7/28- Soccorro to Pie Town

Today’s ride was easily the most challenging of the trip. While I have made certain days difficult by self created challenges, finishing today’s ride was a challenge in itself, and left me with a huge sense of accomplishment.

The roads were decent, and the weather and temperatures were absolutely perfect for the entire ride, but the route visited the highest altitudes for the trip, featured a constant climb for 95 miles, and featured the strongest headwind we’ve encountered on this whole trip.

The ride could best be split up into four parts. The day started off with me riding with Sophie and Lindsay as we climbed over 2,000 feet climbing in the first 10 miles of the trip. It may have been the altitude, or the lack of sleep, or lingering effects of sickness, but I felt truly awful the first 35 miles of the ride as my stomach turned over several times. I struggled to keep my stomach in check, and mentally this had to be the toughest this trip has been since the mountains of PA.

After a lunch where I forced myself to eat, I found myself feeling slightly better and rode alone until I caught up to Lindsey. We rode together, surrounded by mountain ranges in the distance on every side of us as we rode in this barren flat that continued to slowly rise as wind pelted us with all of her fury. We rode until we reached the VLA (Very Large Array) that one of the world’s premier astronomical radio observatories consisting of 27 radio antennas in a Y shaped configuration that give the resolution of an antenna 22 miles across.

I spent the afternoon biking alone, fighting the strong head winds and my own mental battles, slowly watching the odometer increase. It seemed at time thats regardless of how hard I biked, I could not break the 9 mph barrier.... not fun. After feeling really good about my biking progress yesterday, today was definately a humbling experience, losing the battle to mother nature's fury.

I reached second lunch, a general store/diner in the middle of nowhere, and ordered another one of my usual large meals, a chili cheeseburger and fries, and homemade apple pie ala mode. This large display of food was made even larger when the waitress messed up my order and brought a plate of chili cheese fries by mistake. This did not prove to bea problem, as all the food quickly disappeared. I think as much as people on this trip enjoy eating, I think they enjoy watching the "spectacle" of me eating even more interesting. (I think anyone who has seen me eat knows exactly what I'm talking about).

Kyle and I left second lunch hoping to escape getting picked up by the van, as it was already close to 4pm after having already been up since 3:30 AM. We rode hard and were able to gain some semblence of speed as we continued our climb, aided by the presence of large trees that began popping up at our altitude. Looking behind us, we saw we were being hotly pursued by Jose and Jane, who looked to catch up to us. After what felt like a day of injustices, I determined they would not catch me and took off, continually putting on more distance on my two pursuers until I reached the Continental Divide Sign only two miles away from our host when I started my cool down, happy with the time gap I not only maintained but increased.

Pietown, NM was home to a total population of 60 people, and felt more like a hippie commune than an actual town. The people were all older and were incredibly nice and hospitable, and of course served lots and lots of delicious PIE!

Speaking to the locals, we learned of the interesting history of Pietown. Pietown started as a rest stop along the transcontinental highway, back in the day when cars needed to take breaks at the top of large climbs and dirt roads (although the dirt highway still remains). The founder of the town started out by buying cookies from the nearby second lunch stop, and sold them to weary travelers at the top of this climb. One day, the baker of the local town asked why he was buying so many cookies, and upon finding out he was making a profit on his cookies, refused to sell him any more cookies. Well this guy didn't know how to make cookies, but knew how to bake pies, and Pietown was born. It almost sounded like a tall tale, but this story sounded as good as any in explaining why there was a place called Pietown in the middle of nowhere, NM.

7/27- Corizozo to Socorro

Today I did not intend on going hard, but once I got started, I found myself pounding the pedals. Maybe it was the excitement of having internet this morning and being able to talk to Robert in China, maybe it was being inspired by Carlos Sastre’s impressive time trial yesterday to hold onto the maillot jaune, maybe it was my frustration with Kyle R.’s punishment, but I hit the first climb flying. Today’s ride featured two large climbs, the first one lasting 6 miles, and the second one lasting 11 miles and climbing over 3,000 feet. The beginning of the day continued to feature the rain and fog that had started since yesterday. The surrounding scenery (what could be seen in this dense fog), featured broken up black igneous rock spread over this fertile volcanic countryside. As much as pictures would be completely unable to describe the surrealness and beauty of this scenery, I even did stop to take a few pictures.

As much time I had spent to take photos and chat with a few riders, I enjoyed the solitude of riding alone in this beautiful scenery as I climbed at my own pace. Unlike yesterday, there was no tailwind to be found, and we would be fighting a familiar friend all day. I kept at a constant pace up the second mountain when I spotted a second rider in the distance, who could have been none other than Jose.

I know he saw me as well, as he was carefully monitoring my progress as I inched my way closer to his position. (I might take this time to say that while no official race had been declared, I have a pretty good idea of when Jose is slow pedaling, or when he was taking a day off, and he was doing neither). (I’ll also put in the disclaimer right now that I still know Jose to be a stronger rider than me in pretty much every facet of cycling, which only shows me how much I have to improve if I want to rock out Men’s Category B next year). With about 5 m separating us, and realizing he was caught, he pulled off and gruffly announced that I should ride ahead as he wanted to ride alone. That was a good thing, because that made two of us.

Pedalling ahead, I continued to put on distance, finally reaching the summit of the second climb and began the long 15 mile descent to lunch (the rest of the day was all one long downhill). I’ve always prided myself on my ability to lay down the hammer on slight downhills, which was a skill that was practiced at the RPM computrainer classes we did at Breakaway and displayed at the Penn State Road Race this year.

I just missed averaging 20 mph over 40 miles, reaching the lunch truck in 2 hours and 7 minutes. It would be 29 minutes before Jose would roll by and about 110 minutes before the next rider would come through.

I know this sounds foolish when I’ve biked 5 hrs and averaging about 80 miles every day for the past 7 weeks, but I’ve had a legitimate fear of not knowing how much I’ve improved these past weeks, a very similar fear I had before the Rutgers Season Opener this year. Unlike the school year where I had a consistent training plan that had me work on different skills and relied on periodization, my “training” on this trip has been limited to the Eddy Merck training program of “ride lots”. I’ve tried to use this trip as more than a giant training trip, especially after learning my lesson after riding hard every day to Pittsburgh. I’ve stuck to my plan of talking to other riders and being social, while seeing everything our route has to offer and taking breaks to explore things and take photos.

After taking a 3 hour lunch break and updating my journal and playing lots of Queen, I took the rest of the day easy, and spent alot of it taking photos of other riders. A few shots are below:

Speaking of today’s route, we were within 12 miles of the first nuclear bomb tests that were conducted in the deserts. I know there is nothing out here, and the tests were held in the desert further south, but the landscape was truly breathtaking and it seems like a shame to pick this place.

7/26- Roswell to Corrizozo

Before recounting the activities of the day, I think it important to wish Katie a very happy second anniversary. I know there lay many challenges ahead of us, but so far things have worked out pretty well.

So today started on a down note for two reasons. Sophie wound up back in the ER still sick, while I woke up sick myself in the morning and felt fairly nauseous. I made the decision to take it easy while trying to cover the 90 miles in as little time as possible. .

Today was supposed to be one of the hardest days of the trip, but thankfully fortune was on our side. While the majority of the day was spent climbing, our group made it to first lunch in record time aided by a tailwind that was caused by a tropical storm in the gulf. After fighting through 20 mph+ headwinds on several days leading up to today, today was almost too easy, even given my state of health.

I spent the day biking with Kyle on the highway, and we set a good pace all day. We biked through Lincoln County, home of Billy the Kid and one of the most dangerous roads in America, according to President Clevland. While Lincoln County might have been in a state of anarchy in its hey day, I doubt it could compare to present day Philadelphia at times.

We also biked through the national forest where Smokey the Bear was rescued and made into a national celebrity. We took our own lunch break in the town of Capitan, homeplace of Smokey the Bear, and stopped at a diner to get out of the rain which began coming down in buckets. Still feeling ill and having eaten nothing since the night before, I forced myself to put down some food before continuing on.

The large elevation change and unsuspected rain left both of us freezing, and I was glad to see that the van caught up to us after our lunch break where I was able to retreive my arm warmers and rain jacket from the van. As a "grizzled" ECCC veteran, I was content with the arm warmers and while cold, realized Kyle needed my rain jacket even more.

After a few more miles of climbing, still in pouring rain, we encountered our best descent of the trip: 15 miles of downhill. Without even pedalling, our speed never dipped below 40 mph for the first couple of miles and it was a truly remarkable sensation being able to bike at the speed of cars for an extended period of time. It was also interesting to note how quickly things became hot again as soon as we lost part of the elevation we gained.

After reaching our destination, I took a lengthy nap which seemed to eliminate most of the sickness I was feeling. Having found my usual ravenous appetite, alot of our group sought dinner at one of the only two fine dining establishments in town, Elises, which gave us five free dinners. (They also agreed to boil water to make pasta for our group, as we forgot to buy propane for the camp stoves, and there was nothing in town.) Leader Kyle found most of our food, finding food donations from the two gas stations in town.

The day ended on somewhat of a down note, when one of our riders found himself in the van the next day for what was seen as unsafe riding behavior. I know the group leaders did not single him out as he felt, and I feel fortunate that I am just a rider on this trip that is not faced with making decisions that follow bike and build policy, even if they are unpopular regulations.

7/25- Roswell- DAY OFF!

Today was exactly the kind of relaxed day off I was in the mood for. After sleeping in to 7AM!, I left with a group of people and took public transit to Dennys, where another group of riders had organized breakfast for 15. After an awesome breakfast of eggs, pancakes, and hash browns, we walked across the street to a Hastings, where I was able to buy another pair of headphones that I had lost in Yukon, along with a copy of American Flyers for trip viewing, as it’s easily my favorite cycling movie.

Breakfast was soon followed by lunch, where Kyle and I had worked our donation magic into getting free Applebees. After another free steak, I was having quite the good day.

Unfortunately, the day would not end well for everyone, as our group was heading for the UFO museum on the bus and were at the entrance when Sophie felt violently sick and nauseous. I agreed to take her to the ER that was close to the Denny’s/Hastings that we were at before. I spent the rest of the afternoon there with her, where she was given an IV for dehydration.

After finally being released after taking an IV bag of saline for dehydration, Kyle picked us up and I managed to put down a large amount of food at Sonic, and then later at the Italian restaurant where Sophie ate. Besides just being hungry, I also wanted to put down as much food as possible in case I happened to catch the bug that was preying on our group.

7/24- Portales to Roswell

Today I may have outdid yesterday’s plentiful bounty of food. I wound up ridding a century ride seeking “donation magic” as we rode into Roswell, and I did not disappoint. I rode with Kyle, Big and Little Magidas, Sophie, and we had a lot of fun riding in together, although Sophie started fading badly later in the day. After we rode into Roswell, we were able to negotiate Dinner for 10 from KFC, 4 pizzas from Cicis, 2 pizzas from Peter Pan Pizza, Dinner at Chilis for 6, lunch at Applebees for 10 the next day, free ice cream from DQ, and $11 of donations.
Since we negotiated this cornucopia of food, the four of us, along with Charlotte and K-Po got to eat an amazing dinner at Chilis free of charge. As great as getting fed at the host locations every night, it was truly awesome to all be wearing normal clothing and enjoying margaritas, steak, and cheesecake with a small group of friends instead of feeling like you were fending for yourself.

7/23- Hereford, TX to Portales, NM- BIKE AND BARTER

Today was the coup d'etat of food donations, the grand daddy of them all. For a while, I've been one of the few to pull in massive food donations for the group, and I had always been left with getting 3 seemingly impossible things- free Sonic (supposedly only corporate and not franchised), free Chinese food (assuming a cultural and language barrier), and finally free gas for the van. Well today I pulled off the first two.
We woke up this morning and found out there would be no dinner at our host this evening in Portales, although we would have actual beds to sleep in at Eastern New Mexico College. I was told to work my "negotiating magic" by some, my bullshit sweet talking by others. The challenge for massive amounts of free food was on.

The first score of the day came in the form of Sonic, where me and Sofie both got free cheeseburgers and fries. Although I wasn't really hungry at 8:25 AM, it was the best cheeseburger I've ever eaten as I basked in the glow of victory and fatty foods.

The next score would not come until after crossing the border into New Mexico, where I secured more free subway for the group at the gas station/food mart place the van was at. Subway at this point has been somewhat easy to secure, but today may have topped all previous subway victories as I fed the entire group (which I havent been able to do since IN), and was able to get foot long sandwiches instead of 6 inch subs. Thats right, thats 31 feet of free sandwiches.

Right before leaving the town of Clovis that we were biking through, I saw challenge #2 (chinese food) present itself, and feeling quite lucky at this point, Sofie, Kyle R, Lindsey and I somehow communicated we needed free food for our group. Although not the best haul of the day, we got 5 pints of fried rice/ chicken chunks that made a tasty snack when the group got back.

Reaching Portales with still no dinner for our group, our fearsome foursome scored 12 pizzas from pizza hut, and then Sofie and I continued our food rampage by securing $20 of free ice cream from DQ. We also picked up a $20 donation along the way.

Total tally for the day:
2 cheeseburgers
2 fries
31 feet of subs
3 meat pizzas
3 vegetable pizzas
6 cheese pizzas
1 DQ ice cream cake
5 pints of chinese food
and a partridge in a pear tree (no not really, but it started sounding like it)

The ride itself was a relatively flat 75 miles and ride conditions were pretty nice as it never got too hot or windy. In addition we encountered some of the nicer roads weve seen in Texas (road quality has been pretty horrible the past few days and really gave the body quite a beating). It is very interesting to me how much the road quality can change between different counties, and every new county we pass through brings new surprises.

I'm a little sad I have been away from the action of Le Tour, as I heard the last 3 days in the Alps have been quite interesting as the main GC contenders sorts itself out.

90 miler tomorrow before a rest day in Roswell!

7/22- Amarillo, TX to Hereford, TX

Today I made an easy 50 mile day into a challenging 80 mile one. Heres how...

On a relatively flat day in Texas, I took a 20 mile detour with Kyle and most of the group to Palo Duro Canyon, the second largest canyon in the US (we'll be visiting the grand canyon in a few weeks).

We rode to the scenic outlook post where I witnessed some of the most beautiful natural wonders I've seen on this trip. For miles all one could see was carved out layers of sedimentary rocks that had been carved out by the flow of water for thousands of years.

After taking some time to take in what we were seeing, I heard there was a road down to the canyon floor that featured grades up to 20% and Kyle and I decided to take on this road.

While the 14% grade into Johnstown was certainly the most terrifying of this trip, this road was a close second with 7 switchback turns down the face of this canyon. I fully enjoyed taking the turns as fast as possible, and after reaching the bottom, Kyle and I decided we needed to tell others and repeat this awesome experience.

The climb back was somewhat enjoyable, and after convincing others to come with us, we went down a second time. Having seen the course for the first time, I had a pretty good feel for it, and took the turns even more aggressively at higher speeds. I really enjoyed being able to rip through these tight turns and decided at this point I would attempt this a third time, as I figured if i climbed fast enough I might be able to get to the top for the third time by the time the last person got there.

I took the hill up at race pace, and had my heart rate at probably the highest its been on this trip, reaching 194 bpm max. I do think this trip has significantly improved my climbing ability as well as my endurance, as I feel faster on climbs than I ever have before...I guess I'll have to leave it to the fall or even next spring when races start to know how far I've progressed.

Reaching the top, I took a short breather before barrelling down for attempt #3. This time I hit speeds up to 49.8 mph, which was pretty exhilerating. I know some people do hill repeats for fun, but I did canyon repeats today.

The rest of the day was somewhat tiring, although I did manage to draft the trailer twice, albeit for a short time.

Today definately goes down as one of my favorite ride experiences I've had so far.

7/21- Amarillo Build Day

Today we had our 7th build day. We painted the interior and exterior of this house for a Somalian family that had 14 children. This habitat house had a fairly large footprint, with 6 bedrooms, although there wasn't much else in the house other than bedrooms, bathrooms and a kitchen. As many people were excited to get their hands dirty and paint, I spent a large portion of the day putting up the painter's tape so that our group's overzealousness at times was not counterproductive.
We also saw another Habitat house that was waiting for final inspection before move in. I have to admit that I was pretty disappointed in the floor plans of the building, which included a kitchen that opened up into another space, as there seemed to be alot of useless dead space in the kitchen enclosure, while cramping room in the living room/eating room/ whatever they would turn this into. The bedroom layout was also peculiar for its window placement and installation of a cable box, as there wasn't a good place anywhere in this master bedroom to stick even a full size bed. I'm not one to get snobbish about design decisions, but I saw these major overlooks as being really dumb and poorly thought out. ("dumbest thing I ever saw")

7/16- Tulsa to Chandler

(Today I had limited internet access at the local public library in Chandler...I won't have time to upload all of my journal entries, but I decided to start most currently and work backwards from there... I will load more photos and more entries at next available stop...it includes st louis, cracking my helmet, bike shops, riding on 20 miles of gravel, a build day in springfield, my aggravation with the group and certain people, and practicing mitch klipper economics by obtaining large harvests of food and paying nothing for it)

Today we rode a relatively flat 70 miles in beautiful biking weather (sun, relatively cooler conditions with a nice light wind). After helping Hillary fix a flat in under 10 minutes, I spent the rest of the day riding with Sophie and the pastor of Bethany Lutheran who rode with us until lunchtime. Lunch was fantastic today as I enjoyed the leftover brisket from yesterday's Habitat build. Today's route was all along historic route 66.

7/15- Tulsa Build Day

Today we had our 5th build day In Tulsa. We worked on installing the soffits and building the back shed for a habitat site. Local newspeople were there and many photos of us in action where taken (we would find out tomorrow that we were featured on the first page of the Tulsa World).

Lunch consisted of some of the best bbq food I've ever eaten, and I stuffed myself with four brisket and bbq sauce sandwiches. I also tried an oklahoma delicacy called goober that tasted very similar to uncooked cheesecake.

After showering at the local Y, we went to another church for dinner, and afterwards I spent time filling out leader evaluations.

7/14- Vinita to Tulsa

Today we visited the other city I researched for this trip, Tulsa, the second largest city in Oklahoma, home of the Tulsa race riot, and a city known as the Buckle of the Bible belt. Today was another short biking day (only 60+ miles!), sunny, and relatively flat riding on historic Route 66. I got a late start to the ride day after helping Kristi with some chain problems and spent the majority of the day riding at a good clip with Sophie who also hung back to help. Right before lunch we caught up with Amol, and he sealed the deal on securing group burritos from Taco Tico.

After holding a steady 19mph with Sophie post lunch, we arrived in Tulsa shortly afterwards. After going for a 20 minute jog with a few riders in preparation for the local triathalon when I return, we showered at a local Y and enjoyed one of the best prepared dinners at the church we were staying at.

Today also marks the halfway point of our trip geographically, and there is only a month until I return to normal life.

7/13- Joplin to Vinita

Today we rode to Vinita, Oklahoma, home of the world's largest McDonalds and birthplace of Dr. Phil. I rode my second sweep day of the trip with Hillary, who was very entertaining. Riding weather was beautiful and sunny, and while temperatures were hot, they were not oppressive and relatively dry. In short, today could not have been a better sweep day.

We rode from Missouri into Kansas for 12 miles and then into Oklahoma. Unfortunately since we were taking local country roads there were no state signs for either one.

I spent the better part of the day practicing riding without hands and chatting it up with Hillary. Before lunch the group found a river that we all swam in, which continued the otherwise pleasant mood everyone seemed to be in.

Right before lunch I made the day exponentially better by negotiating my way at some local chicken place to donate to the group fried chicken for the group, mashed potatoes, mac n cheese, baked beans and biscuits and gravy. Since the van was located only a mile away, I created makeshift mussette bags for this abundance of food by employing what I learned in Bicycling magazine and tyed a plastic bag to each arm of the bag loaded with food and then tying these two arms together creating a way to carry the food to where the rest of the group was. (picture of my gluttony and pride in my hunter-gatherer status to be uploaded soon)

After arriving into Vinita and showering, we loaded up the van and visited the world's largest McDonalds. (It stratled the highway interstate). I decided to celebrate this by ordering the largest mcdonalds meal, and put down a Big Mac with fries and a coke.

I also presented my affordable housing curriculum project tonight

7/1- Yellowsprings to Rushville

Today we rode our second century, passed into Indiana AND passed over 1,000 miles for the trip.

I spend the majority of the day riding with Kyle R and Jose (amongst others) as we rode aggressively towards the state line sign. This time I was ready to use my Garmin to its full advantage in figuring out when to launch my sprint. Unfortunately, while the state line was defined by a road that ran right along the state sign, the state line sign started at the beginning of the second road that bisected it (To simplify this visually, I had to make a left from road 1 onto state boundary road 2 and then turn right at road 3 200 feet later. While beating Jose to the end of road one only to frantically look for a sign, he dived through the turn and took a narrow victory to the state sign.

After waiting for Kyle and then Jane and her father, we started again, when me and Kyle instinctively realized that today would be our chance to slap Jose’s ass and accrue 25 points to our contest (everyone else is worth 1 point, but since Jose is usually riding hours ahead of everyone, he is worth 25 points). We went for the doubletap, (for which we were successful), but in Kyle’s excitement he rode a little too fast and wound up in my back wheel and took a nice spill on the road. I was alrite, but he broke his helmet, cut through his chamois, and had some nice road rash to show for it.

After the excitement of the day, I rode with Kyle into town for the rest of the day, and were the first to get in, where we were met with great hospitality by our hosts. We also learned that Kyle was not the only one to take a spill for the day, as two of our riders had crashed after encountering a pothole and crashing, which required a trip to the ER. After getting a ride to the hospital, we waited for our two riders until they were released, and thankfully they were both okay for the most part.

The dinner that night was some of the best food we have had, and breakfast the following morning was by far the best food we've had so far. Rushville has been one of my favorite host locations so far as our hosts have had the perfect mix of great food, air conditioning and well wishes. (Also of special interest was the awesome inspirational non-denominational prayer the pastor gave us in the morning)