Center of the Universe – Rugby, ND – 0/2322

I am currently writing to you from the Geographical Center Of The Universe North America(TM).  I’m sitting at a cafe with Sidny, Eileen, Jason, Ashley, Nate, Alicia, Kelsey, Julia, and Will, waiting for my biscuits and gravy to arrive.  Just outside is a goofy pile of rocks with the legend “Geographical Center of North America” upon it.  Next to said cairn stand the flags of the United States, Canada, and Mexico.  Tis exciting.  Tis, tis.

Unfortunately, this appears to be all that North Dakota has to boast.  We’ll find out today – we’re headed to Minot, ND, where we will have our second day off.  We will be arriving just in time for the last day of the North Dakota state fair, and several of us plan to raise rabble at attend this most propitious event.

Pictures – not too many this time…

July 27 – July 31

Broken – Devils Lake, ND – 30/2197

The past few days have not been particularly exciting – I’ve had a tough time riding and went to an Urgent Care this morning to see what might be done.  Turns out I’ve got tendonitis pretty badly and have been henceforth vanned for at least a week.  Hopefully it’s nothing more than that.

Since little of importance has gone on recently, I shall tell you all about prom!  Prom is a Bike and Build tradition and will be taking place in Rugby, ND – tomorrow.  The theme will be “Famous Duos”, and I have an excellent idea for a costume, but no one to go with as of this moment.

Bike and Build has an odd way of distorting our perception of time.  Madison feels like a long damn time ago, as opposed to being less than two weeks ago.  Our first ride day feels like it was years and years ago.  I have no idea why this is, but thought I’d bring it up in case your favorite person on this trip has contacted you and asked more than once what day of the month and/or week it is.  We don’t really know anymore, all we know is The Day We Were In ______________.  Things we did this morning feel like they were three weeks ago.  I often have to think for a few minutes about where we were yesterday.  It’s hard to tell how long I’ve been riding in a day because it’s all just a blur.  Either the wind is at our back, the sun is shining, and the miles are easy, or (as it is right now) we can push and push and push and look at our cyclocomputers only to see that since we last looked, only a mile or two has passed.  /randomthoughts

My knees suck – Grand Rapids, MN – 47/1917

In the van.  Because of knees.  Again.  That’s all that must be said about that.

In other news, Minnesota is gorgeous and has awesome bike paths.  Our ride into Sandstone was largely on a paved bike path, and our ride into Duluth was almost entirely on a paved bike path – about 50 or so miles of it, and the path we were on (the Willard Munger bike path, in case anyone is interested) appears to stretch over 120 miles across Minnesota.  Very cool stuff, other states ought to take a hint from this.

We spent two nights in Duluth at Temple Israel Reform, who served us some excellent kosher hot dogs and hamburgers for Friday night dinner.  They also hooked us up with free tickets to a Duluth Huskies game, which several of us attended and very much enjoyed.  The Huskies lost, by the way.  Oh well…

We spent our build day in Duluth putting trusses on a house and digging a hole around said house.  By the end of the day, a house that had been simply a box with an open top turned into a house with all its trusses on, much of the roof covering attached, and plywood and foam laid around its perimeter (for reasons which were never made clear to me, but hey, I’m sure they were good ones).  For lunch, we were treated to a carnival (including hamburgers, hot dogs, sno cones, a bouncy castle, and a dunk tank) by our good friend Daryl from the build site.  Woot!

Pictures – WARNING: Naughty words occur herein.  If your tender eyes cannot handle certain four-letter expletives, don’t look at the pictures!

July 20 – July 26

Nothing of importance – St. Paul, MN – 0/1690

Some days we bike, and some days we build, but today we did neither. One of our three precious days off where we could wake up when we chose, were not required to don spandex or pick up a hammer, and did… nothing of importance. The 1690 is according to our Route Tracker, so the mileage I put up next time might look a little odd.

Our two nights in St. Paul are homestays, which means that some very kind/adventurous/awesome folk volunteer their homes and their beds to individual Bike and Build members.  Abby and I are staying with Rachel and Jim, and it’s been awesome.  Not only were we treated to real beds with actual pillows, but this morning Rachel made us some INCREDIBLE stuffed challah french toast and breakfast sausages.  We then went for a ride around town to a bike shop called Grand Performance, a yarn store called The Yarnery, and some little shops inside a mini-mall, The Bead Monkey and Ten Thousand Villages, a fair trade shop.  Rachel also treated us to soft tacos from Chipotle, a first for Abby and I.  At this moment, we are getting our laundry done and listening to a thunderstorm outside as I type this.

Cheers, NUS 09. Within 400 miles of the halfway point and our first well deserved day off.  On to the next.

ITT: I ride a triceratops – Pepin, WI – 66/1598

Today’s ride was probably the best so far, including Boonville, which was tough to beat.  It was my second day as sweep, and I was joined by Lauren as well as Alicia and Rider Kelsey just for fun.  It was a pretty easy ride out of “La Crosse” (which was really Onalaska, Bike and Build lied to me =(  ) and lunch was at a sweet little park/playground type thing in Fountain City, WI.  We sweeps spent a good hour or so at lunch as some other riders had stopped at a wildlife refuge and forgot to chalk, but this turned out to be just fine as I got an excellent nap.

Immediately after lunch we located a field containing those rolled up haybales featured in “Bodies in Motion” (see my Videos section) and so we had to stop for pictures.  See photo dump below for the awesome.  Not long after THAT we found this crazy rock/sculpture garden in Cochrane and again we just HAD to stop for pictures.  Featured in this picture dump will be photographs of me riding a triceratops.  Because, you know, when the Earth was created 6000 years ago, humans rode dinosaurs.  According to Ken Ham anyway.

Tonight we will be staying in Pepin, the birthplace of Laura Ingalls Wilder.  It’s a very cute little town and we even managed to get HOT SHOWERS!!  Yay!

PHOTO DUMP!  Finally!

July 14 – July 18

July 19 – July 20

Moo! Beer! Cheese! – Gays Mills, WI – 46/1450 (???)

The title requires some explanation.    Our ride from Grayslake to Janesville finally took us across the IL/WI state line back into my fine home state.  We finally found a “Welcome to Illinois” state sign (hey thanks Illinois, bit late to the party though…) and saw the absolutely PITIFUL Wisconsin sign.  I say “Wisconsin” and not “Welcome to Wisconsin” because that’s all it said.  Wisconsin – Kenosha County.  Thanks so much.  Upon seeing this travesty of a welcome home, the following dialogue ensued:

Mommy Rachel: Yay!  I’ve never been to Wisconsin!
Me: We have cows!
MR: Moo!
Me: And beer!
MR: Beer!
Me: And cheese!
MR: CHEESE!

And so the day went.  My family was at the church in Janesville waiting for me to get in, and the twins were even prepared to skip their softball game so we could all have dinner (provided by the Kolstes, thank you so much, everything was EXCELLENT) and go to Frostie Freeze (a local and delicious ice cream place) together.  The following day was a build day, and the crew of which I was a part worked with a local group called Community Action to put up insulation in a house they were building.  We managed to insulate all of the exterior walls and put up the plastic on three of those walls.  All in all, a good day’s work.

After a month, I was ready to go home and see the family.  Luckily, July 16 was the day we were scheduled to ride into Madison, where we would spend one day biking and one day building.  I spent the day after our short 40 mile ride in with Mommy and the evening with the family, and a good time was had by all.  I’m told everyone else went to the Memorial Union Terrace as well as to go see Harry Potter and it sounds like everyone had a good time.  We then had another build day, where we worked in the same neighborhood as where I did my sweat equity.  We got lots of stuff done, including putting up the plywood on the roof and installing posts on a porch (more time consuming than you’d think!) Again, I spent the evening with my family as it was Sammie and Kenzie’s birthday!  We went to the Nitty Gritty for dinner and saw Harry Potter.  Sidenote – it was really quite good but SPOILER included a scene that never appeared in the book, added nothing to the story, and will likely complicate things for the next movie END SPOILER

Today, we are in Gays Mills, and I have to begin this bit of my post with a Mad Props(TM) to Lil’ Sidny.  It was cold, windy, hilly, all around nasty, and my knees plain gave out at mile 46, which meant I had to finish the day in the van.  When we drove past Sidny, she goes BEST DAY EVER!  Amazing.  Sidny, I am in awe of your awesome attitude.  Well done.  Several people had to be picked up at the end of the day and others are still not in as of almost 7:00 pm. It was set to be a 101 mile day, but was nowhere near as easy as Chicago.  Oh well, all in the adventure.

Century! – Grayslake, IL – 57/1277

Yesterday, from Edwardsburg, Michigan to Chicago, Illinois, I completed my first century ever.  To the non-cyclists out there, a century is a 100 mile ride completed in one day.  The entire trip took 111 miles and 9 hours, 23 minutes of riding, not including the two lunch stops we had.  The ride was gorgeous and include the (apparently) famous Lakeshore Drive, which I guess is the location of some of the most expensive houses in the world and lies along the coast of Lake Michigan.  We also got to ride along the Lakefront bike path in Chicago, which gave us our first view of the skyline at about the spot where most of us hit our 100 mile mark.  Seeing the skyline made it real for me – I hadn’t seen any of the other things we’ve seen on this trip before, so actually seeing the Chicago skyline really drove home the fact that we have BICYCLED from the Atlantic Ocean to Chicago.  It was truly an incredible feeling.

The skyline wasn’t the only thing to greet us, though.  About a half mile after I hit my century, I cruised around a corner to cries of “WOOO BIKE AND BUILD!” from two people who turned out to be none other than Craig Lee and Kathy Hill of NUS08, whose blogs were essentially the reason I’m on this trip at all.  Kathy and Craig had cupcakes and frosting for us and were nice enough to take some pictures of us in front of the skyline.  They also rode with us from Chicago to Grayslake today.  Guys, it was really cool meeting you.  Thanks for riding with us.

From there, it was another 12 miles or so along the Lakefront bike path to St Paul’s United Church of Christ, our destination for the evening.  Dinner was not provided and so we were free to explore the area and find dinner for ourselves.  Myself, Silky, Lauren, and Julia all went to a pub called O’Malley’s for an amazing (and cheap!) dinner.  All in all, a great way to end a great day.

Today was supposed to be a 44 mile day but wound up being 57 miles due to 10 miles spent putzing around Chicago all morning (super fun) and 3 miles of getting lost along scary roads with scary drivers (not so fun).  This morning we rode out to Millennium Park with Craig, Kathy, and Dan (a NUS08 leader), followed by Wrigley Field for pictures.  You can check those out in the photo dump below.  Despite getting lost several times and being one of the slowest riders in the group, I was the first one to the church today by about 30 seconds.  Awesome.

For dinner we’ve just had sweet ‘n’ sour chicken and peppersteak over rice with fruit salad and cucumber salad and normal salad, followed by ice cream sundaes.  Mmmmmmm.  It is now midnight and I’ve just gotten back from doing laundry, which involved finding a closed laundromat and then having to drive 20 minutes away to find one that was still open.  At least laundry got done.

PHOTODUMP!

July 5 – July 7

July 8 – July 9

July 10 – July 13

Three states later… – Camden, MI – 78/1033

First off, I’d like to apologize for the space between updates.  We don’t get wifi at every location, so as we move further and further west after Minnesota, updates may be rare-ish.  I’ll do my best to post each time we do have wifi.  So far I’ve only failed to do so one time.

Since my last post, we’ve been through Pennsylvania and Ohio.  I am writing to you from 4 miles over the Michigan state line in the lovely small town of Camden.  From what I can tell, these fine folks have hosted Bike and Build before (their photo board has a picture of Isaiah “Farm Kid” Berg from last year, for my NUS08 readers) and they’re very nice.  We’ve had showers right next door in the pastor’s house, REAL towels, wifi, and of course they’re about to feed us a huge meal.

I must make a short comment on the roads on which we’ve ridden the past several days.  I noted that NUS08 spent a lot of time on US 20 in Ohio.  We did not.  Thank FSM.  That is all.  Ohio in general needs to fix its roads.  They are often not fun to ride upon, but approximately 20 miles of US-20 was more than enough for me.  Thanks but no thanks.

Now, today I managed to break 1000 miles, and so I made this short video for y’all to watch!

Getting lost is super fun – Westfield, NY – 92/704

Today was seriously hardcore.  It was set to be an 82 mile day, but here on Bike and Build, things are never that simple.  I got lost several times, resulting in (as you can see from the title) an extra 10 miles tacked onto my total for the day.  My little detour,  in addition to an extra hour (at least) of cycling, caused me to miss lunch, lose the group, and generally fail at our route in almost every possible way.  It still kicked ass.

It turns out that the road I took, Old Lakeshore was just parallel to Route 5, but closer to Lake Erie.  As in, right on the water.  It was gorgeous, and a local suggested that I probably also was spared the worst of the wind for that portion of the ride.  Yes, we had an EPIC headwind today, all due to the lake.

Earlier on in the trip, I was joined by a local by the name of Rick.  He was very nice and was kind enough to escort me through the bad parts of Buffalo.  Rick, if you’re reading this, thanks again and I hope you’ll continue to read my blog throughout our trip.

Yesterday was of course our trip to Niagara Falls.  It was really cool to go into Canada (a first for me) and see the falls, but the ride in somewhat ruined the experience for me.  It wasn’t the bicycling as much as the depressing state of the town of Niagara Falls.  If you’ve ever been to Wisconsin Dells and had to go find groceries, you’ll understand what I’m talking about.

The Canadian side was equally like the Dells in that everything was sparkly and lit up and shiny and touristy.  We had fun though, went for coffee in the morning and food at Dave and Buster’s, where Jules had two gigantic Molsons at 11 am.  We then spent several hours chilling around the falls, even having a nap right in the middle of a grassy area in the middle of everything.  That was a comfy frickin’ nap.  We ended the day with some excellent (but kind of expensive) Indian food, since that’s about all there is on the American side, and of course the ever-present ice cream.  Yummy.

Right now, everyone is off to go see fireworks, because apparently today celebrates the birth of the United States.  Or something.  So we blow stuff up.  Anyway, I opted not to go as I’m a bit tired.  Instead, I’m here being serenaded by Lauren on the guitar – Dad, she’d give you a run for your money, I have to say.

More pictures!

July 3 – July 4

NUS09: It’s about to rain – Lockport, NY – 58/590

Every day, I believe, for the past 2 weeks, it has rained at least once.  Every. Single. Day.  This wouldn’t be a huge deal, except that if there’s one thing that makes me cranky, it’s cold, wet feet.  As such, I’ve been something of a crabby cyclist the past several days.

Luckily, the terrain is getting much flatter and so the days are a bit easier.  Yesterday was a 91 mile (by my odometer) day from Palermo to Rochester, and it poured twice.  The first time was an all out thunderstorm – I rode directly beneath what looked scarily like a funnel cloud, and the second time was about 10 miles from our host and 2 minutes after I developed a nasty stomachache.  Awesome.

Our host in Rochester was the Rochester Institute of Technology, where we were once again treated to real beds with real mattresses and semi-private rooms.  The dorms at RIT are very nice compared to the ones at UW Madison and it turns out that RIT is also the nation’s leading institute for hearing impaired students.  Very cool.

Tonight we are in Lockport, NY, having biked 58 miles (mostly in the rain, of course) and are staying at the United Church of Christ.  We enjoyed an awesome dinner of chicken, lasagna, pasta salad, potato salad, taco salad, fruit salad, regular salad, chips and salsa, and various cookies, cakes, and brownies for dessert.  Tomorrow will be a grueling and punishing 20 miles to some waterfall that’s apparently a big deal around here.  Nyagra something or other… maybe you’ve heard of it?