Monday, August 17, 2009

Finale

Oh lordie, the longest stretch of non-blogging to reminisce about yet. luckily my grandpa already asked me to cover the final week and a half so my memory has already been jogged.. thanks Gramps.
first off let me tell you, EVERYONE should go on a long bike tour at some point in your life... at least if you enjoy biking. i still can't believe how amazing this summer has been. i would love to just keep biking and biking and biking. i can't even explain how happy i am that i was able to spend the past 80 days like this.

so i believe the day after we left missoula we made it to a campsite called Colgate Licks. En route we crossed into Idaho and stopped at the visitors center which has free hot chocolate =0) I also realized near the end of the day that I left my raincoat at Brandt's house. Luckily my mom convinced me to bring a "deluxe" rain poncho that ended up coming in very handy only one day after the raincoat was lost.
idaho is not completely covered in potatoes. if you're on route 12 you will see lots of old growth cedars, which mature at 400-500 years old but then live up to 3,000 years. i felt like we were about 12 inches tall when we were walking amongst them. there are also wild blackberries growing all along the side of the highway, and some other fruits too! good times for a biker!
at Colgate Licks we met a man named Chris who was headed back to Portland after a rock climbing trip in montana. we sat around a fire together and had some good conversation. the next morning we went over to chris's campsite for coffee, and he also gave us some cinnamon rolls and a chocolate bar. before he drove away he left us with some fine words of wisdom: "do not open the chocolate bar in the wind".
huh? why not? phil's hypothesis was that smell is very important for taste, so we wouldn't enjoy the chocolate bar fully with the wind ruining our sense of smell. i thought that sounded pretty reasonable. but in fact, when we opened the chocolate bar that night, we discovered that Chris had slipped a $20 bill inside the wrapper for us. that was one of the nicest things anyone has done for us on this trip... if you're reading this Chris, thank you so much, that was amazing.
From Colgate Licks we continued among the cedars and reached a trail to Weir hot springs, where we soaked in the 106 degree water on a fairly cool morning. we met up with Mo from The Lab in Missoula, taking her family who were visiting her from texas to the hot springs. as we left the hot springs the weather went downhill and before long it was raining raining raining. my poncho came in handy, and so did a historic ranger station that we stopped at and warmed up by their wood stove. we stopped at a picnic site off the road outside kooskia to camp for the night.
from kooskia we got to the twin cities of the west, on the idaho/washington border, Lewiston and Clarkston, but not without a little help. we hitched a ride for about 35 of the 75 miles due to a late start and the first of many headwinds, which can gust up to 25mph. the ride actually felt amazing! we got to skip a lot of highway riding, too. we got dropped off at the lewiston city park along the snake river. lots of people asked us about our trip there, and no one seemed to mind that we had picked a not-quite-real camping spot for the night.
from lewiston/clarkston we stayed in washington, and rode about 60 or 70 miles to dayton. the winds and the hills abounded and we realized that the last few days of our ride were going to be a little more difficult than ya might think.
in dayton we were inspired to leave by sprinklers turning on at our campsite, which you might recall would not be the first time we were awakened in this manner. but it was good that we got an early start because phil was able to make a connection with a couple in Hermiston, OR, so we had to make 80 miles to get there that night. we followed the columbia river for several very warm hours, and our warmshowers hosts Ken and Nancy met us on their bikes a few miles from their home to make sure we wouldn't get lost. while we were showering nancy finished cooking up one of the best meals we had on the whole trip... fajitas with the most amazing ingredients. Nancy is all about good food: http://www.healthcaredesignmagazine.com/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=&nm=Articles&type=Publishing&mod=Publications%3A%3AArticle&mid=8F3A7027421841978F18BE895F87F791&tier=4&id=9CBC5AFD93494603A3695421A2E0CC7F or if that doesn't work you can just google Nancy Gummer. she and her husband do a lot of bike touring and they use a Burley trailer like Phil, only they use it for their dog Toby, who has his own sleeping bag to relax in for the ride.
Nancy took us to a bike shop on her way to work and Phil got some new tires and 8 more patches because we had pretty much used up our supply. we went to a bakery and ate/purchased way too many pastries on our way out of hermiston, and another windy hilly day got us into roosevelt. roosevelt is the site of a landfill where seattle's trash gets sent, and luckily we decided to pitch our tent right at an intersection where all the trucks drive between the trains that deliver the trash and the landfill that receives it. 100s of semis later we were happy to leave that campsite behind. phil, of course, slept thru them all passing, much to the surprise of the truckers themselves. roosevelt has hundreds of wind towers and it and its surrounding areas are getting a lot more installed as well! we got to talk to a man who delivers the wind turbine parts to their sites.. it is a job and a half cuz those things are MASSIVE! the most wind power we had seen throughout the whole country was right here in the roosevelt area.
from roosevelt we made it to the Dalles via the freeway, which is towered over by mt. hood. the freeway is getting a bike lane painted in and we were possibly the first two riders to use it! the sunset stopped us in our tracks on this night, but eventually we made it to a good camping spot near a comfort inn, and possibly went swimming and hot tubbing to clean up a bit.
waking up after the Dalles we realized we had only one night of camping together left. we ended up at Ainsworth State park where we cooked pasta with onions and peppers and also had salad, bread, and a bottle of wine. we over-pressurized the stove to a fairly dangerous degree but it was still a completely successful dinner, the perfect one for the last night of camping.
the last day was a rough one for me. it was hard to be happy to be heading into portland because i definitely did not want this trip to be over. but we had a pretty sweet day following the old highway past several waterfalls, including Multnomah Falls, which is over 600 feet high! we decided to risk taking a road that was closed to thru traffic, but after a 6 mile climb we discovered that it was closed due to a landslide and that we would not be allowed thru. so we had a little 12 mile detour on the day of my flight, making the day 47 miles instead of 35. we still got into portland with plenty of time though, and phil helped me box up my bike to ship to my friend Maya so she can go on a bikeride. we got chinese food for dinner and bought 16 postcards at the marriott hotel to send to all our warmshowers hosts. after taking the light rail a pretty good distance to the airport, we spent our last couple of hours writing the postcards to everyone and just sitting there reminiscing and saying goodbye. eventually my flight was scheduled to leave in only 25 minutes and i could not put off leaving any longer. let me tell you, it was not an easy time. i had been thinking about it for awhile but it was still really hard for me to climb up those stairs to security and admit to myself that this adventure had definitely come to its conclusion. it took me about 15 minutes to check my saddle bags and go thru security, so i got to the gate with 10 minutes left before departure. i was definitely the last person to board.
so that's that! the best summer i could have dreamed of. thanks for readin' y'all =0)
my family wants their input:

Uncle Andy: "The last day was great because I knew I was seeing my family again."
Dana: "I really like your head." "You didn't smell that bad when we picked you up, until you picked up your arm."
Ryan: "Ryan did some special interpretive dances and talked in the third person."
David and Gloria: "I think it's amazing that you spent $0 on lodging. It must say something about the humanity and friendliness of the United States."

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Back in Missoula!!!!

Phil and I have spent the past few days back in Missoula, which is where we met on our "montana afoot and afloat" course last september. missoula definitely seems like the place to be around in montana, especially if you are of our generation. you can meet almost every type of person you can imagine here. it almost feels like a mini-utopia i would even venture to say. for example, if you forget to lock up your bike for a few hours while you go swimming and hiking, and it even has saddle bags full of stuff on it, you may just be lucky enough to come back and find your bike completely unharmed. if you are a traveler passing thru town and you need a place to stay, you may just run across The Lab, which is one of the coolest houses I've ever stayed at. There are 7 or 8 residents but several more people have been passing thru in the past 3 nights that we've camped in their yard. They have an absolutely beautiful and bountiful garden that reminded me of K.K. and Ira's biodynamic farm back in Long Island (PS if you want to learn more about KK you can type KK Haspel into youtube's search engine and there's a 6 minute video segment about her and her garden). They also keep chickens for eggs. There's a treehouse bed you can stay in if you're passing through, and there's also a cargo net and some hammocks hanging from the porch ceiling. These along with several couches are occupied all the time by people just hangin' out, talking or making food or watching movies outside on the projector or whatever. Their fridge is covered in thank you notes of the people who have passed thru just in the past few days; Phil and I will add one soon as well.
While in Missoula we got to meet up with 2 of our past WRFI instructors as well as a major WRFI coordinator. First we went to their office, where we traded news and got some long overdue WRFI mugs that were supposed to be given out on course. Then we met another on the University's campus and looked around at an exhibit of Pulitzer-prize winning photos... they were all very depressing and kind of a slap-in-the-face reality check for ya. The instructor we met at the exhibit, whom we call Fancy because of his fancy snowpants, offered to take us floating on the Clark Fork River and then end up back at his house for dinner and drinks. So we ended up spending most of the day with Fancy! Phil got to test out his class II whitewater skills in a single person kayak, while Fancy and I shared a big blow-up "ducky" kayak, where I did practically no paddling whatsoever. When we pulled out I took my bike (which we'd dropped off) back up the river to where we'd left the car, and then brought both back down to the pull-out site. It was a really, really good time =0)
I think we're leaving today, but maybe tomorrow. We've got a week's worth of riding left! I think I am off to get a dollar slice of pizza at Pizza Pipeline. praise richard.

Thursday, July 30, 2009

bighorns to helena, mt

hello from helena ladies and gentlemen
so we left john's house having to bike up up up through powder river pass in the bighorn mountains, which reaches an elevation of 9,666 feet over about 40 miles of ups and downs that includes a lot more ups. luckily, for the first 25 of those 40 miles, john offered to carry all our gear in his truck and then meet us for lunch! so that is exactly what we did. it was a great ending to a great stay with one of the coolest people i've ever met. john helped us out more than i think we still realize.
the climb actually did not feel too terribly bad; the weather was perfect, we were well rested, we had help with our gear, and we even had a tailwind! the wildflowers were beautiful and the trees and the hills and the everything. and at the top of the pass we were rewarded with a sign warning of a steep downhill grade for the next 18 miles. beautiful! we stopped on the way down to look at the huge canyon before us, eat some pop tarts, and talk with a family traveling from missouri who we would actually meet up with again in a couple of days.
we rode about 70 miles on this trek thru the bighorns and camped on nowood road, which was beautifully empty and almost too beautiful to behold. our goal for the following day was to make it to cody, wyoming but we were feelin' the climb a little too much for that to happen. the headwinds caused our progress to slow even further and we ended up having to call it a day about 15 miles outside of cody. close enough i say.
into cody we went the next morning, where some food shopping resulted in a lot of gorging ourselves and where the holiday inn pool called my name a little too loudly so i took a dip while phil caught up on the old blog. it started to rain a bit as we started the gradual climb from cody to the entrance to yellowstone, but the ride still felt really good. the landscape kept getting more and more beautiful as we neared the park. we got to go thru the only real tunnel of the trip so far as well, which was pretty exciting. thought about swimming but the water was cold enough so that i only went in to my waist. i also found a large bag of unopened lays potato chips on the shoulder and ate its entire contents within minutes.
we camped at a developed campground about 20 miles from the park entrance, which you have to do because of grizzly bears (camp in develop campgrounds that is). we were right on a creek in front of a bluff and we got a fire going that allowed us to cook up some rice pilaf that id been carrying from westborough, as well as some mac and cheese. we did our first bear hang and promptly fell asleep.
right as we got to the east entrance into yellowstone, hail came down upon us! this was actually great timing because we could hide under the entrance into the park until the hail passed. it was still quite cold and rainy as we climbed into the park, but all the uphill allowed us to create enough body heat not to mind.
the wildflowers in yellowstone are AMAZINGGGGG. there is also a lot of wildlife everywhere. prairie dogs, bison, pelicans, bald eagles, elk, black bears, and grizzly bears were some of the crazier ones. the bison walk in the road all the time and so we would be biking just a couple of feet away which was pretty nerve wracking!
all the campgrounds were full in yellowstone except for one that was in the wrong direction, but phil figured out a solution to this problem. he helped a french family retrieve a ball that they had lodged in a tree, and with that earned us a place to stay at their campsite as well as a pasta dinner with beer and homemade vodka, and then eggs and bacon in the morning, and plenty of good conversation in between. amazing.
biking out of the park was crazy because you lose about 5000 feet in elevation going from canyon out to the north entrance on the montana border. we had a 100+ mile day ahead of us so the downhill helped a lot! we still didn't make it to our destination, livingston montana, until 11pm. there we met katie kelly, a fellow WRFI-alum and a fellow biker for the next portion of the trip! she is traveling with us from her family's house in livingston, mt to the house she's moving into in missoula, mt, which is a 4 day ride. it is awesome to have another person along and she is totally kicking ass; we biked the 130 miles from livingston to helena in 2 days and though she hadn't done any biking recently she kept up with no problems and no complaints. now we're at her friend's house in helena kickin' back for a bit before we head on for two more days to missoula. good times everywhere. i can't believe there are only a couple weeks left to this trip.

Thursday, July 23, 2009

sioux falls to the bighorns

i definitely don't have the memory to cover this amount of days, but luckily every night i have been writing down about 1-5 words to help keep things in order hahaha.
back in sioux falls i met a Lakota native named Leon Bird Horse. He showed me around a little bit and we just compared pasts. He grew up on a nearby reservation and is the only person from his family to leave. he didn't like all the alcohol and what it did to everyone. so he came to sioux falls and is working for a landscaping company. sioux falls is the only city he's ever been to, but now he's thinking of moving to minneapolis for another job. crazy! in rapid city i talked to a couple of other natives and they let me try some of the food that they get from the government. it's good that they're able to get it, but when i was eating some cheese i definitely had to use my imagination to believe that it was actually cheese.
in sioux falls we got to see harry potter at midnight on opening night! this caused us levels of excitement too great to convey, as we had only been talking about it for the entire trip and even making up trivia questions for each other while biking. unfortunately, we dragged our host, travis along, and he did get a lot of good popcorn courtesy of phil, but im pretty sure it wasn't his choice activity. we didn't get back till after 3am and he ended up calling in sick from work because he was supposed to go in at 6am. well travis, all i can say is thank you for your sacrifice, it was not lost on us. you were one of the most amazing hosts ever! our route out of sioux falls was perfect and it was all thanks to you.
the word "sioux" is actually a french word used to talk about the Lakota people.
so for the first time, biking on the interstate is sometimes necessary, often the best and most direct route, and is actually quite pleasant because there is so little traffic going thru states with so few people.
after sioux falls we made it about 70 miles to mitchell where we stayed with Dave Stevens, a warmshowers host who had just joined the site a week before. he is a ref in the famed corn palace, which i guess is pretty cool but also could be seen as a big waste of corn in my opinion. Dave filled us in on the tour de france and took us out to a really nice dinner! a deluxe breakfast the morning after left us more full that we'd felt in awhile.
there are lots of pheasants in south dakota; it's the state bird but sd is one of five states where you're allowed to shoot the state bird hahaha.
so the nite after mitchell we did some guerilla camping and were awakened to a tour of 50 international, senior-citizen-aged cyclists heading in the other direction. they were supported and had fancy bikes and jerseys, but were also leaving at 5:30am and doing up to 120 miles per day! pretty bad ass for old timers. we met people from new zealand, trinidad, and the uk.
the landscape switched from corn to prairie and the sky seemed to somehow get even bigger, the sun even stronger, the sunsets even more magnificent, the winds stronger, and the stars even brighter even in towns with lots of light pollution. in short, the world is getting crazier day by day. people keep getting nicer too if that's possible; you know you can get help in south dakota and wyoming if you need it just by all the people who willingly stop of their own accord to see if you're okay when you're stopped.
we made it out to the badlands and used some borrowed motorcycle passes to cruise into the park for free, woot! we have sinced passed on those passes to other xc cyclists going the other direction, and they gave us their yellowstone passes.
the badlands seem to spring out of nowhere and are very expansive and beautiful. there were less tourists than i thought but we were biking thru late in the day and got to catch a wicked sunset from the top of one of the passes, it was absolutely ridiculous. we also saw a lot of prairie dogs, who didn't really appreciate our presence but if you're gonna choose to live on the side of the road in the badlands you should probably get used to people.
the town on the other side of the badlands is called Wall and is infamous for Wall Drug, a drugstore that's more like a mini mall and a huge tourist trap. it has delicious and dense donuts and the town served as a really good camping area for us. there are literally about 80 signs on the interstate for wall drug, it is quite bewildering and reminds me of howe caverns, shout out to lauri kaity and peg hahaha.
from wall we went on to rapid city and stayed with a family of 4- Dan and Mary are the husband and wife, remy is the 8 month old son, and tig is the dog. mary took us food shopping in a van which was kind of a novelty, and we all kind of made dinner together and talked about twins and buddhist monks. the next day i picked up a letter that my friend paul sent general delivery to the rapid city post office and it is one of the best letters i've ever gotten, i'll definitely be rereading it lots on the rest of the ride. it even came in a braille envelope, i mean come on now. i also went to the bike store to get a new chain and new brake pads, and to have my derailleur bent back into its nearly original shape, whoops. bike feels great now hahaha im glad to have my lower gears back cuz climbing climbing climbing is our future.
the black hills are what greets you leaving rapid city and there are more pine trees than you've seen on the whole rest of the trip combined. we saw mt. rushmore and the crazy horse monument, which is still a work in progress and should be absolutely crazy (harharhar) when it's completed! then we cruised downhill a bit into Custer, where we warmed up with coffee, soup, and chili, and then went back to our old guerilla camping habits. we went to bed early and got up at 7 for the toughest ride of the trip- 115 miles from custer to gillette, think hills and headwinds thrown into the mix, yikes! i wouldn't have made it without phil, i just didn't think i had the energy, but phil's constant good mood and energy plus the beautiful landscape plus a major stop and subway kept me going somehow. i thought i was going to break down and cry for the last 30 miles but at the end of the night i could just laugh it off. gillette is the energy capital of america, supposedly, and has the country's largest air-cooled power plant or something like that, and it is both ridiculously large and ridiculously bright.
gilette to buffalo (can u tell i don't know how to spell gillette) was beautiful and mostly downhill on interstate 90. and only 70 miles! it felt like nothing. we met those two other tourers who were going the other direction, they are exactly our age and their names are nico and caleb i think haha. we talked for awhile and were able to exchange good advice and stories since we had all just completed the journey that the other party was about to embark on.
buffalo is where we are now. it sits at the base of the bighorn mountains, where i am seeing snow for the first time in many moons. we are about to climb them, 10,000 feet in one day but we have heard stories and seen photos suggesting it is more than worth it. plus there is an 18 mile downhill on the other side! so we're about to leave, phil's just getting a bit of work done at the bike shop and then i think we're off!
for dinner we had hamburgers last night, but that would actually be about my 4th time eating meat on this trip. i have been dreaming about it and so for the first time in 8 or so years i am stopping being a vegetarian for the remainder of the bike trip.
john is one of the coolest people i've ever met. he is a great pianist and composer and let me try to play some of his music and gave me some to take on the trip and practice in my brain. it has been so much fun to stay at his house, definitely good times!
i just bought a plane ticket home for august 14th from portland to boston! crazy! only 3 weeks left.... hope we make it =0P

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

we's in sioux falls waHAHhhhh

there is a honeylocust tree right outside the window and it is making me wonder. nearly every town we bike thru has a Locust St. why would you want to name a street that, unless maybe there are lots of honeylocusts on it. or u want to remember the plagues?
so the twin cities are superrrrrrr wicked awesome. it is a land of co-ops, especially food ones, they are where everyone shops. they're definitely invested in the future of the environment on both smaller and larger scales, from community gardens and a small college that runs entirely on wind power, to a 110,000 square foot green roof on the target center. the mississippi river goes ramblin on thru and trails follow it the whole way. so many people commute by bike and are usually significantly faster than us hahaha. there are a lot of really nice neighborhoods but there is still also a lot of theft.
we met a really sweet person named carol while we were biking to andrew's house and she works at the science museum, so we were able to get free passes and learn a lot about our bodies and the titanic. we learned that if you stare up at the sky on a bright and sunny day, and you start to see those little spots runnin' around everywhere, those are actually your red blood cells traveling thru the capillaries in your eyes. if you can follow the paths they seem to be traveling on, you can see the outlines of the capillaries too. crazy right!!!
andrew helped us get our bikes into shape again, helping phil with his bucking headset and me with my recurring broken spokes. his daughter madeline is such a good kid, it totally blew my mind and made me hope that if i ever have a kid we'll develop a parent-kid relationship like theirs.
we stayed at a second house in minneapolis just a few blocks away, the amazing house of tim and tara. they're both about 30 and also have another roommate sarah; they made us feel so welcome right away and spoiled us with good food and beer, a shower and a guesthouse to ourselves with a loft that has a claim to the most comfortable bed in the world, i slept until 10am for like the 3rd time in my life. sarah is in the process of writing a book about one of her bike tours with the two other girls she toured with so we shared our experiences for awhile. on the morning we were supposed to leave we still stayed with them for breakfast and a 4:00 lunch and helped them spread dirt around their yard; their yard used to be completely concrete but they're turning it into almost completely garden. also at their house i discovered stuffwhitepeoplelike.com for the first time, you should check it out if you haven't because it's hilarious!
so leaving minneapolis after 4pm we didn't make it all too far. we were trying to follow bike trails for 60 miles west out to hutchinson but we couldn't quite put it all together and made it about 20 miles out to waconia after being on and off the trail a few times hahaha. the enormous steeple of a church lured us its way and we camped at the bottom of a hill behind the church. phil cooked some tempeh for dinner that tim and tara gave us in preparation for a 115 mile day to marshall, mn.
the 115-mile day began at 10:30am and would last for the next 12 hours as we passed thru fields and small towns with populations between 61 and a couple of thousand. though there were some headwinds, the lack of topography made for smooth sailing and the day actually passed pretty quickly; we are getting good at talking on the bikes and also at kind of falling into quiet meditation or observation. we ate loads of food and are learning to be always more and more thankful that we are able to sustain our insatiable appetites. also we got 9 free slices of pizza from a gas station attendant who was about to throw them away! pizza and beer for dinner, woohoo!
we have learned that schools are great places to camp this summer and figured that Marshall High School would be no exception. in the end, it was an exception. we were unaware of the automatic sprinklers that drench the entire yard at in the middle of the night with sprinklers that seemingly have the power of fire hoses. it was a hilarious site with us scrambling out of the tent and attempting to haul all of our stuff out of their before it got too soaked. we found a new sprinkler free spot to put our stuff, much of which were filled with puddles at this point. but due to the level of our tiredness we were soon fast asleep again, enjoying the fragrant comfort of our wet sleeping bags, wet clothes, and wet tent. there was also a quaking aspen tree right next to our new site and the blowing leaves sounded exactly like water, just to torture us.
90 miles southwest would get us to sioux falls, but first a trip to the laundromat with our sleeping bags was in order. i could barely ride my bike with the weight of the two wet sleeping bags throwing me off balance, it was hilarious. while i did that phil sun-dried the rest of our stuff and packed up camp. the pizza was finished off at this point as well, thank you again gas station attendant.
traffic is sparse and shoulders are wide in much of this area; the headwinds were not too strong and the weather was once again perfect as we journeyed onward. we made good time, averaging 10 mph throughout the day even with stops, which is something we don't usually do over a long period of time. fields of corn are pretty much permanently imbedded in our minds at this point, and a lot of soy too. tons of trucks passed us today, pulling us up the rolling hills and cancelling out the headwind for awhile, never thought id appreciate trucks so much. thunderstorms were starting up a little ways away as we rolled into sioux falls and the sky looked crazy. we are now staying in the apartment of a guy named travis, who is a bit older than us, also loves to ride, and is a corrections facility officer but is super laid back and nice, it seems like a funny fit. he hooked us up with harry potter tickets for the midnite showing tonight and is even coming along with us despite the fact that he has work at 6am, aka three hours after the movie ends hahahaha. two guys on a cross country motorcycle trip were also staying with travis so we got to hang out with them and learn about their trip as well.
today is dedicated to exploring sioux falls and rereading harry potter for me, while phil catches up on his blog. then tomorrow we set off on about 4 more days of riding until the next big city, rapid city. in between we will probably go through the badlands; the motorcycle guys (keith and richard) gave us their passes which last for a week so we might just make it in time to use them, woot!
happy birthday to phil's mom and happy travels to my own maaaam!

Thursday, July 9, 2009

catching up!

well it's been a few days, let's test the good ole memory. first of all bob dylan' s song "blind willie mctell" is so good it has been slowly killing me. as my friend maya once said, i have been strummed into righteousness.
so on the 4th we left madison at dinner time after meeting alan and erin's landlady, who climbs mountains all over the world and hires guides and all that crazy business. i dunno if i already mentioned but alan and erin are embarking in may on a 2-year bike trip from the arctic circle to the tip of south america... bluh!
so we biked only a few miles before we were already in rural land outside madison. as it got dark we came into a town called Black Earth where the fields were full of fireflies. it looked unreal as it got dark, they all just seemed to be floating around serenely and there were hundreds of them, it was actually a little bit cooler than the fireworks hahaha. we saw some fireworks starting up ahead of us as we biked so we sped up toward them. we got to a public school where we could see them pretty well even though we were a couple miles away, so we watched them there. they made me unexpectedly homesick, but some ridiculous mad libs involving hippopotamous schlongs cheered me up. we camped in the schoolyard since we knew no one was around; the population of the town was like 100.
the next morning began with me picking some wild berries and then getting chased away by a very intimidating bird. i believe we were going to viroqua on this day hahaha i mite miss a day in this entry. it was still flat at this point and sunny and perfect, as it had been for many days. we passed Dylan and Clementine, two people doing a 6-month bike tour of the US who came from Switzerland! we had learned about their tour from talking to someone on warmshowers, so phil saw them and yelled their names but they had no idea who we were so they were super surprised hahaha. we talked with them for about an hour tho it only felt like 15 minutes, that's what always happens when you take biking breaks it seems. phil hopes to visit them in lasahn (no clue how to spell that), switzerland within a couple of years and it wouldn't surprise me if he did.
viroqua is a very randomly located progressive town with a really big co-op considering it's relatively small size. phil was having some trouble breathing here so he went to the doctor, they said he had acid reflux, which he doesn't, he actually had a virus (his grandma is a doctor and she was able to actually figure it out). so a couple of hours in the emergency room with blood tests and a numbing drink just led to phil picking up a prescription he didn't need, yea doctors. we camped in back of a church and phil talked to a lot of people at the food co-op while i did some bike trail research. if we took roads for about 30 miles to la crosse, a small city on the mississippi, then we could hop on the Great River Trail (i think that's what it's called haha) for about 25 miles north en route to the twin cities. so that is exactly what we did. the trail was gorgeous, there were lots of birds and swampland and a national wildlife refuge and a state park, and very nearly the whole trail was lined with wild raspberries and blackberries! phil got his 4th flat, while i've still only had one.
when we got tired we just picked a random patch of grass rite off the trail to pitch our tent. the mosquitoes attacked us with a vengeance so the tent pretty much felt like heaven. phil seemed pretty much better at this point which was excellent.
next marnin' i washed off in the silty Black River while phil was still getting up. it had been about 5 or 6 days since we showered so the grime had accumulated pretty well. i've been getting these solid black lines of dirt along my neck that look pretty hot. sometimes i clean them off, sometimes i don't.
we made it halfway from where we started to the twin cities, to a town of 121 people called Maiden Rock. we had spent almost the whole day just following the mississippi and in maiden rock we pitched our tent about 100 yards from it, and about 20 yards from a train. we seem to end up next to water and trains pretty frequently. again phil was able to sleep thru the ground-shaking trains, while i was awake most of the nite feeling really itchy, which i assumed was from being so dirty. in the morning i went in the mississippi to try to remedy this, but the itchiness didn't go away. by the end of the day phil and i both realized we had somewhere somehow mingled with some poisonous leaves that were the actual source of the itchiness, so now we spend a lot of our free time scratching. alas.
so we made it into st. paul and thru to minneapolis last nite and will be here today and tomorrow. we are staying with a couple and their 4-year-old daughter. they are super nice to us and have about a dozen instruments, plus the twin cities seem really cool, so we're pretty excited. rite now phil is on a bike route with some people who deliver fair trade organic coffee by bike. he found out they were leaving about 15 minutes in advance, so he just jumped on his bike and went, seems to be typical phil-style.
from here it's about 550 miles to rapid city in a straight line west! we'll see how long it takes us to get there! ps phil and i had a race for a couple miles yesterday and i won. though i will give credit where credit is due and say that my bike and stuff = 40 pounds and his = like 100.
when we got off the trail we met some hills, but none so bad as in western pa.

Saturday, July 4, 2009

madison got the best of us again! we're actually sticking around at least a few hours and we'll either just meander out of town late in the afternoon or stay one more night hahaha. as long as we're in rapid city on july 14th at midnite for harry potter all is well (it's the only major city around so we think we probably have no choice but to make sure we're there)
so those vibes. first of all, i have started to lose a lot of my concept of time. this is a pretty rare thing for people in our country to experience. i used to check my watch and know the date and the day of the week and how many hours i slept each nite, normal things of that sort. now a lot of the time im really just not sure. thats why i've given up dating these posts, it takes a lot of figuring out hahaha.
i feel sufficiently guilty that im having such a good time and relying so heavily on the kindness of strangers a lot of the time. however, guilt is not the necessary emotion to feel, so i am trying to channel it in other ways. leaving a really nice note or a little treat at the houses we stay at feels good. applying for a lot of jobs yesterday felt good. staying in touch with people feels good.
most of all its cool when people get really excited and want to know about our trip. they usually say something like, "i wish i had time, i've always wanted to do that", things along those lines, and my response is always the same.... do it, you can totally do it and the time is now. it really is all about your priorities. of course the real world comes with its restrictions and limitations. that is why i never want to own a house or a car or other expensive things of that sort that can tie you down. the more simply you live, the freer you are. i have had plenty of time to reflect on that and i have never felt it as much as i do now. i love when people comment that there's no way i have all the stuff i need just in my saddle bags, which are not full. while i should definitely give credit to phil here because he is carrying a lot of stuff that we both use, i love how on this trip i have figured out that i can live off of about 20 pounds of stuff that can fit in a backpack.
mostly on this trip i am feeling a lot of humility and gratitude. riding under the sun and the clouds and the stars and the moon with the breeze or the rain and the trees and the fields and the skyscrapers and the lakes and riding a beautiful bike alongside a beautiful person, meeting beautiful people, in perfect health, laughing and singing the day away... i know how blessed and lucky i am.
dont wait for things to work out for you in life... you can make them be working out by smiling, laughing, singing, letting go of whatever it is that you are worrying about but you know its not necessary. let other people know how you feel about them. question the motives behind what you do and let yourself be satisfied with the answers when you know they are good ones. look around at this beautiful earth, thank god it is still as beautiful as it is. learn everything you can every day and don't be afraid to feel the importance of the things that really get to you.
well happy 4th y'all! phil informed me last night that the declaration of independence was actually signed on july 2nd, and then the next year they realized they might want to commemorate that but it was already july 3rd, so they just did it on the 4th and kept it that way for all time to come.
we've spent the past couple days in madison which reminds us a lot of ann arbor, which is a good thing! madison is also a huge college town. the college is right on the water. there's a bike path that runs the length of the city; the people we're staying with use it to tandem pike all the way across town to their ultimate frisbee games and its a 40 minute commute each way.
i've been talking a lot about actual events that happen to us but never really stop to reflect on kind of the vibes that we're getting from it all. i guess we're actually trying to leave pretty quickly so now's not really the time, but stay tuned fer all that.
dad, congrats on your block party performance, i bet you gave tailspin a run for their money.

Thursday, July 2, 2009

chicago to neil's dad's fixer-upper-house in highland park!

leaving promptly at 5pm we followed the lakefront as best we could (50% success rate mas o menos) northward-bound to a very well-off suburb called highland park, where neil's dad is fixing up a house that was well equipped for our arrival. air mattress, table, fold-out chairs, guitar, harmonica, mad-libs, the best pizza around, and 6 oz bottles of wine. neil is the man!!!! we hung out playing music and eating for a couple of hours before neil had to go home cuz he works at the ass crack of dawn. then phil and i improvised a ballad that tells the tale of everything we have seen heard and spoken from may 20th to present day.

highland park to..... whoops not milwaukee

planned on making it to milwaukee, got sidetracked by a sweet eco-justice center run by the Racine Dominican nuns about 20 miles south of the city. they are looking for a part time worker for any eco-justice interested unemployed readers. so we pitched a tent in the yard of a church right near the center, the pastor asked no questions but just offered us a spot right away as well as some dessert! we made great friends with the mosquitoes but only 3 made it inside the tent and they quickly met their fate. good-bye, and good-night.

whoops not milwaukee to milwaukee!

UMM SO TODAY WE GOT TO MILWAUKEE WHERE SUMMERFEST IS GOING ON AND GOT TICKETS TO SEE BOB DYLAN AND WILLIE NELSON!!!!!!! willie nelson is still young and chipper seeming, while bob dylan has undeniable style but is undeniably lacking in the vocal range he had of yesteryear. it was so amazing just to be there in the presence of them, i am sure its the only time i will get to do this in my life!!!!!! willie nelson did a lot of covers and was just rockin'. bob dylan i seriously cant even describe the style of him and his band. the only songs i recognized were desolation row and like a rolling stone but thats ok... my favorites are the ballads and i knew he was not really going to be letting the vocals shine. we also saw pete francis from dispatch and a fiddler with her band, ruby jane, from austin texas who is amazzzzingggggg.
the 4th is coming up.... i hope y'all are doing something spectacular with spectacular folk =0)

Monday, June 29, 2009

catchin up a few days!

HEY EVERYONE I MISS ALL Y"ALL! the song hide and seek by imogen heap is taking over my life rite now i really like it.
i am really gettin' into the swing of this biking thing! we are so lucky to be able to meet so many amazing people, see all the beautiful landscapes, be able to afford enough food to keep us revving, i am so grateful and humbled and contented by everything that has been going on.

here are our past few days!

we left pete's house i believe on june 24th? or thereabouts. leaving rochester was a trafficky endeavour as we said goodbye to Big Bear (pete), Mr. Muehmel, Wrigley, and the unemployed world of the detroit area behind. soon enough, though, we were following a road called pontiac trail which is a direct shot into ann arbor, and we were back out in big open fields where green blue and white are the only colors in sight.
ann arbor is a pretty big town or maybe even a city, but the pontiac trail road was completely rural right into the town limits. when we got into town we stopped and sat down at the first bench we saw to eat some food in a motionless state, one of my favorite things to do both on this trip and during the rest of life. a gay couple walked by and informed us of their approval of us as a cute couple.
as we biked toward elissa's house from warmshowers, we saw a resale store called the treasure chest so phil stopped to talk to them while i went explorin, our usual gig. he talked to a lady named swana for like an hour about her values with regards to how we're leaving our mark on the earth, and i believe phil became teary-eyed for a brief moment in time. meanwhile i was just sippin some ginger beer and finding out that ann arbor is full of friendly ppl and cool places, it's definitely one of the more progressive places i've been.
we got to elissa's house and met her and her dog georgi, a silent lover who loves to lick and never barks. elissa just finished her masters in natural resources and works on a farm.
i biked to the hardware store where a guy helped me find the parts to adjust my bak rack, which had been slowly and steadily collapsing for some time. then i met phil at a park at the university, where there is free music every single nite for THREE WEEKS in the summer! we got to hear a cover of wagon wheel and drink 5 dollar beers, phil's first purchased beer, good times. there were so many people just hangin out, eating drinking dancing and listening to music on a beautiful summer nite. really wut more could u want =0P

Ann Arbor to Kalamazoohoohoo

100 miles today and it didn't feel too bad! flat lands are good lands for sure. we just biked our asses off and got to a fire station right outside kalamazoo around 10:30. they'd never heard of ppl camping at fire stations the way Phil has, but welcomed us anyway, even offering their tv and common area. we did some stargazing on the warm pavement with joni mitchell, neil young, bob dylan, and even great skaught serenading us. we camped under a tree with declicious berries which i helped myself to for breakfast the next morning cuz the firemen sed they never eat them. this is also where we found out that michael jackson has passed on from this world.

Kalamazoo to St. Joseph, MI

so we woke up and started singing the Kalamazoo Blues impromptu-style, you know just for fun, but in the end we did experience some real kalamazoo blues. somehow we spent approximately 4 hours in search of groceries and the start of the KalHaven bike trail, which, obviously, were both exceedingly difficult to find. but the kalhaven bike trail is beautiful- 35 miles out of kalamazoo west to the shore of lake michigan, on a shady and gravelly path.
we came out in south haven and got to spend the rest of the day biking south along the shore. we stopped at the lake for awhile and everything just looked absolutely brilliant! chicago looked a million miles away and knowing it was tomorrow's destination was just a bit mind boggling.
we camped right on the lakeshore in a town called st. joseph, about 15 feet from some railroad tracks that trains enjoy using around 3 and 4 in the morning. we split an entire loaf of garlic bread with way too much country crock at dinner. the sky and the lake were GAHHHHHH that good.

St. Joseph to Chi-town!

muffins and coffee for breakfast awwwww yea! phil got a free mug from the grandma across the street who offered us the coffee.
we made sweet tie all morning and stopped for lunch at the touristy beach town of new buffalo, mi, which is rite on the border of mi and indiana. totally a tri-state day today, michigan indiana and illinois yo. anywho, we crossed into IN and were soon greeted by a massive nuclear power plant with houses and a playground like 100 feet away, super reassuring.
soon after that we came upon mt. baldy, a massive sand dune that is moving toward the highway at a rapid pace; i wish the people there the best of luck with that. we had so much fun running, rolling, and jumping, and front-handspringing down the massive slope of the dune, it was so steep!!! i had to climb up it on all fours. and then there was the lake michigan water... warm and clear and fresh! we even drank it, which a friend later found to be utterly disgusting but oh well. we had a somersaulting conest and i won 8 to 7 even tho i kept my nose plugged with one hand.
our next stop was gary indiana, and yes, there is video footage of us singing the song rite at the welcome sign. we spent an hour trying to find michael jackson's family's house. we never found it, but we did find that gary is a very depressed, eerily empty and abandoned city. i have never really felt the way i did biking thru gary.. it was so desolate and even if you did see ppl walking together, they were seldom talking. heebeejeebees.
gary to chicago was only a couple hours' ride and we ha the time zone change in our favor. reaching chicago's lakefront was super exciting, especially for phil who most likely could not have calmed down if he had to. major beach party in chicago. we followed the lakeshore on a bike route. so many ppl out and about, some gathered around for a sweet drum circle.
around 9 we got to kelly's house, which is one of several co-ops in the area and is amazing! around 14 ppl share food and music and good times in a crazily-configured house that hasn't been remodeled since ike the 1880s. we're staying in kelly's sun porch for a couple of nights. they have a dog named bean too =0)

chicago to... chicago!
today i hopped on bus 6 downtown and met up with neil from the outdoor school!!!! we hung out all afternoon at Taste of Chicago, a huge food-frenzy where restaurants from all over the city are vendors in the same area so that you can sample food from a lot of them all in one place. we had spinach pizza, rainbow icecream, and cheesecake with strawberries... wicked good! phil met up with us in time to see the Wallflowers performing, too. then neil had to leave but phil and i went to an improv act at second city which was pretty funny. the whole area was abuzz with excitement because of the gay pride parade that took place during the day.
phil and i walked about halfway back to the co-op, maybe 4 or 5 miles, along the lakefront, splitting a pint of new york super fudge chunk en route. it was a beautiful nite! tomorrow we're biking 30 miles north to highland park to stay in neil's dad's house, neil's gonna meet up with us again woohoo!!!!

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

june 21-23

ummm so i think today is june 23rd yes it must be. we spent the day hangin out with Pete, another kid from Montana! he lives in Rochester, MI, about 26 miles north of Detroit. he lives in a suburban subdivision but there is an absolutely beautiful park a block from his house called the Stony Creek Metro Park where i walked around this afternoon. there are tons of trails and big trees and some crazy birds makin noises i've never heard before. i tried to do some meditation but there were mosquitoes and mountain bikers up the wazoo.
pete drove us into detroit and on the way we stopped at the Chrysler World Headquarters, which is a massive complex on 300 acres of land. the auto industry is falling apart tho, and unemployment is 15% in detroit and its population has gone from like 1.2 million to 700 million in the past five years. the city looks pretty depressed in a lot of areas but there are still a lot of super rich ppl living in the area too. we drove up to the river and could see ontario just across it, which is crazy i didnt know detroit was just a skinny river's throw from canada!
yesterday we spent the day biking from perrysburg mi (near toledo) toward detroit, but we only made it to about 20 miles south and then pete picked us up in a minivan so we could just roll our bikes right into the trunk. it was his birthday so phil and i ordered a birthday cheese pizza for him right before he got to us. unfortunately we were so hungry that it was phil and i who ended up eating basically the entire birthday pizza. we biked past michigan's only nuclear power plant, which looked pretty intense and high in temperature.
the day before that we biked from vermilion to perrysburg i believe. perrysburg is the hometown of a woman named Susan who hosted us with only a few hours notice. we got to her house around 9 and she made us some pasta and salad and leftover chicken and roasted vegetables and then gave us strawberries and ice cream for dessert... dang! she loves photography and has covered all the walls in her house with hers' and other people's photos. she is also a wine aficionado. she left at 6:30am so she had said goodbye to us the night before, but she came home on her lunch break and we were still at her house hahaha. we didn't actually leave till like 2.
supposedly tomorrow we're starting a new precedent and leaving at 9am. we're only goin' about 50 miles to the college town of Ann Arbor, but we wanna be able to check it out during the day, and we also wanna prepare ourselves for the 100 mile day after that where we try to make it from Ann Arbor to Kalamazoo.
i can't believe we've already gotten ourselves into michigan with only a couple short rides here and there! my body feels full of energy, like it's radiating energy, and i never feel very tired or sore or anything. i couldn't ask for better health! my body feels very alive, i think it was meant to do this type of thing.
i am trying to spend a lot more time appreciating the earth and looking at it as a living being in all aspects. every time we take a break i just love to lie in the grass and have my whole body on the earth's surface and just kind of imagine it breathing under me and around me.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

June 20th

after saying goodbye to Sarah and Aaron and their four cats, one of which lovingly clawed me a few hours before leaving on the bottom of my foot, we set out for the shore of Lake Erie so that we could follow the shoreline all day on Route 6. We stopped at a bike shop called Century Cycles to do some adjustments in a biker-intellectual setting, and they asked if they could take our picture and put it on their blog which is pretty sweet. i forget the blog's website tho hahaha. we got down to the lake and it was a beautiful, windy day along the shoreside. we stopped to go down to the water a couple of different times and went in once, even though there was a High Water Quality Advisory Level hahaha. the water is not very cold at all, it just felt beautiful and i couldn't tell it was gross.
we made it pretty quickly to Vermilion where we were stopping for the night at a warmshowers home. there was another bike tourer staying at their house too; her name is Gretchen and she is retired and doing a long solo ride, which is pretty sweet. the parents of the house are Sam and Susan, a coroner/bike and espresso aficionado and a track coach/former amazing runner who still runs for fun. they took us downtown at night for the fish festival, which attracts 100,000 people with tons of vendors and boat parades and music. we got to see one of the boat parades traveling thru the canals, and there were so many people out it was really cool.
Sam the coroner showed us pictures of people after the accidents that caused their deaths and it was pretty disturbing, it set phil and i off on a long conversation of whether we are living our lives exactly the way we want to, sounds morbid but it is a good thing to think about every once in awhile haha. sam cooked a special dish just for me because im a pain in the arse vegetarian. he is an amazing chef, we are seriously so spoiled on this trip its not even funny. amazing and large meals, super comfortable beds, hot showers every day, sightseeing with the people who know the area... absolutely ridiculous.
today (june 21st) we're headed 75 miles west to toledo and tomorrow we're staying with another WRFI-ite named Pete, and its his birthday tomorrow too! Yippee! He lives about 25 miles north of Detroit, in Rochester. But we were supposed to see another WRFI-ite in Ohio and it looks like that's not gonna work out =0( alas.

Friday, June 19, 2009

18-21

day 18 WAS A TUESDAY. and on it we just hung out in pittsburgh, city of steel making. it has a shit ton of steel bridges and two rivers going thru it, the monongahela and the allegheny. it was a wonderful day of just exploring the city and i spent a lot of time by the allegheny river being crafty with some paper birch tree bark. michelle was really fun to be with and made me laugh really hard.

day 19 WAS A WEDNESDAY and also phil's birthday, which we celebrated at midnite but after that, sadly, kind of had to leave thoughts of it behind because of the intensity of the day. it was about 80 miles from michelle's house to youngstown, ohio, where we would be staying with a couple in their 60s named Peg and Frank from warmshowers.org. however, what made this day so crazy was that it rained about 2 inches, the most rain the area has seen in like a year. the shoulders had rivers running down them by the end of the day and lawns were flooded and all of our stuff was absolutely soaked. luckily we actually had a really good time in it, and even extended our ride on purpose a teeny bit at the end. the sky looked crazy and everything was reflecting off the clouds and the sky would not get dark!
peg and frank are super nice. peg gave me dry clothes and we got showers and a dinner of spaghetti, bread and butter, salad, and beer, phil's first legal beer. we talked with them til like 1am and Frank fixed up our bikes like whoa, including replacing my three broken spokes. so nice main. he biked the first couple miles out with us in the morning too. he is actually a bicycle safety instructor and has some very interesting philosophies, including endless reasons why wearing a helmet is dumb. if u care to hear i will gladly tell u but there's too much to say for rite now.

day 20 we went 80 miles from youngstown to cleveland, leaving at like 1pm which was a dangerous decision. we went thru cuyahoga national park which was beautiful. by the time we got to cleveland it was getting dark, so our friend Sarah from WRFI (the montana trip phil and i both went on) and her husband drove out a few miles to help us out and pick us up! they have been our wonderful hosts for the past 2 days, feeding us indian food, taking us sightseeing, helping me find a harmonica strap so i can play harmonica while biking, etc. good times good times =0) they have four cats and one slept on me/in my sleeping bag/on my pillow last nite, its name is blitz.
on the nite of day 21 aka today i got to see friends from the outdoor school!!!!! it felt so good!!!!! and 3 more of them live in chicago, where we mite b in a week or two, so im super amped =0)

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

days 15-17

15th diawell win we lift ryder's house it was to meet ourselves up with 50 miles of hills, gee golly gee. the highest point we reached was called the tuscarora summit at about 2100 feet, but the whole day was just endless ups and downs with 1 or 2,000 feet or elevation change not being very uncommon! the fun has only just begun according to the rumors on the street too, and wen we look west all we see are hills.2nite we're sleeping under the stars in a Mennonite family's yard. They are incredibly nice and respectful, and they love to meet strangers and wish the world was still a place where being hospitable to strangers was perfectly common and acceptable. the kids were really shy but excited that we were there so they kept kind of half secretly spying on what we were doing. the dad is elijah, the mom is brenda, "the boy" (that's how they refer to him) is daniel, and he was out hunting groundhogs when we got to their house, and the girls are marinda and melody. sleeping under the stars for the first time in awhile feels beautiful.16 16 16today we were back on the bikes by 8:30.... which previous to this point was absolutely unthinkable! our goal was 100 miles across endless hills and mountains to a connection we made with someone in greensburg, pa. however, it was not to be.we started out really strong, climbin the hills like it was our job. worked up a hefty appetite and got footlong subs at subway at 10am. the lady making sandwiches told phil he was not allowed to get vegetables on his sandwich and he believed her. then, not 2 minutes later, she told him he could actually only pick out 2 vegetables, and again he fell for it. pretty hilarious.we had to climb multiple 2,000 ft. + peaks today, with zero flat stretches! at one of the summits we stopped to check out the view and talk with some members of a military convoy who were stopped there for a break. we could see 3 states- pa, md and wv. the military convoy had left D.C. the day before and it is taking a 26-day journey across the country to San Francisco. lots of people were lined up along us Route 30, the road we've been on for a large portion of PA, to wave to the convoy as it traveled by. we neglected to ask them what exactly the purpose of their journey is, tho, oops.so yea, route 30 thru western PA = masochism on a bike. at the top of a 3,000 foot summit phil's chain snapped, but with no prior experience and very little outside help (but thanks Pa!!!!) he was able to rehabilitate it and get his bike back in working order. however, the delay forced us to give up our initial plan and instead pitch a tent behind a closed store in Jennerstown, PA, still 30 miles outside Greensburg (our original destination) and 60 outside Pittsburgh. it was across the street from a burger king so needless to say we did some damage there. i told phil to write about it on his blog about our search for a green america hhahaha. his blog's url is www.agreenamerica.wordpress.com if you guys wanna check it out.day 17 aka monday aka yesterdayThe hills are alive with the sound of music! And tons of eating! and sweat and grime and burning quads! 60 miles into pittsburgh and we made it!!! our first stop was an ice cream shop called Oh Yeah! and we just sat there for awhile celebrating our arrival in a semi-delirious state. one of the highlights of the day's ride was a 3-mile downhill with a 9% grade the whole way. we were cruisin' at like 40-50mph the whole way and i was just laughing to myself while tears streamed down my face cuz of the wind.now we're couchsurfing with a girl named michelle, who just got into the phD program for chemical engineering at the university of pittsburgh and has a huge exam in a couple of weeks so she's just studying studying studying. we're just hangin' out in pittsburgh on tuesday, takin' the day off woohoo! while phil is getting his bike checked out at a bike shop im baking a cake for his birthday on wednesday... pretty sneaky if i do say so myself.

days 12-13

Day 12~ WindsdeeWe stayed up til 4am hanging out with Sam's friends (Sam is the couchsurfer we're stayin' with). It was so much fun, I spent most of the time just laughing at everyone's antics. At midnite this kid Joe showed me how you can go down to the pretzel factory down the street from Sam's apt. and get 4 pretzels for a dollar cuz they're hot off the press... there were like 50 kids with bikes just hanging out outside the factory eating tons of pretzels with all kinds of good toppings. so good.in the morning, sam's younger brother jack helped us make sure our bikes were in top shape with his mechanical expertise and his love of bicycle perfection. he fit me to my bike and rewrapped my handlebars with old inner tubes, which actually works amazingly well and is super waterproof! phil's bike is newly acquired from a used bike shop called Firehouse bikes, so he got some adjustments done on it too. but it is riding great and phil is actually like twice as fast now with a road bike that was built for touring instead of a mountain bike.On our way out of Philly we checked out a fair trade market in the Reading Terminal, with a pretty suave jazz pianist tearin' up the keys. then we hopped on a bike trail that took us 20 miles west to Valley Forge, bringing our 4-day visit to Philly to its inevitable end. on the bike trail we met an old guy riding a recumbent-type bike that was only a few inches off the ground. he let me try it out and it was suuuuper comfortable, but slightly freaky cuz everything seems to happen fsater when you're closer to the ground.around 8:30 we biked into a campground, but it was pretty much abandoned and creepy as hell. so a bit further down the road we asked a lady for some yard space and she offered us a spot under her pine tree. we scared her a little but she was really nice and genuine and after looking at our ids she seemed content to trust us.Day 13 (Thursday)Today was WETTTT. we continued following this pre-mapped out bike route that leads you west across the state of PA with convenient and easy-to-follow signage.... how nice is that! some crazy hills, our first taste of Amish country, and some massive rains that pervaded all of our shit and lead us to the dryers of a Lancaster laundromat. while i dried our stuff in Lancaster, Phil was blogging at a coffee shop and while doing so he found someone on warmshowers.org who was willing to host us rite then and there. Her name is Heidi and she is super nice and reminded me of a cross between Betsy and Anna (aka amazing). we had dinner with her, her roommate, and her roommate's fiance, and then i went for a walk thru Franklin and Marshall's campus. at 9 we went a few blocks down the road to see ironman in the park for free; it's a good thing it was free cuz it's the lamest movie ever.now we're back at heidi's house where it's beautifully warm and dry, and yet again i am just marveling at the amazing amount of kindness that has been bestowed on us in the past 2 weeks, a lot of the time from complete strangers. i only hope i can pass it on.a guy named nate asked me for my number today while i was out walking. it was weird cuz we only talked for like 30 seconds but i actually felt like we were really connected somehow. hahhaa who knows, it's impossible to tell in 30 seconds.Dia CatorceWe left Heidi's house around 10 and biked a couple blocks to the Central Market, which is like Lancaster's big indoor farmer's market. on the way we met a guy nnamed mike, who has done multiple xc bike trips in obscenely short amounts of time (think 1-2 weeks), and he's also spent a whole year biking the perimeter of the US... guh!phil went into central market while i listened to this kid Dmitri play guitar rite outside. he just moved here from russia a week ago as an exchange student, and he has an amazing voice! all his songs were in russian becuase he's just learning english. he played Russia's national song, and a song about "big love between one guy and two women". then another guy who was watching, and i, busted out our harmonicas and a trio was formed... it was so much fun!!!! all these little kids came by too, and they were dancing and it was hilarious and beautiful. dmitri asked if i would show him around lancaster, but i said i was leaving, so i just gave him my email address and he sed he would write, hehehe.we made some good time thru-out the day, and realized we could get to gettysburg pretty easily. ryder only lives 8 miles outside of gettysburg, in fairfield, and we called up bets and ryder to ask if we could stay there, and just like that we were hooked up again. we hung out in gettysburg for a few hours, mostly at a coffee shop with wifi. i talked to a kid named jay for like an hour about how traveling completely alters your life every single time you live somewhere new... it was pretty cool, he had just spent a year in egypt. then i talked to another guy about how gettysburg is becoming more and more about commercial possibility than anything else.we got to ryder's house just in time for phil to watch the end of the hockey game with the musselman family. they were incredibly nice and funny and we got to hang out with the chickens and goats and have a paul simon singalong with cody, ryders sister.

days 10-11

Day 10~ mondaywe spent all day in philly and it was absolutely marvelous. i had most of the day to explore on my own while phil worked on his blog in a pizza place w/free wifi and wicked good mediterranean pizza and salad.while we were still biking downtown from brian's house, we stopped for a few minutes outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art and I started talking to a middle-aged man selling water to tourists. He had a necklace with a huge bicycle and so we had something to talk about right off the bat. I told him a lot about our trip and he was really excited for us, but said he would never be invited to stay at stranger's homes the way we were, because the races don't mix like that. I realized i agreed with him and i also realized that based on my very limited time in philly it still seems super segregated b/c of socioeconomic status. you can pretty much assume that in rougher looking neighborhoods, 99% of the population is black, and that it is white people residing in the nicer areas.we went to the main branch of the philadelphia free library, which is a massive beautiful building like so many others here. we basically only went into the cafe b/c we were hungry and just looking to access the internet. the first thing the lady in the cafe said to me was something like, "I'm feeling so happy right now it shouldn't be legal". These are my favorite types of conversations to engage in. She is 50 and "romance is rekindling in her life for the first time in awhile", and she is pretty sure she is about to be accepted into grad school to become a children's librarian, which is her dream job. I just loved being around her b/c it was obvious how happy and excited she was to be alive.It felt like everywhere I went I was meeting people like this and maybe it sounds stupid but I felt like my roommate Maya's spirit was right there with me all day maybe b/c she has spent so much time in Philly. I felt as happy and liberated and invincible as I did at the OUtdoor School for the first time since the season ended. I just felt really open and receptive to giving and receiving love all day long and I'm pretty sure the feeling is here to stay.I did a very historical tour of Philly and saw places like Franklin's grave, the house where Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, the first US Supreme Court house, and the Liberty Bell. It is a very touristy area and I felt like a definite tourist. The Liberty Bell doesn't seem to be in its prime anymore. It is in an artificial-feeling building and it just chills right above the ground at the opportune height for people to snap photos of each other with it. Maybe this is a negative way to look at it, but I felt like a lot of its symbolism was lost amongst people who just wanted to snap lots of photos. Probably I'm generalizing just a little too much here tho.The people we're staying with are wicked nice and funny and Phil's bike got stolen but they said we could stay as long as we need to, or want to. They also offered a couple of bikes to him, gave us sympathy muffins and beer, and are just super fun and nice people, amazing people. So good.But now it is Day 11 and Phil got a new bike and we's back in biznass. THe people in this house are sick, we are at the corner of Federal Street and 6th Street. We went out to a $300 dollar dinner with Phil's relatives who are visiting the states from Jersey, and one of his relatives pulled my chair out and in and kissed my hand at the end of the night. jeezus.

days 8-9

Day 8, saaaturdayToday we left all of the relatives behind for good. Phil's mom drank coffee and was feeling sentimental but she was doing pretty well considering those 2 things combined. Phil's dad continued an extended conversation about his various life philosophies... I think he chose the right major (he's going to school right now for the first time for philosophy)We left at 1 with 62 directions off of a pedestrian-friendly google maps route. we went right by scotch plains again and didn't leave that area til like 4pm, tho it was only about 20 miles south or so from cedar grove... whoooops. i thought the ride was absolutely beautiful... perfect day, good smells surrounding us from endless eateries. But the whole day it only got nicer and nicer! We went thru New Brunswick, home of Rutgers, which is a pretty hoppin' place even now when school's not in session. Got on 130 South which is a cruisin' road for sure. We decided to take a break and lie down in the grass around 7, in what seems to have been a sewage field. If we knew we were still about 25 miles away or that Phil would bike over a nail and puncture his tire, we might not have taken said break. But the night ridin' was wicked sweet as we biked into a much more rural New Jersey. Phil's roommate Paul and his girlfriend Dani met us a few miles from Paul's house on their bikes and led us the rest of the way to their house in Chesterfield, NJ, which is a beautiful beautiful beautiful place. So green and open, smells so good. I'd love to live in a place like that if my friends and family were there.Day 9, sundeeThe day started off amazingly when Paul made veggie and/or meat omelettes that we wrapped in tortillas with melted cheese on them. Add some wicked sugary coffee and some sauteed arugula from the backyard and you are in business, my friend.Paul's whole family minus his brother left their house with us around 1. We stayed on local roads for awhile and biking doesn't get any better than it does in a place like this! Paul's dad, Marty, was barefoot. His mom Martha was bringing up the rear but she kept us just fine. Two dogs chased us that Paul said chase everybody who ever passes that house. Good job owners, good job.Paul led us most of the way toward Philly with the occassional glance at a map. We decided to cross over from NJ to PA at the Palmyra bridge, because it is one of the few with a pedestrian path. NJ officially ends and PA officially begins halfway across the bridge; the states share the Delaware River.We stopped for a 3:00 or 4:00 lunch at a nature park right on the river at the bridge crossing. I went in the river... not too cold but not too clean either. Still my legs and arms came out cleaner for it.The bridge was beautiful... you could see downtown a few miles to the left, and the river below was sparkling. We got into Philly in a pretty low income area that extended for awhile and kind of reminded me of the Dominican in a lot of ways. But in about 10 or 15 minutes, as we approached downtown, we left the rougher area behind for the most part. We rode the hilly part of Philly up to Paul's girlfriend's sister's boyfriend's house (Brian), at the top of a hill on Rector St. We had just missed a 160-mile long international bike race that took place thru the city during the daytime. Everyone was outside using it as an excuse to party.We dropped off our stuff and biked back down the hill with Brian so that we could escort Paul to the bridge that would take him to the light rail that would take him back home. We followed a super nice trail along the Delaware River and got to go thru beautiful parts of the city. So many beautiful, humungous buildings, many of them very old. So much open space, so much green, trees and parks, fountains and statues, dang. Tomorrow we're exploring the city all day.We split a whole pizza at Mom's Pizza, which was back near Brian's house. There was an actual mom at the register who completely spoiled us; she kept telling us to relax and Phil even got a brief back massage. After downing a whole pie we thought it fitting to get some ice cream. I could feel my stomach expanding uncomfortably but it did not deter me in the slightest. The moon was full either yesterday or today and both nights it was big and glowing and yellowish-orange and beautiful. Phil trucked it back up the hill in the excitement of not having his trailer attached to his bike. I barely made it up the hill with my once loose-fitting fanny pack now cutting into my expanded stomach. But we made it back and that is that. Yay Philly!

cant find days 1-3, startin with 4 harharhar

I took a 4-day hiatus from writing while we visited all our relatives these past few days. On Tuesday, we biked from my grandma gloria's house in seaford long island to my grandpa jack's house in queens, ny. he took us to lunch at the cross bay diner, which is the only place we ever really go, and a short burst of rain passed over while we were eating and hangin out with gramps. it stopped around 5 just as we were ready to leave... good karma. biking toward manhattan was cool because we could just watch it looming ever closer as we approached it for about 10 miles. it didn't look as intimidating as it normally does, not as imposing for some reason. we sang the 59th street bridge song while we thought we were crossing the 59th street bridge (also called the queensboro bridge). we thought we had the right to comment on how ugly the bridge was and how we couldn't understand why anyone, let alone 2 people as great as simon and garfunkel, would write a song about it. turns out we were just on a bridge that approaches the 59th street bridge, which ended up being much more legit and actually crossing over water (we seem to have forgotten about that on the other bridge hahaha).we biked over to central park and i got to travel through it for the first time, in my memory at least, which we all know is faulty. it is huge and peaceful and definitely has a totally out-of-the-city feel to it. we crossed thru it and came out on the west side, where phil's uncle marvin lives at 100th street. it is a super nice neighborhood and we decided not to even take the wheels/seat posts off our bikes overnight. phil even accidentally left a bag with a lot of his valuables on marvin's neighbor's windowsill, but it was left untouched from about 7pm to 11pm and it was even unzippered the whole time hahaha ridiculous.marvin's apt. is basically a museum sitting on top of a synagogue. he has collected more cameras, clocks, artwork, model cars, photos, etc than he can fit in the apt anymore. he loves to drink orangeade, the closest thing to orange juice without potassium (he only has one kidney and he can't have potassium). he showed us old photos and told lots of stories... let's just say he's a ladies' man who has traveled far and wide, maybe had a 2-day affair with a supermodel, you know things like that.the next marnin we biked over the George Washington bridge, which is absolutely ginormous yet still shakes and sways a bit with all the traffic and the wind. i guess that's what bridges are supposed to do but it still makes you feel a bit uncomfortable. we stopped in the middle to look around... on our left was a really good view of the cityscape, to the right the hudson river, behind us the bronx, in front of us NJ. we had to carry our bikes and all our shit up and down a lot of stairs, but i think i'm stronger for it.it started to rain as we got into nj and weaved our way across the random streets that google maps recommended pedestrians should take. it was my 1st taste of biking in the rain and it really wasn't that bad. we went to dunkin donuts for the 2nd time on the trip, which has by now led to a 3rd time since yesterday was national donut day. got to phil's house around 4.... his parents are wicked nice and it has been really good just chillin here for 3 days. i went to my cousins' house one night in scotch plains which was wicked fun and got to see julia's chorus conert, which she was wicked enthused about, and borrow her pants which fit me so comfortably that i was wicked enthused too. their dog benji is a job and a half to manage and so is their 11 year old dog Murphy nowadays because he is so sick, but they seem not to mind each other and they're both good dogs in entirely opposite ways.on friday i met phil's grandma, Omi, who used to be a pediatrician, but is now 86. she is still on top of her game though, that's for sure. now it is saturday, one week from the day i started. and we're off to philly WOOHOO!