Dave Cycles

Done.

2006-09-12T21:40:00.000-07:00

Ok, well, here I am at Bob and Cathy's place in good ol' Socorro, NM. It doesn't really feel like it's over though. I suppose because I'm not back home in Pasadena yet. In that case, it will never feel "over" because I'm moving to Mountain View (or thereabouts) and not back to Pasadena.

Cathy has a hole in her shirt because her bird likes to rip her shirt. Bird ownership is a mystery to me.

Anyway, the wedding is coming up this Saturday, and the following Tuesday I'm flying back to California. Then I get to start looking for a place to live. Fun fun.

Today's ride was pretty reasonable. About 45 miles long. Started out at my parents' house in Belen and rode South along I-25. I rode on I-25 for about 15 miles, where there was no other way to get through.

Here's a typical mid-NM landscape view which looks (to me) very homey and familiar. Low scrub vegetation like mesquite, sagebrush, and grasses; long sight distances with mountains on the horizon; blue skies.

Those of you who went to NMTech should recognize the mountain that the freeway is pointing to in this last picture. It's M-Mountain as seen from about 15 miles North on I-25. Techies seeing this know they're almost home when coming back from Albuquerque.

I got my third flat tire today, but I knew it would happen. Only about 2 miles North of Socorro, there is no paved road that goes through except the interstate, and I didn't feel like getting back on it. So... I took the old way Bob and I used to do on our mountain bikes. This went on a bunch of twisty dirt roads, under a super-low-clearance freeway underpass (about 5 feet) and into and out of a big concrete flood control channel. Much of the dirt road surfaces were covered completely with goathead plants, and that's how I got the flat. Ah well, it was fun riding on those same old dirt roads I remember from 18 years ago in college. :)

Penultimate day

2006-09-11T21:21:00.000-07:00

Today I arrived in Belen, NM, where my parents live. Tomorrow I ride another easy day down to Socorro and the End of My Trip. I'll be glad to rest, and to be getting on with the rest of my life.

Taos, NM

2006-09-08T22:32:00.000-07:00

Wow, I'm finally in New Mexico! Tonight I arrived in Taos just as the sun was setting. Very pretty, with sunset colors in the sky and bright yellow flowers all over on the ground.

Today was a tough day, with a strong headwind for the first 50 miles. Just about drove me crazy. But it's the weather, what can you do? After that there were forested hills which I rode up and down and up and down (though without wind).

Taos is a neat town. Lots of artists, apparently. I won't be spending much time here though. My usual dinner and breakfast and then riding on South to Santa Fe.

Aurora to Conifer to Buena Vista

2006-09-05T20:54:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I said goodbye to Paul, Jen, and Scott and rode off towards the mountains alone again. I got a late start around noon and only made it as far as Conifer, about 40 miles away (but a few thousand feet higher I think). Turns out Conifer isn't much of a town and doesn't have any ordinary hotels and no campgrounds at all. The sun was going down and I was beat tired, so I stopped at a fire station and asked if I could pitch my tent around back. They said yes! Then just after I got done setting up my tent, one of the firemen poked his head out a back window and invited me to join them for dinner. How nice! The spagetti dinner was very tasty, and while eating I had the pleasure of watching them make fun of a fire-fighting movie that was on cable. One thing I learned was that in a car fire, the gas tank exploding is not a real danger - however, the shock-absorbers in the front and rear bumpers can explode and shoot their pistons 100 yards. So next time you are near a car on fire, get far away. :)

Today was a great day. I went over 3 mountain passes (Kenosha, Red Hill, and Trout Creek) on US 285 and covered about 91 miles. The distance surprised me - it was easier than I thought. The first 2 passes were pretty tough, but then from Fairplay to Buena Vista was 36 miles of mostly downhill with a tailwind. I was asking myself what I had done to deserve such a great situation. The scenery was gorgeous, the shoulder was wide, the pavement smooth, downhill, and a tailwind to boot! There was a small bit of uphill before Trout Creek Pass of course, but no more than a couple miles. Then the downhill from the pass into Buena Vista was amazing. I could see the "collegiate peaks" (Mt. Princeton, Mt. Yale, etc) across the valley as I was descending the curvy road at 30-40 mph. Awe. Some.

A pleasant evening in or near Silverthorne, CO

2006-08-31T20:20:00.000-07:00

Hey all. Today Paul and I cycled from an odd little campground near Heeney, CO to the bustling interstate town of Silverthorne. I had kind of a tough time in the morning, no doubt largely because of the complete lack of coffee. Heeney has a nice bar, which was great last night, but it didn't open until 11am and we didn't want to wait that long to get our morning coffee. Then of course there was a 28-mile stretch without any coffee sellers. We did find one small snack/bait shop open, but no coffee. Turns out graham crackers and Hershey bars are not a sufficient substitute.

This afternoon and evening we spent riding along a LOVely bike path from Silverthorne/Dillon over to Frisco and back. In Frisco we had dinner at a brew-pub pizza place, which was excellent. Really restored my faith in food. I'd been eating too many cheese/tortilla or peanut butter/tortilla things lately, and they just are not good any more.

Lyons, CO

2006-08-28T07:06:00.000-07:00

Turns out Lyons Colorado has a coffee shop with a PC in it.

The ride here yesterday was beautiful. Only about 10 minutes of rain for a whole day of the cloud-based sun protection. The mountains are pretty, the road had a nice paved shoulder, drivers were aware. Little Lyons is a cute town, has a nice brew-pub with a great old video-game arcade. Tempest, Ms. Pac-Man, Paperboy, Asteroids, Tron, etc.

Yesterday was a standard 60-mile day, but we'll see about today. We're headed directly up into the mountains, Rocky Mountain National Park.

Heading into the mountains, sans laptop

2006-08-27T08:43:00.001-07:00

Paul and I are about to head off into the mountains. Since we are taking camping gear for this leg, and I especially want to save weight for climbing mountain roads, I decided to leave my laptop here in Denver. I'll be back to pick it up before heading south to NM, but in the meantime I likely won't be posting to the blog here.

See you next Sunday!

Heading into the mountains, sans laptop

2006-08-27T08:43:00.000-07:00

Hangin' in Denver

2006-08-26T10:04:00.000-07:00

Today is Saturday, and in a few hours I will have been in Denver for a whole week. After staying with Dale and family in Littleton for several days I've shifted the burden over to friends Jen and Scott in Aurora.

I have now eaten at Watercourse Foods three times - lunches Wednesday through Friday - and I still love it. I can choose from the whole menu, it's all vegetarian, yay! I also hung out at a nice coffee shop called Penn Street Perk for hours, caffienating and using their free wireless. Once I stopped by my old favorite art gallery, Walker Fine Art. I used to live a few blocks from them, and I would often stop by to look at the art. I really like the style of sculpture she shows there. Lots of abstract metal work. It always inspires me to go home and get welding. Ever since I first went in there I've hoped that I could one day either afford to buy something or have some of my own work shown there. I think I'm a lot closer to the former than the latter so far. Maybe I can take some classes at The Crucible once I get out to the bay area.

Today Paul arrives from Pasadena and hopefully tomorrow we'll ride off into the mounains together. His return flight (from Denver) is Monday plus a week, and at that point I'll be heading south towards Albuquerque and Socorro. It's nice hanging out with friends, but I am itchy to get back on the bike.

For those of you I told about my numb-toe problems, I have now bought a set of insoles from an orthotics store in Aurora. The guy who helped me was very nice and combined and arranged some off-the-shelf products to help keep my feet in a healthier position. The custom-molded option apparently takes 3 weeks, and I'll be done riding by then. Hopefully these do the trick.

Limon to Littleton

2006-08-25T10:32:00.000-07:00

The last day of the Chicago to Denver leg of my trip was a fun day and a tough day. 99.7 miles total for the day. This first photo shows a typical view from much of the non-Denver part of the ride. It was rainy for several hours in the morning, but then cleared up to give me a beautiful, if hilly, ride towards the big city.

Next is another typical landscape photo including a yellow flower. :) I really enjoy the landscape out here. More hilly, more trees, more variety than the plains.

Just outside Elizabeth Colorado I saw a Smart Car parked in a dealer's lot and I had to stop. It's funny, the guy sells giant RVs and tiny cars. I was only interested in the tiny cars. :)

He also had this electric tricycle. I thought this view was funny because you can't see the front wheel. In the US it's licensed as a motorcycle for some reason - perhaps a simpler process, or less stringent or something?

On my way into Denver, Dale helped me out by looking up local bike paths. He found bike paths such that most of the last 15 or 20 miles to his house were on protected bikeways. Sweet! However, these bike paths suffered from the standard bike path problem - they were designed with recreation in mind, not transportation. So it wiggled and swerved and curved all over the place while the road nearby went perfectly straight. I went a longer distance than I needed to, but the road had no shoulder so it was still a good trade-off I think. Besides, the path went through this great natural area near a creek, and I had an awesome tailwind. I was really flying through the curves, zipping around, having fun. On that section anyway.

At some point the bike path started following an interstate highway, and that interstate intersected with another one. The bike path went through a number of confusing twists and turns in order to stay with the original highway. I wonder when the bike path will be a high enough priority to warrant its own bridge straight through the tangle of roads?

It turns out that suburban Denver is a very large place. Even after this shot I probably still had over 15 miles to go to Dale's place, and he was relatively close to where I was coming from. It took a few more hours to arrive, and in the meantime I was beset by many more hills and two serious downpours. At one point near the end the lighting was getting pretty worryingly close. Finally as I was rolling down Dale's street the rain let up a bit. The garage door was open, I rolled my bike inside, and I was done!

They generously gave me a towel and some of Dale's dry clothes to replace the soaked ones I was wearing, and I could finally relax after 26 days on the road.

Eads to Limon, CO

2006-08-21T06:35:00.000-07:00

I'm posting this from the comfort of my friend Dale's house in Littleton, a suburb of Denver. It's still easy to imagine the work that was involved in this day though. I wrote most of it right then, and I'm only now adding the photos.

The day started off beautifully, but ended as a fight with the wind.

The night before I talked with Dale, and it sounded like it would work out better if I arrived there earlier, and there is a more direct route from Eads to Denver than going to Pueblo first, as I had planned previously. So I said goodbye to Maggie and Dave and headed North. I was sad to leave them, they've been great travel partners, but the lure of arriving a day and a half early proved too great.

For the first few hours I had no wind, but as the day wore on it got stronger and stronger. For the first few hours of wind it was a crosswind, annoying me but not slowing me down. Then just 10 miles from Limon it turned straight against me and slowed me to about 5 or 6mph, making that last little bit take about 2 hours I guess. It definitely felt like a fight, but I just geared down and spun and stayed basically sane. I think I only shook my fist at the sky once.

Saw some cool stuff today - cactus, pronghorn antelope, cow skull, jackrabbits. I didn't take too many photos early on, but got into it later with some landscape and cloud pictures.

I had a nice experience in the morning in the tiny town of Wild Horse. It shows up as a dot on the map, but apparently only 9 people live there. The next town west of there was Hugo, over 30 miles away, and I wanted to refill my water bottles. After being rebuffed by some people working outside the "STUF SHOP" (a painted sign said "OPEN"), I tried at the US Post Office. It was a tiny little metal building, but inside was a very nice woman who told me all about the town, the post office business, etc. She gave me some of her own emergency drinking water after telling me that people in Wild Horse don't drink the tap water there because it seems to make people sick. So that was very nice of her. I then bought some stamps :) and went on my way.

I am super-psyched to be almost in Denver. Tomorrow night I'll prolly stay in Castle Rock, which is only about 20 miles from Dale's place. I might be able to keep going straight on to his house, but I don't know, that would bring the mileage from 67 up to 87 for tomorrow. Try it and see, I suppose.

Besides now being in cactus and sagebrush country, I have arrived in Green Chili country. Unfortunately for me, it is green-chili-with-pork country. In New Mexico people make green chili vegetarian by default, but in Colorado they put pork in it. So, I'll have to wait another day or two until I can go to the New Mexican restaurant in Denver. Hot green chile action awaits!

OK, pictures. This lovely tower was made of car or farm implement parts welded together. I think it was in the town of Hugo.

This repair shop was also in Hugo I think. The sign says "We Fix Everything, from daybreak to heartbreak". Doesn't look very open though. Glad I didn't need anything fixed.

I saw this broken bike safety flag on the side of the road while I was fighting the wind. Seemed like a creepy omen: someone else may have been fighting wind hard enough to break off their flag! If you look closely you can see that the non-flag end is splintered. Yikes.

This next cloud/landscape photo I took just to show a sample of what I was seeing most of the day. At least the clouds kept it from being too hot out. There were almost no crops to be seen today - the land was largely used for grazing.

Finally, I realized that my political views have been causing me to filter some very typical things out of my blog. This shows an old US flag flapping in the wind that someone fastened to a street sign way out in the middle of nowhere. Actually there were US flags all over the place all along my trip. I personally am not very proud of my country because of what our government is doing these days, so I tend to ignore such things.

Similarly, there were "support the troops" ribbon stickers on many many of the cars that I saw, and I sort of filtered them out as well. I suppose I didn't want to acknowledge them or something, so I never took pictures.

Finally all across Kansas there were anti-abortion signs. "Stop abortion - Save the baby humans", some would say. I think one said "Some gifts only God can give" and it had a picture of a little baby. Every time I saw one of these I fantasized for the next half hour about retort signs to put up next to them. "Stop war - save the adult humans". Or "...Though a rapist can give a pretty similar gift." Pretty harsh I suppose, but it just goes to show how different my viewpoint is about the issue.

Anyway, I'm happy to be back in the big city for now.

Made it!

2006-08-20T10:15:00.000-07:00

Whew! Last night I arrived at Dale's place in Littleton (part of the Denver metro area) around 6pm after riding 99.7 miles. So I still have never done a century in my life, and I continue to have great respect for people who do them. I was really blown.

I'll post photos later, but for now I'll summarize yesterday as: rain, hills, nice weather, hills, pasta, nice weather, hills, tailwind, rain, hills, rain, nice weather, hills, rain, scary thunderstorm, heavy rain, getting lost in Dale's neighborhood, then saw the "/." sticker on a minivan and I knew I had arrived. Hole lee cow! I can hardly believe I'm finally here.

Welcome to Colorado!

2006-08-17T16:59:00.000-07:00

We have made it into Colorado! It turns out that much of Eastern Colorado looks a lot like much of Westen Kansas, but I guess that is to be expected.

We ran into a group of 6 cyclists from Britain (luckily no one was hurt) at a defunct gas station in Sheridan Lake. They are going from San Francisco to New York City. They had lots of dire-sounding descriptions of what's ahead for Maggie and Dave when they cross Nevada.

We passed this amazing field of sunflowers today, and Maggie had to have a photo of herself in the infinite expanse of yellow. It was a pretty cool sight, all those flowers. From a distance it looked all shimmery from the heat, so it was a shimmering yellow field. Notice that they are all facing the same direction.

Later in Colorado the plantscape changed again. Now we are often surrounded by sagebrush. It's pretty and smells nice and reminds me more and more of New Mexico. The further West I go, the more I feel at home.

We are staying the night in Eads, Colorado. We ate lunch at a little restaurant painted all purple.

According to the waitress at the Purple People Eater-E, we are still in "Cattle Country" so no veggie burger yet. (I'm so close to Denver I can almost taste the yumminess of Watercourse Foods vegetarian restaurant.) Anyway, she was nice enough to indulge my odd request of a sub sandwich with all the vegetables plus kidney beans. The homemade bread was very nice, I must say.

Today we rode 58 miles, and there were no services available the whole way. It worked out just fine, had enough water and foodstuff. The only thing that bugged me was that later in the ride there were no places to stop and rest in the shade. Not a tree in sight for miles at a time. Perhaps it would have been worth setting up a tent? Eh, I suppose not.

Kansas lives up to its name

2006-08-16T16:49:00.000-07:00

Kansas really lived up to its name today. Apparently the name comes from the Kansa tribe which used to live here, which meant "people of the south wind". The wind came from the South all day while we rode West all day. It wouldn't be that big of a deal, but it takes more effort to keep the bike going straight with a side wind. The biggest factor, though, is that being on the North side of the road, the wake from the trucks passing us is blown toward us and hits us really hard. Strangely, we all noticed that the tanker trucks' wind hit us much harder than that from even the biggest box-style semis. Must be something about aerodynamics.

Early this morning, we passed this odd farm scene. At first it just appeared to be a junk yard or a storage area for a bunch of equipment. Then I noticed a goat standing on top of a pile of dirt, and I looked closer, and I saw that there was a herd of sheep scattered among the junk and equipment. I guess that's an efficient use of space or something.

Later I saw one of those high-rise tractor things in a dealer's yard, so I had to stop and see if I could ride under them. Answer: YES! So cool. Apparently they are sprayer trucks, and they have a big armature thing on each side that folds out for a total width of 120 feet! They have such a crazy high ground clearance so they can drive over full-height crops, probably like corn, without damaging them. Of course they are made to spray pesticides and chemical fertilizers, so they are probably not relevant to organic farming. Sigh. I guess I can save the $250,000 they cost.

This is a typical view we had after the cloud cover broke up today. Flat land, straight roads, strong winds, and a whole lot of sky.

I was really excited to see this Modoc sign, but then I realized the spelling I was looking for was "MODOK". Oh well, sounds the same.

Then finally, about 10 miles before our final city for the day, Tribune, we passed this lovely sign. So I am now in my destination time zone. Woo-HOO! So all you California people, I'm one hour closer to you today.

Tonight, thanks to Dave's persistence, we are sleeping in a local school gymnasium. We did check out the local motel, but the bed looked like it might have had bedbugs. Not for sure - I'm no expert - but I did find some suspicious signs when I looked at the bedding. After our bedbug experience in Chicago, I wanted to be really sure to avoid them.

I may be as few as 4 days from Denver, if my previous calculations are feasible. If it works out more like Dale suggests, it might be 6 or 7, and I'll spend next Tuesday in Colorado Springs riding the Cog Railway up Pikes Peak. That sounds like fun. Maybe I can visit Garden of the Gods too, that's a cool spot. I don't know how fast I'll be able to go from Pueblo up to Denver, because it's off the Adventure Cycling route maps and has really significant altitude changes.

Ness City to Scott City

2006-08-15T11:13:00.000-07:00

Another day on the road with Maggie and Dave. They are pretty good travel partners, I have to say. Last night we shared a room at the "Derrick Inn" motel. When I saw the name in print I figured Derrick was some guy's name, but the photo shows otherwise.

This morning was really misty, and the sunrise was really gradual getting through all the clouds and fog. There were a bunch of oil well pump jacks visible through the mist. They looked pretty cool, slowly cycling away in the cool morning, making little animal-like creaks and groans as they turned.

This was an awesome vehicle, I thought. Gave me some great ideas for another KSR vehicle. I bet I could ride my bike underneath it. I didn't think to ask the guy to stop at the time, I'll have to wait for the next one I see (if any). I'd love to get a movie of one of those driving over me while I'm cycling too. Heh.

This afternoon we arrived in Scott City after 65 miles of riding, and found the local grocery store, city park, hostel, and library. I'm at the library even now using their wireless network. Hot wireless action is everywhere. Jeez, it's like we're in the 21st century or something.

I'm really enjoying travelling with other people. Makes me wonder if I was terribly lonely before. I guess not, really. But I do recall often thinking how great it would be to get back home to California. I haven't been thinking those thoughts as much since I hooked up with Dave and Maggie.

To Ness City with new friends

2006-08-14T16:12:00.000-07:00

Friends! Today I met Maggie and Dave, who are riding from New York City to San Francisco together. Pretty cool. We rode together for about 30 miles and are even now sharing a motel room. Dave had the idea to try and stay in the local volunteer fire department, something he's done before, but upon investigation there was no place to get a shower, so we decided to go with the hotel that I had a reservation at.

This is a photo of Dave's foot. Guess what kind of shoes he rides in?

Maggie and Dave are doing similar daily mileage to me, so maybe we'll ride together for a while.

They are both independently blogging their trips, so as soon as I get their blog URLs I'll post them on the "links" thingy on the sidebar. heh. friggin' bloggers. :)

Sterling to Larned, KS

2006-08-13T17:49:00.000-07:00

I find myself appreciating Kansas and the prarie landscape a lot more than I thought I would. There can be a lot of variety in prarie landscapes. I guess it is just commercial farming that makes the plains monotonous. This first shot shows how the flat prarie is naturally variegated. Different grasses and forbs (plants that aren't trees or grasses (new word for me!)) grow in a mix or in clusters, interspersed with the occasional tree or small stand of trees. The overall effect was quite beautiful, I thought.

These white papery flowers were very nice too. I suppose maybe they are a type of poppy?

I took this next photo to show these white-topped grasses. The seed-heads were stark white, which made a great contrast with the leaves and surrounding plants.

I even saw pelicans today! These white pelicans were flying over a salt marsh wilderness refuge. Actually all the photos today are from this refuge. Not all of the refuge is salt marsh though - in fact all these photos are from the prarie parts of it.

This bigger photo of the pelicans just looked cool with the clouds and sunbeams. Same birds.

I don't know what these last birds were, but there sure were a lot of them.

Today was not hot, unlike many days on this ride. The clouds you see in the photos were representative of much of the day's ride. Unfortunately they were accompanied by a near-constant strong wind. Not a perfect headwind, but even coming at me a bit less than 45 degrees from the side, it was enough to slow me down considerably. The side-load of the wind is also tiring in its own way, because it makes balancing take a lot more energy and attention.

I have realized on many mornings that if I was writing this diary at 7am every day, it would sound very different. At that time, I have spent an hour or two cycling in cool near-darkness and an hour or two in the sunrise, watching the landscape come alive around me. It really is a beautiful time to be out there. Every day though, by the time I arrive at my destination I have cycled a number of hours more, fighting wind or heat or traffic or hills or boredom, and those end up coloring my thoughts about the day much more than the early morning bliss. Anyway, it's nice that today I remembered the morning enough to write about it. I suppose those morning feelings are what really make this trip seem worth the trouble.

According to my calculations, I have 7 more days of cycling before I arrive in Denver. I will be glad to arrive somewhere familiar finally and not cycle much for a few days.

Hesston to Sterling, KS

2006-08-13T17:35:00.000-07:00

The tractors of dawn. I saw this great line of combines and similar equipment in the early morning light in the field just by the road. They didn't look particularly disused, nor did they all look new. At other places I have seen obvious graveyards of farm equipment, but the status of these was not clear to me.

I also saw these camels and ostriches today. They were living at a place that I could have spent the night... "Hedrick's Exotic Animal Farm and Bed and Breakfast". Too bad they wanted $99/night or I might have gotten to pet a giraffe or something.

Restin' in Hesston

2006-08-13T17:22:00.000-07:00

Today (Friday Aug 11) I'm resting at Lois and Ray Zehr's house in Hesston Kansas. They are old friends of my parents and have generously agreed to let me stay here two nights.

About a block away from their house is a lovely arboretum, and I walked around there for a few hours this morning. Their pond has a lot of fish and swimming turtles. Some kids came and were feeding the turtles, and there were easily twelve or more turtles swimming around us. Then after a long while, the great big granddaddy turtle showed its head. The head of this turtle was about 3 inches wide. I didn't get to see the whole body of the big one because he was kind of shy, but I'm guessing it was 2 feet across or more. Wow.

I also saw a tail of an animal that I never saw the body of. It was crawling off through some tall grass, and I just saw this thick black fleshy tail sliding away. Weird. Not furry, kind of bald. Too stubby to be a snake tail... looked first like must have been a great big lizard, but what lizard living there would have a tail where the base was 2 inches fat? Maybe an armadillo?

Lois cooked lunches for me, and the first dinner. This was very nice of her, especially because I'm vegetarian and she wasn't really familiar with vegetarian cooking. She asked what I ate, and one thing I mentioned was beans and rice. So she cooked up a big thing of that, and it was delicious. Then the first night I was there they (and by association I) were invited to a neighbor's place for some fresh fish specially brought from Virginia and cooked by a visitor of theirs. It's a good thing we brought the leftover beans and rice, because the side dishes with the fish consisted of rice cooked in chicken broth, plus fresh avocado and tomato. It did look delicious, and the fish-bringer (actually named Dan) seemed to be quite a skilled cook. Ah well.

For the next night I made a vegetarian lasagne-like casserole for Ray and Lois, which they seemed to like. That was a lot of fun - it seemed like forever since I had actually cooked real food. It sure will be nice to get home someday.

Cottonwood Falls to Hesston, KS

2006-08-13T17:09:00.000-07:00

Today I stopped at a national tallgrass prarie preserve and looked around. I felt a little cheated because the grass was only about a foot high. Hardly "tall". I learned later that is normal for this time of year - the really tall grass doesn't grow up until later in the season. OK.

They also had displays of a bunch of old stuff... horse-drawn buggies, foot-powered grinding wheels, etc. Made me wonder how we would make those things differently if we had to make them today. I was imagining for example the buggy... instead of being made of lumber and forged iron, it could be built like a bicycle. It would have a lightweight chrome-moly steel frame, bicycle-style tension-spoked wheels, air-filled rubber tires, mesh-backed seats, a waterproof ripstop nylon canopy, sealed ball bearings, etc. I was thinking about a post-carbon world, of course. Before gasoline was used for everything, people used horses or their own muscles. But what if we went back to human or animal power but with modern manufacturing techniques? Seems like we could use some of the basic designs they used but make them much lighter, more comfortable, and more convenient. I can imagine a collapsible horse-drawn buggy, for example, that folds up when not in use. Hmm...

Saw this cool sign today. If that doesn't say "Dave, come visit us!" I don't know what would. Too bad it was 4.5 miles out of my way down a gravel road, or I surely would have visited them.

Finally arrived in Hesston, where my parents went to college.

Osage City to Cottonwood Falls, KS.

2006-08-13T16:53:00.000-07:00

Got a late start this morning because I stayed up late (after 10pm!) talking to another guest at the b&b. He had long hair! First long-haired man I've seen for weeks. He was really into music and he had a laptop with a whole lot of music he liked, and we swapped and listened and talked about music. He was in town working for a company that paints water towers, so we talked about that too of course.

This morning I saw a badger cross the road. Long, low, pudgy-looking animal, with a sort of shovel-shaped head with obvious black-and-white markings on it. Why it crossed the road I don't know. :)

This evening I talked (but mostly listened) to one of the hotel owners where I'm staying. He is a talker, but very interesting and funny. He used to run a laundry service in Galveston Texas, he used to assemble big machinery, lots of stuff. Told me all about the hotelling and landlording and laundromatting businesses.

I'm a little chagrined that I always need to bow out of these conversations to go to bed because I have to get up early. Ah well, during the hot part of the day I know it's important.

Saw some fun stuff today. Another nice ad for dead animal flesh.

These three horses came running up to check me out as I passed.

Wow, please don't get me a job in the noxious weed warehouse!

I think stuff like this antenna tower is beautiful. Is it just me? I love the mathematical precision and the thin, spindly tautness of it.

I got passed by this house today. Freaked me out... I was cycling along near the right side of the right lane and a truck honked at me. Usually trucks just change lanes and go around me, so I looked back and saw this HOUSE bearing down on me. It took up all 3 lanes of that 2-lane road, so I rolled down into the grass and it basically went over me.

This is just a picture to give a flavor of the typical scenery I rode through today. It was soon after dawn, fairly cool out. Those hay bales are pretty big, maybe as tall as I am.

Osawatomie to Osage City

2006-08-08T17:15:00.000-07:00

One thing Kansas is good for is sunrises. It's easy to see a big stretch of sky all at once, and the clouds are rarely totally absent or totally covering the sky.

This was a cool flower I saw today while I was on a fruitless detour. I wanted to avoid the scary road situation pictured below (65mph limit with no shoulder), so I took a side road that my Kansas map said should be paved, and found out after going about 10 miles out of my way that it wasn't all paved. Oy.

Later I saw a crop that I didn't recognize. Anyone know what it is? The leaves and stalks look like corn, but shorter plants and more leaves, and of course the tassle is replaced with a funky yellow flower bunch thing. Maybe sorghum?

After dinner at the local Mexican restaurant here, I was chatting with the waiter. At one point he asked if I was here on vacation (since I'd said I was from California) and I said yes. He said "You come to Osage City for vacation??" Hmm. Looking around the town, I can understand his perplexity. It, like almost all the towns I've stayed in, have been small farming communities. Each has a hotel, a bank, a "Casey's" chain gas station slash convenience store slash pizza restaurant, a Chinese food place and a Mexican food place. Of course there are lots of other things I don't notice much - feed stores, farm equipment dealers, etc. Just kind of made me stop and think.

Clinton to Osawatomie

2006-08-08T16:25:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I rode from Clinton, Missouri to Osawatomie, Kansas. It was a nice ride, and especially nice to be back on hard pavement again. I started riding really early in the morning, about 4am. That meant I rode about an hour in the pitch dark, which was a little freaky. I have a 3-LED headlight on my bike, which is fine to see the way if there are no other lights around. There were often no other lights around. It was kind of cool to be able to star-gaze while cycling. I could just about make out where the Milky Way was before I'd start veering dangerously.

After that first hour, the sun very gradually brightened up my world. At first there is just a hint that something is different. Then I start seeing the lines on the road in places where my light isn't shining and seeing silhouettes of trees and cows and buildings. Eventually I turn off my headlight because I can see OK and want to save battery. Even at this point it is still at least an hour before I actually see the sun - all this light is just reflecting around in the sky above. It doesn't start getting noticeably hotter until the sun actually hits my back directly, and even then it takes a couple hours before it gets bad. By that time, I'm almost to my destination for the day.

This riding in the dark doesn't lend itself to lots of photographs, but I sure am happier riding during the cool part of the day.

If you click on this photo to look at the big version, you can see in the center that the road ahead of me is a long straight series of ups and downs. Lots of work.

In Osawatomie I bought a cheap mp3 player at a Radio Shack. I mean cheap in quality, not in price. Oh well, when's the next time I'm going to be in a town big enough to have a well-stocked modern electronic-doodad store? It's a discontinued model ("My Musix" brand), and I have already worked out its primary failing. It does not understand subdirectories! I'm using it with a 2Gig SD flash card, which represents about 600 songs, or 60 albums, give or take. That's a lot of files to have just in one big list. It's also a lot of songs to scroll through one-by-one to find the music you want to listen to. It's especially a lot of songs to scroll through when it does not know how to remember what it was playing when you turned it off.

All that aside, having music while I ride makes it a different trip. A better trip I think, definitely an easier one. Today I was struck by the surrealism of riding through countryside similar to that pictured above and listening to this. This means I miss (some of) the cicada sounds, the birds, the wind in the trees. It also means a lot of time flies by without me wondering what the hell I'm doing out there. You might think it means I don't hear cars coming up from behind me, but believe me it's hard to miss the sound of 60mph tires approaching on asphalt when you associate that sound with the possibility of sudden death. Besides, there is generally not much I can do... I already ride as close as I am comfortable to the edge of the road, and beyond that it is up to the driver to see me and avoid me.

Today I also started to use my little rear-view mirror which clips onto my glasses. It lets me see the cars and trucks approaching from behind, but all I can do is make sure I'm over to the right. I do tend to watch them approach up to the last second now, so I suppose I could dive off into the weeds if I noticed someone not avoiding me. It really adds an extra element of tension though, to be constantly aware of exactly where the cars are behind me. I don't know if it's a net benefit or not.

The end of the Katy

2006-08-08T15:15:00.000-07:00

As you can see in this picture, the scenery around the trail has changed considerably from the forested riverbank. This was the high point of the trail, altitude-wise. Otherwise, I would say using my laptop on a bench on the banks of the Missouri river and getting a cell phone call at the same time was the high point of the trail. :)

Oh yeah, that reminds me. The cell call was my "move coordinator" person calling to ask about what kind of apartment I'm looking to rent for when I start working at Google in Mountain View. During the course of the conversation I mentioned my sunburned lower lip and she suggested that I invent a little visor for my lip to prevent such. I liked the idea very much and said I'd put it in my blog. So there you go: "lip visor". Heh.

I wonder if a moustache counts? Hmm, it would have to be awfully bushy to work.

Yet another day on the Katy

2006-08-08T13:32:00.000-07:00

This next day was pretty uneventful. My second full day on the Katy. It is extremely nice to be totally protected from traffic, and also to have lots of shade from trees growing only a few feet from the path. On the other hand, it's not paved, and it does not go through any big towns. So you go a bit slow and you don't ever get any city amenities like traffic jams. Or something.

The trail crossed the Missouri River and headed Southwest. Out in the farmland, I saw this interesting silo building. Looks like it was made of some kind of ceramic blocks.

In one of the towns along the way was a caboose from the MKT railroad. Apparently cabooses have fallen out of favor now that we have technology to replace actual humans at the back end of trains.

I also saw this remnant of signalling equipment along the trail. If you look close, you can see right through the places where the lights used to be.

I saw later that the Katy was converted from a railroad to a trail simply by covering the tracks with gravel. Near the end of the trail, the trail left the tracks, and they just emerged unscathed from beneath the trail material and veered off. Funny, I thought they would have salvaged the tracks or ties or something.

Still not up to date.

2006-08-07T18:10:00.000-07:00

Well jeez. I'm still not up to date on the photo posting and it's time for bed.

I'm currently in Osawatomie (emphasis is on the "wa") Kansas. Tomorrow I head for Osage City KS. This morning I got up at 3am, hit the road by 4am, and got to this hotel before noon. Not a bad way to go, really kept me cool.

Today finally I mailed a box of camping gear to Denver (look out for it, Jennifer!), so hopefully tomorrow's journey will be just that little bit easier. Specifically, 12 pounds easier.

Katy trail part 2

2006-08-07T16:46:00.000-07:00

Today on the Katy I saw "standing rock", pictured here. Written on the side of it were records of high-water marks from several floods of the Missouri river. Turns out track damage due to flooding was the primary reason the track was finally abandoned by the railroad.

These cows had the right idea.

I saw my first snake today. This one was nice and long, maybe 5 feet. It did not threaten me at all, just slowly wiggled off the road. It was weird watching it move... I watched a point in the middle of the snake for a while and was surprised to see it get skinny and disappear. The snake kept the same shape but just sort of moved through the curve and continued it forward. Neat.

I also saw a really enormous bean pod today. Check them out, and the enormous beans that were inside. They smelled like sugar snap peas and I was really hungry, but I resisted the urge to taste them. Anyone know what they are?

The place I stayed this night was really great. This is a photo of it from the next morning. It's the Rendleman Home bed and breakfast, owned and run by a great guy named Doug. He is himself a cyclist, and he really does a great job catering to cyclist clients. Unlike most b&bs it is a very relaxed place. Sort of a bachelor-pad version of a b&b, though without the squalor. The decoration is very simple and minimal, but nice.

Doug and I chatted pretty much the entire time I was there - he's a really interesting guy. He let me help (a little) with making dinner, and he was very accomodating to my vegetarianism. He's trying to sell the place now because he wants to start a new venture where he does something similar but on a boat. Anyone want to run a b&b in rural Missouri next to a great bike trail?

The Katy Trail

2006-08-07T16:19:00.000-07:00

Today I started riding West on the Katy trail. It is a 225-mile-long bike path which used to be part of the MKT railroad line connecting Missouri, Kansas, and Texas. I got on at Marthasville with the idea to take it as far west as it goes - to Clinton, MO.

The scenery was gorgeous the whole way. Most of the trail follows the Missouri River, and there are often cliffs on the other side of the trail.

I thought this building being eaten by plants made for an interesting picture.

There were even a few tunnels along the way.

Louisiana to Wright City

2006-08-07T15:50:00.000-07:00

As I was leaving LoMo in the morning I took this photo of the once-quaint downtown. There was a WalMart on the other end of town, 3 or 4 miles away, which had been there around 15 years. The Motel owner said before WalMart came to town the downtown area was in much better shape. Ain't that the way? He also said that WalMart was the smallest WalMart in the US. What a distinction. I wonder what the Walton family thinks when they see photos like this? A small riverfront town of just less than 4000 people with cute old buildings, a small town where people can walk to everything. Then they put in a store 4 miles away which is larger than any other business in town by probably 4X, and sell probably everything that was previously available in town for lower prices. Now everyone drives their cars to the edge of town to buy cheap Chinese plastic copies of stuff they used to buy in town. Sure, people save a little money in the short run, but it's not long before their town has completely lost its soul.

On the road South of LoMo there is a wonderful stretch of about 10 miles which has a marked bike lane, just out across the countryside. I was impressed enough to take a photo. :)

Also along that road was a factory visible in the distance with several smokestacks. One in particular was spewing yellow smoke. There were others spewing the typical white mostly-water-vapor type for comparison. For a mile or 2 along that stretch my sinuses were hurting in a way I had not felt before, and I had a bit of a headache. I wonder what sort of poisonous gasses I was breathing. The locals told me that was the Holcim(?) plant and that they make cement. They said the yellow smoke was from them burning "cheap coal". Huh. Also along that stretch was a chemical plant, and I was sure I was smelling a strong odor of garlic there. Soon after I felt the strange sinus pain. Kind of freaked me out because a friend in Boise used to work at a semiconductor factory (Micron) and had been warned (I think) that if he smelled garlic to leave immediately because it indicated arsine gas had escaped. Yikes!

Of course who knows, maybe it was a garlic-processing plant. :)

After Clarksville my route turned away from the river and up into the hills. I took a picture of a typical view of my speedometer. Keep in mind that it is mis-adjusted and is reading 10% higher than reality - so I was going 3.9 miles per hour. Good thing I have low gears.

During the day I stopped at the Cuivre River State Park and took a little hike. Talked with some interesting Canadian grad students studying trees, and also took some pics of yellow flowers.

That night I stayed at a hotel owned by another Indian guy. This guy was a very religious Hindu, and when he heard I was looking for a place to eat where I could get vegetarian food, he got all excited. He told me that was good for my soul (pronounced sowl, like "owl" preceeded by an "s"). Showed me pictures of a very impressive temple he had visited, etc. Then when I was about to leave to go get dinner, he asked if I would like to eat food his family made. I accepted his very generous offer, and was treated to two rounds of delicious homemade Indian food. Even having been to India, none of the flavors were familiar. There was a spicy soup similar to sambar, but sweet as well. There was also a squash and chickpea curry which was delicious. He later showed me the plant in his garden where the squash came from. It was just by the driveway to his motel. I took a photo of him with more of the squash. What a great guy!

Across the Mississippi

2006-08-07T15:14:00.000-07:00

Today I crossed the Mississippi into Hannibal Missouri. Hannibal is a tourist town showing off some association with Mark Twain. Coming into town there is a (rough) likeness of him in colored gravel on the side of a hill. I'm sure he would be very proud. :)

The bridge over the river was on an interstate, so the shoulder was wide and smooth. I was impressed at the sign which carefully listed all the kinds of vehicles and pedestrians not allowed on the interstate and then at the end said "except bicycles". Yay!

After leaving Hannibal my route took me South through the hills to the West of the river. There was a lot of nice scenery, including two very pretty blonde horses. I didn't realize horses could have cleavage!

For lunch I stopped at an idyllic roadside park and ate my raw zucchini and dinner rolls. Gourmet, I know.

I stayed at a great little motel on the edge of Louisiana, Missouri (hereafter called LoMo) that night. "River's Edge Motel" I think. There's a bridge over the Mississippi there too, which I took a photo of at sunset. That's the view from my room too, pretty cool. I talked with the guy who ran the motel for a while. Pretty interesting. Originally from India, spent a bunch of time as an Electrical Engineer in Africa, then came to the US and bought that motel. He said he liked the quiet small-town life out there. He told me about a bunch of interesting people who'd spent the night there, including one guy who was walking backwards across the US. Wow.

I also saw a sign advertising dead cow flesh. Welcome to Missouri!

Back on the net

2006-08-07T11:54:00.000-07:00

Hey all, finally got to a hotel with wireless again. I'll post a backlog of stuff pretty soon, but first I'm going to go to the post office and ship a bunch of weight to Denver. When originally packing for this trip, my attitude was "what might I need?" and now my attitude is "what might I be able to survive without?"

Even yet still more photos

2006-08-02T02:59:00.000-07:00

The best $6 I've ever spent! Though not ideal fashion-wise, these sunglasses have really saved me. I was Mr. Squinty before, but now my eyes can relax. My prescription glasses are on underneath these... it's a bit awkward yes. :)

This is a spider I ran into while looking for a place off the road to have lunch one day. About 1cm long, and very funky looking.

Check out this cute little house by the river! What does it mean? I don't know. It is tiny.

Day 7: rest

2006-08-01T20:38:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I just rested pretty much all of Monday. Slept in until about 10am, eventually in the afternoon went to a local bike shop to replace my (stolen?) bike lock and get my headset adjusted.

Had a very nice dinner at a local Italian restaurant called Tiramisu even though I was looking pretty scroungy. The wine of the day was a "Nero D'Avola" (a red) which I thought was good enough to write down the name of so I can try and find it again. Anyone heard of it? And hey, they had a vegetarian pasta dish other than spaghetti marinara! Portobello ravioli in a tomato and cream sauce. Pretty tasty.

Today is Tuesday, day 8 and I have to say that it went reeeally well after that day of rest. More about today, with photos... later. Time for bed now. (10:30pm! it's late!)

Picture backlog

2006-08-01T20:02:00.000-07:00

My first accident! Oh no! Well, actually I just dropped the bike while going slowly down a steep gravel road. My butt fell the 1.5 feet from the seat to the ground, and my leg got this minor scrape. Hopefully that will be my worst injury during the trip!

This next photo shows my friend the freight train. There were 2 train tracks exactly that far away from my 5th night camp site. There was also a road crossing right there, so they would always blow their lovely horns and the bells would ring, even at 2am when I finally got up and started packing.

I think this place was night 4's campground. Right on the Mississippi river, grassy, with trees, tables, bathrooms, drinking water... it was great. Still too hot and humid to sleep well, but at least the campground was safe and pleasant. :)

This dude was Mike. He is riding from Washington State to his home in New Jersey. We talked for about an hour on the side of the road there in the sun, because we were going opposite directions and I don't think either of us was willing to give up ground to go find a nicer place to chat. Several car drivers stopped to make sure we were all right. :) Notice the corn.

This photo is from the campground with the train. It shows some typically amazing scenery.

I thought this last one was funny. I wonder if Don Knuth has this one on his page? Wow, I don't think he does! This was on the road leading to the campground I slept at on the 4th night. A very nice campground next to the Mississippi river (in which the road ended).

Days 4-6. Holy cow.

2006-07-30T14:11:00.000-07:00

Hey there. Wow. I camped the last 2 nights, which is why I haven't posted until now. Tonight I'm staying at the "Althoff Motel" on the far outskirts of Quincy Illinois.

Did I say I wouldn't talk about the heat anymore? Today I cut it a little too close, and misjudged how much water I would need. Quincy is about 20 miles from the previous town on the route, and I figured 3 liters should be sufficient. Apparently not, because when I was still 12 miles out I was over half done with my last liter. Luckily there was a small town with a gas station about 3 miles off route, which I arrived at with about a cup of water to spare.

As is becoming typical, the morning was wonderful. I woke up around 2am and couldn't get back to sleep (possibly because of the freight trains passing next to the park, or possibly because I was edgy). So I packed up and was on the road by 3:30am. Those 2 hours of riding in the dark were magical. Cool, quiet, hardly any traffic. The only downside being of course that there was no scenery. Just the sounds of nighttime insects, birds, and the occasional dog.

Just as the sun was rising I found myself in Nauvoo looking up at a magnificent Mormon temple. There was a lone Mormon there in front of it, and we ended up talking for about an hour about Joseph Smith, atheism, etc. Turns out Nauvoo was the town where Joseph Smith was killed by a bunch of angry townspeople. I asked what the townspeople were so angry about, and he said they "didn't like his message." Heh. Maybe that and his polygamy? Yeah, he admitted that that might have been a small factor as well.

At one point I asked him why Mormons have so many children. He said there are all these unborn souls waiting to be born and the living Mormons want to do them the favor of allowing them to be born and live on Earth. Of course I asked what about overpopulation of the earth, and he said "no such thing." Hmm. He said it's just that people are not taking good care of the planet and that is why people are starving in Africa, etc. OK. I tried to pursue with him the idea that the exponential growth of the Mormon population was not sustainable - I said after enough time all the land surface would be covered entirely with people all jammed together, and how would they eat, etc? His reply only clicked with me later... he said essentially that it wouldn't get to that point because there would always be some evil people who kill people... so in essence, he's saying that at some point the population would stabilize because evil people would be killing (on average) 8 of the 10 kids that each Mormon family was having. That sounds pretty miserable. Too bad I didn't think it through to that point during our conversation. :)

I have a few pics and other stories from the past few days which I'll post later.

Day 3: fog, heat, and poshness

2006-07-27T18:52:00.000-07:00

The morning was foggy and cool. The sunrise was neat through the fog.

It didn't last too long though. Soon again it was blazing hot. Perhaps I can stop talking about the heat and just take it as read. OK.

When I got to Henry, IL I stopped at a friendly coffeeshop and drank an iced "german chocolate cake" coffee drink, and enjoyed the air conditioning.

Today I noticed that I've been averaging about 60 miles per day, and that even that has been tough. So I re-figured how long my trip to Denver might take based on all 60-mile days and including one day per week of rest. This added two weeks over my previous estimate with 100-mile days and no rest breaks. What was I thinking? Anyway, now I'm thinking I can be in Denver by August 26. Hopefully I'll speed up as my body gets stronger and I learn more about touring, and I'll have more time to hang out with friends in Denver.

Today I spent a lot of time riding through fields of corn and soybeans. In fact I think those are the only commercial crops I've seen so far. Apparently they need massive tractors to deal with this stuff. Here's one example.

So after last night's very small amount of uncomfortable sleep, I decided to get a hotel room tonight. One place listed on the Adventure Cycling map for Kewanee was "Aunt Suzy's Bed and Breakfast". Who can pass up a name like that? They put me in the "Victorian" suite. Not shown in the photo is the red velvet chaise lounge with a peacock-feather fan sitting on it. Wow, they thought of everything!

Day 2: rain, heat, and fear

2006-07-27T16:33:00.000-07:00

When I got up Wednesday morning it was raining lightly. It didn't take long to get to the I&M canal trail, and as I rode along between the abandoned waterway and forest I was overcome with joy. The rain stayed light and cleared up after about an hour. There were many egrets and herons on the water, countless turtles, some kind of swimming brown furry mammal (possibly not a beaver), and deer. The first photo shows a nice part of the canal.

By mid-day, no trace of the rain remained and the sun was brutal. The canal trail was not too bad, because there were shade trees some of the time. Even so, the heat and humidity made for a tough ride.

As evening approached, it became clear that I was not in shape to get to the campground I had optimistically signed up for earlier in the day. I had written some weak notes regarding the location of some alternate camping area (I thought) that was closer, based on some web surfing the previous evening. I ended up low on drinking water on a dirt road following the Illinois River. I knocked on someone's door with my hands full of empty water bottles, and the kind man inside filled them for me, gave me some snack food, and told me that the only nature area around was back there and up that nasty hill - but that it wasn't a campground. He said I would probably be OK to camp there anyway because hardly anyone went there this time of year because of the mosquitos (hmm) and no mushrooms were in season. So, I pushed my bike up the nasty hill and found the nature preserve. He'd advised me that I should camp out of sight of the road (just in case), so I found a flat spot in the forest away from the road and set up camp. I have very limited solo-camping experience, and it turns out I get freaked out really easily by animal noises in the night when I'm all by myself. At one point around 2am after I had finally gotten to sleep, I was awoken suddenly by a couple loud huff!s of breath and two loud stomp!s on the ground. I was tingling with fear, but I didn't hear any more... I figure it must have been a deer sniffing and then jumping away from right next to my tent. There were many other noises - coyotes, dogs, car engines, and random shufflings on the ground. I don't know if I even got 4 hours of sleep, and around 4:30am the sky was ever-so-slightly lighter than before, so I started to get up. I was on the road just after 6am.

First day out, arrived in Joliet, IL

2006-07-25T20:58:00.000-07:00

The requisite "before" picture.

Well, I got a late start (1:10pm!) but I did leave today. I arrived in Joliet just as the sun was going down. The odometer says 64.9 miles, though I don't know how accurate it is since I didn't actually measure the circumference of the front wheel when I installed the odometer, I just chose one of the options that seemed close.

Today's ride demonstrated to me why I love Chicago and I hate suburban development. In chicago there are great bike lanes, coffee shops, restaurants, funky stores, interesting people, and it's all close and easily accessible. In between Chicago and Joliet there are industrial-scale meat processing companies (Quantum Foods!), there are eNORmous chain retail stores, and roads with no shoulder and 50mph traffic. I kept thinking "This is what cheap gas gives us." Everything is so far apart you have to drive a car. The scene in this second photo here almost made me cry... it is going to be an enormous new commercial development. On the right behind the sign advertising it you can see a beautiful field and forest, with a gorgeous sunset to boot (though it didn't come out well in the photo, sorry). On the left you can see a tiny corner of the acres and acres of bare dirt that they've scraped clean in preparation. Yuck. The thing that really gets me about it is that it isn't even close to anything. There are open fields and farms on either side of it. It's not even growing out from a town.

So of course I was relieved to finally get into Joliet and get onto the Joliet Junction Trail, pictured here. It is supposed to connect up with the Illinois & Michigan canal state trail which takes me another 60 miles or so west. There's supposed to be camping available along the canal trail, so I may not be blogging tomorrow night.

I hope you are all well. Good night.

First Post

2006-07-21T18:13:00.000-07:00

I'm still not sure when I'll be starting, but I hope sometime next week. I have some more stuff to prepare, have to figure out the route, etc. I'm getting pretty psyched.

For those of you who haven't heard of Breen Colorado, it is the closest town I could find to where my friends Bob and Cathy are getting married. It's in the mountains near Durango. Should be a really pretty area to ride in, though tiring. :)