Random B&B Memory of the Day

We had planned to have a Bike and Build prom in Trinidad, CO and began asking one another on the days preceding the prom.
Claire and I decided to ask Brynne to prom (due to Brynne's hottness and the surplus of lady riders).
Of course the importance of a creative prom invitation can not be over stated.
Mid-ride, Claire and I stopped and hid behind some trees to write "Brynne, Prom?" across both of our butts.
Then we waited until we could impose ourselves upon Brynne's riding group and isolate her for the Big Question.
When it was just us three and traffic cleared, Claire and I sped up and biked in front of Brynne, pulling down our shorts revealing our butts and the corresponding question.
Of course she said yes, and we had a roadside party in celebration of our fanciness.
It should also be noted that the prom was cross-dressing themed...

Bike & Build & Dance & Cuddle & Eat & Sleep

Bike & Build & Dance & Cuddle & Eat & Sleep, a set on Flickr.

An amateur geographical survey of the US from the perspective of a bicycle

This is a paper I wrote for a Geography 100 class at BSU,
the prompt was: describe your favorite PLACE

South Carolina, California, and Everything In-Between

            This summer my favorite place became the United States; specifically (but still generally) the route I took from Charleston, SC to Santa Cruz, CA. As I rode my bicycle across the country with my 29 teammates I saw some amazing geographical and cultural changes. Some changes were gradual, going by unnoticed, and some were sudden, drastic, and disorienting. I spent the summer biking for affordable housing with a group called Bike and Build and I experienced every geographic change from the East to West coast from a bicycle.

            I spent five days in Charleston and immediately recognized the change in humidity. I stayed in a marina and took some time adjusting to being near the ocean. Walking around the marina I saw a dolphin, turtles, many fish, and many more bugs. Charleston was very flat and nice to bike through except for railroad tracks at strange angles (a cyclists worst nightmare and cause of my first crash), and poor road conditions such as potholes and drains. We ceremoniously dipped out back tires in the water of the Atlantic Ocean as we headed out the first day. Leaving Charleston and biking through the rest of South Carolina and then Georgia was extremely hilly and forested. Trees and other plants hugged the roads in Georgia. Going from Georgia into Alabama I learned that there was a drastic cultural shift in the concept of dog ownership, as nearly none of the residents cared to chain or fence their dogs, dogs which chased bicycles and got progressively more mean the further we got into Alabama. Leaving Georgia I hit a dog on my bike and had my second and last crash of the summer. The dog was fine, too bad I ended up unconscious for a minute while my friends called me an ambulance.

            Mississippi was another beautiful, very green, state. I noticed an invasive vine throughout MS, which I later learned is called Kudzu. It covers all other plants and trees and creates a rather Dr. Seuss inspired landscape that I swerved on my bike more than once to stare at.  Arkansas was beautiful and very similar to the states before it. Known as the rice and duck capital of the world, Arkansas proved to be full of character, and human-sized mosquitoes. As we rode into Oklahoma, however, things changed for the worse. It was a decent state for the first couple miles that still looked like Arkansas, but suddenly all plant life around us died as if the apocalypse was something that had been going on for a while in OK and the rest of the world was just starting to catch on to. Oklahoma is a geographically large state, what this means to a cyclist is this: you’re going to be there for a while. Our daily mileage increased throughout OK and stayed high through the panhandle of Texas. With two century (100 mile) days in this region and 80-90 mile days the rest of the time, there was no way we were going to like this part of the country. To make it better, Mother Nature provided us with spirit-crushing headwinds as well as hellish heat up to 114 degrees. We also noticed a worsening of road conditions with hills, construction, and less-than patient drivers. The prevalence of gargantuan trucks should also be noted here. Needless to say we didn’t have high standards for the next state and were immediately won over by the small corner of New Mexico we rode through. All it took was a tree every 20 miles or so, and some degree of scenery. I think the real advantage of New Mexico was simply the fact that it wasn’t Texas.

            I should mention that we took the scenic route across the country, and right about here is where the ridiculousness begins. We biked up a fragment of New Mexico into my entire team’s favorite state, Colorado. We arrived just a day after the fires had been put out and didn’t notice any smoke during our rides, just a lack of oxygen from a sudden increase in altitude. Our first mountain pass in Colorado was Cuchara pass at 9,995 feet, painfully close to 10,000. I had to ride twenty yard increments and stop to catch my breath because I was so new to the increased altitude as well as the increased ride difficulty. We quickly learned that Colorado had a funny way of sneaking mountains between each town we had to ride to. There is no experience quite like biking towards a mountain range, thinking to yourself “I have to go through that somehow,” and then doing it. Unanimously my team named our ride over Independence Pass as our favorite ride, riding from the beautiful Twin Lakes, CO (a place with next to no light pollution and the best view of the stars I have ever seen), to the ritzy and pretentious resort town of Aspen with a reputation for celebrity visitors and skiing. We climbed to 12,095 feet from somewhere in the range of 8,000 feet. Filled with joy and terrifying the families that had driven there, we had a dance party atop the pass once everyone arrived. We danced amidst patches of snow in an area designated as sensitive tundra; we biked to a different climate in one ride-day.

            We forgave Utah for being a desert because it managed to still be pleasant to look at, beautiful even. Biking into scenery that included the amazing and signature red rock of Utah, as well as some amazing climbs and descents into Mars-like valleys. There was a drastic shift in driver culture on our first ride in Utah. Immediately upon leaving CO we got onto a highway with a reputation that preceded it, Highway 40. Commonly used by oil drill workers and almost entirely huge truck drivers, this road was not a hospitable one for cyclists such as ourselves. We experienced every form of driver harassment, ranging from yelling, to throwing food, driving as close to us as possible and off the road a couple of times, purposefully accelerating to blow exhaust from their trucks, honking and every other form of unfriendliness you care to come up with. We had three days on this road, I could only stomach two days and spent the next in our support van worrying about my teammates as the road worsened with the new obstacle of single-lanes due to construction.

            We rode through the driest part of Idaho, which made my job of convincing everyone to move here much harder. The desert was quickly forgiven however by the once-again dramatic change in driver attitudes. Idaho drivers right from the state line gave us more space on the road, waved at us more, and all around had Utahans beat for niceness. Biking into Boise confused my teammates even though I had done my best to make it sound like the mid-desert oasis it really is. Soon enough we were back in the desert, Oregon desert. This confused some of my teammates which only knew about the Oregon that existed in Portland, they anticipated a rainforest and got a desert. We spent one night in Oregon in a town called Wagontire, with a population of one. We spent that night convincing the one man that lived there to like us, as he had formed a negative opinion from the group that was on our route the summer before.

            California was all kinds of Geographic insanity. The beginning was still desert, and startlingly cowboy-obsessed. We biked along a 15-mile Alkali lake at one point. With a pH too low for any living organisms, it was just a bright blue, barren, salty, smelly, and disorienting lake view. It was beautiful to ride alongside but didn’t make any logical sense to me so I spent the majority of the ride being confused by the scenery rather than enjoying it. We also rode along many salt flats, giving me the impression that we were biking on a different planet, especially disorienting when we saw random signs warning us of loose Bulls which seemed like anything but a native species, extraterrestrials seemed more likely. We rode through Lassen National Park and had another rare experience, this time we rode over a volcano, a dormant one but still, a volcano! Some riders even hiked to the top of the volcano once they finished biking to the top of the pass, where they managed to find patches of snow to slide down. We climbed somewhere in the range of 6,000 feet that day. The rest of our time in California we were supposed to steadily lose elevation as we approached sea level, and yet CA managed to give us some of the hardest climbs of the trip. One day consisted of 60 miles of climbing. We rode over an extremely steep mountain pass on our final day and later in the day were slapped in the face with an 11% grade hill, or more accurately called a wall.

            The final three miles in Santa Cruz we rode as a team, which resembled something worse than herding a group of cats towards a pool. We arrived at the beach welcomed by the locals, yelling solely because they heard us yelling, and our family and friends blocking traffic for our final turn into the beach. We sprinted as a group into the cold water of the Pacific and sang songs ecstatically as we danced and hugged in the water, singing songs that had become signature to our trip. This repertoire included some Katy Perry, the Killers, and that one song ‘Call Me Maybe.’ That night we gathered around a bonfire on the beach for a final group goodbye. The only geography that I was aware of on that last night with my team was; the heart-stopping realization that we had ridden our bikes there from Charleston, that we had conquered insane mountain passes and other immensely insurmountable obstacles along the way, and that within hours and days each of the people I had grown to love so dearly that summer would be returning to their homes and scatter back across the US like a handful of marbles falling to the floor. After everything we had gone through that summer, within days I would be without the people that had given me the most beautiful experience of my life, and all of those obstacles we had biked over would divide us geographically until the day we all end up moving to Colorado and living together in our own Bike and Build commune.

            

So the summer is over

AND, I never posted during my trip.
This is not one of my biggest regrets since I wouldn't have traded the way I spent that time for anything in the world, but I do feel guilty for keeping this adventure all to myself.
I'll do my best, with school now back in session, to post some things about this summer.
Feel free to chastise me if I do a poor job.

SO MUCH GOOD NEWS

My bike is ordered and on it's way to it's new long-term relationship [with me]

AND

Bricolage (a superfantastiwonderfulgreatacular local gallery/workshop) will be housing my fundraiser!
check out the event page: http://www.facebook.com/events/310097099051546/
YOU'RE SO INVITED IT'S UNBELIEVABLE

AND

My freakishly talented friend Matthew Wordell made a flyer for the event that will make your eyeballs applaud

<----- just LOOK at how cool that is.





AND

Tomorrow is FACEPAINT FRIDAY

AND

This is all just too too great.

$1,179 raised!

I'll be ordering my bike soon and begin legitimately training.
Also, planning for my head-shaving fundraiser is still in the works. Chances are it will be occurring sometime between March 17th and 24th... So stay tuned and save up for your chance to bid on shaving my head!

Here's a Valentine's Day present

from me, to you

and the rest of the internet...