deadly rigs

upcoming ride for 02/11/2012

2012-02-07T19:52:00.000-08:00

Since attendance last week was pretty low and we have added some new faces to the rides, we have decided to just do a repeat of the paradise loop for this saturday. Having now done it myself, I can attest that it is a really nice, really easy ride for anyone who wants to hop on the training band wagon before things start getting real. The ride is really pretty and none of the hills are too harsh. So I stress this again, if you are not already a primo cyclist and you have interest in doing these weekly rides... you should consider joining us on this one before the mileage gets out of bounds for beginners.

Per usual, we will be meeting at sports basement in the presidio at 9am. Rolling out by 9:20.

here comes a link to the ride! http://www.aidslifecycle.org/training-ride/library/tib-loop-from-sports-basement.pdf

The Tortoise and the Hares

2012-02-06T22:36:00.001-08:00

I'm now officially a Deadly Rigs maniac, aka blog contributor. Word. AIDS LifeCycle training is upon us. So…every Saturday morning, we ride. And every Saturday morning, I'm the only cyclist in our pack with bazoombas instead of balls. I wish there were a few more lady cyclists on the road, to offset the musky male spandex that whizzes by me weekly. Instead, I end up talking to the guys about whether or not to don underwear under cycling shorts (verdict: skip the undies).

Captains B. Steegs and Patchy Crawford are amazing cyclists, strong and athletic, with calves like Lance Amstrong's, only beefier. But when a pack of dudes rides, they race to the finish.

Here's my bike, sometimes far behind:

I am the tortoise in this fable. Slow and steady. According to Aesop, I'm supposed to win the race, right? As it were, the hare is quite a bit stronger than this tortoise, so I can never catch up. Those swift rabbits wait for me at the top of the hill. That's where they're supposed to curl up and nap til sundown, while I soar by in a graceful flash. But guess what. Cliff bars and five-hour energy shots weren't around in Aesop's day. The rabbits wait for me to catch up, only to zoom off again! It's motivating and definitely challenging, but a tad mentally discouraging too.

During the upcoming months of training, Aesop's fable will be rewritten my way. I don't even know what that means, but my subconscious is humming that "Rock Steady" song by the Whispers. Timeless:

We crushed a gorgeous 48-mile trek through Tiburon and Paradise Drive last weekend. Aside from the post-ride Little Chihuahua burrito, my favorite part of the day was rounding a bend only to see Brian peeing in the woods and waving at me with his free hand. For a short while, the tortoise was winning!

training: paradise loop volume 1

2012-02-06T20:58:00.001-08:00

Our training continues. After a little bit of a hiatus due to vacationing in ft. lauderdale where the young are OLD and the old are ANCIENT, I have gotten back in the saddle to continue training for the aids ride. Last saturday we took a lap around the paradise loop. According to many, this is one of san fran's favorite medium difficulty rides. This was, in my opinion, the first real training ride. The entire trip ended up being just under 50 miles as we left from sports basement in the presidio to head across the bridge, blast through saulsalito, head up a decent climb and down in to the tiburon peninsula. The ride was full of rolling hills and coastal views. It was a super pretty ride, and honestly pretty damn mellow. I enjoyed it. I think we are actually going to do it again this saturday since only 3 of us managed to make it for the ride last weekend. Going in to it, I wasn't sure if I was going to be sore, or exhausted, or what, by the end. Turns out I was none of the above. We got back and I felt completely normal. I wasn't even really tired. I guess this old man can still ride 50 miles and feel like a champion.

Here is a pic of my whip cold chillin by the water in rich person land:

Anyway, in other news. due to some stellar fundraising abilities... George and I have earned aids life cycle wind vests. Here we are looking hard as shit:

Lastly, I am going to get better at posting about our training rides on the blog starting NOW. You can check back here each week to see what is up with the rides. I will try to get the info posted by thursday nights as long as I don't get consumed by 1s and 0s at work.

Recap of Training Ride 1

2012-01-13T15:19:00.000-08:00

Hi, I'm George. I am going to ride on the AIDS Lifecycle with this crew of sellswords. I will probably be blogging too.

Training ride 1 was held on Saturday Jan 7th, the same day that I was going to celebrate my 30th birthday for the 4th time.

The 3rd time had been the friday night before, lasted until 2am, and I was feeling it. Woke up at 8:30 and rode to the meeting spot with no idea what to expect. I had been riding my bike to and from work for the last 5 months, but that was only a 10 minute ride. I hadn't done a ride across the bridge in almost a year.

We met at the east-side of the pan handle, the statue. It was Brian, Jessica, Pat, Andy, Jason, and me. Brian showed up on his road bike looking pro & metal at the same time. Pat wore some kind of old school 70s cyclist getup. Jason and I looked like we were going to work. I was the only one not wearing shorts, I was wearing jeans.

We left and rode the standard trip across the bridge: through golden gate park, up agurello to presidio, across the bridge. Then we took a huge descent (Conzelman Rd) under the bridge and rode up East Rd to Sausalito.

After saying goodbye to Pat (who was riding to San Rafael) , eating some WHOLE MEAL bars and swapping food poisoning stories, we started back to SF. This is where I would typically take the ferry.

But instead, we rode up that big ass hill that most people come into Sausalito on. This is when the reality of my weakness started to set in. We all crushed it however because, as readers of this blog know, Brian does not associate with craven weaklings. We are going to smash AIDS when we're done training.

Fun: Descents, GG Park, GG Bridge

Learned: do not wear jeans, dont wear a backpack, get a computer

Training Ride 1 Route

Training has begun!

2012-01-13T14:20:00.000-08:00

So we have begun training for the aids life cycle. The ride isn't until like june or something, but we are getting started early, and easing our way in to it. Our first training ride was last saturday, and we took it super easy by biking to salsalito and back from SF. This is only about a 22 mile ride, but most of the people in our group have never even really biked much farther than that. With that said, everyone did a really good job. The ride to salsalito and back is pretty hilly, so it was a good preview of what is to come on the aids ride.

Anyway, we are doing our next training ride this saturday morning (01/14). We are gradually increasing the mileage to around 27 with an extended city loop. If you are in the bay area, feel free to join us! We are meeting at 9am at the east end of the panhandle at the big statue. Here is our proposed route

Also, we are still trying to raise funds for the ride. Please donate and spread our link around to help us raise money! Here is our link.

Aids life cycle 2012!

2012-01-03T13:58:00.001-08:00

Long time no write deadly rigs readers!

The blog is coming back strong for 2012 (our last year on earth). I have formed a crew of maniacs to participate in the 2012 aids life cycle. We are going to be posting about our training rides here, as well as posting while we are on the ride. For those who don't know... the aids life cycle is an annual ride form san francisco to LA to raise funds and awareness for aids research.

With all of that said... everyone on our team will need to raise $3000 to participate in the ride. You can check out our progress at: http://www.tofighthiv.org/site/TR/AIDSLIFECYCLE11/AIDSLifeCycleCenter?pg=team&fr_id=1440&team_id=7500

If you want to be really cool... you can donate some money to our team! Just go to the above link and choose your favorite deadly rigs rider (ps. we are named dreadly rigs out of appropriateness for the ride) and provide a donation! It is super easy!

So yeah, expect to see some life breathing back in to this blog. Also, expect to read from many new writers who will be participating in the ride!

BYE FOR NOW!

The Numbers of the Beasts

2010-08-26T20:59:00.000-07:00

Total Milage Clocked: ~450 miles, but my computer was only working for 364 of those.
Maximum Speed: 43 mph
Lowest Speed: 4.2 mph
Longest total distance in one day: 96.99 miles
Flat Tires: 4 (I had one at 56th street on the last day after we were back in NYC, and Brian had 3 at different points in the trip)
Bike Shops Visited: 3
Gas Station Pit stops: 8
Illegal/Sketchy Situations: every waking moment
Cliff Bars: 7
Red Bulls: 3 (by me, the other dudes were chugging those shits)
Gatorade/Powerade: at least 2 cases
Hoagies: 3

Live Animals:
dogs: 100 - 150 (including a golden retriever that almost took charlie off his bike, and a pack of 12 daschunds)
cats: 10-12
squirrels: hundreds
chimpunks: hundreds
deer: 11
badgers: 1
snakes: 4
cows: thousands (they turn their heads and would watch you pass by. so weird)
horses: hundreds (one time we saw a horse with a straight up executioners hood on it's head. it could hear us, but couldn't see us. poor guy)
insects: millions upon millions.
vultures: 5

roadkill (in various forms of decay) count:
squirrel: 25
skunks: 4
raccoons: 14
birds: 17
deer: 6

Tripped out

2010-08-26T20:23:00.000-07:00

Word, so I just wanted to hook up a little recap right quick. In my mind the best riding of the day was done on Tuesday, August 24th. This was the day that we rode from that weird RV campsite (with the owner/lady who sold us logs in a plastic bag from NY state, and only sold ice cream and candy) to Connecticut. We charged this day, and the scenery was mind bending.

This day started with us trying to find some short cut to Route 7 through the scraggly network of dirt roads that exist in southwestern Vermont. We ended up riding up-hill for about a half-mile in the wrong direction. This didn't turn out to be so bad because it kind of set us up like a drop-in. A fucking half-mile drop in to a 3 mile descent down a mountain. It was absolutely wild to have started your day in this way. It was, like, wake up, bathroom break, have a coffee (which ruled, being in the woods and all), and then get on your fucking bike and shred. For miles. At close to 35 miles per hour. This might not seem that fast, but becomes interesting once you add 30 pounds of gear to your 30 pound bike. Fucking fun, I say.

This wasn't the fastest we went during the trip. I clocked us doing 43mph on the previous morning. That descent also started on a dirt road, but only lasted for about 1/2 mile. I had off-loaded my front pannier and an additional 10 pounds of shit from my bike that I thought I needed, but (of course) totally didn't. I was a little sketched out because my bike felt, well, better. Anyway we ended up passing a huge piece of heavy machinery that was being pulled by a tractor trailer. Unsafe, but totally awesome. 12 miles later, in Manchester, we stopped for coffee. Then it rained for the rest of Monday, and it was horrible.

Jumping back to our ride from VT to CT: I had low expectations. I generally dislike Massachusetts (fuck the bruins), and Pittsfield was absolutely horrible to ride through. Chud roads, no shoulders, and drivers had their heads shoved directly into their anuses. It was living hell for hours, and miles. We pulled over, checked the map, and decided to barge through the rest of this shitty state.

Three miles (up-hill and with no shoulder) later, we made the right hand turn onto US Route 7, and things changed. The clusterfuck that is Pittsfield disappeared into country nothingness, and the road opened up into rolling hills, and endless descents. The turns were epic. We passed Charles Xavier's School for the Gifted at least 3 times. We hit up an ill bicycle shop in the Berkshires, and Brian copped a sweet new cycling computer. I got up on a new pair of cycling shorts (underlayer), because the new ones I bought had shredded themselves on the morning that we left. Don't ask.

It kept on going for about 45 miles. Even the climbs were awesome, but that was only probably because there weren't any cars on the road. We were riding right in the middle of the street, and it didn't even matter. I had been snacking the whole trip on all types of shit. Cliff Bars, granola bars, shit bars, and tons of gator and/or powerade. I even might've had another Red Bull (before Pittsfield) and I hate that shit. It's horrible stuff. In any event, I wasn't that hungry but Brian was. We pulled over at some random parking spot, which turned out to be a trailhead that will hook you up with the Appalachian trail. We debated about hiking out into the woods and camping on the trail, which would have been tight. However Brian and I wanted to rage it, and chose to keep pushing on. It was only about 6 miles to the next town, and ultimately 15 miles from Macedonia Brook State park, and we had to finish at our original goal. There was no other way.

We stopped for supplies in Lakeview, and charged out. After a short hill climb, we ended up in Sharon, CT. For those that don't know this is where the ultra-elite gather and make decisions that will affect the rest of the population. You might know these people as skull and bones, the illuminati, the federal reserve bank, Bildeberg group, Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush, Halliburton, and all that shit. The place stank of Freemason sorcery. They had expensive driveways, too.

We blew past that shit, and missed our turn because we were in such shell shock from the magnitude of those ridiculous houses. We had to back track (up-hill, again) for about a mile, and then we had to walk through a fucking construction site. The bridge was out, and we had no choice but to walk the bikes through because our tent site was somewhere on the other side.

After crossing we got on the bikes and started pedaling again. The road seemed to jack straight up, and kept on going. This climb lasted for 3 miles, and the road disintegrated into mud and rock. It was wild. When it ended, and switched to downhill it was kind of like mountain biking, kind of. We were cruising at about 30mph down this shit when we saw the sign that said we had entered the state park, and we saw campsites appear out of nowhere. It was also a security-free zone, and we just set up camp without fee, or fear of hassle. It ruled. We had neighbors, a Wiccan couple who shared corn and hot dogs. They were real nice. The woods are fucking rad.

We ate, crashed out, and woke up the next day and rode back to New York City.

Vermont trip photos posted

2010-08-26T16:31:00.000-07:00

click here for the set

Vermont trip: CONQUERED

2010-08-26T06:08:00.000-07:00

All right, so we weren't actually supposed to be back in brooklyn until tomorrow, but matt and I decided to stop being pre-schoolers and ride our bikes like adults and we made it back last night. We started riding on tuesday and I asked matt if he wanted to beef up and combine the mileage for the next day and get home sooner. After little deliberation we decided to go for it and biked 88 miles to macedonia brook state park to camp. We biked across the entire state of Massachusetts in an afternoon which is pretty impressive I would say. We technically hit 3 different states starting in vermont and popping in to new york for like a minute before finally chillin out in northern Connecticut.

The ride through Massachusetts I would have to say was definitely my favorite day of the entire trip. We were surrounded by mountains the entire day and went up and down lots and lots of hills which meant lots of bad ass descents. The weather was pretty much perfect. Not too hot, not too cold. However, it was very cloudy, which I think rules and makes the world look scary. Honestly, the day couldn't have been much better. Toward the end of the day we rode through sharon CT which I have to say is possibly the richest town I have ever seen in my life. There were mansions ALL over the place. It was actually kind of absurd. Matt said he thought it must be the home of the freemasons and that they were running the country from sharon CT. Not long after, we needed to find a place to sleep for the evening. I really wanted to pull up to one of those mansions and ask to sleep in their yard just to see how hard the rejection would be, but I was too lazy to travel the extra two miles down their $20k paved driveway. We instead stopped at some potential hippie house (which I deduced from their subaru outback with a bucket of compost in the back) thinking it would be a sure bet. We were unfortunately denied and had to instead cross a broken under construction bridge by foot and then bike 3 miles up steep ass hills to get to macedonia state park. It all turned out to be pretty awesome in the end as the park was really nice and not near civilization and we met a couple of old wiccans who gave us sweet corn and hung out with us until our 9pm bed time.

The next morning we decided to suck it up and do the last 100 miles to brooklyn in one day. Honestly, 100 miles isn't shit. People get all worked up about centuries... but the way I see it is if you can do 60 you can do 100. You still feel the same at the end of the day. So yeah, the day started off really nice for about the first 40 miles until we started getting in to NYC suburbs then everything just got sort of stressful. Lots of wrong turns and re-routing to try and stay off hectic streets. However, we had to take some shit roads here and there to get things done. Once we got right outside of yonkers things got much more bike friendly as we hopped on a bike path for 8 miles or so which popped us out on broadway which we rode down to 181st street to hop on the west side highway. Basically the trip was over by then (even though we had almost 20 miles to go haha). Once we were on the westside highway we knew we were home. Amazingly, matt managed to get his first flat of the trip with 10 miles to go haha. He made it the entire way to vermont and back with no flats until the west side highway haha.

Anyway, the trip was a success. The first week was kind of boring to me as we just biked through suburbs and farmland, but the last half was super nice and very scenic. I shall post photos soon!

Posted.

2010-08-25T13:08:00.000-07:00

bike paths are awesome. thank you westchester county.

why do all campsites have to be at the top of a giant hill?

2010-08-25T08:18:00.000-07:00

Nearly did 90 miles yesterday. This tops my previous all-time longest-ride-ever by a good 35 miles.

Back in Brooklyn tonight, sucka.

Massachusetts destroyed.

2010-08-24T12:29:00.000-07:00

mASSachusetts has been ravaged. now time for CT, yahhh.

entering lee

2010-08-24T10:10:00.000-07:00

Massachusetts is unsanitary.

2010-08-24T08:06:00.000-07:00

no facilities, anywhere in this state, are sanitary. sanitarium. "just leave me alone".

PS the headphone jack in my iPhone is apparently jacked. fuck.

bienvenue

2010-08-24T06:16:00.000-07:00

mASSachusetts, entered.

Hand Sanitizer

2010-08-23T19:22:00.000-07:00

like I said: my phone was dead. I couldn't blog. Now that were in yuppie-ville with electricity and running water and no mile hike down (and back up) a mountain my phone is charged. I can blog my fucking face off. I am doing that right now.

I'll skip the part about the hamburgers and bacon wrapped chicken carcass, and also the part about the 35 foot tree we pulled out of the woods, broke, and burned. I'll also fail to mention a sweet hike, Charlie climbing up a twelve or thirteen foot tree-bridge jawn, endless games of eukert, and the part about five "bottles" of wine. instead I'll talk about the rain.

the first rain came on Friday morning while we were camped in the backyard of the dude with the kayak on his car's roof. it didn't last that long and wasn't that bad. Sunday morning was another story altogether.

sometime overnight the rain had started pouring, and was off and on throughout the day. the heaviest stuff started coming at about five pm, while Brian and I were hiking back to the tent site. Sabah, Charlie, and eli had left for their "jobs". mortals. pffsh.

Brian and I are invincible, and lucky as shit. we found a package of fire starters hidden in the corner of the lean-to at the tent site. without this we would have surely been fucked, and with it we was able to resuscitate the already resuscitated fire from the previous night. I can say "we was" because I'm from the east coast and I'm all hip-hop and shit. word.

anyway I threw, like, 10 giant logs on the fire and it raged. I can't speak for Brian, but I was actually dry and comfortable in my tent under the shelter. if we didn't have that shelter then we would have had to have slept in the woods in some near hurricane force winds. no bueno. it's all good tho, we were chilling. I made some couscous, and we mowed. the. I read a sin city graphic novel and peaced. I wish I got photos or video of the storm, but my phone was dead.

it was also raining, like, all day today. It didn't phase me at all. I dunno, maybe it was the first descent of the day: 43 mph on winding Vermont country roads, passing tractor trailers, and riding much lighter than previous days. I appreciate Sabah, Eli, and Charlie sacrificing some space in the rental car for me. I left them with about 20 pounds of gear, maybe more.

we made it to Bennington today in about two hours. I had an espresso in Manchester, and then raged the whole way down there. an awesome tailwind and descents that stretched for miles helped, too.

when we got to Bennington we re-upped on groceries, and the we hit taco smell, which for some reason had the best music selection playing inside it. all fifties shit, it totally ruled. anyway I dont eat that fast food, but Brian offered tonpay for a double down if I would eat it, and I said 'ok'. derrrrrrrrrrrr.

then it started pouring again, and we sat it out in an alley on main street in Bennington. there was a bike shop next door, and the owner was cool as shit. he let us take up floor space for a while, and make some small repairs.

after about three hours of waiting we finally decided to barge, and we headed out. rain was, again, off and on. Brian had the whole jam figured out, and took us on this route down dirt roads through some ill dairy farms. he hollered. shit was tight. we got here at this campsite that's hooked up with electrics and agua at about four pm square. I had to buy some firewood (BULL), and we ate pasta and now I'm going to sleep because we got fifty some miles to ride tomorrow to Massachusetts. boom.

a quick recap

2010-08-23T18:40:00.000-07:00

so, yeah Brian posted the details of the trip thus far: barging some dudes back yard, pooping in the woods, Vermont mountain summer typhoons, the lucky firestarter brick we found, and the most burly hill climb on the final approach to merck forest.

I had a gallon of water and a six pack of long trail ale strapped to my bike on the last one , and both of these things were incredibly beneficial at bringing me to a complete stand still. i repeat: the climb up rupert mountain road was the hardest hill climb yet.

merck forest is, basically, a bunch of small steep mountains. nobody is really out there and when you camp there it's lime you are on a mission into the woods. the hike is steep, and you are not allowed to ride bicycles of any sort back there because of this. after climbing up that beast-hill rupert-hell our reward was bombing that trail on our fully loaded (or in my case overloaded) touring bikes. you will read the previous sentence in the voice of Emperor Palpatine. if you do not know who that is then die.

later that evening, and after hiking our bikes back up the hill and out to the visitor center, Sabah and Eli show up. in a car! WTF! how do you get o e of those things jeezus lord have mercy. we hiked, ate, and unfortunately did not jump off of forty foot cliffs into the now water-filled Dorset marble quarry. we did drive past it in the rental car on our way for pizza. this was not as extreme as I wanted to get, but I couldn't really complain because I was still on a crazy caffeine/sugar crash from the red bull Brian stegall made me drink back in Salem, ny.

Charlie told us he once was in Salem, Massachusetts for Halloween and it was wack. Charlie then demonstrated the ill switchback hill climbing technique on ruler mountainhell road. I tried to follow in suit and smashed my fender w my clumsy foot.

that's where this one ends. late.

this was the last photo I got before my phone died

2010-08-23T18:21:00.000-07:00

and its a straight baller photo, too. it's got the church and the gas pumps and shit. fffffffffffffffffffffffff

So fucking wet

2010-08-23T16:19:00.000-07:00

Ahoy mateys! We have returned to the first world where AT&T roams free! Camping in merck forest was pretty raging. Lots of eating lots of lounging and a little bit of hiking. We were sad to part ways with CHORLIE as he headed back to Brooklyn with ZABAH and Eli.

The weather was pretty damn nice all weekend until Saturday night when it decided to pour rain until the end of time. It rained all night Saturday until I had some sweet puddles in my tent. It let up a bit by morning but drizzled all day which sort of ruled out many outdoor activities for the day.

After ZABAH and others took off matt and I trudged back in to the woods for one more night in the forest. It started raining on us pretty hard during out walk back just enough to drench me to the point of anger. We moved our tents under the wooden leanto thing at the camp site and miraculously found a pack of fire starting blocks hidden in a corner of the leanto which we used to ignite an all powerful bonfire which fought it's way all night through the pounding rain.

While we slept shit got straight bananas in some mini-hurricane bullshit. Trees were falling over all night and when we woke up and walked around outside there were tree bits all over the damn place.

After lugging our gear a mile out of the woods and doing some minor repair work to matts fenders we hit the road starting with a 3 mile descent which was pretty satisfying. Planet earth was still spitting all over us so I was rocking my rain jacket which I have decided does no good. Yeah, it blocks the rain.. But is also traps all the sweat to the point where I am still drenched and even more disgruntled. It was, however too cold to shed the jacket so I miserably peddled all day leaking sweat out of my arm holes all over myself. Those of you who know me well know how I hate being wet. With that said, I was pretty fucking annoyed all day which was unfortunate because the ride today was really pretty. I was just losing my mind after being wet for 2 days straight. Totally not cool.

Anyway, we're now straight chillin at some camp growing south of Bennington vt. The rain has let up for now and I hope it stays out of my life. Tomorrow we will tear up Maryland. BEWARE THE BENNINGTON OBELISK!!!!!

Evil skies over towering obelisk. Thank you Bennington Vermont

2010-08-23T16:02:00.001-07:00

Christians... What will they think of next?!

2010-08-23T16:02:00.000-07:00

Hazy merck forest morning

2010-08-23T16:01:00.000-07:00

Matt tries the double down

2010-08-23T09:40:00.000-07:00

We have arrived in vermont

2010-08-20T15:44:00.000-07:00

Oof! What a tough day. We only rode 57 miles, but we were fighting some pretty gnarly head winds and climbing some nasty hills throughout the day. We got up this morning and chatted with our super nice hosts before we hit the road. The whole ride today was on back roads and shit so everything was quite scenic with very little traffic. I would have to say that even though today was the most grueling, it was also the best ride by far scenery and road quality wise.

We bombed some massive hills on our way in to eagle bridge (or some shit) where we perched up along side the road by some shitty river and cooked noodles. After lunch everyone realized they were out of water and CHORLIE and I were mega low on energy so we stopped in the next town to get high on red bulls. After that we crushed the next 20 or so miles feeding matt pounds and pounds of dust until he finally caved and bought himself a red bull too which brought him up to speed.

At this point we thought we had about 9 miles left to merck forest, but google was telling us sweet little lies and it was really 15 or some shit. Not only was it way longer than we expected, it was basically all up hill. We of course decided before all this went down that we better stock up on drinks for the weekend. GREAT JOB US!!! But yeah, shit wasn't too bad until literally the last hill, which I am pretty sure was the steepest hill I have ever climbed. I could barely go 20 ft at a time up this 1.5 mile monster before I thought my heart and lungs were going to break my ribs. It was for real no joke. Luckily our camping destination was right at the top of the hill.

HOWEVER, this was not the end of our gruesome journey. We still had to bike half a mile up a gravel driveway before going yet another mile through the woods on a hiking trail that basically went straight down a mountain side. Was extra crazy and exhausting.

We then chilled a minute, set up our tents and ate a little snack before we had to hike back up the trail where we are now sitting around waiting for ZABAH and our friend Eli to arrive for the seemed of raging. Our camp site is really cool and has a huge fire pit as well as a nice lean to shelter thing. Should be an awesome weekend me thinks. I am definitely ready for a riding break after today.

All right! Off to the wilderness for two days! No phone service!

Welcome to Vermont

2010-08-20T11:51:00.000-07:00

Mackora campground my ass!

2010-08-19T14:50:00.000-07:00

Hello blog readers of the future. Today was the longest day of our trip at a wopping 65 miles. I am pleased that this tiny number is the longest we will ride. The trip thus far has been mega chill. Low mileage + matts excitement to go all out with the camping every night has turned out to make this trip ridiculously relaxing and easy. Also, matt and CHORLIE are both cycling ragers. We have been killing it every day at warp speed with very few stops. Today we managed to average 16 mph which is above average for loaded touring. Total mutantry.

So anyway, the ride today was pretty easy even though it was slightly longer than usual. We stayed on country roads all morning and it honestly looked a lot like Ohio which kind of bored the shit out of me. We hit up some nice back roads here and there though that were way nice and we could finally leave the confines of the shoulder.

We popped off the road for lunch in some make believe town where, apparently, icabod crane was from. We never crossed any covered bridges so I guess we are still marks for that headless creep lord to ravage us in our sleep. The picnic spot we had was ultra cozy though and totally secluded in the woods. We might have made out with eachother. MIGHT (sorry lady friends and fiancée).

CHORLIE and I chugged some red bulls after lunch and left matt in the dust. He refused to be given wings. Our destination was some suburban camp ground north of Troy ny named makora camp ground. Shit seemed fishy to me when we looked it up and upon our arrival we learned the shit didn't exist. Fucking bummout. I was set on not riding any further so we pulled up to some dudes house who had a kayak on top of his car hoping he would take pity on us as a fellow adventurer and let us camp in his yard. Fortunately for us, he and his brother are stand up dudes. We are now perched up in their woods grillin shit on a camp fire. Eat that Troy.

Tomorrow we are heading in to merk forest for a weekend of cliff diving and other mountain dew sponsored events. Hang ten!

Matt finally gets to use his grill top

2010-08-19T14:35:00.000-07:00

lunch break near Martin van buren house.

2010-08-19T09:00:00.000-07:00

it says deadlyrigs.blogspot.com, fool! y'all people need to take your trash with you.

I like Rhinebeck

2010-08-18T18:23:00.000-07:00

rhinebeck is tight. it's a small city with a traditional, somewhat idyllic, American downtown area with a ton of great restaurants, and there are high school kids rocking summer jobs at the deli and shit. it's totally yuppie, and you'd love it. I love it. I'd also love a sandwich, but all I have is this DIY mac and (moldy -- kinda) cheese.

this a photo from Linda's (from warmshowers.com) with our tents in the background. the bikes lie beneath a cloak of invisibility. I know this because used to be on some D&D shit back in the day.

Thanks Linda, your place is awesome, and thanks Brian for fixing my cycling computer. I mean your cycling computer

bloggers

2010-08-18T09:39:00.000-07:00

totally blogging. dude.

Bloggingston Rhinebeck

2010-08-18T09:38:00.000-07:00

An evil wizard lives in this castle somewhere near Garrison NY. Down the street from this place is a wonderful sandwich shop that sells local produce. He (the wizard) has cast a spell that caused Brian to grt a flat tire, and Brian became very angry. Fuck that wizard.

Back on the road

2010-08-18T09:23:00.000-07:00

POOF! So here we are sitting in Poughkeepsie on our second day out totally munchin on some subway. Yesterday we had a really good start. Raged up the west side highway to get out of NYC. I definitely travelled the furthest north I have ever travelled in manhatten going to 175th st to cross the George Washington bridge. Let me tell you, it is not easy to find the bike path over that fucker. We circled it a couple of times before we figured it out.

The rest of the ride was fairly uneventful. Lots of boring suburbs and cars. Nothing notable. The scenery got much nicer as we arrived at bear mountain where we had to trudge up our first major hill of the trip. Shit was intense on our wicked out of shape bodies.

After climbing and descending the mountain we perched up to camp near HESSIAN lake. There were wild metal heads everywhere circle headbanging all around us wearing corpse paint. It was totally kvlt. Anyway, we stopped and asked some total dick master where we could camp in the area and he was too much of an ass hole to be helpful and basically told us we couldn't camp anywhere. With that said we rode another half a mile and dipped off in to the woods out of site from the road and renegade camped it. Shot turned out to be tight. Matt is king of bougie campers as he whipped out some box wine and proceeded to cook pad thai.

After sleeping for about 10 hours we popped up feeling pretty good, had some breakfast and hit the road again. The scenery to Poughkeepsie was much nicer and more nature ridden. However, Poughkeepsie looks like a straight up strip mall.

We are now off to rhinebeck. Toodles!

Night 1 camp spot

2010-08-18T09:10:00.000-07:00

Day 1: exhausted and out of shape

2010-08-18T09:09:00.000-07:00

Straight mean muggin new York state

2010-08-18T09:08:00.000-07:00

round two: poo-kypsie

2010-08-18T05:19:00.000-07:00

leaving for poughkipse. breakfast was tight, and there wasn't any hassle. more later...

FIRST

2010-08-16T09:20:00.001-07:00

Greetings.

It is one day before we leave, and I'm pretty much all packed up at this point. Ready to roll. The past week has been one of intense preparation: Brian has built 37 bikes from parts ordered on-line, and I have been battling Magneto, i mean Magento. I'm not going to bother with linking the parts of the last sentence. Last night, I took my first ride with the bike fully loaded. Shit is mad sweet.

Below is a photo of my ride. It's pretty much the same as Brians, except all of the components are totally different. As you can see Charles approves of the quality of Surly Bicycles, but he still refuses our request for him to ride with us.

Also, we saw Slayer last week, and this was the set list.

VERMONT AHOY!!!!!!

2010-07-18T06:17:00.000-07:00

So matt and I have been doing a little bit of planning for our upcoming vermont trip. It is looking pretty chill and the route looks like it winds through a lot of wooded areas and shit. Surprisingly, it looks like we actually will have a legitimate place to stay almost every night haha. That makes it even more stress free. So here is our potential itinerary, once again, if any of you filth mongers out there have a place for us to stay, or know of a place for us to stay... speak up and shit:

DAY 1 // 8-17 // BROOKLYN TO HESSIAN LAKE
-56 miles

DAY 2 // 8-18 // HESSIAN LAKE to RHINEBECK NY
-52 miles

DAY 3 // 8-19 // RHINEBECK NY to TROY NY
-65 miles

DAY 4 // 8-20 // TROY NY to MERCK FOREST
-55ish miles

DAY 5 // 8-21 // RAGING
-camping with friends

DAY 6 // 8-22 // RAGING
-camping with friends

DAY 7 // 8-23 // MERCK FOREST to OUTSIDE OF BENNINGTON
-46 miles

DAY 8 // 8-24 // OUTSIDE BENNINGTON to BEARTOWN STATE FOREST
-50 miles

DAY 9 // 8-25 // BEARTOWN STATE FOREST to MACEDONIA BROOK STATE PARK
-41 miles

DAY 10 // 8-26 // MACEDONIA BROOK STATE PARK to OSSINING
-55 miles

DAY 11 // 8-27 // OSSINING to HOME
-43 miles

HERE IS A LINK TO OUR ROUTE!!!!

THIS BLOG IS NOT DEAD

2010-07-14T16:47:00.001-07:00

Hello out there. This blog is not dead! I am currently in the works planning a quick tour from NYC to merck forest in vermont. So far it is just going to be myself and my friend matt (gonzo) kosoy and maybe a couple of others. We are going to make this trip super chill and go about 50-60 miles a day to maximize enjoyment and minimize stress. I am not quite in the mood to do another brutalizing pace tour again just yet haha.

Anyway, make sure to keep checking back here in the future because there shall be updates! I will leave you with a quick glimpse of our tentative route: CLICK THIS

I shall post more on this soon. Per usual, if any of you filth hounds out there have friends or family or luxary cabins for us to stay at anywhere along this route, DO holler at us hard.

trip photos posted!

2010-06-15T16:57:00.001-07:00

Click on me to peruse the filthy imagery!

BIKE TOUR COMPLETE! WE ARE FINISHED!

2010-06-15T03:14:00.000-07:00

It is all over! I am writing this from my own computer in clarksville ohio at my parent's house after finally sleeping in a familiar place for the first time in two months. So, you may be saying to yourself "wait, I thought you guys had two days left not one?" That is correct! We ended up calling it quits in louisville yesterday. Yesterday morning we woke up to the sounds of rain pitter pattering on our tents after an extremely strange evening. We went about our usual routine of packing up our shit, and just as routine would serve... I had a mystery flat on my rear tire which I had just changed the tube the night before after I hit a rock. Mystery flats have been pissing me off extremely this entire trip, but this one sent me over the edge. We were out of tubes for a quick swap, I didn't even feel like bothering with patching it, so I turned to zach and was like "I'm done if you're done." Just so happens that Zach was feeling really nauseous and was about to say he didn't think he was going to be able to ride the rest of the miles anyway as the temperatures for the day were going to be the highest of the entire trip. Not to mention, his ass had been killing him for the past few days for some unknown reason. Basically everything was seemingly falling apart and it didn't take a lot of convincing at this point for us to throw in the towel. We decided we would at least try to ride 30 miles out of west point to the other side of louisville where we would chill at the vans skatepark and wait for my parent's to drive down and pick us up. I decided I didn't feel like fucking with my tire situation, so I just pumped it up and hoped it would still have air by the time we made it to louisville and I could buy some new tubes.

We hopped on our loaded ass bikes and slowly rode on to louisville. We were both pretty bummed as we had these grand visions of riding over the bridge to cincinncinati and rolling up to our favorite indian buffet and CRUSHING IT! But all in all, what does it really matter? We biked across the country. That is what we set out to do. We went from san francisco, to san diego, to austin, and now to louisville, which is 100 miles away from our original destination. We went about 3200 miles (I don't know exactly as I didn't get my odometer until halfway through the first leg) which I am extremely proud of. Cincinnati... louisville... same difference!

By the time we rolled in to louisville Zach said he was feeling completely awful and knew he wouldn't have made it anyway in his current condition. We still had a few hours to kill before my parent's would make it down to pick us up so we headed over to bardstown road to hang out for a bit and hit up some bike shops to get some tubes. We straight up headed to the most memorable building of both of our louisville past, the old BRYCC house where we have both seen countless punk and hardcore shows. That shit used to be one of the coolest DIY venues in the country in my opinion and we both used to drive down to louisville, to me what seemed like weekly, for shows. Honestly, I have only been to louisville a handful of times since that place got closed down, so you must know how bummed I felt when we rolled up and it was now a BW3's. WHAT THE FUCK LOUISVILLE?! Anyway, we milled around for a couple hours waiting for kashmir indian buffet to open so we would at least have a piece of our original vision. We crushed that shit, then headed over to the vans skatepark to wait to get picked up. Ps. vans skatepark isn't nearly as sweet as I remembered it from years ago when I used to drive down to skate it at 2am. Shit is straight up snoresville now.

So that's that! Our last day of the bike tour! Not quite as fulfilling as we would have liked, but I am not bummed it is over at this point haha. Shit got pretty difficult towards the end with our bodies giving up on us in the extreme heat and humidity. I'll be writing another post soon to sum up all of the highs and lows. I will also be uploading the photos from my camera so you can all bask in the visions of what my poorly contrived words have described this entire time. So stay tuned! this blog lives on!

2 days to go... Will we make it

2010-06-13T18:24:00.001-07:00

I thought this trip was going to get mentally easier the closer we got
to Cincinnati, however, it has turned out to be the opposite.
Tempuratures continue to rise each day as we rode through 106 degree
weather all day. That shit is unbearable. My body hasn't felt this
weak the entire trip. I usually have a little stock pile of energy
boosts up my sleeve if I need to power up a hill or outrun a dog, but
that shit doesn't even exist anymore. Basically whatever power I have
is put forth only to propel me at my minimum speed. Shit is not
getting any easier! On top of that, we now have friends and family who
could come get us in a couple hours notice. It is so tempting to just
give the call and end it all now.

With all of that said, we biked 80 miles today in the brutal heat from
beaver dam to west point ky. As stated earlier, it was incredibly hot
and somewhat crippling as we had many huge hills to climb. I woke up
to a mystery flat front tire which is always awesome. Then descending
on a hill during our last 3 miles I hit a rock and burst my rear tire.
Cool!

So now we are camping in some park in west point which has turned out
to be scary as hell due to all kinds of mutant hillbillies lurking
around at all times. Our first encounter with these inbreds was a
young man biking up to us and asking where our girlfriends were and if
we liked "just girls" because apparently everyone in this town is gay?
Needless to say, I am sort of scared he is either going to come back
in the middle of the night to steel my drying biker shorts, or he is
going to bring a clan of hill mutants to lynch us for not camping with
our girlfriends and in turn making us gays.

Next up we have a couple dill holes who keep cruising around the camp
area sitting in their car like with their entire upper bodies out the
windows, driver included. This started as one car then multiplied to
2, making sure to stare at us each time they pass. Not to mention, all
of these freak lords come lurkig up from some gravel road that leads
straight in to thick woods. What the fuck is happening?! Amidst all
this sketchiness, we are also hearing gunshots randomly. Needless to
say, Zachary has stuffed some rocks in a sock just in case things get
hairy.

Tomorrow we head through louisville and up to Carrollton to stay with
an old high school friend of mine, dean johnson. That is if we aren't
skinned and eaten by hill people. Hopefully I can sleep!

Big Deuce! GET IN!!

2010-06-12T15:21:00.001-07:00

somehow Brian failed to mention that we crushed it hard all morning to make it to this hotel for USA v England today. We made it and after a tense 90 came away with a big ass point. Holler. There is a taco bell up the block, gatorades in our fridge, and AC blasting us hard. Roughing it? Not tonight posers. Life is good and Robert Green is my bf. Let's go home!

I thought shit was supposed to get cooler up north

2010-06-12T14:05:00.000-07:00

What's with this bogus record setting heat wave? Why can't we catch a
break with the weather this month? Today we biked about 60 miles from
Hopkinsville to beaver dam ky. Tempuratures were blazing around 104
degrees with the heat index. Shit got real sweaty. Turns out Zach is
some sort of mutant with water squirting abilities because he looked
like it had been raining on him solid for about 3 days. Even his shoes
were completely doused in sweat. We can't seem to figure out how he is
still alive with all of the liquid he loses.

Kentucky has brought back the hills. I don't think we had ridden on
any real hills all the way from austin until we neared the Kentucky
border. Honestly, I don't really mind them though because it breaks up
the monotony. Also, I have always thought kentucky was a pretty scenic
state and these last couple of days have confirmed my memories. Lots
of trees lining the streets and many little streams and rivers.

The only hitch we ran in to today was a closed road, which compared to
yesterday was not really a big deal. We had to take a short detour on
a gravel road and that was about it. No sweat. I am pretty glad I went
with wider tires for this trip, as thin shit would not have survived
some of these dirt and gravel roads we have ended up on.

3 days left!

Today was pure insanity!

2010-06-11T16:25:00.000-07:00

Hey y'all, we're in tucky! And the ride to get here today was by far the most insane shit of the entire trip. I think today was one of the most terrifying days of my life for real haha. The plan for the day was to do an easy 50 miles from Paris landing staten park to Hopkinsville ky but that turned in to a ridiculous 70 miles of obstacles and gunfire.

The morning started off pretty intimidating as we woke up hearing thunder and seeing lightning in the distance. We were pretty sure we were going to get hammered by mother nature but somehow the crazy storms missed us all day. Right off the bat we rode over a huge bridge and straight in to the first of many large hills of the day. The ride was pretty scenic all day I must say, so the hills didn't really bother me.

So the main obstacle of the day was that the easiest and most direct route to Hopkinsville was to go through fort Campbell army base on the border of Kentucky and Tennessee. We were thinking it would be an easy stroll through just like camp pendleton in California so we went for it. However, once we got to the edge of the base we were greated with basically a small bar across the road saying do not enter. We only had like 7 miles to go through the base and the roads we would be taking were sort of on the outskirts, so we figured fuck it, let's just go for it.

We rode about 2 miles in to the base on gravel roads until we saw some signs that said "UNEXPLODRD DUDS! KEEP OUT!". These signs were pretty scary, but we didn't have much further to go so we continued on. About half a mile later we found ourselves coming up on a stretch of road lined with target dummies! It was at this point we decided we better not keep going and tried to find a different route out of this place ASAP. Almost instantly after this decision we here an explosion in the distance. At this point I started to panic and was like "LETS JUST GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE AND GO BACK THE WAY WE CAME!!". I didn't want to risk getting lost, or getting shot, or whatever. We just had to get the fuck out. So as we started backtracking we start hearing machine guns firing in the direction we are heading. With no better idea we kept going that way riding as fast as we could on the gravel roads (which let me tell you, wasn't very fast!). I was like riding with my head super low just chugging but trying not to make any noise. We finally got out of the place and just through our bikes down and paced around collecting ourselves haha. It was soo fucking scary and I was so stressed. All I wanted to do in the middle of that place was freeze but I knew we had to get the fuck out. Seriously, one of the scariest and most stressful experiences of my life. At least it is funny now!

So after we were out of that shit storm we figured out a new route around the base which unfortunately tacked 20 miles on to our day. Not to mention, we ended up riding on some back road that was straight up rocks. Not gravel, big ass rocks. Not to mention, this road was like a straight down hill. How the hell were we even supposed to know if this road actually lead anywhere in the first place? So once the hill got so steep that there was no way we would be able to get our bikes back up it, we got off and walked down the hill a ways to see if it was going to meet up with the next road we needed. We walked quite a while and never saw the end, however we saw a house with a mini van and I figured the road had to get more passable as it went on, because there is no way that mini van took the piece of shit road we were riding down to go anywhere. So we walked back up and hopped on our bikes and headed in to our destiny. Lucky for us, the road took us where we needed to be. Aye aye aye.

Shortly after that we crossed in to Kentucky, which before all the excitemet of the day I was pretty stoked for. However, after nearly dying multiple times the border crossing was just sort of blah. What we now came to realize was that we had about 30 miles left, thanks to our new route, and we were both pretty much out of water. Oof. There of course wasn't shit around for the rest of the day so we just had to suck it up and ride. In the end we had about a 52 mile stretch today with no services. There were a lot of houses around though, so we weren't like completely screwed if we ran out of water. Though it was hot as shit and water was pretty crucial today.

Anyway, we made it! Totally sketchy day, but we survived with only 260 miles to go until Cincinnati. Four more days!

That's about right.

2010-06-10T19:14:00.001-07:00

Last evening in Tennessee

2010-06-10T14:16:00.001-07:00

We are currently chillaxing on a state park resort at Paris landing Tennessee. Our tents are of course set up across the street at a camp site, but we are chillin in some fancy hotel lobby where Zach is going to try and score us a free room haha. We shall see about that.

The past couple of days have been pretty easy rides. Nothing to complain about. We had good tail winds, the scenery has been wooded, shady and nice. Tennessee hasn't been too bad. We got a super cheap motel last night in humboldt which had a pretty large room with a large TV to match. The owner didn't like that we sat our clothes outside in the parking lot to dry so he passive aggressively offered to wash them for us for free. I was confused. Was he mad, or was he doing us a favor? I am confused by his actions. Regardless, free laundry.

The area we are in now, Paris landing, is pretty nice. Lots of parks and Kentucky lake or some shit. ESPN is hosting some huge fishing contest in the park where we are camping. If I gave even barely a shit about fishing it might be cool.

Tomorrow we leave Tennessee and get all up in Kentucky which will be our last state to conquer!!!!! We only have 312 miles left which if we wanted to we could probably crush in 3 days. However, Zach must watch USA in the world cup on Saturday so we have to plan our route with a place to watch it so we will unfortunately have to spread it over 4 to 5 days. Most likely 5. The finish line is so close!

Almost time to get the early bird special on this hotel buffet. I'm about to eat myself silly.

Only cool thing in Memphis

2010-06-08T17:54:00.000-07:00

Another state down. Welcome to Tennessee.

2010-06-08T17:51:00.000-07:00

Here we are in Memphis Tennessee. Home of Elvis Presley and shit.
Today turned out to be quite unlucky all around, but I will get to
that later.

Yesterday was pretty uneventful. The only reason I am going to mention
it is to give a shout out to this dude Josh that pulled over to chat
with us right outside of clarendon ar. He ended up giving us a ride in
his truck about five miles after warning us about how shady the
bridges to ahead of us are. They were indeed sketchy with absolutely
no shoulder and tall concrete walls to make it even more
clostrophobic. The ride was much appreciated. The only other thing
mentionable about yesterday was how incredibly bored Zach and I have
become with the rides. We aren't even tired anymore, the rides are
just super uneventful and boring. It is difficult to keep going every
day when there is nothing to look forward to.

With that said, today we were crossing another state border and going
through Memphis which was somewhat exciting because we haven't been
through a real city since leaving Austin. However, from everything we
read, it is really difficult to get across the Mississippi river. With
that in mind we tried stopping at many different gas stations to try
to hitch a ride over the bridge in to Memphis. Unfortunately for us,
people in west Memphis Arkansas are not very eager to help out.
Therefore we had to improvise.

We knew there was an old blocked off walkway on one of the bridges,
however we were told you had to take a dirt path to get to it safely
without riding on the interstate. We found this dirt path, but due to
the moist ass weather it was now a mud path. We tried pushing our
bikes through it for about 20 feet before our fenders were completely
clogged with mud to the point where our wheels wouldn't turn. We
clearly had to give up on this idea as we turned back and scraped the
mud off our rigs.

This lead us to plan B of just sucking it up and riding on the
interstate for a bit until we got to the bridge where the walkway
began. As we pulled up we had to get off and go around a barrier
through tall ass weeds for about 100 ft to get on the retired walkway
which was pretty much only as wide as our bikes which lead to a fairly
challenging ride over the Mississippi. Ps. That river is ugly.

So yeah, we got in to Memphis and things were sort of exciting except
that the city is pretty lame. We randomly stopped to get drinks across
from sun records where Elvis, johnny cash and many others made many of
their early recordings. Shortly after that things shat the bed all
over the place.

Our plan was to ride all the way through Memphis so we could get right
on the road again in the morning. Unfortunately, this put us right in
the middle of Memphis rush hour. I had read a lot of shit on the
Internet about Memphis being a non-bike friendly town, and that shit
is dead on true. No shoulders in the city. People have no idea what to
do when a bike is on the street. This all lead to me getting side
swiped by some dill weed in an el camino. I managed to just power
through it as my pannier took all the impact and got ripped off my
rack. I turned around and was all like "what the fuck you idiot" and
dude was straight up about to be a dick when it turned out there was a
cop behind him who yelled at him on his loud speaker. Dude pulled over
and looked all burnt out and dumb at me while I popped my undammaged
quality crafted ortlieb pannier back on. I told dude I was fine then
just took off. Idiot.

Our luck didn't get much better as we tried to go to like 3 or 4
restaurants to eat and they were either not there (thanks yelp), not
open, or out of falafel. I got super disenchanted at this point as we
ended up in an overpriced Mexican place.

Originaly we were going to try camping at our first KOA only to find
out it cost $27. Fuck that man. I am not paying $27 to sweat my ass
off in my tent when or $10 more we can get another motel. So that is
what we decided to do. However, this turned out to blow an ass too as
we pulled up to multpile cheap shits only to find out they had no
vacancy. COME ON!! I just wanted to lay down after this shit day!

Fortunately, ramada had a $39 special and they have showtine and shit.
Big ups. So yeah, moral of the story: Memphis can get flooded with
shit for all I care. Hopefully the rest of our time in Tennessee goes
better. Severe thunderstorms predicted for tomorrow! NICE!

You know what else is cool about Arkansas?

2010-06-07T18:42:00.001-07:00

...

Family size spaghetti + 7 pieces of garlic bread... Housed

2010-06-07T14:07:00.000-07:00

Duck hunt

2010-06-06T15:12:00.000-07:00

Greetings from stuttgart Arkansas. Today was our second half day in a
row to add up to a full day off. We are in the duck hunting capital of
the world apparently. Today we slept in a bit before heading out of
pine bluff around 9:30 or something. It would have been nice to chill
a bit longer in the mornig, but we wanted to get going before it got
stupid hot. Lucky for us, it was already stupid hot and humid by 9:30.

We only had to ride 37 miles to stuttgart but not long after we
started the tempusature popped over 100 degrees. Pretty awesome! Due
to this heat we stopped twice to chill out and drink cold drinks at
gas stations. We met lots of people intrigued with our trip and were
warned by two people not to go outsid after dark or we will get
wrecked by Mosquitos. That doesn't sound very cool. Fortunately for
us, motels in this part of the country are dirt cheap so we aren't
forced to sleep outside all the time. The unfortunate thing is that
even if we don't want to spend the money on a hotel, easy camping
spots are non-existent. None of the cities in this region seem to have
camp sites or rv parks. We are usually quite desparate to rest in the
evenings, so we typically are too lazy to get creative and find
aomewhere to set up camp. Oh well, this trip is almost at it's end so
a little motel pampering is fine with us.

Tomorrow we will start going at our new pace of 65ish miles a day to
Forrest city. Hopefully these days will basically feel super easy to
us after our usual long days. Estimated 9 days until Cincinnati! Wooo!

To follow up..

2010-06-05T20:08:00.001-07:00

When I finally rode into Austin, my body was just about done for. I had clearly lost weight in that last week.. it was obvious in my face. My appetite was totally gone.. most likely due to dehydration. The last 45 miles to Austin took me like 8 hours.. stopping every ten minutes and dry heaving on the side of the road. I pretty much felt like ending the ride. I think it was a combination of terrible head winds, long stretches between towns for food and water, and Brian and I just being completely thrown off our routine (which up until that point was working flawlessly for me) anywho.. after two days of rest and stuffing my face with food, pedialyte, water, and gatorade, I felt great and good to go again. Our first day out of Austin was hot as all get out but short and smooth. The following days, however, were all big mile days since we were racing to get home by the 12th.. it turns out that my body just can't take that anymore. I think I am again (or still) dehydrated a bit and it is still affecting my appetite. I drink all I can but my body is pushing out sweat at an insane rate that doesn't even make sense to me and I just can't seem to keep up. So there's my explanation for cutting down our miles per day and giving up on getting home for the world cup. It is really frustrating to feel totally depleted after only 50 miles or so when just three weeks ago 100 felt fine but life goes on. It was nice of Brian to attempt to race home for something he doesn't give a fuck about but now maybe I can get over this shit and enjoy the rides again. straight edge.

PINE BLUFF. the place to be

2010-06-05T17:31:00.001-07:00

Greetings cowards. Zach speaking. Big day today. Woke up in our bug covered hotel in Fordyce around 5:30am.. got on the road by 630 with the intention of riding 80 miles to Stuttgart but you know.. fuck that. Rode 40 miles and quit at 10am here in Pine Bluff. So what to do.. strolled a boring mall, went to the grocery, ate veggie burgers, and then went to see Get Him To The Greek. It was alright. It's hot out. United States beat Australia today. FTW EDSON BUDDLE. We did like the short shorts/cowboy boot combo on the girl at journeys. Oh yeah.. we rode through Kingsland this morning which is the birth place of Johnny Cash for all you hillbillies and yokels who are interested in all that. I personally prefer the walk the line soundtrack over his recordings but hey.. anyway I'm going to eat this cereal and ignore Brian for the rest of the night. XXX Arkansas straight edge

How a vegan consumes 5000 calories a day

2010-06-04T18:17:00.000-07:00

A less grueling a schedule has been adopted

2010-06-04T17:40:00.001-07:00

This morning we started riding and my legs for real were struggling to
pedal that shit. We had a minor head wind, but shit just didn't seem
normal. We rode about 16 miles and took a break in which Zach informed
me that he felt like shit as well. We discussed our future a bit and
it was decided that zachs viewing of the world cup is not worth 7 more
days of struggling through the heat at 80 to 90 miles a day. Womp womp.

So with that said we are going to pair down our miles and possilbly
take a day off. Out original plan was to be home no later than the
16th which can be done at around 56 miles a day. That sounds pretty
damn easy so we are going to instead do around 65 a day and still get
back early.

To kick things off we only rode 67 miles today to fordyce. We got here
by like 2:15 and basically just sat around the rest of the day and
relaxed our decimated muscles. The exciting part of the day was when I
discovered mrs. Freshlys makes a vegan oatmeal cream pie. I am pretty
sure this was discovered years ago on some dead hate the living tour,
however, mrs. Freshlys is not sold in the Yankee states so I forgot.
Not only are their oatmeal cream pies vegan, but do are their iced,
and non-iced, honey buns. Fuck yeah! Plus, one iced honey bun is 650
calories. That to me is mind boggling!

Anyway, fuck cycling. I am so bored with it right now haha. I am even
more bored with sore leg muscles. I'm going to get like 8 more honey
buns before I sleep it up. See you chumps in Stuttgart tomorrow.

Our first real state sign welcoming

2010-06-03T18:19:00.001-07:00

The dirt road to louissiana

2010-06-03T18:18:00.000-07:00

Two more states crushed!

2010-06-03T18:17:00.001-07:00

So finally we have a day worth writing about. Today was the first
enjoyable day of riding I think I have had since fort Davis. Wouldn't
you know a good day comes as soon as we leave that shit dumpster of a
state known as Texas. I can't really express how awful that state is
and the fact that we spent a rather large chunk of our trip there
saddens me. Honesty, my morale was at rock bottom many days in Texas.

This morning we decided to try a new schedule of waking up at 5:30 to
ride longer during the cool hours of the morning. However, that shit
didn't even matter today as it was rainy and overcast the entire day.
Though we got caught in the rain more today than any other day of the
trip, it was a million times better than riding in humid heat. We are
soaked with sweat in the heat, soaked with water in the rain. I would
much prefer being cooled down and wet than sweltering and wet.

Anyway, today was full of all kinds of interesting shit. We took
googles recomendation on a back road which turned out to be a dirt
road for 10 miles. We pulled up to the road and looked down it and it
looked really cool as it cut through a forest and was like a tree
tunnel. The road looked like shit, but we were like "fuck it, looks
tight" and indeed it was. We road that dirt path for 10 miles through
thick forest and a swamp. It was awesome. The only thing that sucked
were the enormous horse flies that bit the shit out of us as we
climbed hills and the occasional sand areas that were hard to roll
through.

That road lead us in to louissiana which was like a dream come true.
Instantly the flies were gone as if they didn't dare cross the state
line. The road became perfectly paved right at the line just showing
how superior louissiana is to Texas. The road was lined with tall
green trees shading us from the sun. It was seriously like a dream
after spending the last couple of weeks in Texas waste lands.

The first town we stopped in across the border was a town called
Vivian where we pulled up to a small grocery store. As we were
checking out I saw a screen saver on a cash register displaying behind
the scenes photos from the recent remake film "the mist". I have seen
this movie a couple times on cable so I began looking around and
realized everything looked familiar. I asked the cashier, and sure
enough this was the store they filmed the movie in. Pretty awesome
random find.

We weren't in louissiana for very long before we crossed over in to
Arkansas. We were only in LA for about 40 miles. Once we entered
Arkansas we were both pretty sluggish with 26 miles to go to magnolia.
I decided to try pounding a red bull to kill the last 20 which maybe
helped me go about 10 miles. Whatever, it was a nice experiment.

So here we are in magnolia Arkansas after riding 92 miles. We will be
in this state for maybe 2 more nights before conquering tennessee. You
can't even fathom how exciting it is to be out of texas. Shit.

Last night in Texas. Of course it sucks!

2010-06-02T18:38:00.001-07:00

So yesterday I didn't even bother to blog. Nothing really happened. I woke up to a mystery flat tire, this time on my front tire for a change. I broke my chain in Palestine. I luckily had a spare so whatever. We rode in hot ass humid weather as usual. Went 82 miles from I forget where to Jacksonville. We were both completely filthy and soaked in sweat and didn't feel like looking for camping so we got a cheap hotel.

Today was more of the same but even hotter. I would like to say this is probably the hottest day we have had. I know we breaches 100 in the desert, but with this humidity I feel like this is way worse. The UV rating is high as shit too So no matter how much sun screen I put on I am still getting burned. All in all today was pretty shitty and also boring. We rode 92 miles to caddo state park through rolling hills the entire day which are pretty exhausting in this heat. On the bright side the scenery finally improved slightly the last 15 miles to caddo lake. We are finally seeing trees again.

Anyway, we finally made it to this park and headed through the entrance to go to the camping area only to find it was at the bottom of the hugest hill in east Texas. As we were descending I slammed the brakes and was like "fuck this, there is no way I am biking up this hill in the morning." we promptly turned around and set up camp at top of the hill. Unfortunately the restrooms are at the bottom of the hill and we at cici's pizza buffet for dinner. Shit. Tomorrow morning is going to be unpleasant as we are no where near a bathroom with all this buffet to unload. Oof.

Anyway, it is still hot as shit. I'm laying in a pool of sweat in my tent. I have a feeling I won't get much sleep in these conditions. Oh well! More of the same tomorrow! Hopefully louissiana and Arkansas won't be as dismal.

Fuck Texas. Get me out of here.

2010-05-31T18:56:00.001-07:00

Still in dumb ass Texas. Today we rode 92 miles from Taylor to
marquez. The ride was incredibly boring. The plus side was that it was
an easy ride, aside from the heat and overwhelming humidity. We have
been riding up 79 pretty much the entire time which is sprinkled with
small towns every 10 to 20 miles which makes things pretty easy on us.
We don't have to carry any extra supplies, there are cheap diners in
every town that will make us whatever we want to eat most of the time,
and there are cold drinks a plenty. If only there was something even a
little bit interesting to look at. I haven't even had the urge to pull
out my camera in days. Texas is just that boring. At least maybe once
we get in to Arkansas and Tennessee thing will get mega americana and
at least be humorous.

I suppose the biggest plus to Texas is that the people here are over
all very nice. Everyone is friendly and a lot of times willing to help
us out. The rv parks seem to not know what to do with bikers and let
us perch up for free. I will say it is stupidly hot in our tents at
night. Makes for very gross sleeping while wallowing in our own sweat
after sweating ourselves to death all day. I suppose it will only get
cooler the further we go north (I hope).

Anyway, sorry for not posting pictures in a while. Shit is ugly and
unexciting here. No one would want to see this shit. The most exciting
thing in this area is us!

Leg 3 begins! The home stretch aka the business trip

2010-05-30T17:47:00.000-07:00

Heeeeere we go! We are officially on the home stretch! If you would
have asked me a few days ago if I was ready to ride 1250 more miles to
Ohio I would have definitely told you fuck no. However, the past few
days of not riding were just what my body needed. Once we hit the road
today I felt revitalized. My legs felt super powerful and my bike felt
brand new. Before I get in to that shit I want to say some tid bits
about Austin.

On Tuesday I rode my bike around downtown Austin in search of a new
deraellieur. I hit up lance armstrongs joint, mello johnnys, first
which was a failure. I then headed over to bicycle sports shop or
whatever and got straight hooked up. Thanks to shimano having a sick
warranty policy on their higher end shit I got a brand new xt deore,
just like the one I broke, for straight up free. The shop even
installed it for me and gave me some new extraneous parts for free
which was awesome. To top it all off the dude working on it, who was
rocking a suicidal tendancies hat, adjusted it lightning fast and I
have to say it works better than it ever has before. The shit shifts
so damn smooth. This leads me to believe that I had a defective first
xt from the get go because this shit feels amazing. No wonder this
dérailleur has nothing but stellar reviews. Anyway, it is really great
to not shift with my finger pushing the chain anymore. So much better
haha.

As for chaos in tejas 2010, I had a pretty good time. It was great
seeing friends from all over the country like Todd and allie, Dennis
and Amanda, Pittsburgh and Philly people... Got to catch up with a lot
of friends. It was also good to see Lenora after our week or so of
separation. I was really happy that she was well and she ovarall had a
great experience on the ride, even though things got really tough
towards the end of her time with us.

As for bands... There were honestly only a handful of bands I wanted
to see or even bothered to watch. Bastard was definitely the crown
jewl for me. They are my favorite Japanese band by far and it was
icredible screaming "MISEREYYYYYYY" along with every other shit neck
in that place. Crow were pretty ripping, but played some stinker
songs. Talk is poison was my second favorite of the fest. Really
awesome to see them. Slang took the prize for best sounding band of
the fest. They had their shit together. Other than that, everyting
else was basically filler. Oh yeah, thanks a ton to bniesz for letting
us take over his place for the week! Was great seeing him as well.
Thank to Ashley too for taking care of me while I was sick. No thanks
for leaving the weekend I came to visit. Coward!

So this morning I couldn't really sleep in anticipation of getting
back on the road. Woke up at like 8:30 and fixed some issues with my
rear fender and put on a new rear tire as that shit was balding like
Nicolas cage. We kind of took our time this morning getting groceries
and making sure we had everything before leaving Austin. We didn't
really get going until about 1pm.

The ride today was pretty uneventful. Boring suburban scenery. We rode
about 42 miles and we were both dozing off from being sleep deprived
the past few days. I don't think I slept a good night of sleep the
entire time I was in Austin. We stopped at an RV park in Taylor tx to
take a quick nap. The dude who runs the place came up and offered us
to stay in his camper for $30. This sounded kind of exciting to us, we
were also pretty sleepy so we went for it. Trying something new!

Anyway, we went to taco bell to chillax and have dinner. Today is the
first day of us riding without a bike map and making up our own route
so we are officially riding through areas where people are blown away
by the fact that we are riding cross country. The entire trip we had
been riding on common routes where bike touring was nothing new to
those towns. This shit was like space travel to the employees of the
Taylor taco bell. They were super amazed.

Anyway, Ima hit the sack early as all get out. Tomorrow we are going
to ride an adult sized portion of miles and not be wangs.

GIVE UP ALL HOPE! GIVE UP ALL HOPE! GIVE UP ALL HOPE!
-inspiring words by crow

From Autin with Love

2010-05-28T12:34:00.000-07:00

Been in Austin a week now, chillin and recovering cause my shit got wrecked. As in my knee was busted all to hell and my back was destroyed, left shoulder a wall of pain. So yeah last Thursday after 13 hours of skittering the flights of butterflies and fading my tattoos in the sun I reached my mental, emotional and physical limit. It was a tri-fecta of bad, the perfect combination for me and Brian to clash which is a bummer. It was my light bulb moment though, thought to myself "if I'm in this much pain and am now having a fight with my friend, I think I need to bow out." So I did, crashed at a hotel that night, hitched a ride to the next town 70 miles away, and caught the greyhound to Austin. Arrived that night and was welcomed to the Cindergarden of Austin much to my relief. Spent the next few days there resting, working in the garden surrounded by chickens, and enjoying the company of righteous people. Hell yeah intentional, co-operative communal houses!! The house was wonderful but so HOT, I'm so not use to this shit anymore!! Luckily my old friend Tim rescued me to the AC of his house where I as until Mykke and Co. got into town. Got a massage to help my body heal and the massage therapists basically told me my shit was fucked(greeaaattt). Anyway body still jacked but glad to see everyone and glad we all made it here whole if a little broken. I think this trip was amazing and brutal and beautiful and I think it was totally worth.

Fine I'll start my own band.. and I'll call it Megadeth.

2010-05-26T18:15:00.001-07:00

Gone solo. I always knew I was the Bobby Brown of the group. So to recap the past two days..

Yesterday Brian woke up having puked himself into dehydration and a splitting headache. He worked himself a ride to Austin and I was left with a choice to make. Initially, I said fuck this I'm getting a ride too.. but then three hours later I decided that fear and laziness were horrible excuses for bailing. So around noon I hit the road alone. The ride? Well it sucked. Painfully hot. Painfully humid. Painfully drab. A set of four 1000 ft climbs in a row. As I was descending the 4th, I saw a jeep w/ cop lights flashing and some cars pulled over. Like any cyclist would do, I attempted to just go around. Duh. Not ok. Pig ran out from his jeep into the road in front of me and I slammed my brakes. This earned me a shove in the breast. When I replied "don't Fucking touch me" I was threatened with a beating I wouldn't ride away from. Nice. Went back and forth a bit before I wised up and walked away. Eventually the road cleared.. there was a fender bender up the road. Big Fucking deal. So I had lost nearly an hour and then what.. thunder and lightning and the sky opened up. Bum out. Rushed to make it to Hunt before dark and look for a camp. No luck. Hunt is posh. Weird. On the edge of the town was a convenient store so I ducked in to get out of the rain. Girl working the counter was some type of alternative and had an anarchy tattoo so I tried to holler and scam a place to stay. No luck. The beard doesn't work for me like it does for my brother. Sooo I crushed more miles into a.town called Ingram and found an rv park. I pitched up out of site behind this dumpster and went to bed. Woke up super early and wad able to get in and out for free. Baller. For anyone reading this considering a bike tour.. rv parks are great and you can almost always creep in after the office is closed and creep out before its open.

So today started off alright. Little towns every 7 miles. Nice. Then around noon.. road closed. Can't pass. Called Brian to help find another route. It was not fun. I don't want to talk about it. Austin tomorrow. Never expected to be riding in alone but I should count myself lucky u suppose. In Blanco, tx right now. Killed a burrito and grabbed a mango gatorade. End of text. XXX

leg 2 complete: time for the chaos

2010-05-26T07:20:00.000-07:00

Wowee. So leg 2, which I personally thought was going to be a breeze compared to leg 1, turned out to be a million times more difficult. The mountains were much larger, the weather was much more extreme, the miles were much longer, places to stay were more difficult to find, and food/water was much fewer and far between. Though it was significantly more challenging, this leg provided many more instances in which we could be proud of. We broke our top speed record at 47.5mph, did multiple 100+ mile days, climbed to almost 9000 ft., conquered the desert, survived a world of post apocolypse, and overcame a lot of stressful situations.

I would have to say the lowest points of this leg were all within the last week. We lost lenora, we encountered horrible head winds, we were let down by the lost finale, and I suffered from crippling food poisoning for 2 days. Other hard times included the second day of the leg climbing in to live oaks springs, the 60 some mile stretch of endless heat through glamis, and the climb over emory pass. I would also have to say the scenery in general for about half of this leg was pretty lack luster. Especially west texas. I really can't think of a more boring place on earth other than maybe kansas. I think by far the biggest bummer for me was the food poison that disabled me from riding the last 170 miles. I am pretty bummed about hitching a ride in to austin, but I guess some things are out of my control. At least zach will finish the ride by himself! Way to go zach.

High points were the views climbing out of superior and emory pass, the insane descents out of the mountains, walking around the dunes of glamis, the rolling hills crossing in to new mexico from arizona, the abandoned towns outside of el paso, and the nice people who helped us out in various cities with places to stay or whatever.

Would I ever ride this route again? Probably not. Maybe on a supported tour where I could just blast through on a rode bike at 25mph. But I think I am content with only doing it once haha.

So zach and I have ridden somewhere around 2200 miles so far. We have 1 leg left to cincinnti which is around 1200 miles. I can't really imagine this last leg to be very exciting really. As zach has put it, "this leg will be all business." We are changing things up quite a bit for this one by not following any sort of cycling map and sort of just winging it. I have planned out a route and have written down directions, but in general we don't exactly know what to expect. The plan for this leg is sort of just to straight up kill it and ride as far as we possibly can each day to get to cincinnati as quickly as possible. Zach is trying to get home for the world cup on june 12th at 2pm. We'll see how that goes haha. If we can do at least 100 miles every day we should be able to do it. If the weather doesn't shit all over us this goal is realistic.

All right, it's time for me to finally go get a new working front deraellieur and try to eat a real meal for the first time in 2 days. See you filth nasties at chaos in tejas! No riding until sunday! bye bye for now

Even more bad luck

2010-05-25T08:50:00.001-07:00

I will start off by saying that the series finale of lost was a huge
let down. What a cop out ending. Anyway, yesterday's riding conditions
actually improved quite a bit from the days before as we switched
directions and began heading north. It was still super windy, but at
least it wasn't in our face for a change. We rode about 25 miles and
stopped for lunch on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere.
Almost imediately after lunch I started feeling pretty weak and
shitty. We rode another 25 miles with me feeling like shit before
stopping in camp wood for lunch.

After lunch we hopped back on our bikes to head in to the mountains
for leakey. We rode about 3 miles before I had to stop and lay down. I
was feeling like complete shit and thought I was going to puke. I laid
on the side of the road for about 40 minutes until we saw a wall of
rain coming straight for us. It had been raining off and on all day,
but this wall was no joke. We jumped up and ran to a nearby bridge in
which we used for shelter. All of this running ended up doing me in
unfortunately. I started vomitting all over the place and feeling
generally terrible.

We decided the best thing to do would be to head back to camp wood and
let me rest in a motel for the evening. For the rest of the day I
basically laid in bed until it was time to puke again. This went on
all night. Shitty. Mother nature doesn't want us to bike to austin.

So today I am feeling much better, but I still got that pee butt and I
am pretty sure I am dehydrated from all the vomitting. At this point
with losing this day the chances of making it to Austin on time are
pretty slim. I am unfortunately going to have to get picked up by my
friend Ashley who lives in Austin with only 170 miles to go. It realy
sucks because now I feel like I am cheating. I guess shit happens. Oh
well I guess... It is only 170 miles of the 2100 we have already
ridden. Boooo

New assessment

2010-05-24T04:59:00.001-07:00

I just checked the map and we have 241 miles left to Austin. That
means only 60 a day to get there in time for the fest. That is totally
doable, though if the winds don't let up will be quite exhausting. Let
me tell you, if those winds do let up we will most definitely crush it
and get there by Wednesday for some nap time. Otherwise, I'll be
napping until talk is poison on Thursday.

I feel defeated

2010-05-23T16:30:00.001-07:00

Once again, today we were pummeled by head winds. According to weather.com
it isn't going to let up for at least 2 more days. This shit is
torturous. Today, however, was supposed to be the strongest winds of
the week so it should only get easier.. Though it will still suck for
a couple more days.

Our original plan was to take the day off in del rio today to sit out
what was supposed to be the final, and worst, day of winds. To our
dismay, we checked the weather report this morning to see that the
winds were going to shit all over us for days to come. This sort of
forced us to ride today to decrease the mileage for the next couple of
days just to make it bearable.

The day started off imediately like shit. I tried installing my new
deraellier first thing in morning only to find that dude in alpine
sold me a deraellieur with missing parts. I tried to install it anyway
and use some spare parts to get it working only to have wasted 2 hours
and make myself completely furious. I ended up just taking off all
signs of front shifting capabilities and plan to just deal with this
shit in Austin.

We finally got out of the hotel right around 11am. Right out of the
gate I pulled up to a stop light and straight fell over straight on to
the street because my foot got stuck in my foot strap. Zach thought I
passed out, which I suppose could have been possible with the way shit
was going. Real dumb.

Anyway, we started riding and it was misery as usual. The only
highlitght of the day was a 10 mile stretch where we slightly turned
north and the wind was less in our face so we didn't have to try quite
as hard. However, after stopping for a Short break, we had to go south
again which made the day agonizing again. Shitty! All I could think
about at this point were the emergency days off we spent in safford
and van horn where we had incredible tail winds and we didn't take
advantage of them and now we were doing this! Fuck us!

We only went 30 miles today due to the next city being way too far to
get to in these conditions. We stopped here in bracketville and got a
hotel at this weird fort resort thing so we can watch lost. This will
be our last opportunity to use lost as an excuse to get a hotel haha.
Oof! Anyway, this place is pretty cool and has a sort of natural
swimming pool thing that we swam in for a bit after goingn to some
restaraunt where they made us off the menu vegan food. A pretty nice
ending to a super exhausting day.

Time to watch lost! Holy shit!

Wading through shit again

2010-05-22T19:28:00.001-07:00

Today was basically the same as yesterday. We travelled 60 miles
against brutal head winds yet again. However, at times the winds were
much stronger than the past couple days.

Firstly I will mention that it is very hard to sleep when the wind is
pummeling your tent all night long. Shit is loud and at times
worrisome that your tent is going to get blown away. I was even scared
we were about to be caught in a tornado at some point as the winds
were that strong. Besides all that, we woke up at 6am only to find
that it was raining. Luckily it let up after about an hour so we began
to mobilize around 7. We ate some chips and pretzels for breakfast, as
they were all we had, before heading out against severely strong winds
and 100% humidity. The humidity was almost as bad as the wind. It was
sort of like riding through jello. Everything was wet and my hair was
just dripping all over the damn place.

We miserably struggled through this shit for about 12 miles. After
about 4 of those I was more exhausted than any other point in the
entire trip. Since we both felt like dying we decided to try to hitch
a ride. No one would bite and we weren't exactly trying very hard to
look desperate. That is until the bolts holding my rear rack broke
off. I guess with all the weight and the strong ass winds pushing on
my panniers the bolts couldn't take it. So here we were with a
legitimate reason to hitch as I could no longer carry my shit. Lucky
for us it wasn't long before an old man named Melvin picked us up and
drove us 15 miles to the next town, comstock, where he lived. He had a
huge tool shed and helped me get my rack back in order with some wire
and a new bolt. Thanks Melvin! Thanks to weiner dog too!

We were now ahead of schedule so we chilled and had some shitty lunch
at a small restaraunt in comstock. The food was basically freezer
food, bet it wad better than what we had been eating. From this point
we had 30 more miles to our destination of del rio. We decided the
best way to handle it was to straight kill it and ride as hard as we
could to get it over with. I suppose you could say it was like
removing a band aid. It is either over quick and sort of painful, or
slow and sort of torturous.

Our method worked out fairly well. We both pushed hard as shit and
knocked out the 30 miles in about 3.5 hours. I must say, those were
the most intense 30 miles I have ever ridden. We were both completely
spent by the time we were finished. Fortunately, del rio has a super
cheap motel six for $30 and we were stoked to chillax in it. We both
needed to get out of the wind so we could actually sleep tonight.

So now our new pickle is that tomorrow the winds are supposed to be at
their strongest and we are both physically drained. We feel like
taking a day off to rest might help with upcoming days, however, the
wind may not go away by monday and if we don't ride tomorrow we will
basically be gambling and could easily screw ourselves. Oof!

On a brighter note! Tomorrow is the series finale of lost! We will
HAVE to get another hotel to watch it.

"I always knew I was the Will Smith of the group" - Brian

2010-05-22T19:14:00.001-07:00

Deep down the Fresh Prince always seemed to appreciate everything Aunt Viv and Uncle Phil did for him. Every compromise and every sacrifice. I hope in the future we can all learn to do the same. In the meantime, Brian and I continue to battle mother nature in our rush to make up for lost time and reach Austin before this warped tour or whatever hippy fest he is attending. We have another couple days before our brutal headwind subsides. The plus side is that we will head north sometime in there and the winds can do fuck all about THAT.

Woke up in our sweaty wet tents this morning after an on and off sleep. Heavy winds and some rain kept me up. Ate our slim breakfast rations of pretzels and chips then jumped into the shit. Brutal headwinds. Yes.. you get it. Headwinds. Did I mention the wind? Shut up. Brians rear rack busted. Piss off, tubus. Had to hitch a 15 mile ride to Comstock with our pals Melvin and his weiner dog. I think Melvin is about the age of Jacob from Lost. He was a huge help and even helped fix Brians rack in his tool shed. That shed was massive. Massive.

Out of comstock we just decided to ride as hard as we could the rest of the day as we were desperate to end the nightmare. It worked. Amistad was lackluster. Del Rio is where we are. We ate Chinese buffet and Nascar oreos. What? Yes. Exactly. Mhmm. Well. Whatever. Feels good to be straight edge in Texas.

Record highs and record lows

2010-05-21T18:29:00.001-07:00

The past couple of days have been pretty interesting. I suppose I will
start off with the bad news. Lenora unortunately has dropped off the
trip. Due to the schedule getting down to the wire and her knee
problems not getting any better, she has been struggling to keep
going. Unfortunately, we are unable to extend the schedule to a
comfortable pace as our emergency days off have worn too thin.

Yesterday we broke our mileage record again by going 112 miles from
fort Davis to sanderson. I woke up to be the recipient of the days
morning mystery flat, which has become quite the ritual lately. We
were served breakfast from our wonderful hosts before hitting the
road. The day started off pretty well, the ride to alpine was fairly
scenic. Once we got to alpine we hit up the grocery and a bike shop so
I could get a new deraellieur (which I still have not had time to
install).

After leaving alpine the rest of the day was pretty boring. The ride
was pretty easy until we got about 15 miles outside of sanderson where
we got caught in an awful head wind. We were already exhausted so this
was like the nail in the coffin as we were almost there. During that
15 miles I seriously thought I wasn't going to make it. This is the
first time of the entire trip that I seriously didn't think I could go
on. However, we all struggled through it, but by the end everyone was
super cranky. That day ended up being the deal breaker for Lenora
unfortunately.

However, lucky for her, today was much much worse haha. She definitely
chose the right time to dip out because today was for real the
absolute worst day of the entire trip.

We got up after sleeping terribly due to loud ass winds all night and
traffic from the nearby road. Also, it was humid as shit so everytime
I woke up my entire body was covered in slime. Anyway, we got our shit
together and started riding only to realize we had the same exact
shitty head wind and we were most likely going to have it all day. Let
me tell you, this was by far the strongest head wind we had ever
ridden in. It was even worse than the night before when I thought I
couldn't go on.

With no other choice we kept going at an exhaustingly slow pace. We
rode about 20 miles before stopping in dryden to get some lunch. The
only thing in the entire store that we could eat was condensed cambels
tomato soup which we ate straight out of the can dipping peanut butter
crackers in it.

We consulted the map to see how far it was to the next town only to
see that it was 40 miles. We still really had no choice but to ride
even though we were both already dead from the first 20. Lucky for us,
the winds only got stronger as the day continued. It seriously felt
like we were getting physically slammed by boards or something as we
were getting plastered by 20-40 mph winds for 40 miles. My favorite
points in the day were when I was pedeling as hard as I could down
mega descents only to go 9mph. These were descents that I would
regularly go 28 to 34 down. Unreal.

With 20 miles left we had to climb 3 large hills that would have been
difficult with no wind. At this point the wind was stronger than any
other throughout the day. We were going about 4mph up these hills
pedelling harder than I think I ever have. Our bodies could no longer
take it at this point so we decided to walk our bikes up the hill and
attempt to hitch a ride for the last 10 miles. We couldn't get anyone
to stop so we sucked it up and destroyed ourselves all the way to
whatever small town this is.

The map showed that the town has a grocery store so we were so stoked
to get there and eat everything they had. However, after climbing yet
another hill to get tocthe grocery we were greated with a "closed"
sign that said they closed at 5. SHIT!!!! We barely had any food so we
resorted to eating a can of spaghetti sauce and some leftover chips
from lunch. There really was no good spot to camp in the area so we
just set up behind the store hoping to drop in as soon as they opened
in the morning, otherwise we wouldn't have shit to eat for half of
tomorrow. Luckily, the store owner showed up to get somethig so we
popped in to buy what little offerings they had. Hopefully what we got
will last us until the next store...

So yeah, today was awful and the forecast for the next 3 days is
exactly the same. So we are in for a real struggle. Today we did 60
miles in 11 hours which is pretty gnarly. We have shuffled around
some miles and think we have a new plan which should get us in to
Austin by Wednesday night. Shit is going to really suck for the next 3
days though with these winds. Hopefully our bodies can take it. Oof.

One more thing...

2010-05-19T20:37:00.001-07:00

Zach pooped on the side of the road today. Nice.

Disaster strikes v 3.0

2010-05-19T20:36:00.001-07:00

Whew! What an unfortunate day. But first I will mention some things from yesterday. I believe Lenora may have mentioned that we got a hotel in van horn last night for lost night. We only road like 32 mile yesterday and basically had to eat an emergency day due to a miscalculation on miles. We couldn't really push past van horn without going 120 miles through the mountains, so our most logical plan was to just take a light day and chill in van horn.

After we checked in to our hotel I popped out to walk to the grocery to get some snacks when I saw a punkish looking girl walking across the street who totally looked out of place. We both sort of eye balled eachother until she crossed over and guessed that I was biking cross country as I didn't look like I should be in that town. Her name was Shay and she was walking cross country from Santa monica or something. Anyway, we chatted a bit and she seemed stoked to meet a like minded individual as she has been travelling on her own. I invited her to come hang at our hotel room if she got bored later (however, I informed her we were only in the hotel to watch lost that evening. Luckily she showed up before it came on). Anyway, she came over and we shot the shit and it was cool to meet her. She also has a blog if you readers want to check it out. Www.Fakeplasticshay.blogspot.com

Now, back to today. We got out the door for the most part on time and problem number one struck early. Zach had a flat. We fixed that shit then raged out of van horn on some frontage road and were in Kent tx in no time. So a few days ago we ran in to some bikers going the opposite way than us and they warned us about how Kent had Jack shit other than alcohol and beef jerky. They were liars. It was like a Gatorade utopia in there. We were all stocked out of our minds thinking we wouldn't see shit all day. Well Kent was a fine stop. So all you hatred can step off.

We perched up in an abandoned school house right off the Kent exit for lunch and I had noticed my deraellier was acting funny again. I wheeled my bike up in the dirt to adjust only to blow out my tire on a broke bottle. Sweet! After I changed my tube it turned out my skewer was also wonky and it was hard as shit to put my wheel back on. The icing on the cake was that when I went to adjust my deraillieur I found out it was truly broken this time. The arm snapped in half. I furiously decided to just take the damn thing off and ride without it. Just so happens it was the least awesome day to not have a front deraillieur as we were biking through the mountains. Luckily, I experimented a bit and figured out that I could easily shift down with my foot and up by bending down and popping the chain over with my finger. Not really a perfect process, but it works for now until I find a new deraillieur. I rode 50 mile theough the mountains like that and honeslty it
wasn't too bad. Who needs a front dérailleur anyway?!

That aside the ride was exhausting. We had brutal head winds while climbing all day. Once the head winds let up we had to climb super steep shit. I also was periodically getting mystery flats which I believe are from clbimg in the extreme heat with too much weight. I had to stop and pump up 3 times.

After, we finally got out of the mountains we were about 9 miles to the end of our 94 mile day when lenoras tire goes flat too. All three of us got flats today! I had multiple! So shitty. So we changed her shit and started riding again and I noticed my skit was flat yet again. At this point I justnpumped it up and rode off furiously for the last few miles to the town.

Fortunately the day ended wonderfully. We made our first successful use of warmshowers.com and are staying with a great couple here in fort Davis. Susan and matt welcomed us in to their home with dinner ready and towels for showers. They even read in our blog that we were vegan so they accomodated by buying us daiya cheese to put on the delicious vegan food they made us. They offered to loan me a dérailleur or drive me to the bike shop in the morning in the next town over. They even recorded lost for us as we were originally supposed to watch it last night. We couldn't ask for better hosts. Thanks so much if you are reading this. Oh yeah, and they just so happened to have 2 spare queen size beds. Get out of town! We will have to try warm showers more often!

Anyway, I gotta sleep. Supposed to break our mileage record tomorrow. Hope I don't tear off my finger in my chain ring haha.

Las cruces, Los crudos

2010-05-18T14:49:00.001-07:00

I left silver city in a red Volvo and a swirl of cotton wood fiber. I
was grateful to go despite how kind people were, there's only so much
self important priveleged white hippy nonsense I can take. I met up
with Brian and Zach in las cruces new mexico and rode the last 40
miles into el paso with them. It was good to be back on the rode.
Riding behind zach dodging the farts and snot he threw at me. We had
our hotel and day off which was awesome. I was still adjusting to
riding with a bunk knee so things were a little slow going. We hit the
rode and went through beautiful pecan farms. I think the sw is lovely
but riding through those sudo forests made me miss the east coast. At
one point we stopped and I was able to collect some fallen pecans.
Ack! My time line is all messed up. The pecans happened on the way to
el paso, whatevs. Anyway yeah so yesterday we were suppose to go so
many miles. 75 miles into our 114 mile day my brain and body had
enough. In the middle of a climb in a awful headwind I stopped and
just started crying. Ugh! We had 50 miles to go and I just felt I
couldn't do it. My knee was screaming, my back was in knots and I was
mentally worn down. But we couldn't stop there obviously so we powered
on to Sierra Blanca, Texas. We entered the town on west main street,
past the devastated shells of abandoned cars and the skeletons of long
forgotten buildings. Seriously it was a ghost town. The strangeness of
it was that the stores still had merchandise on their shelves. They
sat there collecting dust and fading with age. We crossed train tracks
searching for signs of life to no avail. At the end of main street we
found an abandoned rv park, an exxon, and a BBQ restaraunt. We camped
there for the night, ate way to greasy food at the BBQ place, and used
the exxon for a bathroom. Today was 30 some miles to van horn
scattering sunbathing lizards on the red pavement. Some climbs but
mostly down hill and we had a tailwind. Glorious!!! We got to van
horn,tx, got a super cheap hotel and i ate two ice cream cones at
dairy queen. Being a grown up rules!!!

Post apocolypse ride 2010 AD

2010-05-17T20:51:00.000-07:00

This morning we got up and I did my usual route examination on our map
and came to realize there must have been a miscalculation or some shit
when I planned our shit for today because we were only supposed to go
83 miles but the map was telling me 113. This isn't really a big deal,
but since we didn't expect it I guess we weren't really mentally
prepared. Also, Lenora was feeling a bit ill this morning so we left
an hour later than we had hoped.

We hit the road around 8am just in time to ride in the morning el paso
traffic. It got a bit hectic for a bit until we escaped civilization.
Also, we saw a place named "the burro cafe" which sent me in to a
frenzy.

Pretty much our entire ride today was filled with ghost towns. Every
"town" we drove through was full of abandoned businesses and the
completely run down buildings that housed them. It was some post
apocalypse shit for real. It looked straight up out of the pages of
the book the road. I was pretty in to it and it made me feel somewhat
desperate and like dangerous lurkers were around every corner waiting
to jump me and ravage my food rations.

When we weren't among the ghost towns we were on ghost roads where no
cars dared travel. It made for an easy ride as we had the entire road
to ourselves. Zach and I did a lot of badass stunts with our plentiful
road space.

Seeing how all of the buildings and stores we encountered were gutted
and destroyed, our ride was not quite rich with recourses. About
halfway through the day we were running low on water and were sort of
banking on this one gas station coming up to fill up on water.
Unfortunately, Zach read the update sheet for our map and found out
the gas station had been ghostified and would no longer be of service
to us. At this point we decided to head up to some house in the middle
of nowhere to see if we could fill our bottles. However, no one was
home. We decided we had to do what we had to do so we found a spicket
outside their house and pillaged their water. Thanks random home owner!

So we carried on and found our ghost gas station and decided to stop
their anyway and sit under their awning for shade while we at lunch.
The shit was falling apart and littered with broken down vehicles and
random twisted machine parts. We also peeped in the store windows and
saw there was a TV inside that was turned on playing some staticy
shit. That was actually pretty creepy.

Anyway, we then hit the road again and had to so some minor climbing.
However, at this point in the day it had become super hot. During this
stretch everyones pacience was wearing quite thin. We had some
distress and stopped for a bit before carrying on to a border check.

Shortly after the border check we popped up in Seirra blanca which apeared
to be a once happenin town but is now as run down as the rest of our
ride. 90% of the buildings were completely destroyed and abandoned.
Everything that was "open" was half destroyed as well. Though the
weird thing Was that people still lived in the town. We were all
thinking how depressing it would be to live in a town like that. And
with that said, we discovered we didn't have enough daylight to make
it to the next town so we pitched our tents on the only piece of grass
in the shittiest RV park I have ever seen.

Though this town is completely ruined and depressing, we are kind of
stoked to be here. It is so run down it is almost unbelievable.
Hopefully we don't get ransacked in the night!

Anyway, i am laying in my tent past my bed time so I am ending this.

Lines on my face growing deeper every day

2010-05-16T21:10:00.001-07:00

Birthday blog. 28 years ago mom gave birth to me as drug free as I am today. Appreciate all the media bday wishes from everyone today. We crashed at a hotel last night as a gift and it was pretty spectacular. Jumped in that filthy, frozen pool and got Chinese delivered. Today we only rode a handful of miles.. just enough to get a little outside of the city and to get to Cici's for my birthday lunch and dinner (we stayed for like five hours.) After eating till it made us sad we headed on towards this camp site. We were 500 ft away when me and Lenora both got our tires thorned up and busted. Treated Housed and Served. Rode on our wabblers to the site and patched that shit up hard while talking shit on each other and sipping Fanta. I had strawberry. They had pineapple. So what!?

Yesterday we broke the 100 mile mark. Made even more baller do to the oppressive headwind we fought all day. Made even more baller that I was barefoot and bunny hopping every crack and eating pasta out of my water bottles. This ride made me want to go row a boat. I think you can only look at rows of pecan trees for like 3 hours before you start wishing a bird would peck out your eyes and feed them to its young.

The plus side of yesterday was meeting back up with big fat Lenorbit. Brian is fine but we can only verbally assault each other so much before wanting to have an actual conversation.

So anyway. This is west Texas. I'll be listening to Explosions In The Sky tomorrow and will keep an eye out for Timmy Riggins and the rest of the Dillon Panthers. Wish we could have spent more time in New Mexico. Nah I don't really care actually. One of my earliest childhood memories is of getting super sick in in albuquerque on a vacation with the fam. Remember that? mom? Dad?

I've been whimpering in my sleep.

XXX

Yeee haw!

2010-05-15T20:51:00.001-07:00

Hello from el paso Texas. We have crossed yet another state line.
However, we won't be crossing another one for quite a while. Today's
ride from arrey to el paso was pretty uneventful except for the fact
that Zach and I broke our mileage record by going 103.6 miles today.
Our first 100+ mile ride. Woooo.

So we started off our day at about 7:20 heading out of arrey. We
killed it for the first 25 miles or so with a slight tail wind before
stopping at some family dollar in hatch to try and find food. It has
actually been really difficult to find anything vegan the past couple
of days other than chips and salsa. Family dollar failed us except for
picking up some kick ass 2 liters of Gatorade. We then went down the
street a bit to some shitty super market and still barely found any
food. Zach and I are basically at a loss when we can't find bushes
vegetarian baked beans. For whatever reason, this bullshit part of the
country carries all varieties of bushes except the vegetarian. I am
not willing to eat any other brand so fuck that! Also, hatch is
apparently the chilli pepper Capitol of the country. I wanted to eat
the shit out of some chilis, but did not in fear of dropping ass all
over my bike seat for the next 78 miles. We eventually just gave up
and settled for more pb&j.

After leaving hatch we spent the rest of our day battling a severe
head wind. Shit sucked all day and basically made it like riding up
hill for the next 78 miles or whatever. Not to mention today's ride
was pretty damn boring. Lots of farms and small crappy cities with no
food for us to eat.

About 60 miles in we arrived in las cruces where we met up with Lenora
after she caught a ride with someone from silver city. We had a quick
lunch at subway then got back on the road to el paso. More boring
scenery happened and then all the sudden we were in Texas with no
welcome sign or anythig. The welcome signs on this trip have been
pretty lack luster thanks to all the backroads we are always taking.

We got a hotel once we arrived in el paso as we have a planned sort of
day off tomorrow. We figured if we don't have to go to sleep early or
wake up early we muse as well do so while chillin hard as hell in some
beds while watching cable. Also, zachs birthday is tomorrow so he gets
to relax real style'n for that shit.

Not sure what we are doing tomorrow. All I know is true lies is on TV
and it got vetoed by some fine cinema hating snobs. Whatever, all
Lenora talks about is the new marmaduke movie that is coming out soon.

Texas better not be as abysmal as everyone says it is. Period.

Some jock at Emory pass

2010-05-14T19:44:00.001-07:00

Epic Emory pass

2010-05-14T19:44:00.000-07:00

The gruel and the beautiful

2010-05-14T19:43:00.000-07:00

Today was a grueling day. We got up at 6 and hit the road by 7:20 or something after saying goodbye to Lenora and our new friend Jamie who was nice enough to host us. It was strange leaving Lenora behind, but I believe we all know it was for the best with her knee situation. I definitely think it was for the best now that the ride is over. Today has taken over as the new most physically brutal ride I have participated in.

We started off gradually climbing out of silver city on some huge rolling hills. We would climb about a mile and a half then drop down for a mile and climb again. We dis that for about an hour maybe before we descended in to Hanover where we were told there is a store where we could fill up our gallon of emergency water before heading in to the mountains. Unfortunately, the store wasn't open at 8:45am. We then decided to hang out on there stoop and eat bananas for a bit in hopes that they might open up. They didn't, so we pushed on hoping to find water elsewhere.

We continued up some more massive hills which in the end overlooked some sort of mine. Maybe a copper mine? We were then rewarded with a fast and fairly long descent in to milbrane or some shit? We saw a building that sort of looked like a rest stop so we headed over to try and get water there as we knew we were only a couple miles away from the mountain side.

Unfortunately, the building was not a rest stop. It was instead a seniors lodge. We were pretty desperate to fill our water supply so I went inside to see what was up. Luckily, the women running the place were super friendly and allowed us to fill up our water and eat brunch on their picnic table. They even gave us some cake! Better than a rest stop!

So now we were fueled and supplied and ready to do our 18 mile vertical climb to Emory pass. The first 8 miles started off fairly tame, but definitely got super steep at times. The climb lasted forever. I thought we had to have been at the top by the time it levelled off but we weren't even half way. Also, the scenery was pretty bland for that first 8 miles.

However, as soon as it levelled off a bit things got all rocky and treey and started to look amazing. We then had 5 miles of ups and downs that were pretty challenging. My legs were really started to get weak by the end of this 5 so we stopped for another banana break before ripping up the last 8 miles.

The break wasn't quite enough as we hopped on our bikes and I was still feeling beat. But you know, what can you do other than keep going? So we basically forced our way up the last stretch which was about twice as steep as the shit we had been doing. It was painful at times and I had to let out some mean orcish grunts here and there out of shear struggle. I found that the only way to get up the hill was to put on some tunes, bring my hat bill down so I couldn't see up the hill, and just zone out staring at the road. It was for real some zen shit.

Once we finally reached the top we took many pictures and walked out to some raunchy overlook of pretty much the entire mountain range. It was pretty awesome. We were 8,800 some feet up and we got there riding fully loaded touring bikes. I was pretty proud. THIS is officially the highest elevation of our trip I am pretty sure. This also marks the end of the mountains until Austin I am pretty sure. We are going to finally be going down hill for a few days after constantly clbimg for what seemed like weeks.

After we were finished sight seeing we got to partake in a gnarly descent. We raged down the mountain side winding down sharp ass curves keeping pace with cars. It was a blast and totally made the past 40 miles of clbimg worth it. We descended for about 15 miles or something and landed in Hillsboro where there was supposed to be a grocery store. Instead there was nothing so we just stopped and at peanut butter and jelly and ran in to a couple other touring cyclists and shot the shit.

After leaving the town we had to climb yet another huge hill before catching a 20 mph tail wind which pushed us right to the edge of arrey where we were planning to camp for the night. We still had 5 miles left, but unfortunately we had to turn against the wind. That last 5 miles was nearly as hard as climbing the mountain. We trudged along at about 7mph and eventually made it to a state park where were stoked to sit down and eat.

Despite the majorly intensive ride, we went 82 miles and managed to arrive at our camp site with about 2.5 hours of daylight left which we haven't been able to do for weeks. It was really nice to take it easy upon arrival for a change instead of rushing to put up our tents before the sun went out.

Anyway, we are off to Texas tomorrow. Bye bye new Mexico, you have been beautiful.

Left Behind

2010-05-14T11:46:00.000-07:00

So here I am in the library of WNMU looking up fun things to do in Silver City. Gotta keep it low key so as to not brutalize the ol' knee here. I was sad to see the guys go this morning and was wishing I could join them. It feels weird to not be riding my bike and my body isn't sure what to do with itself. I would love to be charging through the desert taking in the rest of amazing New Mexico. People here have been rad though, this morning they took me out for breakfast and paid for it. Looks like I got a ride to a town about 60 miles from El Paso tomorrow, if my knee is up for it I'm just going to ride there and meet the guys. Suppose to be pretty flat, maybe I'll actually get to take in some more of New Mexico before the long stretch of West Texas. Today has given me a chance to reflect on our journey so far. I love the scenery, even the barren scorched earth of the desert, it's just so different than what I'm use to. I saw houses surrounded by pasture at the base of mountains and thought how lovely it would be to one day live like that. Things not noted in previous blog post: the weird ass shack/house at the base of the mountain climb, it was made of plywood,street signs, flags and other scraps of material. We joked the guy was gonna come after us with a shot gun as we munched a snack nearby. The sky is huge here, nearly cloudless and blue it stretches far. The land is lovely full of boulders, caverns, caves and crevices. Dry river beds are deep and look like mini canyons choked full of rocks and the dry branches of parched trees. The other day as we bombed a 7% grade on either side was a depleted muddy river giving enough water to allow for a small oasis in the red rough desert. Green grass and trees grew near it for a few acres before giving way to sand and rock. Its hard to write of these things at the end of a harsh ride. The mind and body are drained and the days run together. How can you possibly remember all you saw? I think I will sit on all this and recap later my experience.

Knee-rly there

2010-05-13T22:13:00.000-07:00

So here's the blicky; 24 hours of rest and a kneebrace later and we
hit the rode. We said goodbye to our hotel room and the scene of an
Oreo cookie massacre. It was cold out and my knee was stiff but we
went for it. I felt like I was fighting my bike for miles and couldn't
figure out what was going on. My knee was killing me and that combined
with the bike issue made me hella frustrated! Felt bad most of the day
cause I was holding the guys up too. When we finally got to our major
climb I was spent mentally and physically. The guys attacked the
mountain before us with vigor despite the four or five switch backs
needed to climb it. I started to but knee and bike weren't having it.
I finally stopped and took a look at the bike and realized my front
wheel had been rubbing all day. What the f?! Seriously?! Wishing I had
noticed sooner I fixed it and started back up the. By then I hAd just
been pushing my bike up the hill and found I was not too far behind
the guys. Ha ha they were biking almost as fast as it would take to
walk the thing. Despite this i felt i should try to ride but just then
a truck slowed and asked if I wanted a ride to the top. I looked at my
knee and decided to take him up on the offer. Randy was his name and
he was a total cowboy. Complete with yes ma'ams, cowboy boots, hat and
shirt. Totally worth it!!!! I would say half the fun of this trip has
been meeting and talking to people. We stopped at a little gas station
today and I had a really nice conversation with folks in there. I love
the sw! After Randy dropped me off at the top of the climb the guys
met up with me and we rode through gila national park and over into
new mexico. Hello new Mexico you are beautiful!!!! Lush rolling hills,
mountains and what's this the sun bleached bones of a dead calf?!!!
Total win!
Today was a killer, nothing but false flats and shitty hills. Ugh
we were wiped but we landed well!! Wingnut bike hippies took us to
their house and made us welcome! So we are indoors tonight and not
freezing at a campground. Tomorrow this rad dude named chris offered
to drive me to the next town to catch the bus, total win. Me and the
old knee can't take two more days of climbs. I'm holding the guys up
and biking through too much pain. Sucks cause new Mexico was the state
I was so psyched to bike through. Bummed to be parted from the guys
and frustrated beyond belief with my knee. So strange when your body
betrays you.
Positives: this house we're at, the awesome folks I've met, the
hummingbird I rescued and held, the sweet cat at the rv park, cooler
weather, bones we found, and my supportive bike partners in crime.

Newest in bicycle fashion

2010-05-13T19:47:00.000-07:00

Welcome to new Mexico

2010-05-13T19:45:00.000-07:00

Hello readers, so two days have passed since I have had service. We have been in the straight up mountains for days. It has been extremely grueling, however, the views have been lovely.

Before I get in to the logistic tecniques of bicycle touring, I would like to touch on an issue that has been bothering us for the past couple of days. When we were passing through Pima, safford and thatcher and noticed that for whatever reason, probably out of human laziness, they call burritos burros. Now maybe I have some sort of linguistic ignorance, but i have never heard anyone call a burrito a burro. We even went to a restaraunt to get some burritos and when Zach requested one by the word burrito, the waitress even corrected him. What the fuck is that? YOUR SMALL STRETCH OF TOWNS ARE WRONG!!!

Now, back on point, yesterday we started out of safford with a goal of going 59 miles as we read that that particular stretch was the steepest and most difficult of the entire southern tier. So we headed out and the climbing basically started right away. The first 30 miles or so to three way were all up hill, but it was pretty easy. Very gradual climbing. Right outside of three way we hit a gnarly ass decline where I am proud to say I reached my top speed on a bicycle of 47.6 mph. Though it was incredible, it was also terrifying because the wind picks up on you super hard when you get up to those speeds. Tears were just streamig off of my face and at times we would get blasted with a cross wind that made me pretty scared for my life.

After three way the climbs got really real on us. The hills got super steep and winded all around the mountains. We were doing some super steep climbs for a long long time. We climbed to I believe 6900 ft or something. The views were incredible. We even saw a cliff that looked like a phallus.

So after reaching the top we began a super fun descent which tool us across the new Mexico border. As soon as we hit the border, once again, the scenery changed completely. We saw forests filled with trees all the way down the mountain side which lead in to rolling green pastures surrounded by mountains. This made all of the climbing totally worht it. New Mexico is straight up baller looking. Also, we were riding this last leg while the sun was setting making the landscape even more beautiful. This was another of my favorite stretches of the trip.

We rode about 20 miles of that before hitting up buckhorn for the night. Even though the ride tha day was physically exhausting I felt really good the entire day. I was super stoked the whole time and the ride didn't seem hectic which many days it does due to long miles. We ended up doing 78 miles when all was said and done, even with all the mountains. Great day.

Now today was a different story. We woke up this morning to about 38 degree weather. It was probably the coldest morning we have had yet. We got up and slowly got our shit together because we were sluggish and cold. We hit the road I believe around 8 am and headed toward silver city. Today's ride was also up hill alllllll day. However, today was just boring and I think we all agrees that even though none of the climbs were as severe as the ones from yesterday, something about today was just straight up exhausting. Once we rolled in to silver city we headed over to some overpriced vegetarian restaraunt. Turns out silver city is a MEGA hippie town. Though I am no hippie sympathizer, I do have many common interests with the likes of them so this town was a nice change from the red neck breeding grounds of yore.

The orignal plan was that we were going to hang out for a bit then hit the road to get ahead of the game for the next couple of days. However, turns out we were all Spent. Then Lenora dropped the bomb that her knee is in too much pain to endure the 8000 ft climb we have in store for tomorrow. She unfortunately has decided to catch a bus to meet us in el paso. Her knee is the opposite of zachs bicep (from Zachary).

After this Zach and I made up our minds not to continue on and just brave the night with the hippies. Luckily while we were stopped at a bike shop a friendly wing nut started talkig to us about our ride and invited us to stay at his wing nut castle. So here we are! Amidst familiar territory among fellow biker weirdos.

Tomorrow morning Zach and I will leave Lenora in our dust to climb Emory pass. An 8500 ft. Behemoth.

Breakfast

2010-05-13T16:56:00.001-07:00

We've Gone Country pt 2

2010-05-11T16:06:00.000-07:00

We've gone country

2010-05-11T14:08:00.001-07:00

Cop Asshole

2010-05-11T12:45:00.000-07:00

Sent from my HTC on the Now Network from Sprint!

Lost Cause

2010-05-11T11:42:00.001-07:00

Sent from my HTC on the Now Network from Sprint!

Starts and stops

2010-05-11T09:00:00.000-07:00

Amazing things have been seen on this trip. Seriously the only way to
travel is by bike, I'm convinced! The night before last we stayed at a
windy but beautiful camp ground at the top of the mountains in a
national park. It was a hell of a climb getting to it though.
Especially since I have a slow leak and my tire was at half pressure
most of the day. For reals why is the back half of my bike trying to
sabotage me? The new wheel set has made things a hell if a lot better
though. Love love love my new wheels. So the really rad stuff that has
gone down includes the following; Yesterday we kicked in the apache
Rez and made friends with a mangie stray, heard coyotes talking one
night, flocks of small birds in the early am and pm swirling and
diving while they hunt, we've met some really friendly people and
recently the weather had cooled off. Bummers would include Zach trying
to poison Brian with kerosene, my tire being super low the last couple
days, and my fucking knee deciding to crap out at the end of a 98
mile day. We're now kicking it in a motel taking an emergency day off
so my knee can recover. WTF?! Today zach said it's always something
with you. It's really starting to feel a little like that. Oh well
here's to an unexpected day off and the quick recovery of my bum knee.

Mountain biking

2010-05-11T06:40:00.000-07:00

Shew! So the last couple of days have been pretty tough. We biked about 170 miles through some tall ass mountains.

We started off Sunday leaving Phoenix around 6:30 or so in the morning. It took us a pretty long time to get out of city/suburbs. I think we ended up riding 35 miles or something before we got out of there. Regardless, suburban riding is some of the most boring shit. The only thing I could do to keep myself entertained was to ride around in my new sun glasses telling all the bystanders that I was a cop. Before we left town we picked up some groceries and stopped in apache junction for brunch before we entered desolation again.

The next part of the ride was pretty boring as well. Just same old desert shit. We were banking on stopping at Florence junction to have a nice lunch break, but as we pulled up to it we saw that it was merely a meeting of freeways and there was no city at all. Fortunately, there was an overpass for us to hang outnunder for a couple hours to escape the heat.

We ate some food and chatted for a while and Zach informed us that he was completely out of water. This definitely sucked becaue we were like 20 miles to the next town. None of us thought he was going to die or anything, but we had some hills to tackle.

After climbing a few hills we made it to superior where for the first time in a while all of our climbing paid off with some nice mountainous scenery. We then stopped in supperior to fill up on water and what not before climbing the worst hill of the day to get to our camp site at the top of the mountain. We had to pick up 3 gallons of extra water before making the climb as there was no water at the camp site.

This climb to the camp site was probaby the scariest part of the trip so far. We were going about 4 mph the entire time up a steep ass hill on a busy ass freeway with no shoulder and cars speeding past us. We also had to cross a bridge and go through a tunnel which were both pretty damn scary. On top of the general conditions of the ride being scary, the sun was also going down which made our visibility to drivers quite lower.

All in all, we killed that mountain and made it almost to the top to where our camp site was. The views were ridiculous and even though the camp site was pretty rugged with no water or electricity and shit, it was one of the coolest camp sites we have stayed at based on location alone. It was also free as all get out.

We arrived pretty late and imediately got to putting tents and cooking dinner. We had a feast of coos coos and lentil soup and finished it off by dipping pita in to bakes beans! However, about a quarter in to my pita i realized that it tasted kind of like soap. Zach and Lenora assured me it was just the way these pita tasted so I kept eating it. Then I was thinking it tastes more like gasoline, or even more specifically... Kerosine! This made sense to me because there was kerosine packed in the same bag. But no... Lenora assured me it was just cilantro and Zach said it was impossible that there could be kerosine leaking. Soooo I finished the pita. Then Zach looked in the bag and realized there was kerosine leaking all over the bag. AWESOME! So I checked the back of the container which told me "harmful or FATAL if ingested". This kind of scared me so I just quietly went to sleep hoping I wouldn't be dead by dawn. Fortunately I survived with just a little pee butt.

The next morning we woke up cold as shit. These mountain mornings without the sun are frigid. We go to bed with like 70 some degree weather and wake up to 40 degree weather. It certainly makes it hard to get out of the tent in the morning. Anyway, we got up, got our shit packed and hit the road thinking we were at the top of the mountain. We got all bundles up in our hoodies expecting an imediate long chilly descent. We even saw a sign showing that we were about to descend at a 6% grade for the next 12 miles. We were so stoked! Instead... We climbed for about an hour before we got to descend. LIES! Our elevation map lied to us all damn day! We were supposed to be going downhill pretty much the entire day. Instead we were going up hills all day with short descents in between. It was agonizing and infuriating. Every time I saw a new hill I would get enraged. It was definitely one of the worst days for me by far. I hated it. On top of it sucking we still managed to ride a record breaking 98 miles. We are tough.

Anyway, next up is more mountains for like the next 3 days. We will hit up new Mexico by the end of the day if all goes well.

Ok bye.

To con't

2010-05-08T20:56:00.001-07:00

Ok so this iPhone blicky sent my other blog before I could finish so
to continue......
I've decided to start writing down some of the ridiculous shit we
say on this tour. Gonna post it here once I get a good collection.
So the day has ended and I didn't get a chance to see the fam.
It's been a minute since I've seen them and my aunt Dorothy is over
100. It would've been rad to see them. 24 hours isn't enough time to
do all you want. Besides that this is been a fun day. Glad we get a
day off every six days, gives us a chance to kick it without the
stress of the ride. Tonight we had vegan smores shakes, which ruled!
Hell yeah food, I love to eat you.
Ok so next leg of the trip begins tomorrow. I would very much like
to find a stray puppy to take with me, see an armadillo and find some
animal bones bleached by the sun. So off to shower than to bed, we got
a five a.m wake up call.

Steve Nash is just outside this shot

2010-05-08T19:17:00.001-07:00

Civilization but not quite civilized

2010-05-08T19:02:00.001-07:00

We're in the car on the way to some sweet vegan restaraunt which is
gonna be rad! Oh civilization how I adore you. So yeah as mentioned
before i'm $300 poorer due to a new wheel set. I'm not crying to hard
cause it's a set mavic aksiums and they look hot. Shipped the other
set back to mykke whose in desperate need of new wheels, so there u go
sweets! Feeling a little better after a pretty brutal week.
Today has been good, anne has been awesome, driving everywhere. She
has really helped us out and I'm ridiculously grateful. She also gave
me a sweet necklace with a bike and compass on it.

rip River Phoenix

2010-05-08T17:33:00.001-07:00

So now we relax on a much needed off day. 3 days straight of 90+ miles in the desert sun can start to wear on your body and attitude. We are crashing at our old buddy Anne's. Last night we killed crazy amounts of pasta, broke her sink, and rearranged her kitchen while she was out. Later we all laid around blowing farts and laughing. I think we all expected to sleep in late but everyone is up by 9 so we got straight to work. Lenora still has a problem with her rear wheel staying true and apparently breaking spokes so we went to a couple bike shops and in the end decided the best solution was to get a whole new wheel set. In a perfect world this wouldn't be the first choice but it has been a persistent issue affecting her riding and bike shops will be few and far between from here on out.

After that anne drove us to get some Chinese food and back to her place. Brian and Lenora went straight to work on the bikes while Anne and I hit the pool. Laying poolside was one of the most trying parts of the trip.. watching these ass clowns smoke cigarettes in the pool while they blare sublime on their stereo and talk about getting fucked up. Cruel Fucking joke. So now I'm back inside watching Brian sleep while Anne and lenora go off to ship her old wheel set back home. Oh also me and Brian have eached lost ten pounds. Holler. Drove past a Mexican buffet earlier.. I am intrigued. XXX

Yo. Where is Charles Barkley?

2010-05-08T08:41:00.000-07:00

We made it to phoenix! Wooo. I believe this marks about 1/3 of this leg or something? I could be wrong on that because I honestly don't remember how many days this leg is.

Since we made it to Phoenix with only losing 1 emergency day, we have decided to take our planned day off here. I think we all are definitely ready for a day off after the last few days of trial and error. We also need to take care of some lose ends and Lenora wants to visit some family that she has in the area. Luckily, my good friend anne schwartz is living here so we have a comfortable place to stay with air conditioning and a pool.

The ride yesterday, I would say, was pretty right on for the most part. We left a little later than we planned, but it all worked out just fine. We got up and biked 25 miles to wickenburg where we too our first break aroud 10am. As usual this first part of the day was up hill. For some reason my phone thought we had hit a time change though and was reading 11 and I was like "what the fuck? Are we really that slow?". The thing is we didn't even hit a time change and I still don't know why my phone lied to me.

We hung out for about an hour before hitting it again. For the most part yesterday was a fairly uneventful ride. No problems, nothing special. We stopped again just outside of surprise around 1 and took naps / ate until 4:30 as we waited for the tperatures to cool. We then blasted our way towards Phoenix on route 60.

So our bike map advised us to take a completely different route once we got in to surprise. It wanted us to get off 60 and zig zag our way through the city. However, it never quite zigged or zagged anywhere near anne's house where as the 60 drops off right at her door step. Seeing how we had been riding on 60 for the past few days we saw no reason why we couldn't just stay on it all the way in to Phoenix. Unfortunately, we had to find out the hard way why our bike map didn't want us on it.

As soon as we entered surprise 60 became under construction for MILES. At first it was no big deal because we were just riding on the fresh paved areas behind the cones, but the closer we got to Phoenix we had to get more creative by riding on sidewalks and through parking lots until neither of those things existed anymore and we were sometimes even rising through dirt or in the highway lanes themselves with cars wizzing past us at like 70 mph. I personally was having fun and enjoyed was enjoying this stretch because it was challenging and broke up the monotony of riding on regular streets all day. However, it was expressed to me that Zach and Lenora were not quite as enthused about this leg. Upon realizing they weren't pleased I got pretty stressed too becuase there really was no other option other than go like 30 miles out of our way to re-route. The issue was that Phoenix is basically a perfect grid in which the 60 slices right down the center diagonally. This situation is actually kind of awesome if you are in a car. However, if you can't take the 60 on say, your bike, you have to figure out some other bullshit way to get downtown.

At the point where everyone was getting stressed the re-route would have totally screwed us. So to compromise we toughed it out on 60 as long as we could until it was basically way too dangerous to continue. Fortunately, this got us to a point where we only had to ride about 10 extra miles instead of 30.

As always, riding through cities fully loaded blows. It is slow and starteing and stopping all the time for lights is quite exhausting with all of that weight on your bike. We rolled up to anne's place probably around 8:30 which isn't so bad. All in all we rode 90 miles which was a bit more than we had planned, but whatevs.

Though we were all pretty stressed during that last stretch, once we got to anne's and could relax all was good again. I am happy to see this group is making it through a lot of tough situations laughing and having a good time when all is said and done. We all get pretty cranky at different points of the day for various reasons, but it seems like as soon as we get off our bikes and chill for a minute we are instantly laughing it up again and put our issues from the day behind us.

Anyway, it's time to party in Phoenix!

90 some odd!

2010-05-06T21:41:00.000-07:00

So our new schedule bodes well for biking across the desert. A cooler
and slower paced morning saw us arriving in Salome in time to get out
of the worst of the heat. Some grouchiness ensued here and there
mostly due to weather and an unruly bike. Seems i was riding on a
mostly flat tire for hours and my wheel is crazy out of true again!
I'm pretty content with my pace otherwise,15mph on average I think. I
think it's a good speed for taking in the scenery and keeping my body
from totally crashing. Zach and I stopped here and there to take
pictures. Arizona is way more beautiful than east California. I can
find nothing redeeming about that area. Got some pictures of baby
goats, desert plant life, and awesome abandoned motels. There are tons
out here and I can't figure out why. Like east Cali this stretch of
Arizona has been hit hard by poverty. Was it the depression? A lot of
these towns were established in the early twentieth century. Did they
just not survive the dust bowl? The depression? The mass exodus to the
suburbs after the war? I don't know. My hands are weathered by the sun
and layers of salt left behind by hours of sweat. My body will take a
beating when this all through.

Ps. I love dessert

2010-05-06T20:42:00.001-07:00

And apparently can't spell desert

Bye bye California. Hello Arizona!

2010-05-06T20:35:00.000-07:00

BOOM! We finally entered a new state! It feels like Zach and I had been biking california for ever. Today I think we got it right. I think we finally figured out a good way to go about the day in this heat while still conquering our epic mileage. On the west coast we could basically ride whenever we wanted because it was chilly no matter what and we could just layer up if we needed to. However, the dessert will boil you alive.

This morning we tried out our new plan of waking up at 6 and taking breaks more often and having a longer break in the afternoon. I personally think it worked out wonderfully as I didn't get worn out all day really. I had forgotten what it felt like to end the day and feel all right.

So yeah, we headed out of blythe at 6 and imeiately crossed the Arizona border. Right away the scenery changed up for the better. We even saw our first legit cactus a couple miles across the border. I must say, Arizona is MUCH nicer than south eastern california. It is still the dessert, but it is a much prettier dessert with nice mountain views and cacti as far as the eye can see. Also, peoples homes don't look nearly as desperate. Californians seemed to live in whatever items they could nail together out in the middle of nowhere, while arizonians seem to at least have trailers if not actual houses. I know this speaks a lot on the economy differences in the area of course, but it certainly made our ride less dismal.

We rode about 3.5 miles on a gradual incline (I will go ahead and say we were gradually climbing all day for the mos part) and popped up in quartzite where we stopped at a loves mega gas station for brunch. I will admit I was pretty happy to see the modern ass station for a change.

After fueling up we hit it again and after about 10 miles we were greeted with a 15 mile descent with a mega tail wind which had us killin it at about 25 mph basically coasting. It was pretty awesome. At the end of the descent we had to go back up hill where we were trying to get to Salome before 2pm so we could escape the heat for a couple hours before finishing up the ride. Unfortunately, Lenora got a flat which slowed us down a bit and we ended up getting caught in the 2 o'clock heat which, honestly, was the only time of day I started feeling weakend.

We finally got to salome "where she danced" around 3 Where we hung out until about 4:30 before riding the last 30 miles to aguile where we be camping out hard at some RV park. This RV park is banging by the way. Has free Showers, nice bathrooms, air conditioned laundry and was only $10 for the 3 of us. Killer. All in all we ended up riding 92 miles. We are fucking ragers. All you doubters can eat our dust.

Off to phoenix tomorrow!