1st crash!

Yes we all know I am not the most graceful of people. So need it be surprising that I was the one to fall off their bike first? No, I think not. First let me say that I am fine. I have some pretty cool bruises on my lower left leg and I am missing a little skin from my right arm--just a little.

It all started with a hill, an exceeded speed limit (of the b.o.b. trailer), and some rail road tracks, which all equals a recipe for a disaster. As it turns out the company who manufactures the trailers knows what they are talking about when they tell you not to exceed 25 mph. I lost control around 29, which I know some of you probably didn't want to know (sorry mom). Anyway, all my gear is fine for the most part. A little more duct tape has been added to the trailer bag, my rear axle has been replaced, and my shifters bent back into place. I was pretty darn lucky, though I am beginning to suspect that by the end of this trip my trailer bag will be more duct tape then anything else. will

Ivan had been behind me; I can't say for sure what his experience of the whole thing was, but he helped me get my bike out of the road and got me the first aid kit so I could bandage my arm. He told me later that he had stopped and watched the whole thing, thinking to himself that he could go and help me. "But you were already moving," he said. "Even on the ground you were so independent."

Anyway I am currently in a small town in Virginia called Mineral. We are camped out at the fire station, and I am watching the most beautiful sunset. It is unbelievable.

Have a great night everyone.

You only start twice

In all of our excitement getting this trip on the way, some of the finer details have been left by the wayside, much like our hygienic habits. We've had two starts, to be honest. The one where we dipped our bikes in the Atlantic ocean (which I'll get to soon, promise), and the first start, the true start according to Nikki, when we stepped outside the our cool air conditioned not-Hilton hotel room into balmy Richmond.

We were jumping out if the nest, using our wings for the first time, and it showed. We hobbled and wobbled through the streets. There's a reason that parking lots have multiple entrances, and we missed quite a few of them.

Our first goal was a map of Virginia. "But Ivan, you suave and hairy man-beast," you say, "your phone has the interwebs! This is the future! No one has used paper since the American Revolution!" I once thought like you too, clever straw man. Paper doesn't run out of batteries or lose signal ever. It just tears and gets moist occasionally. Easily avoided. Maybe. What I'm saying is we bought one from a convenience store. It is more of a road map when we need a bit more of a path and campy map, but whatever. It makes us look purposeful whenever we stop for breaks on the side of the highway.

Which we did. Quite often, that first day.

One of the most notable breaks had to do with food, as is usually the case. On the Richmond University campus I opted for Chipotle, while girl-biker chose the conveniently located Panera next door. This is all fascinating in a mundane sort of way, we were in one of the most historical brick buildingest states, after all. But that is where we met Not-Brad. Which is important.

Not-Brad sought us out. He saw our bikes outside, and sought out the two equally silly dressed riders who owned thkem. He was about to head out to Idaho to start his own cross country route with his family. Terribly friendly, he was full of good news. We swapped stories, good practice for the hundreds of times we'll have to repeat introductions.

He gave us his card and said if we needed anything between then and... well, today, then he'd be happy to help. But now he's off on his own trip and I wish him the best of luck. Fingers crossed that we run into each other in some of the middle states. One of them, at most. More would be too confusing.

The rest of the ride was guesswork. I had an improbable goal, and the weather knew it. We rode a bike path out of downtown and onto a few roads that collectively were known as "something 5." Route, highway, road, not sure. After we were sure that we were roasted enough, we stopped at what we thought was a campsite according to the map. But the little teepee deceived us, and there was no camp (but there was, and you know that). Instead there was a hunting/fishing building that is the most environmentally friendly building that I know of, because there are signs about it EVERYWHERE. The lady inside (air conditioned) was kind enough to let us camp out back and use their ice and all that. We've talked about that. It was an eye opening experience. I had way too much not food, but I was more thirsty than anything, and there was plenty of water.

Then some other stuff happened, which we'll still write about. Then today happened, which was fantastic.

But damn it all, I'm in the middle of the sound system version of dueling banjoes. I can't think straight. I think Nikki is trying to sleep, and there is a hell of a party to our right blasting country music. And now the truck pulling a boat out of the water to our left thinks it needs to blast 90s music. Full blast. Impossibly loud. No one could sit in that truck and stand it loud.

No matter, it's their day too, and they don't have places to be tomorrow. We'll sleep somehow. I'll write about the start if the trail in a few weeks or something. This is a conversational travelogue.

Bugs I've killed with my thumbs on the touch screen while typing this: 9

11 Thing's I Have Learned

Here are a few essential things I have learned/discovered so far:

1) people do weird things in public bathrooms like plucking all of their eyebrows and dyeing their hair.

2) it doesn't matter if you have a chest or junk in your trunk, so to speak, a six year old will still ask you if you are a boy, looking perplexed at your bald head.

3) bag balm (butt ointment) will become your best friend.

4) the boy on the trip will make fun of you for how much stuff you have brought along, but then he will use your pliers, tent repair tape, sunburn cream, leatherman, and stove.

5) you will become disturbingly comfortable with disturbing bugs.

6) you will he surprised when the day comes when your butt isn't the partook your anatomy that hurts the most at the end of the day.

7) shaving your head will become the best decision you have ever made.

8) "clean" is all relative.

9) you can burn your sunburn.

10) your new favorite thing will be to walk into the campground shower fully clothed, shower, and walk out again without drying. You will do this more times than is proper--probably depriving a whole third world country of their drinking water for at least the next ten years.

11) your biking partner will not appreciate your rather wonderful rendition of Janis Joplin's Merzedes Benz. He will not like it so much that he will slow down till he is fifty feet behind you--obviously a BIG indication of his bad taste.

1st casualty!

A squirrel tried to eat my b.o.b. bag-- below is a picture of some of the remaining pieces. Ok he really just ate a hole through the side in order to eat a squeeze tube of peanut butter and chocolate whey protein. So if hard waterproof plastic isn't safe to leave food in what do we do with it? Ivan is being gallant and sleeping with my b.o.b bag in his tent. My tent is a one woman tent while Ivan's can hold two people (or one human and all our gear). So four days into the trip and we have suffered our first gear casualty. Luckily the squirrel was considerate and chewed through at the best place possible: the bag is still fully water proof, with the help of a little duct tape, and is still fully functional.

I would like to take a moment and make a list of the people who we have encountered out here that have been willing to help us. Our first night in the wild we stopped at a fish and wildlife station to ask how much further it was to a camp ground. They told us that the camp ground we were looking for did not exist. I think the two ladies at the counter saw that I was done in and offered to let us to camp on the forest service's property. Then in the morning they let us take showers, fill up all our water containers, and gave us each a bag of lavender cookies (mine were delicious and a squirrel thought Ivan's were too).

The night before last we stayed at a camp ground along a river I can neither say nor spell. While we were there I ran into a woman in the bathroom. She was wearing a floral print top, reminiscent of Hawaii, and dyeing her hair. She told me that she came to this camp ground every year with her family, though now she lived most of the time in Hawaii. She then invited me and Ivan over for a cook out she was having. After watching three or four cars drive towards her camping spot we decided to meandering on down ourselves where we were greated with beer, hot dogs, burgers, and key lime cheese cake. We also met what felt like her whole family.

Everyone was so nice and welcoming. We were offered a place to stay in Richmond when we head back that way. I sat and talked with Maria (whose full name I think was Rose Maria?). She is going into her senior year of high school; she has started looking at colleges. She is so passionate and has such great ideas. It was interesting to think back five years to what I was like then, and see where I am now. As for Maria, she is a girl--young woman--who is going to go far...I flatter myself in thinking that I see some of myself in her.

We are currently staying near Yorktown; today was a rest day and then tomorrow we will turn around and officially start the Transamerican bike route. Ivan keeps insisting that we haven't started yet, but the hundred miles on my cyclometer and my sore butt say otherwise. We are hoping to make it back to Richmond in two days and then on to new territory after that. I am beginning to come to terms with the fact that this is what we will be doing all summer, and I am happy about it. We have met the neatest people, seen some beautiful country and history, and if anything it was worth coming out here for the fireflies. They start lighting up around 7 or 8, and it is magical. They make you think about fairies and magical flying dust. They are an emblem of the quintessential American childhood--the rosey-cheeked boy who can't stop smiling into his mason jar that glows with captured insects. I guess that is part of the reason I am doing this: to experience the America I don't know. I am hoping as I go along more pieces to the "nikki's reasons for doing insane things puzzle" will fall into place. 

I shalt not kill...

Ivan. I promise--because his last post seems to indicate that he might not live very long after deleting my first, and thus far, only post. To tell the truth I am too endorphined-up to care.

That's the best thing about this trip--the endorphins. I may be exhausted, my butt hurts, my hands hurt, my shoulders hurt, my knees hurt, and I have one hell of a sunburn, but truth be told I am happy about it. But then again this is only the end of day two, and the soreness is only going to get worse before it gets better.

Day two and about 56 miles into it. Virginia is beautiful; everything is so green. All the corn fields are about as tall as I am, and the wheat has turned its lovely golden color. With all this green there are bugs abound. The ground crawls, but I think because I am outside, I know I will be outside for the next couple months, and I know I will have to deal with them I can handle it. It's the intruders in the home, the many legged trespassers that bother me. But out here they don't bother me that much--I even picked up a spider, who was in my tent, and put him outside...without screaming.

The weather--is insane. Don't get me wrong it is beautiful here, but it is so hot and so humid. I am sweating more than I ever have. I can't keep sunscreen on. As soon as I lather myself up, I sweat it off. If I stopped biking to put on sunscreen every time I actually needed to, I would still be sitting outside the train station in Richmond. And it brings up this question: what is worse, getting skin cancer from the sun or putting on heavy metal enriched cream all over your body, which by the way is also carcinogenous?

It is hard to think about this trip in its entirety: three months, 4200 miles, biking practically everyday. It is daunting; it makes each pedal stroke and each breath of air feel like a trap that I am drowning in. It is too much. So I have to think about all of this one day at a time--one mile at a time. I may not have the mental strength for this, to push myself mile after mile, but I am stubborn enough. I said I would do this, so I will. But I am learning that strength and stubbornness are not the same thing.

My bad

Accidentally deleted Nikki's post. She probably won't be too thrilled. I blame Blogger, by the way.

If this is my last post while alive, well, that'd be lame.

$46, Cash

We have had a heck of a time getting across the country, not gonna lie.

We bought our train tickets a few months ahead of time, just to be safe. That was the big thing to get us to commit. If we had train tickets, expensive train tickets, then chickening out would be more embarrassing. So that was that. Logistically our journey was now out of our hands and in the clutches of a higher authority. A vengeful authority.

Maybe it was a compassionate move to get us to spend more time with our families, to be better prepared. Whatever it was, it was overkill.

The day before we were scheduled to leave, we each received a phone call informing us that our train had been cancelled. Bless her, Nikki was already on the phone with Amtrak getting us the next possible ride out there. That particular route had been closed for the previous 2+ weeks. The route through Colorado was covered in landslides. The route through Montana was flooded. And Arizona was on fire. A higher power, indeed.

Yup. So we had to wait a few days. Good. Neither of us was really ready.

Because of the natural disasters, all of the freight was routed our direction. Which meant we stopped pretty often. Which meant we were seven hours late into Chicago. Which, who cares? We have no schedule. Everyone else did, so we got to listen to that for a few days.

Amtrak came through. At the station they had a charter bus waiting to take us to the Hilton and they gave us 46 bucks to have dinner with. Very nice of them. We didn't use it at all. Save it for later.

The hotel was too good to be true. We saw a group of old Vietnamese ladies in ball gowns, and a roided out bodybuilder walking in the lobby at one in the morning. Our room was even better. Seventh floor, spectacular view of the parking garages from the airport, and more pillows than we knew what to do with. After a movie we promptly passed out. Greatness.

We got to spend most of the next day waiting in line to have our tickets changed and going out to lunch with AJ, who happens to be going to school there. He showed us around. I like Chicago, but it's way too big for me. The pizza was awesome. I'm a believer.

The next ride was uneventful, or I can't remember it at all. We wound up spending a whole afternoon in DC, which I never cared about until I knew that I would be going there. Then I was frothing with anticipation. Storing our bags while we explored was stupid pricey, so I got to carry around my saddlebags for a few hours. They came with terrible shoulder straps, but it worked. Nikki got to see a friend that she hadn't seen in years, which was great. She knows people everywhere so far.

What else is there to say about the capitol, really? It was muggy outside, and most of it is outside, so we got to enjoy that. One more train ride, a hop, really. And we were in Richmond, VA, the freak deaky substitute starting point of our trip. We were finally reunited with our luggage and after putting our bikes back together, we wandered around in the middle of the night until we found our hotel. We're done with our Amtrak journey. The real trip is just beginning.

Beginning yesterday morning, rather. You get the idea.

Wait, what?

The idea: Ride a bicycle from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific coast.

Such a large idea distilled into one sentence. Sounds simple enough, and really, it is. Mine and Nikki's only responsibility for the next three month is to make sure we get back home across the country safely. We'll have gone crazy, and be sick of each other, but if we're alive and have all of our limbs, mission accomplished.

I'm still trying to figure out blogging on my phone. I love the future! If it works as well as I hope, expect to see regular updates from myself and Nikki. If it proves to be temperamental, well, we'll keep you guys updated some other way. With all the Facebooks and the Twitters and the phone calls, we are going to be more connected than ever.

We'd love to hear from you all as well. It will keep us motivated and homesick, which is what you all really want, yeah? Wouldn't want to drop off halfway across the country.