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!!!!

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.

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.

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)

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!