Year: 2008

I’m still pedaling. It’s been pretty wet and cold. Last night it went down to 35. But now its sunny with no clouds and warming up fast. I’m about to cross into mass. But first i have to climb the berkshires, the first mountains since WY! Been eating great food, especially pizza. Just had a black and white, which i think is the official cookie of NY.

Greetings from Rochester, New York, where I’m hanging out with the ever-awesome Marni Shindleman. She’s rescued me from the crappy weather we’ve been having – clean laundry, comfy bed, and soooo much ice cream!

Tuesday may have been the worst night camping in my life. I wish I had taken a picture of me crouching in my boxers trying to bail out water from the pond that had formed under my tent. Sure, maybe I should have looked for high ground when setting up, but I was too busy trying to get some shelter from the floodlights – plus, about 75% of the ‘tent’ area was under water in the morning. Finding a true campground is becoming rare – outside of state parks, most everything else is an rv park.

The past few days have been pretty cold and wet, but not unbearable, although I did get hailed on twice yesterday. The scenery has been great and people have been pretty cool. The route that I randomly picked has worked out really well – not too much traffic, and the shoulders have been really good. Yesterday, I did a 103 mile haul to get into rochester, on top of spending time getting new tires and a new thermarest. I hope I get another 10 years out of this thermarest like I did the last.

From here I’ll be taking the Erie canal path to Albany, where apparently I can camp anywhere I want along the path – pretty sweet. I’ll let you know how it goes.

jumped off to a great start yesterday – rode 105 miles. The first forty were along the tow path trail along the old canal. It was awesome, especially the part around akron. I can’t believe i had never been there. The weather hasn’t been too bad. It’s mostly only rained at night. Right now there’s a raging storm outside. Also some of my gear is starting to show wear. There’s a wierd bubble in my sleeping pad that keeps growing, my rain fly is starting to leak a bit, and i had 3 flats this morning – as many as i had in the first 3k miles! I trashed that tire and am now on the spare. But riding along lake erie has been great. I also highly recommend the sunrise cafe in geneva-on-the-lake. The owners are hilarious.

Ah, geez. Once again, we never got around to writing that final detailed post. In our defense, things got pretty busy pretty quick once we got to Minneapolis (who knew – you give the cops $50 million to play with, and things start to get out of hand). Anyway, here’s the brief summary:

After rolling out of Pierre, the terrain flattened significantly. On that first day out, we got caught in a nasty storm. We at one point were debating on whether to proceed 3 miles into the next town or knock on the door of the only farmhouse we’d seen in at least a mile. We decided to go for it and rode about 20 feet when the wind began gusting in our faces so hard that I almost fell over. We rode back to the farmhouse and were greeted by the hospitality of Phil Ostrich. He flipped on the TV, and we discovered that there was a funnel cloud over the town we were heading to! Phil told us that South Dakotans will never turn folks away in bad weather – in fact, while we were waiting it out, someone else knocked on the door for refuge because the hail was too bad to drive in!

We continued on through an abundance of Dairy Queens, spending the night in De Smet, birthplace of Laura Ingalls Wilder. In Brookings, I lost my glove to a man-mountain in the library, and we continued on through a giant wind farm on the Minnesota border. As soon as we crossed the border, we were surrounded by lakes. Also, the weather got crazy again, and we were having a deja vu moment of considering riding up a drive to a farmhouse, when a minivan pulled up and the woman told us that she was giving us a ride into town because of the tornado warnings. Weee! This time, we might have actually seen the finger of the funnel cloud snaking towards the ground. Despite the weather, we pushed on to do our first (and only) century on the trip – 104 miles. We were rescued from having to camp in the Marshall, MN wal-mart parking lot by Alice, who let us stay at her house – and even sleep in a bed! Thanks Alice! From there, it was a fairly easy two days into the Twin Cities. We had the best breakfast of the trip at the cafe in Buffalo Lake – you have to check it out – they make their own syrup! On the final day, we hooked into the awesome bike trail network they have in minneapolis, culminating in the midtown greenway, which is basically a below-grade freeway for cyclists. We came in during bicycle rush hour, and it was awesome to see so many folks on two wheels cruising through the city. We finally rolled up to Angela’s house, where we stayed, with the odometer clocking 2900.5 miles. I’m not entirely sure where the extra 200 miles came from, but we made it!

Aside from the craziness surrounding the RNC, we had a great time in Minneapolis/St. Paul – they’re super bike-friendly, and the cities have a pretty good vibe. The first day we were there, we went to the raw food restaurant our friend works at – it was so nice to eat delicious combinations of raw fruits and vegetables after 6 weeks of diner food.

Ok, I think that’s the bulk of the update. Here’s the newsflash: I’m not done! I’ve spent the last week hanging out with my family in Ohio (megan flew back to Oakland), but in the next day or so, I’m going to ride out to Boston to meet up with my band (the Brass Liberation Orchestra) for the Honk Festival. So I’ll be putting in another 700 miles or so! As always, I’ll do my best to post updates from my phone as I travel along – the hope is that I get a good run of autumn leaves and all that, although it looks like it may be a late summer.

Well, I’ll keep you posted! Keep the rubber side down!

Oh – by the way – I’m uploading the rest of our pictures right now, so they should be available in the gallery section. Be forewarned: Megan took almost 1800 pictures!

Victory! We rolled into minneapolis at around 6! Total mileage was 2900 almost exactly. Ok – time to start transitioning back into humans from bicycle machines. A more substantial update will follow soon.

in the home stretch, with two bike days left! Did century yesterday, at 104 miles i beat my longest day by 2 miles.

that’s right, we just avoided a nasty storm

rolled into pierre last night. Had a super tailwind while we were going north, then turned the corner into a cross wind. Broke the cardinal rule last night, and ate dinner in the tent because the mosquitos were so bad. thinking about getting full body mosquito net. We’re still drying out from the thunder storm last night. i got scolded for riding to the laundromat in flip flops. Should be in minnesota the day after tomorrow. – megan

we found another tourist town. We are eating in an old train car. there was a lady paid to stand at gas station and tell people about the specials. May have been an old set for dances with wolves. Barely avoided a big storm last night. It’s been windy in the wrong direction, but We’re about to turn, so it should get better. Probably be in pierre tonight. I’m told It’s peer in south dakotan.

Previously on bike bums- we rolled out of Sheridan Amidst a swarm of motorcyclists on their way to the sturgis rally. Someone said they expect half a million! we were hosted by the find owners of the spotted horse bar, where we tented among the trappings of their anniversary pig roast. on the lonely highway there, we saw a 3 mile stretch where there were slim fast shake cans strewn every 15 ft. probably some cowboy chugs one every morning on his commute. Yesterday we had some nasty head winds into Gillette. probably one of the hardest days. it was actually a relief when it started storming because the wind shifted. we didn’T even mind the hail! well, that about wraps up this state – onward to dakota!

ride like the wind!