Wrapping it up with a big bow: Reflections on the journey and 1 UNBELIEVABLE DAY

Well, this is definitely a bit embarrassing! It's December... and I never told you, my precious audience, about the last days of my journey. And what a saga those last few days were. I had this mistaken notion that once we went over the mountains in Colorado and peaked at about 10 or 11,000 feet that it must be one continuous descent to SEA LEVEL...because weren't we going to the ocean, after all?? This turned out to be very far from the truth, as the mountains continued right up until about an eighth of a mile from the ocean.

There is so much to write about I'm actually having a hard time beginning from where I last left off:

From the flatlands of Colorado, I made it to Colorado Springs, after riding in the van for the last 18 miles of a 118 mile day coming into Co. Springs. We had the option of continuing to ride the last 20 miles, or riding in the van, and actually, after completing the 100 miles by lunchtime, believe it or not!! I felt ok, and was ready to continue. This was also the day that we took an "access road" for about 13 miles to the outskirts of Co. Springs. "Access road," as I now know, is code for dirt road that disintegrates to sand (have you ever tried riding a road bike through a sand pit for 13 miles??) with horse flies biting our legs and butts and backs. It was pretty hellish, actually. But we made it fine, and I thought, well, I guess I might as well do 20 more miles. Once we left the comforts of the air conditioned gas station, however, I started to feel really sick. We were biking on the side of a major road, it was really really hot, and all of a sudden I felt so tired that I couldn't keep up with my group very well. When one person got a flat tire and the van pulled up behind us, I decided it was time to cut my losses, and it is a good thing that I did: the last 18 miles of our trip were, I think, the scariest part of the entire journey for the people that rode them. There was no bike lane, and the only way to get where we were going was a major multi-lane road full of retail establishments and cars who were very unhappy that we were in their way. This was not a bikeable road, but there was really no other option, I guess. 18 miles takes a long time when there is traffic and stop lights the entire way.

Mom flew in that night, and we had a delicious Thai dinner which I had been longing for for whole states. The next day, we drove to the top of Pike's Peak, and she helped me take care of bike repairs. It was so weird to drive in a car!! I just kept checking out the shoulder of the road and thinking about what it would be like to bike on it. She ended up driving to our next day's location too. It was really hard to watch her leave. I think this is because so much of my trip had been so difficult, that seeing someone who has stood for comfort and protection and solving all of my problems was so relieving. To see that person leave so that I could continue my lonely and hard journey was hard. But obviously, I kept going, up my first mountain pass! And it wasn't so bad. About a six mile climb. I stopped about every mile or half mile to take a break, and made it up without too much trouble, to our highest point! Monarch Pass, between 10 and 11,000 feet! Coming down, we had to go across another desolate plain. Colorado was full of windy, bare plains in between mountain passes. You would get all hopeful because there was a dot and the name of a town on the map, but when you got there, there would be a little store if you were LUCKY, and sometimes nothing at all but a few abandoned houses. I don't know how anyone manages to survive living out there.

There were too many crazy things that happened I think to even tell them all, so I will organize by state.

Colorado: 3 Mountain Passes in one day - overhyped, and not as hard as you would think. The worst was freezing on the descents. Red Mountain Pass we had heard was this horrible switchback road where we could fall to our deaths easily since the drop was so sheer. I kept crying all morning because I was so afraid of a 3 mountain pass day after the day we had had prior (maybe my most exhausting of the whole trip, yet another century, but with the last 20 miles against a wind making it impossible to go more than 11 mph - and that was when I was drafting off of kind Meredith!) We also had too many places to stay without working toilets. 30 riders all consuming 4,000 calories/day and drinking maybe 300 fluid ounces of water - you do the math. We biked right past Mesa Verde AND the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, but there was no time for a detour to either place. In Durango, CO, Molly's mom cooked us a FEAST. It was amazing, and there was beer, post-ride, like paradise. Also, when you are exercising like that and probably living in a state of constant dehydration, you feel the effect of alcohol Really quickly.

Arizona: we stayed a few nights on and around the Navajo reservation. We also saw a cow walking along the road. The Navajo reservation has many feral dogs. One of them actually knocked into Mary Olive's bike and she had a pretty nasty spill (hit her head). I have seen America's heart on this trip, and boy is it unpopulated! Arizona is a surprisingly colorful place, but most beautiful in my opinion at sunset and sunrise, chiefly because it is cool enough that you can appreciate the stark beauty of the landscape without the oppressive heat taking over your mind. We saw some awesome cacti in Arizona, before we hit the Grand Canyon (uphill forever to get there of course!). Seeing the Grand Canyon was yet another time when I cried on this trip. Most days you did not realize the enormity of what you were doing. Kind of like comprehending the size of the galaxy or universe, it seemed too big to really believe. But upon seeing the grand canyon stretch out in front of me all of a sudden with no warning, I had no choice but to believe that I had in fact powered my own body from the Atlantic Ocean to this fabled place pretty close to the Pacific. In Prescott, I met up with Alan's brother Sean, which of course made me miss Alan even more because Sean was similar to Alan, but not him. (but I really enjoyed hanging out with Sean in Prescott, a really cute little town with incredible rock formations outside of it.)

California: It started to get REALLY hot as we entered Southern California. It was also my first experience with the Border Patrol, so that was quite fascinating. For the first time, I feel I have something to say from my heart about the immigration debate - to cross what we crossed on foot, evading border patrol and without a van to provide water and food like we had...I cannot imagine the desperation of someone willing to risk that. There is nothing out there but rocky moutains and little scrubby cacti. They aren't even pretty cacti - the whole landscape is brown and rocky (though of course, still hilly!!!) I think there is a picture on my webshots of the lunar landscape, maybe Martian would be more appropriate since I think it is hotter on Mars. I think Hell might look like the Desert State Park we crossed in So. CA. Then of course we had that C R A Z Y day which I don't believe I haven't written about in detail anywhere yet - a 106 mile day where we hit the road at I think 4:30 AM and got in at 9 PM. We crossed an intense desert with temps reaching 110+, our support van was in a car accident so it couldn't bring us any food or water, and we were in a desert state park (not exactly a hotbed of commercial establishments). Then, we crossed a mountain range. Then, we biked on the interstate (a tip from a local) to get to the Indian Casino we were camping at in a way that was entirely downhill (WOOOOHOOOOO!!!!), whereas everyone else had to go up this intense dirt road hill, and then down it, in the dark.

Then, on our last day, we naturally had some huge climbs, after we dilly dallied all morning thinking we only had about 30 miles to ride anyway. Longest 30 miles of my life. All of the metropolis biking is scary as heck. Our most scary days: Memphis, Colorado Springs, San Diego. Naturally, we biked on the interstate again (illegal), some got booted off by police, and Meredith flipped over her handlebars on the interstate because there were these nasty grates that would come up out of nowhere on these big downhills. She was ok, incredibly. I started to have my first major temper tantrum on this day because we made it to the Pacific Ocean; I was in emotional turmoil at having finished, and I was done biking. I mean, I was DONE, and I was also done with biking on the interstate and being in other life-threatening situations and not having any control over the route. And then, we had to bike to the church we were staying at!! AND, the directions were like, go left here to a street that sounds like this, wait is it this, it has La Jolla in it (all streets have La Jolla in their names in La Jolla), and boy I had a highly out of character anger spasm. But we made it ok, and I calmed down. And then it was 100% pure fun. I saw Kait Dunton, and drove up to LA with her and her family, then flew to Portland for a few days before going home to pack up and move to Pittsburgh.

Other bike trips I want to do now:
Pittsburgh to DC
Another cross country route someday? maybe I can convince Calicoe?

Thanks for reading, thanks for listening, thanks for supporting affordable housing financially, and thank you for your presence in my life!!
Love,
Emily

California Here We Come!

In Arizona, there is almost no internet, thus the delay in a good long post.

First of all, there are some BEAUTIFUL pictures added to the second set of Webshots. The Grand Canyon, the Rockies, the wild and surprisingly mountainous desert of Arizona, and just about an hour ago, crossing the Colorado River to enter CALIFORNIA!

We have two rough days in store to get to the outskirts of San Diego, one just under a hundred, the other about 108 miles, but we are getting up well before the sun so that we can leave as soon as it rises, and I know that everyone is strong enough to at least get a very large portion of those miles done before it is too hot to ride.

It's been so long, and so many sights now that I am not even sure where to start. I might have to wait for some downtime in Portland to really start describing everything in detail. Plus, I have really hogged this computer for about an hour. If I have another chance later, I will write more, but will go ahead and publish this now.

I am in California! And I biked here!
Emily

Mountains in the Distance Today!

Today we are in La Junta, CO, with a long day to Colorado Springs tomorrow, another century +, but I've been taking it easy the last few days so that I am not really tired at all (we did a century yesterday to get from Kansas to Colorado). Yesterday was full of milestones. We hit 2,000 miles, changed into a new time zone (I am now 2 hours earlier than the East Coast), it was my first century of the trip, And rode into Colorado! (whose state sign, I might add, says, "Welcome to Colorful Colorado." The sign is brown. The landscape all around is brown. The irony did not escape me, clearly. And immediately when we entered Colorado the road we were riding on became the worst road I have ever tried to ride a bike on, full of holes and cracks and debris. It was horrible. Molly Pederson hit a hole and fell off her bike, breaking her collarbone, but she is so stoic! Just riding in the van for a week or two....(wow).

Because I don't have too much internet time left, a list of things I've seen and want to tell you, and want to not forget:

Camp Amache: Japanese "relocation camp" from WWII. We rode past this in eastern CO yesterday.

We are also riding along the Arkansas River, and have been for miles. I have been wondering if the Arkansas River empties into the Mississippi, in which case I think we have crossed it at least 7 times in the last two weeks, and are heading up to its headwaters.

No more dead armadillos. Mostly dead withered snakes and birds.

TONS and TONS of cattle feedlots. It makes me very glad I do not eat beef. They smell horrible, and are packed with cattle.

Holcomb, KS, setting for Truman Capote's In Cold Blood.

I know I left a lot of things out, but I am about to run out of time, and I can't think of them right now. The group is good. We're camping out tonight at a city park. Biking is good. The mountains will be intense, but I don't really care. I will go slow and steady, and it will be so beautiful. Mom is coming on Saturday, and we have a day off on Sunday! I need even more bike stuff now, sigh. Probably a new chain, new brake pads for the rear brakes, maybe new gloves because my left ring finger is permanently numb, and tire liners so that maybe my tires can make it to the Pacific. I will talk to you again from the midst of the Rockies, if I'm not too tired :o)

Love, Emily

Tomorrow we will get the heck out of Dodge!

This is where I am. Dodge City, KS. Home of Fort Dodge, now a VA Clinic and Soldiers' Home, and Dodge City - also home to U.S. Beef, a huge slaughterhouse/processing plant run by Arby's on "Wyatt Earp Boulevard." I have thought Kansas and Oklahoma were both beautiful, chiefly because of how dramatically different their topography has been from anything I have seen before. I think I wrote a little bit last time about the flooding in Oklahoma. I few a pictures of this. I saw corn up to its tassels in water. And a barn completely flooded, and a house with water lapping around its foundation. Speaking of natural disasters, today we passed with a mile or so of Greensburg, KS, destroyed by a tornado about two months ago. I did not go myself, but the pictures I saw today (look at Meredith's blog maybe?) were just astounding. Trees stripped of their leaves and branches, just trunks standing there with two months worth of growth on them. FEMA trailers were at Coldwater Lake where we camped last night. P.S. The campsite at Coldwater Lake was A-Mazing! No mosquitoes. No bikes tied up in trees in the morning or other sketchiness which I will only describe on the phone. Big pavilion, a cool breeze from the lake, tents pitched under gently rustling trees, and as if all that wasn't enough, I am thoroughly out of my biking mid-trip slump and am SO ENERGIZED AND EXCITED FOR WHAT'S COMING!! Kansas is beautiful. Oklahoma was too. I have had some great bike rides and great conversations, and I love my teammates. This Saturday Mom is flying to Colorado Springs, and then we will be surrounded by the breathtaking Rocky Mountains!

I have a lot more to write about but the computer lab at the library closes in about 5 minutes! I put up some new pictures today on the second batch on Webshots, and I'm sorry I can't write more about them right now. I am doing great, and something very exciting is that Andrew, who was hit by a car in Memphis, is rejoining the trip this Saturday in Colorado Springs also!

We are SO GLAD to have him back because it has felt like a missing limb ever since he was hurt.

More ASAP. Thanks for all of your mail and emails and encouragement. My mail drops are under one of the first blog entries in May :o)

Love, Emily

Oklahoma, where the wind comes right behind the rain

A Day Off in Bartlesville, OK! Home of Conoco-Phillips Oil, a building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, and an incredibly hospitable church here, the Adams Blvd Church of Christ. Today I may also go to "Woolaroc," ranch of Frank Phillips with lots of Native American artifacts and animals.

Yesterday, Melanie, Emily B., and I played a game called "Wow, we only have a 40 mile day today!" This game is designed to make an 80 mile day seem much less hard. After our lunch stop at mile 40, we pretended that we had just started biking for the day, and gosh, did our leaders think we were wimps or something, just giving us 40 miles to do today?? This made the time pass fairly quickly, and though it had been threatening rain all day, the heavens did not open until we were only about five miles away from Bartlesville on our "40 mile day." There has been an incredible flow of rainfall in Oklahoma over the last couple of weeks, and we could see as we were biking that the rivers and ditches were overflowing their banks. Not until we biked through the flash flood coming into Bartlesville did we really realize why! It was SUPER FUN! Like stomping in puddles when you are six, careening through huge puddles on your bike, with warm rain pounding all around you. I had not been feeling so great all day (I think I am coming down with a cold), but that last five miles made me come in beaming because it was so hilarious that we were biking through these kind of conditions.

I think I am plateau-ing a bit in regard to biking. I am starting to feel a bit of the compulsory nature inherent in doing a bike trip as opposed to a bike ride - there are no choices really - you have to bike to the next town. There's no other option. And you don't always feel happy to be sitting on your bike seat for 5-6 hours. It is a lot of exercise. So I need to recover my joy in biking since I only have a month left! And of course I am still so incredibly happy to be doing this, don't get me wrong. Just some days are easier than others.

The terrain is changing rapidly now that we are Oklahoma (and will continue to change as we get close to Colorado Springs, where Mom is coming to visit me ! ! !). The Ozarks were, while only baby mountains compared to the Smokies where we cut our teeth, quite steep and more intense than I was expecting. We had a few climbs that had me breathing heavy, though I am happy to report that I almost never stop biking now on any climbs after my Appalachian training. My tan is incredible. My arms have turned to what I would describe as a nut brown, almond in particular, the outside of the almond. Melanie is so funny because her skin is so fair that she looks like the creamy inside of the almond, except she gets pink every single day! While I continue to get more and more mocha colored. Soon I will look like one of those ladies in Florida (NOT you Aunt Diane!!) who lay out all the time and have brown leathery skin. Unfortunately.

The Ozarks were beautiful, though not as beautiful as the Smokies to my eye. They were smaller, more rolling. More nice farmland though (the refrain of this journey). We went through a mini-Gatlinburg in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, complete with about 14 wedding chapels. It is apparently the Little Switzerland of the Ozarks. There were many themed hotels. I mean themed in their architecture, either Tudor style or Victorian style, but everything a bit overdone. There is a trolley that stops at every hotel to take people from place to place along the one road through Eureka Springs.

A very exciting day was crossing into Oklahoma because we got to cross into Missouri too! The whole group stayed together (mostly) throughout the day so we have some awesome pictures from the state lines.

Tomorrow I'm having dinner with my Aunt Jane and Uncle Perry, which I think I already said somewhere, and then we're off - only one more week until my visit with Mom in Colorado Springs, and then only two more weeks until we're there in San Diego!

Hello from Harrison, Arkansas, the biggest town we've passed in days at about 15,000 inhabitants. Other towns in the Ozarks and the flatlands leading up to them were more like hamlets, with laughable population signs: 80, 150 (more or less, the sign said), and finally a whopping 485. Yesterday we had thunderstorms all morning that were supposed to continue all day on our first real century day, soooo! After 40 miles we stopped riding and were shuttled the rest of the way! It was AMAZING! Not to be a wimp, but I was exhausted, and today I had about the best ride ever because I was just so refreshed.

Some things I've seen in the last few days:
lots of cows and horses, and this is the season for adorable calves and foals!
finally, lots of dead armadillos, what fascinating creatures
in Arkansas, lots of rice paddies in the flat lands, also sohrgum, not a common crop, soybeans, corn, and I think cotton and potatoes
a horde of mosquitoes at our campsite that has made every single person here in itching agony

I didn't write about this earlier, but on the way to Memphis, I saw a DEAD HORSE. Just lying by the side of the road, with no eyes, rigor mortis, and tons of flies. After further investigation, in this very rural farmland, when livestock die, the county provides the free service of picking them up and sending them to either the glue factory or the "rendering" factory.

In Memphis, we went to a piano bar on Beale Street, and sang Piano Man and Country Roads and Tiny Dancer about a million times.

I had to put new tires on my bike. They are called ARMADILLOS, HAHA! Because they are puncture-resistant. Here's hoping they get me to the Pacific!

Over and out for now. This Saturday I will see my Aunt Jane and Uncle Perry in Ponca City, Oklahoma, and I am very excited for that! They are driving down from Wichita. And Calicoe and Elissa sent me an AWESOME care package.

Love, Emily

From the Beating Heart of the Southland

I am Sewanee, TN, home of the University of the South, actually staying on the campus. We're camping next to a manmade lake tonight. (In the South, there are Sonics and Piggy Wigglies. Sonic is good especially for ice cream blasts, and we saw an employee on roller blades in Dunlap. I think originally it was a roller skating drive in eatery. Piggy Wigglies...well I've only passed them and not gone in for groceries, but a name like that is so comical.) I went swimming in the lake after my ride, which completely hit the spot, and it's a nice place to camp with a pavilion. My appetite has definitely revved up again now that we've been riding. And something exciting!! I am now in the Central Time Zone!!! We're also going to bed earlier, at 9:30, and getting up at 5. I hate getting up early. But getting here before being boiled in my own skin by the sun is Worth It!

The best part of the last two days has been my riding group, the "Chainrollers" (pronounced "Chainrolla's"). We do a pace line sometimes, so we can all draft off of each other, switching who is in front every half mile. It's like geese! We also wait for each other if we get flat tires or fall behind. The core four of this group are me, Melanie, Lee Anne, and Ivey, though sometimes others too. And the initiation is that you have to tell a story involving feces/defecation. And yesterday I blew my first snot rocket! I know. My hygiene goes more and more downhill everyday I lack a steady base to call home. And every day I am covered in sweat, sunscreen, chain grease, and assorted grime. This morning I noticed that because we were doing a big climb in the morning, instead of in the heat of the afternoon, I was only subtly glistening with sweat, instead of dripping it. That was nice. Getting up at 5 is worth it in this hot climate. And Friday we have a day off in Memphis!! Only 270 miles from here (ha!) And I am getting a MASSAGE. I've been planning this since before I left. I'm getting an arnica sore muscle massage, and man I can sure use it. The masseuse will probably be full of pity for my knotted muscles. That first day on the bike after our break in Maryville was tough! (only because I got so out of shape already) But it was also SHORT, only about 32 miles thankfully, and only rolling hills. I also got my first flat tire, which I fixed with a Cliff Bar wrapper, a perfectly acceptable practice, and then we realized that the National Guard Armory where we were staying was only about 500 feet farther up the hill!! Oops. I could have just walked, or probably rode, rather than make 5 people wait for me to change the tire. I also got another flat yesterday! But I think it was in the same spot because the Cliff Bar wrapper got moved when I was deflating and inflating yesterday afternoon. This time I used a Nutrigrain bar wrapper, and have experienced no further problems, after patching both punctured tubes.

Ok and here's a revelation! Bike chains and sprockets and cassettes, all those moving parts - are supposed to be SILVER, not black! When they are black they are dirty, and you need to clean them with rags, soapy water, and degreaser, and then relube them. I was astounded. And also to learn that our little patch kits are only to patch the tube inside the tire, and when your tire is punctured a little bit, you just ride on a cliff bar wrapper to plug the hole until something worse happens! So I'm pretty sure that before San Diego, I will have to invest in a new pair of tires, but I will keep going on these for now. I also added up the total I spend on equipment, and it falls in the neighborhood of $750+. That is a lot of $. New tires will bring it up to over $800 probably, and then I just bought my plane tickets home (with a detour to Portland), so there goes a good chunk of $! I am praying that I will be gainfully employed in the fall so that I can pay back my loan before the grace period is up, and boost up my savings to buy a car. Anyway, biking.

Something else I want to write about is the smells of biking across the country. Every sense is so much more visceral when you are on a bike - feeling the wind, feeling the burn in your thighs, and then the scents - the heady smell of honeysuckle is one we smell often, but far more often is the putrid stench of roadkill. I'm pretty sure that I've seen more dead animals than live ones, even including all of the herds of cattle we've passed now. That's bad! How do I feel about the infrastructure of America? Without it, I couldn't do what I'm doing either, but any thought I ever glancingly had of animals having any kind of peaceful coexistence with humans is completely shattered. Papa said we will see a lot of dead armadillos in Oklahoma. Is a bad I am excited for this?? Just to see armadillos I mean.

I think maybe this is just about enough for today. We have had some interesting host sites in Tennessee. Unlike in North Carolina, where we stayed almost exclusively in churches, in Tennessee, we have stayed at a camp (though a churchy camp), a National Guard Armory, a rescue squad, and a college lakeside campsite. Who knows what tomorrow will bring. I'm riding sweep to Pulaski, TN, so it will be a loooong day in the sun, but lots of fun to be able to relax, go slow, and take lots of pictures. And though I do not dare to predict anything involving hills (it seems that every time I say, I think we're at the top! I am completely wrong), I know that there are no major mountain ranges left. And perhaps no more ridges either? We had one major climb yesterday, and one today, but neither have been anything compared to what we did in the real mountains and I love it that I feel so strong! And rolling hills can be awesome with the Chainrolla's momentum.

Over and out from the University that pretends to be THE University (of VA),
Emily