkout. Steve stayed with us until 1PM today. We followed the Cleveland Metroparks road south of the city for the better part of the afternoon. It was a great road with lots of bike traffic. We've seen a lot of road bikers here, more so than in any other place we've been on the trip. (The guy at the nice bike shop said it's because everything on a mountain bike is illegal—I still have no idea what he meant.)

Toward the end of our day, David called his old friend, Ryan, who is staying an hour south (by car) of where we were at the time. He's spending the summer at Kent State for the Kent Blossom Music Festival. Ryan drove the hour to pick us up on the side of the road and drove us back down to Kent State. Once there, we showered, ate Taco Bell, and were about to walk over to the sight of the Kent State tragedy when the skies opened up and it began to pour. We opted to get our heads shaved instead. Following all of this fun we fell asleep. P.S. Thanks a lot, Steve!

(Photo: Ryan and David)

Day 36, Monday, August 4.

2007-04-15T18:00:00.001-04:00

(Kent), OH to Conneautville, PA
Daily Mileage: 76.67 miles
Total Mileage: 3,227.5 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 5:44 hours
Average Speed: 13.3 mph
Maximum Speed: 38.2 mph

Outside it was thunder storming when the day began all too early at 6:15AM as Ryan's alarm went off. David didn't want to leave the nice dorm room; however, Ryan, needing to be back for a 9:30AM rehearsal, hurried us along. The drive was nearly an hour long, so I made use of the back of the station wagon, next to the bikes, to sleep while David and Ryan talked and ate McDonald's breakfast. When we finally arrived at "the place," we unloaded our equipment rather hurriedly in order to let Ryan leave for his return trip to Kent. I took a few pictures of David and Ryan and then he was off. Thanks, Ryan!

We started down the road and after about six miles, started looking for a café because I hadn't eaten breakfast yet. We ended up in Kirkland at Billde's with a breakfast for $5.36, but I think the lady forgot to add my other two pancakes to the bill. I read the newspaper (UPS is on strike as of 12:01AM this morning) while David looked over the maps. As we continued our push for Pennsylvania we started to move through more farmland. At one point, we blew past two Amish guys in a buggy.

Today, we were chased by more dogs then we ever have been on the entire trip. David almost was knocked over by this huge black dog that flew through the air looking like he was about ready to hurdle David's panniers. We think the dog caught a whiff of the pepper spray though. (Side note: I hate using pepper spray on dogs, but you never know what kind of temperament one has as he’s sprinting towards you. People have been killed by an attacking dog because they couldn't get their feet out of their clips or the dog knocked them down and they couldn't do much after that.) David also caught some of the spray on his arm as the wind blew it back at him (boy, did that burn).

We finally made it to our first non-land-locked state in a while—Pennsylvania! David was actually more excited than I about this one. I think once we cross this large state with its many hills, I'll feel much better and be more excited. It's a bit depressing thinking that this state is about the length of North Dakota, and we know how long that state took us to cross it.

We have been in contact with the Doug’s parents on and off throughout the day trying to plan our meeting spot this evening (and I don’t remember us using our cell phone, so I’m not quite sure how we stayed in touch with both of us on the move). We landed in Conneautville, PA, a town of about 900 people, because of time and distance considerations. Not much besides the IGA grocery store, two gas stations, and a pizza place, much like all the other towns we've been through along the way.

His parents arrived right on time and after David and Doug’s dad searched for a place to stash our bikes, we jumped in the car and headed for a restaurant near Conneaut Lake. We really enjoyed our time with them, were fed extremely well, and afterwards were returned us to our bikes. Thanks Doug's parents!

The lady who let us stash our stuff by her house didn't offer to let us camp in her yard, so we made our way to the park. We’ve been getting increasingly more anxious about safety as we get closer to the East Coast and more populated areas, so we didn't feel comfortable sleeping in the park. Tonight was the first time that we camped in a baseball diamond dugout. It's actually a really great place to camp. We could lock up our bikes, set up the tent (to keep animals away from us as we slept) without the rain fly, and have a safe, hidden, place for the night.

(Photo: Tim with the “Welcome to Pennsylvania” sign.)

Day 37, Tuesday, August 5.

2007-04-15T17:59:00.006-04:00

Conneautville, PA to Warren, PA
Daily Mileage: 89.22 miles
Total Mileage: 3,317.6 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 6:39 hours
Average Speed: 13.4 mph
Maximum Speed: 43.5 mph

Weather today was unseasonably cool. When we woke up it was 40-degrees outside (and for that matter inside our tent as well) and it went up to around 75 degrees for the day. The windbreaker got a lot of wear today, and it didn't even rain! Every time we stopped we'd get cold.

The baseball dugout was a nice place to camp, we should have started using them sooner. We didn't bother changing into our riding clothes when we broke down camp this morning—we went fully dressed to breakfast at Frannie's. It’s very similar to every café we've hit for breakfast since North Dakota. We ordered our usual: three pancakes, two eggs scrambled, hashbrowns/home fries, toast and water (David had a Coke).

After our morning stretches in the incredibly frigid temperatures, we mounted the bikes only to discover my cleat had finally and completely broken off. We have clipless pedals on our bikes. With our special shoes (equipped with plastic cleats in my case) we are able to snap our shoes right into the pedals, providing more power per stroke. Problem with me cleats is that they're not recessed into the shoe like David's and after a month and a half of walking on them they had worn down completely. The screws on the bottom attaching the cleats were worn so flat that there was no way to remove the broken cleats. A very kind old man at the local hardware store used a hacksaw to put some grooves in the screws in order to unscrew the old cleats and replace them with the new ones that I had carried the entire trip for this very reason.

Today's terrain was rolling hills with a few flat stretches and a wind was coming from an acceptable direction. We saw more Amish houses and people today. They're different from the Indiana Amish as there appears to be more carpenters than farmers, but maybe that's because I'm biking by them and not flying by in my car.

The hills we're dealing with here are much more difficult than the mountains. Sure they're not miles long, but the grades are much steeper. I've found myself almost falling over on a number of occasions because I was going so slow uphill, and if you happen to stop, you might as well start walking your bike up the hill (which we never had to do) because there's no way you're going to start up again.

We rode into town with this forty-seven-year-old biker who was showing us the way because we're now off of the Adventure Cycling Maps and making up our own route from here on out. After eating a hearty, yet not filling, dinner, we hit the street looking for a place to sleep. The first church we stopped at these gentlemen helped us find a nearby ballpark. So, we're repeating last night's camping procedure. After we found our spot we went around the corner for some ice-cream—hey, it's still summer.

(Photo: Tim’s "action" shot.)

Day 38, Wednesday, August 6.

2007-04-15T17:59:00.005-04:00

Warren, PA to Galeton, PA
Daily Mileage: 91.48 miles
Total Mileage: 3,409.1 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 6:15 hours
Average Speed: 14.5 mph
Maximum Speed: 40.7 mph

Today started like yesterday. We woke up in a baseball dugout, cold. Without changing into our riding gear, we mounted the bikes and rolled toward town for the Peppermill restaurant. On the way, we passed one of the guys from the Church of the Nazarene who helped us find our camping spot last night. We stopped to talk for a while and then moved on. After a nice, big and hearty breakfast, with pancakes that once again were actually the size of our plate, we stopped at the local bike shop (for what, I’m not quite sure, maybe more inner tubes).

We crossed the Kinuza Dam and then began our first big climb of the day. The scenery was beautiful, the terrain wasn't too difficult, yet. We only climbed two really big hills today, and the way people talk we shouldn't run into too many more like them. We rolled into Port Allegheny around 1PM for lunch and ate at their local café, a quaint little place with reasonable prices and food. It was here that I first realized that I didn't want to return to "real life" just yet. There was a table of two women and a man behind us that sat there and complained about everyone and everything the entire lunch time. I love the freedom of the road, the ability to be a hundred miles further each day then where we were the day before, and going through so many towns you're lucky to remember where you started. I like not having a real schedule besides get up, eat and ride. I love just sitting on the bike and pedaling, even though the seat seems to gets smaller and harder each time I sit on it.

We stopped for a 4PM snack in Coupersport at another gas station. After leaving, we hit the big hill of the Allegheny Mountains. We “summited” it at 2,424 feet. On our way down, the lady at the AAA office said that we would run into the Nine Mile Motel and could find topographical maps of the state there. [Now, even though we really can't take anything besides U.S. 6, we still like concerning ourselves with the route, not that we can change the elevation, surface type or the width of the road’s shoulder. The Adventure Cycling maps only took us just into Pennsylvania. After that, their route leads north to Maine while we were continuing east to Cape Cod, a destination that still was debated late into the trip. From Pennsylvania on we had the control of our own route, deciding which road we would take next. By the end of the trip we were experts at telling directions as well as figuring out how far distances really are on the maps.] The people at Nine Mile were very friendly, and even more so when they found out we were biking cross-country. Their daughter did a trip before, and they gave us a few tips of where to stay once we reached our stopping point for the day.

The road into Galeton was all down hill and very nice change. As we rode into town the sun was setting and lighting up the sky above the town. There was an amazing rainbow that sat over this town with a trickling stream and old buildings. (I’m still disappointed that I didn’t take a picture of it.) Our first stop was Fox Pizza. We had the mega 36-slice pizza while playing tunes on the jukebox such as "On Broadway," the Drifters (fitting isn't it), Alanis, the Beatles, Eric Clapton, and No Doubt; writing postcards, and looking at our new U.S. map from AAA. After quite a long time, we set off to locate camping for the night. We stopped at the Baptist church that we heard was very kind. It was weird at first with the pastor and trustees saying that they had to have a meeting about it, but eventually they were all outside offering us a place to camp and discussing our trip. Suddenly, after realizing how cold it was going to get tonight, the pastor suggested that we stay in one of the classrooms—fantastic! Next, he offered to let us use the restrooms and the showers in the gym locker room, amazing! They were preparing for a memorial service tomorrow, so we sat in the sanctuary while they rehearsed singing. It was quite an experience. Eventually everyone left, allowing us shower, shave, brush our teeth and sleep.

(Photo: David by the sign marking our highest point in the Allegheny Mountains.)

Day 39, Thursday, August 7.

2007-04-15T17:59:00.003-04:00

Galeston, PA to Lawton, PA
Daily Mileage: 100.57 miles
Total Mileage: 3,509.6 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 7:06 hours
Average Speed: 14.1 mph
Maximum Speed: 38.3 mph

We woke from our nice slumber on the classroom floor. It's always nice to sleep in churches. We feel like it's our home having walls, a roof, and indoor, clean plumbing. After brushing our teeth and running through the daily morning rituals we headed over to the Ox Yoke for breakfast. Supposedly, we received the “Lumberjack” portions, but they looked smaller than most. The only difference was that they put it all on one plate. It was a touristy type of restaurant that looked like it hadn't changed since the 1970's with all of it's dark wood paneling and sign over the door saying, "We haven't changed since the 70s."

From Galeton our travels took us to Wellsboro. A small touristy town that most people say resembles a New England one with its gas streetlights. We stopped at the pharmacy to grab something to drink and a snack, along with a USA Today. We took all these things down to the park, sat around by the fountain and enjoyed our little break. The next town we hit was twelve miles away. We stopped there just so the next towns would fall into our twenty-mile schedule that has worked so nicely for us up to now.

Our 4PM break was in Towanda, a busy little town. We figured there was a shift change happening at the local factory to provide this rush hour. We stopped at a gas station for a light snack. While sitting on the curb, as we do most places we stop, kids in cars continued to enter and exit the parking lot. Finally, as we were getting ready to leave this girl asked us about the trip. Her reply to Washington State being our starting point was, "that's on the other side of the map." And our reply was "No shit.”

We had roughly twenty miles to Camptown. The first ten were used getting over two huge hills. Both were very scenic with rock cuts on our left and valley on our right. At the top of the second hill, we hit highway 409, which took us winding downward through forest for the remaining five miles to Camptown. From there we traveled a very tiring ten miles to Lowden. The hills weren't bad, but my body was aching and I was getting tired.

Once in town, which is only a small village, we located the only café. It was either that or the bar across the street for dinner. We opted for the café, named something to the effect of "Boo-Dee-Hoo's." During our dinner we were able to watch part of the new Home Improvement and Seinfeld episodes. David tried something new tonight, going right up and asking if we could camp behind the diner. A strange exchange of addresses occurred, but here we are. We haven't done a full-blown camping job since Kewanee, IL.

(Photo: Scenic Pennsylvania.)

Day 40, Friday, August 8.

2007-04-15T17:59:00.001-04:00

Lawton, PA to Liberty, NY
Daily Mileage: 89.9 miles
Total Mileage: 3,599.5 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 7:15 hours
Average Speed: 12.3 mph
Maximum Speed: 45.9 mph

We woke up to another cold morning; however, it warmed up faster today. We ate breakfast at Don-A-Bee's (the correct name of the diner). The local men occupied the bar spaces while David and I grabbed a table. About halfway through our meal one guy started the questioning and we ended up having a nice conversation.

We had a couple really nice surprises this morning. The first was that the lady who owns the restaurant, and who we thought hated us, gave us our breakfast for free! We finally did it, we got a free meal! We heard about this happening to bikers, but until now didn't believe it. Then, while we were across the street changing my flat tire, one of the customers from the diner drove over and told us they heard what we were doing and they though it was great. Afterwards, the guy gave us a $5.00 bill and told us to use it for lunch. Man, it was incredible!

We made our first stop twelve miles down the road. David had something to drink while I looked at the map. I always look at the map whenever we stop hoping the towns have moved closer together. Today we just went up and down hills. All day it was down one big hill at 40 M.P.H. and then up a huge hill at speeds that registered as 0-2 M.P.H. on our computers. We did that for six of the seven hours we rode today. Talk about tiring.

The big news today was that we finally left Pennsylvania and entered New York State. It’s fascinating how you can cross a state line and notice the differences. Along the road toward Liberty we saw a number of Hasidic Jewish communities. For so much of the trip we have just seen people that looked like David and I, except (usually) without the shaved heads. Now, we were beginning to run into a great variety of ethnicities and after so many weeks on the bike it was all new to us.

We pulled into Liberty around 7PM and needed to camp, and we ended up working really hard on this one. First, we stopped at the Police/Fire station, nothing. Next, we moved to the churches, nothing. This was impossible. Hills all over the place made us not want to bike up and down them to find something on the other side for fear that there wouldn't be anything and we would just waste what little energy we had left. It was getting dark and we needed to sleep. So, we bit the bullet and got a disgusting hotel room. This was a trick too as the prices were so expensive here to what we were accustomed, and we didn't want to pay double for the two of us. David decided to be the point man for this operation. He went into the motel and bartered with the lady to come down to $40 for the room. She made him promise that it was just for him, which he did. David took his stuff up to the room and walked across the street to meet me at the gas station where I had been waiting. We walked down the street for dinner, stopping at a Pizzeria owned and operated by actual Italians—great pasta, homemade bread, and the nicest people. When we went back to the motel I had to bike quickly past the front desk so they wouldn't see the two of us.

Our motel room looked like it missed being remodeled and used to be rented at an hourly rate. It would have been cleaner to sleep outside on the sidewalk. The shower was disgusting, and we didn't even turn down the bed sheets—we just put our sleep sacks right on top of the bed. It did have a color television with New York stations though, and we watched the news about Woolworths closing and fell asleep.

(Photo: David with the “Welcome to New York” sign.)

Day 41, Saturday, August 9.

2007-04-15T17:58:00.003-04:00

Liberty, NY to Sharon, CT
Daily Mileage: 89.23 miles
Total Mileage: 3,688.8 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 6:32 hours
Average Speed: 13.6 mph
Maximum Speed: 38.3 mph

We tried to get out of our slummy motel as fast as possible this morning. I rode out quickly as David checked out. Ralph, from the gas station across the street, directed us to a café nearby. When we arrived, we discovered it wasn't the Blues Café, and while our meal cost us about the same price, it took about four times longer to arrive at our table.

We started out across New York around 9:30AM; it’s become our usual starting time now (much different from the beginning of the trip when we tried for 6AM). We coasted our first twenty miles, which was a nice start to the day. I can't remember town names anymore. The only ones I know are the ones in out West. We're just traveling through so many now it's hard to keep track. Anyhow, most of our stops don't incorporate food, they're mainly liquid breaks. I'm not quite sure why that's so, but that's the way it has been going. Out West, we stopped in every town along the way because they were so far apart that you had to or you could go without food and drink all day.

One of the first big events today was going through Minnewaska State Forest—people, hikers, climbers, mountain and road bikers were all over the place. There were cars parked bumper-to-bumper all along the road, and it was incredible to see so many people doing outdoor stuff. We stopped at a mountain restaurant, sort of a hippie Stop-n-Go (uh, I have no idea what that means now). From there we were only about thirty miles from Poughkeepsie, NY, and it was a nice coast to more level ground, without many hills.

Our biggest thrill of the afternoon was biking across the Hudson River. Yesterday it was the Delaware River, but the Hudson had a huge bridge to cross. It was also a toll bridge, but they didn't make us pay. They must have figured that anyone stupid enough to bike across the bridge didn't have to pay. On the far side of the bridge David blew out his tire when he hit the expansion joint. We sat on the other side of the bridge right across from the NO BICYCLING/PEDESTRIAN signs and changed the flat. When we finished up, we headed through town to find the nearest Taco Bell. It wasn't an ordinary Taco Bell, it charged twice as much as any other Taco Bell we’d run into along the way.

We started to make our way out of New York State now. The thirty-mile stretch was somewhat hilly, but nothing major though. Five miles from Connecticut we stopped at a BP because some guy was filling up his Ferrari. We both drank a 44-ounce Coke as fast as we could, looked at the maps, and then started down the road. It was a nice ride to Connecticut. We saw terraced hills with vineyards, bike trails, and huge houses.

About a mile and a small hill down the road we entered Sharon, an incredibly beautiful little town. The houses are all old and painted bright white with each flying huge American flags. The grass is all dark green and the cars are foreign and expensive. Few people were on the streets to greet us. Only a boy and his mountain bike were on hand to help with the town information (food and sleep). After we got the information, we started through town and down a nice size hill, past all of the big houses, post office, and exotic car dealership, until we ended up at a café. My meal consisted of grilled cheese, salad and water; however, a famished David ate a little more.

Following dinner we set off to find the Catholic Church we'd heard about. Word was the Father Pilon was very friendly. After a wrong turn that cost us a large uphill battle, we found the church. It was David's turn to beg for lodging tonight. I sat on the lawn while he worked his magic. After five minutes he returned with the Father and a place to stay. We chatted about the musical talents that the three of us shared, and then we put in calls to our parents.

While making several failed attempts, we sat outside of the convenience store and ate Ben and Jerry's ice-cream and read People and Time magazines. Jennifer Aniston was on People, while sharks occupied the front of Time. Finally, we made our way back to the church garage where we are currently residing, nicely on the wood floor, for the last time of the trip.

As the trip nears to a close, our pitstops sound more like the milestones one counts as they approach a graduation… “Our last night to camp,” or “our last full day by ourselves.” While I'm riding it doesn't seem like were that close to the end, but I know sure enough that we'll hit the ocean and it will all go so fast.

(Photo: Tim with the “Welcome to Connecticut” sign.)

Day 42, Sunday, August 10.

2007-04-15T17:58:00.001-04:00

Sharon, CT to Abington, CT
Daily Mileage: 90.21 miles
Total Mileage: 3,779.0 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 6:46 hours
Average Speed: 13.3 mph
Maximum Speed: 41.6 mph

Today began with us hitting the snooze button a number of times. About halfway through the trip we discovered why our alarm clock wasn't working properly. Every morning, we'd set it for some insanely early hour, and every morning we'd wake up a couple hours past the original time. It seems that each time the alarm went off, one of us would roll over and unconsciously hit snooze, or assume the other person heard the alarm as well and any minute we'd both get up; however, only to fall back asleep again. This morning was one of those early mornings though when we had to get up and out because it was a Sunday and Mass was starting—we could already hear a lot of activity happening outside of the garage. David woke and went outside to hunt for a “Public Restroom” (i.e., someone's yard). I went upstairs to change just in case anyone decided to open the unlocked garage door.

From the church we biked over to the Firemen's Breakfast and helped them purchase a new ambulance—there you go people of Sharon, CT. The pancakes were pretty good and made with freshly picked blueberries. We stretched out in the driveway, trying to avoid the swarms of gnats and finally hit the road at 9:30AM. We made our way down the road and up our first big hill of the day, stopping about nine miles down the road for some caffeine. Both of us had a liter to drink while we sat and finished reading our magazines purchased the night before.

We knew that we were going to meet up with David's parents today and the celebration was going to start as the trip began to wrap up. The roads seemed to be lined with huge, long hills today, but we didn't mind all that much. We stopped in Torrington to find the town doesn't have public restrooms. This had become more prevalent the further east we traveled. Before people would say, "we don't have public restrooms, but you can use the one right here." Now there’s nothing. So we went to a McDonald's. On our way out of town we spotted our first Wal-Mart of New England, and New York for that matter. I went in to grab whistles that we could use as our horn or communication device. It was about thirty miles from Hartford, but the miles went quickly because they were essentially city miles.

We made it to Hartford and thought it looked a bit like Minneapolis. We were heading through a number of the run-down areas and eventually ended up right in the heart of downtown. Faced with an Interstate and being hungry, we stopped at a Wendy's to eat. We had a small problem after we ate because our highway joined the Interstate to cross the river. Finally, we ignored the prohibited signs and bit the bullet. Going around this would have meant adding countless miles to our day—it was only a bridge, but it was pretty scary nonetheless. We were faced with four or five lanes of traffic, on our side alone, over a bridge. Luckily, we were the first exit on the other side. On the outskirts of Hartford we were once again faced with breaking the law in order to take the right highway. From here on out the highway never strayed too far from towns and the town just ran one after the other.

Our last forty miles of the day went relatively fast, except for being extremely thirsty and a bit tired. We made two stops before calling it a day. We pulled into town around 7PM and were right on schedule with our quitting time from the past couple of days. There was a closed general store with picnic table that would serve well as the rendezvous point with David’s parents.

They arrive right on schedule and after the usual greetings that accompany not seeing your parents for two months and biking across the country in the meantime, we loaded up our gear and started out to find a restaurant and hotel. They brought a hundred pounds of food and drinks after hearing from Steve all the stuff we consumed when he spent the day with us back near Cleveland, wow!

We found a pizza place for dinner and then after several more stops found a place to stay the night. David’s dad got two rooms, and while we insisted that it wasn't necessary, I think it was his way of politely saying thanks, but you guys stink.

Today was our last "normal" day of biking and tomorrow is our last full day on the bikes. I'm a bit bummed as our trip comes to an end. It has been an incredible way to spend the summer, and now we only have a day and a half left. I could go on about it, but I want to shower before today becomes tomorrow.

(Photo: David’s “action” shot.)

Day 43, Monday, August 11.

2007-04-15T17:57:00.000-04:00

Abington, CT to Sandy Neck Beach, MA
Daily Mileage: 95.62 miles
Total Mileage: 3,874.6 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 5:48 hours
Average Speed: 16.4 mph
Maximum Speed: 37.4 mph

Today we woke up and began to eat some of the 100 pounds of food. We went into David's parent's room to watch the news, eat and read the paper. Around 8:30AM we hopped back in the van to make the return trip to where we ended the day before. After stretching and putting on sunscreen to the accompaniment of camera clicks, we began to ride our fully loaded bike for the final time. We rode them for about ten minutes while David’s parents went up ahead and positioned themselves to take actions shots of us on our bikes. It was hard to keep a straight face as we passed them running across the street and snapping pictures—very unlike what we were used to. We finally unloaded our packs after about five to ten miles. That’s when the real fun began as we started to fly down the road. Everything had come together to give us a great day. The weather was incredible, we had unloaded bikes, David’s parents were sagging for us, and we were pumped because it was our last full day and tomorrow we were going to pull onto the beach and finish our trip.

We started by crossing into Rhode Island. It was the first state sign in which we had a photo shoot. David’s parents took about eight pictures of us with the state sign, which was extremely funny since it was the smallest state through which we were biking. Rhode Island's roads were in poor condition always we need the smoothest roads, downhill and into the cities. We stopped about every ten to fifteen miles, but when we rode we flew. Pretty soon we were in Providence, which proved to be a huge pain.

David’s parents went ahead of us to scout out a better way to cross the river so David and I were able to keep riding until we met up with them again. Unfortunately, we got into the city sooner than they expected so we ended up stopping to wait for them to return. I thought for sure we were on the wrong road and that they would never find us, but eventually we found each other. We ate in a Burger King parking lot while still trying to figure out a way across the river that didn’t involve another Interstate trek. Eventually though, we decided that we were going straight across.

This was even scarier than our last bridge and Interstate experience—five lanes of traffic on our side with many, many merging lanes coming from all over the place. It was busy, scary and a huge adrenalin rush! It was also the longest time we spent on an Interstate. Once we crossed the bridge our exit was right there waiting for us. We met up with David’s parents and told them that it was one of those experiences of the trip that you wish your parents hadn’t been there to witness. For the most part, David and I were riding in the shoulder, but there were so many lanes merging that it made the whole experience all the more exciting. With every new approaching lane of traffic we'd throw out our arm in the direction that we needed to go and start moving. You know, besides the fast, heavy traffic, and the constant fear of death mixed with amusement park-like excitement, the people were very polite. No one honked their horn or cut us off, all in all a very pleasant environment for us to work in. David’s mom said that she didn't watch us cross since she knew what his dad had to do to drive in it. Fortunately though, David’s dad took out his camera and telephoto lens once they got to the other side and said he got some good shots of a blue and yellow dot (our jersey colors) in a sea of traffic.

From the gas station where we currently were it was only three miles to our next state, and last state, Massachusetts! From that point we rode like the wind. The closer we got to Cape Cod, the more excited we became. Our last stretch on the mainland was seventeen miles, and we continued to fly to the Cape Cod Canal.

The first thing we encountered on our trek to the bridge was a rotary perhaps more dangerous than the interstate. The traffic was pretty insane crossing the bridge, which by the way, was huge. The incline wasn't too steep, but the bridge still had to be tall enough for ocean-going vessels to travel beneath it. There was a rather high sidewalk on the side of the bridge, raised at least a foot or two above the roadway, so we road on it for a bit. It was a bit scary because it wasn't very wide and the wind was so strong it was hard to keep the bike on the sidewalk, not to mention, this was a busy bridge with constant four-lane traffic. At the apex of the bridge David and I stopped to look around. We held onto the fence and looked out over the canal, the island, and all the way to the ocean. It was here that I had realized what we had done and the hairs on my neck stood up as I looked out at the ocean.

We coasted down the bridge and were greeted by a Cape Cod welcome sign made from shrubs. Our plan was to take the highway along the island until we reached our turn off at the Shady Neck Beach tonight, about twenty miles away. We wound our way along the coast of the Bay through the thick traffic. We made the turn off for the beach and proceeded the mile down the road to a parking lot. When we arrived, we piled the bikes back into the van and started back for the motel. Right as we were pulling into the motel parking lot our cell phone rang—it was Doug, Lauren and Rob calling from Rhode Island, and they were going to be able to join us for the final day of our trip

After dinner, we picked up some postcards and Dunkin' Donuts and then went back to the motel to sit on the porch and wait for Doug and the crew to arrive. When they finally arrived, we all talked for a while until we were about ready to collapse. We hadn't seen Rob since he dropped us off on the West Coast and left us for dead. And Lauren, the girl who taught us to shave our legs, we hadn't seen since leaving Cincinnati seven weeks ago. Target time to be riding in the morning was 8AM—I never thought we'd make it though.

(Photos: The “Welcome to Rhode Island” and “Welcome to Massachusetts” signs. It was pointed out when the photos were printed that while David was actually kissing the Massachusetts sign, I on the other hand, was laughing too hard and didn’t actually make contact. I was still glad to be there.)

Day 44, Tuesday August 12

2007-04-15T17:56:00.002-04:00

THE FINAL DAY
Sandy Neck Beach, MA to Nauset Beach, MA—Atlantic Ocean
Daily Mileage: 27.68 miles
Final Mileage: 3,902.3 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 1:38 hours
Average Speed: 16.8 mph
Maximum Speed: 31.0 mph

Everyone woke up around 7:15AM, but it took forever to get everyone going. We all wandered outside onto the porch where David’s dad set up a beautiful display of two dozen donuts. We sat around eating donuts and drinking orange juice. About 8:00AM we were finally in our various cars headed for Cape Cod again. It was a three-car caravan to Sandy Neck Beach. Once we got there they wanted to charge us $8.00 per car to park. Needless to say, we didn't park (looking back $8.00 for the day seems quite reasonable, but at the time, wow, that was a lot of money). We turned back around and parked at the end of the street. We unloaded the bikes, stretched, took more pictures and applied sunscreen before Rob stashed his car and we started to ride, for the last time.

David and I started very quickly. Everyone else went up ahead and we didn't see them for quite some time. Traffic was still heavy even at the early hour, and on a Tuesday. About five miles down the way I needed to use the restroom, and without any road-side options, we stopped at a store selling Christmas items.

After ten miles or so we met up with David's parents. We didn't want to stop because now we were only twenty miles from the coast. We just kept pushing and screaming as we passed by all the gray-shingled houses. We were flying; even with a head wind we were maintaining a speed of 25 M.P.H.

With ten miles left we ran into David's parents again, and then shortly afterwards, Lauren's Jeep-full. It was from this point that the excitement was unbearable. We were back on the main road after a brief shortcut through the island and were now in a full-out sprint to the finish. No need to conserve energy now. With speeds reaching 30 M.P.H. on flats with a headwind, we moved ever closer to the beach. Then, there it was… We turned the corner and between the trees, down the road was a great big, blue body of water sitting just ahead of us—the Atlantic Ocean!

We raced down the hill screaming, going in the Exit of the parking lot, while avoiding all the cars waiting to enter the lot. We raced in to where the cars were waiting for us, to the applause of our friends and family. We had done it! We crossed the country on our bikes!

Soon the beach parking patrol came to tell us that bikes had to be parked at the gate. David’s dad explained what we had just completed, and then it seemed fine for us to be in the lot with our bikes. The two attendants asked us many of the same questions we heard all along the trip, but now we didn't really mind, it was sort of fitting it guess. They both were so amazed at the accomplishment they would have let us do just about anything. Our first objective now was to get down to the water. So everyone grabbed the supplies: bikes, cameras, Champagne and glasses.

As we walked onto the beach with our bikes, we suddenly had that extremely out-of-place feeling even more so than at any time or place on our entire trip. As soon as we found a spot far enough away from the lifeguards we dropped anchor for the party. We too a great deal of photos; it was a full-out photo shoot. When we couldn't think of any more poses, we made the big toast. Lauren took care of the glasses and Doug did the honors with the champagne. A random guy on the beach took a picture of the big event for us. Then it was into the ocean, for believe it or not, the first time in my entire life. What a fitting event. We bike clear across the continent from ocean to ocean and when we arrive I get to swim in the ocean for the first time. David, Doug, Rob and I all ran into the water followed by Lauren and David's parents. It was refreshing for David and I, but everyone else thought it was extremely cold (water temperature was a nice 61 degrees), but it wasn't long before we got out of the water and headed back to the car.

(Photos: David’s dad, Tim, Doug, Rob, Lauren & David; Tim & David in the Atlantic Ocean.)

August 13-14, Wednesday & Thursday

2007-04-15T17:56:00.001-04:00

Cape Cod … Boston … Pittsburgh … Cincinnati
Return to Reality.

We headed into town for our first victory meal. I forget the name of the restaurant, but it was nice place. We devoured a brief meal since David’s parents needed to get back on the road to head home. As we were leaving the restaurant, I asked a stranger to take a photo of all of us and then we said farewell and a huge thank you to David’s parents.

From there, we headed back to the beach to enjoy more of this incredibly beautiful day. Between dips in the ocean we tossed the Frisbee, picked up some rocks and ate some of the leftover food we had from our trip—peanuts, Twinkies and Gatorade, perfect beach fare. After a logistical meeting to determine our return trip to Cincinnati via Boston and Pittsburgh, we decided it was finally time to leave the beach.

We drove first to Rob's house near Boston to shower and change, and his mom greeted us with pizza and Sam Adams beer. From there, Rob took us on a three-hour speed tour of Boston—downtown, Cambridge and Harvard, the Commons, site of the Boston Massacre; we rode the subway, and saw the Boston Pops esplanade. It finished around midnight and was 1AM by the time we arrived back at Rob’s place to begin our thirteen-hour drive to Pittsburgh. David miraculously drove about ten hours of the trip (I tried but only lasted an hour and then fell fast asleep for the rest of the way). Before I fell asleep though, we added one a new state of the trip—New Jersey.

We rolled into Pittsburgh around noon, and while we were all tired, somehow managed to do a little sightseeing—downtown, University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Melon, the Pittsburgh Incline and Mancini’s Bread. Doug admitted that his tour wasn’t as good as Rob’s, but we appreciated it nonetheless. Most of our time over the next twenty-four hours in Pittsburgh was spent relaxing with his family as David and I tried to adjust to life off of our bikes.

The next morning, we all ate breakfast outside on the patio. It was a great breakfast under blue skies, cool temperatures and all without having to clean out our dishes after we finished. Afterwards, we loaded back into the car to begin the final leg of our journey—the five-hour trip to Cincinnati. Along the way, we added one final new state to the trip, West Virginia. David made Easy Cheese pictures on crackers for a couple of minutes (one supposedly of Mount Rushmore), but for the most part it was just your average road trip.

As we approached Cincinnati, David, Doug and I started singing “Chula Vista,” a random and incredibly repetitive song that David and I coined somewhere in the middle of Minnesota. “Chula Vista” was the name of a Mexican restaurant that we rode past with too little sleep and out of that delirium was born the song. We sang it for what seemed like forever—it must have gone on for fifteen or twenty minutes, and that was how was the trip ended.

Once back in Cincinnati, Lauren went home, Doug went to school, and David and I, not excited to be back, made a run to the nearest Cinnabon. I guess everything after that would just qualify as your normal, run-of-the-mill stuff. In the end, we had seven weeks, 8,000 miles, two trips across the country, a handful of photos and some great memories by which to remember the incredible summer of 1997.

(Photo: Rob, David’s mom and dad, Doug, Lauren, David and Tim outside of the restaurant on Cape Cod following our first celebratory meal.)

Epilogue

2007-04-15T17:53:00.000-04:00

It took five years before I got back on the bike again. I believe that I did two or three short (10-15 mile) rides in the first few weeks after getting back to Cincinnati, but after spending an entire summer traveling 100 miles each day, and not having to backtrack, it just seemed like so much work to get suited up and then only ride for 30 or 40 miles through familiar territory. Even so, I moved my bike from apartment to apartment, and city to city, occasionally dusting it off. Finally, during the heart of the 2002 Tour de France coverage, I decided to get back on the bike. No big trips though, just 40 to 50-mile jaunts, with an occasion century, to get out of the City and enjoy the surrounding calm of points north of New York City.

Looking back on the trip now ten years later, I’m not quite sure what more to say about it than what was covered in the previous pages. It was a wonder summer and one that probably changed my life. There are memories that I carry with me from the trip, and some that I didn’t remember again until rereading my journal to put compile this site.

I’ll leave you with a few thoughts that I jotted down about the trip upon arriving back in Cincinnati…
· The sky is biggest in Central Montana, just west of Havre.
· Mosquitoes are the worst in Montana, North Dakota and Minnesota.
· The water is clearest, an unbelievable greenish-blue in Washington—the Cascades. Even the roadside waterfalls are clear.
· People are friendliest in Minnesota; they also have the best accents.
· The wind blows hardest just east of Glacier National Park, MT.
· You sure have a lot of time to think while on a bike for that amount of time.
· Singing “The Old Grey Mare” under your breath really helps when you climb mountains, even if you can’t remember the last line.
· Coasting down mountains for miles and miles is both an incredible rush and very tiring, but after six hours of climbing it's a good problem to have.
· Keeping your head shaved sure beats having to wash, shampoo, comb and dry your hair each morning; it’s also much cooler in the extreme heat of the Plains.
· No matter how many times you enter the same café with spandex on, the people still look at you funny.

(Photo: Doug, our friend Robert (but not Rob), Tim and David during the summer of 2006.)