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)