El Fin

The End!! As I'm sure most of you lovely readers are already aware, Ben and I have made it to our destination of New York City. We rolled straight into Manhattan (by way of a bicycle super-highway, the Hudson Greenway), on the sunny afternoon of October 1st. Just north of the city we ran into some other bicycle tourists, Ryan and Lisa, a lovely couple who were just then completing a bicycle saga that spanned 2.5 years and 4 continents. Our adventure was not nearly so expansive, but we were still damn proud of ourselves. Over the past 68 days (for Ben, I was along for 56 of them), we only took 4 days off (+2 for Ben), covered about 3,800 miles coast to coast (of which I pedaled about 3,200), biked through 7 states (+2 more for Ben), as well as Ontario. Of the 59 nights we were together, we stayed in official campgrounds for 9 nights, people's houses 24 nights, non-official camp spots 22 nights, and paid for exactly 1 hotel (after a particularly miserable rainy day coming into Hudson, New York.

To say the very least, it was a truly amazing trip. I was taking a pretty big leap of faith by agreeing to bike across the country with Ben, a boy I knew I liked a whole lot but had only been dating for 3 months. We got along famously, probably owing to Ben's ridiculously calm and content demeanor. I tend to be a bit more fiery, so I suffered a few minor breakdowns. All of them were completely reasonable however, and were always directed more at frustration at the physically/emotionally/mentally challenging situations more than my impossibly sweet long-haired companion.

People ask us if we trained a lot before undertaking such a physically demanding trip. The answer is no, we hardly trained at all. Sure, I took a few long bike rides before heading down to Missoula, but they were along the lines of 20-30 miles, 2-3 hours on my sweet racing road bike in the drizzly cold Alaskan summer. To be fair, there's only so much training one can do for a long-distance bicycle trip when one lives in a place with only 46 miles of road. I had also never ridden my bicycle loaded down with panniers. On the first day of our bicycle trip, we rode 45 miles out of Missoula, Montana. This was more than I had ever ridden in my entire life, and it turned out to be one of our shorter days.

Before starting the bicycle trip, I was quite found of saying things like, "At the end of the day, it's just a bicycle ride!" Well, this proved to be not entirely accurate. I'm pretty sure some of those mountain passes and 102 degree days in South Dakota represented the most physically challenging things I've ever done in my entire life. And I don't know anyone who gets on their bicycle for 6 or 7 hours to relax and enjoy life. So I retract my previous statement. This was not "just a bike ride." It was an insane, 2-month long epic self-powered journey across the northern states in which we encountered many strange and lovely people, places, incredibly sunsets and inhaled the repulsive perfumes of far too much roadkill.

Not everything was fun and games in rainy northern New York...

Quite possibly the best thing about this velocipedal voyage were the people we met along the way. We stayed with many "hosts," which we found through the websites couchsurfing.org and warmshowers.org. We were absolutely floored by the hospitality shown to us by friendly folks who had literally just met us, and whom we were connected to by nothing more than love of bicycles and the desire to help fellow humans in their journeys. We were often given our own bedrooms, incredible home-cooked meals, cold beers, warm showers, and hours of colorful conversation.

 

 And then there were countless people who helped us along the way who had no connection to bike touring or those websites. People whose names I will never know. An adorable elderly couple who picked us up outside of Helena Montana as the sky was darkening and we had just discovered that my front tube had 9 holes in it. An older woman outside sitting at her fruit stand in upstate New York who made us listen to her I-hate-Obama rant and then "donated" a pile of apples and peppers to "our cause." Another couple who picked us up in the pitch darkness somewhere in Ontario just when we were starting to despair and drove us to our host's front door in Owen Sound. There are countless others. 

 

Ben and I have talked endlessly about how our very faith in humanity has been restored by being bicycle tourists. I've thought quite a bit about what quality of being on bicycle makes people particularly receptive to us. I think that people appreciate how vulnerable we are, and how connected we are to our current environment. When you're in a car, you're completely insulated from your surroundings and are for all practical purposes an autonomous self-sufficient being. On a bicycle, however, you are powering yourself through every mile of the landscape, and are painfully aware of factors such as temperature, slope, wind, traffic, animals, people, cities, towns, etc...It's absolutely incredible how people rise to the challenge of giving you what you need, whether it's because they respect what you're doing or find you to be insane and in need of guidance.

I could go on and on. And I think I very well will, but in future blogs. I haven't even mentioned New York City yet, this energetic metropolis we've called "home" for the past few weeks. Or the fact that we're headed to Argentina next (sans bikes) to meet up with our friend Lora and volunteer on organic farms for a few months. I'll also try to relate a few more stories from the bike trip, as I feel there are countless things I never got a chance to mention on here. I thank everyone for taking the time to read about and thus share in this crazy adventure that I am blessed enough to be on. You can reach me at sarahginter@gmail.com. Happy Revolutions, everybody. I wish you all the best.

DC Detour

Whew! I can't believe I haven't had the opportunity to update the blog until today. What have I been doing? Good question. Biking? Eating? Sleeping? Making preparations to engage in those three activities? It's hard to say what occupies my time. Before starting the bike trip, Ben and I thought we'd be dealing with plenty of free time--we each brought several books, journals, and I even considered bringing running shoes--a fact that seems hilarious now. But we somehow manage to fill the days with something other than free time. It's a busy lifestyle, this bicycle touring!

This past week was a little disorienting, as Ben and I took a slight detour to Washington D.C. On an airplane. Some of you may have heard, but I won this National Geographic Traveler/Matador U Travel Writing Contest a few months ago, and the prize was a free trip to Washington D.C. to meet National Geographic editors. I found out the date for the event right before we left on the trip, so Ben and I tried to guesstimate which airport we would be near on September 20th, and we came up with Buffalo, New York. Wonder of all wonders, we actually made it to Buffalo on the evening of the 19th, where we were hosted by my friend Cristin Lambert's Aunt and Uncle, Tricia and Marty Lambert. They were so incredibly kind to take us in, and they did everything they could to make sure we were well taken care of, including driving us to and from the airport. 

We flew into DC the day before the NatGeo event, so we got to spend time with Ben's friend Zeeshan as well as Ben's aunt Cathy, uncle John and cousin Woods. Ben's family took us out for a really wonderful middle eastern dinner in Alexandria, where we were for some reason treated like royalty and the chef himself kept coming out to bring us special, free foods. I now have met nearly all of Ben's extended family, except for his parents. Pretty good for only 6 months of dating! Anyway, we spent that first night at Cathy and John's house and the next morning Cathy and Ben drove me to the subway and pointed me in the direction of the National Geographic Headquarters.

Let me just interrupt this story to say that being thrust into Washington D.C. after spending nearly two months in Rural America/Canada was quite the culture shock. In the airport alone, I was surrounded by more diversity than we've seen in the past 2 months. I stumbled around the streets of DC with my freakish tan lines and the one outfit I brought that isn't padded spandex, weaving my way through hordes of fancy, clean, professional people with places to be.

I finally made it to the National Geographic Headquarters, where I met the three other "Winners" (as we were referred to all day--a title you can get used to, let me tell you). We then spent the next 12 hours  schmoozing in various styles--a "meet and greet" with coffee and snacks and the entire staff of National Geographic Traveler, a tour of the museum, lunch in the staff cafeteria, sitting in on various meetings and presentations about the magazine and travel writing, a meeting with the editor-in-chief, Keith Bellows, a wine and cheese schmooze-fest, dinner at a lovely restaurant, and an evening event where Andrew McCarthy was interviewed about his new travel writing book. I feel like I made some great connections for a potential career in travel writing. The NatGeo Traveler staff were all friendly, creative and surprisingly approachable. Perhaps the best part of the whole event was meeting the Matador U staff, four energetic, fun and encouraging gentlemen who we spent most of the day with. It was a truly eye-opening experience, though exhausting, and I was deliriously happy to have a Mayflower Hotel room to crash in at the end of the day.

We made it safely back to Buffalo on Sunday and kept right on biking that afternoon. It's strange to be back on the bicycles--but even stranger to think that this tour is almost complete! We're now in Syracuse, NewYork, which means we only have about 300 more miles to go...in this moment I'm feeling more sad than ecstatic to be done biking. My body had finally adjusted to this lifestyle so much that I'm actually sore after walking for a day, and I only feel normal when I'm "back in the saddle" as they say. I'm also not quite sure how to stop consuming the insane amount of calories we do on the daily, once we're not burning quite so many. Anyway, all this is to say that we should be rolling in to NYC sometime on Sunday. If you are in the area, come meet us! Happy Revolutions!

Say yah to the U.P.!

After dedicating over a week of our lives to ride bicycles across Wyoming and South Dakota (each), it seemed miraculous that we were able to spend the next week crossing Minnesota and Wisconsin combined. Ben's uncle Dave set us up with a really fantastic route across northern Wisconsin that included about 50 miles on a rails-to-trails bike path called the Gandy Dancer. 

The bike path was phenomenal. Being an old railroad, it passed through the middle of several tiny towns the grade was never even remotely steep. It was incredibly relaxing to not have the anxiety of biking next to 60 mph traffic, it was in the shade, there was no wind....so basically it was a bicycle tourist's paradise. Biking through the small town of Frederick, Wisconsin, we noticed that the old railway depot was still standing, so we stopped to check it out. Apparently the Frederick Historical Society had just concluded their meeting at the old depot, so 3 or 4 interested looking people flocked around Ben and me, asking us all kinds of questions. We talked to them a little about the trail, at which point they gave us a very animated history of Frederick and the surrounding towns, insisted we take a tour of the depot (which they had converted to a pretty decent museum), and gave us a full detailed account of every town we would pass on our way from there out of Wisconsin. It became clear that they weren't going to stop talking any time soon, and we were quickly losing light, so we literally started biking away as they were still shouting after us about Danbury's casino/restaurant which really isn't as expensive as it looks and actually has reallygreatpancakes.....!

We spent one night in a city park in Siren, Wisconsin, another night in Hayward in a random field at a trailhead, then woke up on Ben's birthday and proceeded to bike 80 miles into the U.P. (Michigan's Upper Peninsula). We had a random connection in Ironwood, Michigan--Ben's cousin's friend's wife's parents happened to live there, and so generously agreed to host us. Pat and Chuck and their daughter Ellen took good care of us, fed us plenty of steak and beer and told us all about why they loved living there. According to Chuck, in the 1970s and 1980s there was a big movement towards combining northern Wisconsin and the U.P. to create the 51st state--the state of Superior.

The next morning, Chuck insisted that we not leave Ironwood without seeing a little of what made Ironwood so special. So he took us on a brief but informative tour, showing us the World's Largest Indian (a ginormous fiberglass statue of Hiawatha holding a 3 foot long peace pipe), as well as the Stormy Kromer manufacturing plant (an essential Michigan hat--woolen baseball cap with ear warmers). Ben bought a neon orange Stormy Kromer, claiming that it wasn't fair that hunter's had a monopoly on such an awesome color.

For the past couple of days we've been biking across the U.P. The colors are started to turn, which is a beautiful sight to behold in these mostly deciduous forests. It's significantly colder here than anywhere else we've been, and it's rained most days, making us a little wet and a little homesick. The towns we bike through are a trip. Most of the towns seem to have sprung up over one particular industry, such as mining (iron or copper mostly), timber, smelting, etc. For whatever reason many of these industries had their heyday and packed up and left, leaving behind towns with gaping holes in their economies. The towns are almost eerie...there's still plenty of houses standing, some of them look like they were really nice at one point, but are now slowly decaying. Most of the businesses, cafes, bars, grocery stores--are all for sale. It gives you the feeling of walking through someone's house who has left party decorations hanging for an awkwardly long time after the party's over--streamers and balloons still hanging around collecting dust, waiting for the next party so they can finally feel useful again. Most of the houses have signs in their yards that are wholeheartedly in support of mining, "STOP the whining, START the mining," etc...

We actually decided to take a small detour and check out White Pine, a town that Ben lived in from age 3 to 5 while his father worked in the copper mine up there. It was a pretty similar scene to the towns we had passed through already--wide, hopeful streets, neighborhoods set up like a model suburbia, several churches (one of which was playing creepy hymnal chime music), a sorry looking playground. There was a tiny fire station, but the fire truck had a for-sale sign on it. All the larger looking buildings were deserted. We thought we might buy groceries, but the grocery store had long since been abandoned, as had the laundromat that had taken its place. There were several people around, mowing their lawns and walking their dogs as if it wasn't bizarre that they were living in a ghost town. It's strange to think that Ben could have just as easily grown up there than in our little wet city way up in Alaska.

Last night we made it to Marquette, the cosmopolitan hub of the U.P., as well as the home to Northern Michigan University. A lovely lady named Jessie hosted us from Warm Showers. She made us a pork roast (delicious) and took us out for beers at her favorite neighborhood pub. She gave us a little bit of the environmentalists' perspective on the mining up here and told us about her reasons for loving the U.P. (naked Lake Superior midnights dips, traditional music festivals, brew pubs, a different sensibility....). 

For all it's worth, the U.P. appears to be somewhere people love, or hate, or love to not even think about, or think that anyone who lives up here must be insane. I'm not sure what camp I'm in yet. Thankfully we still have 2 or 3 more solid days of biking across this lush, colorful no-man's land to develop our own perspective. Until then...say yah to the U.P., eh!

A CoupleFew Photos

Kate Dehmer and me! And corn!

Welcome to Minnesota!

Huron, South Dakota, and the World's Largest Pheasant

South Dakota Sunset

Mountain Mike and Linda in front of their homestead. Caputa, South Dakota

Ben, Mountain Mike, and Linda, of the previous post's fame

One minor correction...

Oops! I forgot to mention that I somehow made a mistake in one of my previous blog posts. When I talked about the woman we met in Spotted Horse, Wyoming, I called her "Colette" but her name is actually "Coleen." My only explanation for the error is that I had just received my first shower and cold beer in a few days, and must have been slightly intoxicated from the experience.

That was brought to my attention by another fellow bicyclist and blogger, whom I have never met but gave me a shout-out in her blog! Check it out:

www.apoetandaonemanband.wordpress.com

Turtles and Tidbits

Hello everyone! Well, it's been a while since I've had internet access, so I'll do my best to update you on the past week or so's events. We made it across South Dakota! Finally. Good. Lord. That state just goes on and on. Though there were some redeeming factors (Black Hills, the Badlands, Mountain Mike, beautiful sunsets...), I don't feel compelled to pack up my entire life and move myself to South Dakota any time soon. Those that call that state home seem perfectly content that they live there and hardly anybody else does. As one farmer we met put it, "We tell everyone that this is the worst land in the country, so that nobody else comes here..."

After we stayed the night in Pierre, we biked about 65 miles and decided to camp in an teeny-tiny town called Ree Heights. There happened to be a bar there, and apparently about 47 residents inhabiting the smattering of houses gathered around the town's one street. We went inside the bar, only to be met by the curious and hardened faces of about 4 bar patrons and one bartender. They gave us a good long stare, until we exposed that we would be more than happy to try the bar's local specialty, "bloody beer" (homemade bloody mary mix with an ice cold budweiser. They quickly warmed up to us, and we ended up talking for a long while with the 4 old, mostly toothless men and the one bartender, who cackled like a devious fourth grader and told us of all his travels around the West that had eventually led him right back to small-townville, South Dakota. We were fast friends by the end of the night, and the bartender let us pitch our tent right behind the bar.

The next day we biked about 60 miles and made it to Huron, South Dakota, a town of a few thousand whose main claim to fame is that fact that they host the South Dakota state fair (which we missed by two days), as well as the world's largest pheasant (a glorious 3 story tall colorful pheasant replica we hit up on the way out of town). We weren't sure if we were even going to stay in Huron, but our Warm Showers host got back to us just as we were deciding what to do next, so we headed over to his place.

We followed his directions to his apartment building, where we were greeted by a collection of rather derelict, down-on-their-luck looking men, as well as one very clean-cut, very cheerful man who happened to be waving us down. We then met Steven (not his real name), our host, who showed us up to his apartment while explaining that the apartment building was for low-income residents who experienced some sort of mental disabilities. His "apartment" ended up being a tiny room, smaller than my dorm room freshman year of college, in which he had a bed, a closet, a desk and a table full of plants. He also mentioned in an off-hand sort of way that he had found a turtle by the side of the road a week ago and took it in as a pet, but he didn't want to put it in an aquarium so it was just sort of free-floating in the room somewhere.

 It took us a while to kind of figure out what wasn't being said...was he a client here, or a counseler? was this his entire apartment? were we supposed to sleep in this room with him? Eventually we discovered that the answers to all these questions were "yes," and he also insisted that we bring our bikes into this tiny room because he was a bit wary of his neighbors and there unpredictable behavior. The whole situation had the potential to be incredibly sketchy, although there was something very genuine and normal about Steven's disposition, so we wordlessly decided that we would in fact spend the night with him.

We ended up having a lovely evening with Steven. Turns out he was actually a professional cellist, pianist and organist who had had a difficult time in life recently and came to Huron to sort himself out. He worked as a music teacher, judged 4-H music competitions at the state fair, and played the piano and organ at the local Presbyterian church. We all went out for Mexican food together and then he took us to the church he attended and played us some beautiful hymns. We ended up going to bed fairly early, he in his bed and Ben and I smooshed together, 2 feet away from him on the ground.

All was well until about 3 o'clock in the morning, when I felt a gentle scratching on my cheek. I was still half-asleep so I shrugged it off, but the scratching continued, followed by what felt like a smooth round disc sliding slowly over my face. At this point of course I was well awake, as was Ben who I had started shaking like crazy. We both rolled over in our middle of the night stupor to discover Derodimus the Turtle clinging to the end of my thermarest, making weird gulping sounds and glaring at us with his beady little eyes.

I don't have much experience with turtles (Ben apparently doesn't either), so I wasn't really sure how to go about getting the turtle off my inflatable mattress. I started lifting the mat, hoping the turtle would crawl off, but then I thought he might start digging his claws in like a cat and pop my precious air mattress, so I stopped. Ben lifted the turtle up eventually, but it started flailing around with its creepy prehistoric limbs, so he immediately dropped it again, and the poor turtle landed on its back. We eventually decided to put it in a plastic crate I found in Steven's closet, which we placed on the only piece of open floor, about 2 feet away from our heads. For the rest of the night we heard the gentle scritch-scratch of the turtle moving the crate slowly around in his little piece of open floor. Amazingly, Steven slept through the entire ordeal, and was a little surprised to find his free-roaming turtle in an upside-down crate by our heads in the morning.

A few more Tidbits:

After Huron we had a solid day of biking to Brookings, South Dakota, where we stayed with our CouchSurfing hosts Josie and Ferdinand and their 4 day old baby, Roslyn. I don't think I've ever held any human that new to the world before. We were surprised they even wanted to host us dirty travelers, what with a brand new baby and everything, but they ended up being incredibly hospitable and friendly and even let us hold tiny Roslyn (there's photographic evidence on Ben's Tumblr blog). She mostly just slept and gurgled and made facial expressions freakily similar to Derodimus the Turtle of the previous night's escapades.

The following day we finally made it to Minnesota, and were happy to leave South Dakota behind. We stayed in a local park in Walnut Grove the first night, a tiny town whose main industry is Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prarie tourism. The following night we made it all the way to Mankato, Minnesota, where we were hosted by Eric and Christie and their 10 month old baby Lolo. They made us an amazing meal of salmon and vegetables and told us all about their travels, which included a 14 month tandem bicycle journey all the way from Mankato to Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The next day we biked into the Twin Cities, where we were planning on taking 2 days off (our first day not biking in a month!) to hang out with Ben's huge and wonderful extended family. As a bonus, I also got to see my dear friend Kate, my roommate when I studied abroad in India three years ago. We went to the Minnesota State Fair, ate a bunch of fried food and touched some soft baby animals. That afternoon we headed across the state line to Houlton, Wisconsin, to Ben's aunt Michelle and uncle Dave's house. I got to meet a bajillion delightful people all related to Ben, ate delicious food till it hurt, and drank plenty of local beers.

Yesterday we rounded off our "vacation" quite nicely by kayaking down the Apple River with some of Ben's cousins. We ate pizza at his aunt Joanne's house and enjoyed one more night of precious sleep in an actual bed. This morning we're heading off for more adventures in rural America! Wish us luck. It's been a great time thus far.

Ben's Tumblr

For more pictures and stories, check out Ben's Tumblr blog! http://www.ridingforromp.tumblr.com/

Mountain Mike and other Great Faces

Hello, everyone! I'm writing to you from the Pierre, South Dakota public library. Turns out it's difficult to find internet access when you're biking across lonely highways in South Dakota. But I found a computer and half an hour of free internet time, so I'd like to tell you a few things about our continuing adventure!

Ben and I made it to Pierre last night after our loooongest day yet...88 miles. They say South Dakota is flat, but I'm starting to think that's all part of a big joke aimed to confuse bicycle tourists. This state is not flat by any definition I regularly use. Yesterday we had the pleasure of biking 88 miles over some pretty significant "slow rollers," on Highway 14. It was a fairly cool day...only 92 degrees...and we were on the "scenic byway," which basically meant there was some variety to the amber fields of grain lining the highway (hay, afalfa, hay, hay, afalfa, sunflowers, corn, corn, afalfa, hay). But somehow we made it, crossed over the Missouri River as well as a time zone early last night, and collapsed into an actual BED, courtesy of our lovely Warm Showers hosts, Tom and Ellen.

When we crossed over the Wyoming/South Dakota border a few days ago, we were met by a huge picture of Mt. Rushmore with the state's slogan, "Great Faces, Great Places." scrawled underneath. I'm happy to say we've experienced a little bit of both those things, yet we purposefully avoided Mt. Rushmore, thinking we'd seek out our own Great Faces. We spent our first South Dakotan night in a campground in Deadwood (luxurious!), and the next day spent a considerable amount of time climbing through the winding, hilly roads of the Black Hills. We hit up Rapid City, an adorable little town with several bike shops and a tempting water park, and made it 20 miles east of Rapid City to the general store in Caputa, where we didn't mean to spend the night.

We meant to just re-fill on water and ask some locals about different roads in the general store (which is, along with a handful of houses, all that Caputa consists of). Entering the store, we were immediately met by Ricky, the genuinely helpful owner of the store. He gave us a little history about the town (railroad pick-up point for sugar beets, the store had been in his family for 3 generations) and pointed us to the back of the store where they were having a little wine tasting. I'm never too proud to refuse free wine, so Ben and I helped ourselves to the dixie cups full of various wines and delicious spread of cheese and crackers layed out.

I was in the process of loading up yet another cheese/salami/cracker sandwich when someone came up behind me and asked if that was "thermophile or mesophile...." or something along those lines. I quickly found out he was referring to the cheese platter, and that he had assumed that since I was hovering over it so nurturingly, I must have made the cheese myself. I told him I had no idea, but that I liked his shirt (neon fishes with some obscure beer logo). I then found myself deeply engrossed in a conversation with him about the intricacies of producing raw milk cheese, and why the bleeping government won't let us sell it, etc., etc. I didn't know it at the time, but I had just entered into a lengthy interaction with Mountain Mike, a local oddity with scraggly long hair, fierce brown eyes and an enormous round belly that he kept rubbing like an expectant mother.

At this point Ricky-the-friendly-shop-owner had already offered us a place to camp (in the grassy spot behind the shop), we had already had several dixie cups of free wine and were eyeing the fat tire on tap, and the conversation with Mountain Mike was just getting more interesting, so we decided to stay in Caputa.

Somehow the conversation turned from raw milk cheese to politics (as these things often do) and Ben and I both bristled when Mike said something completely racist about how the Indians outta be grateful that white people came here and "gave" them industrialization. Normally we've been trying to avoid politcal discussions in our travels across rural America, but this was an outrage impossible to ignore, so we took the bait and ended up having a several hour long conversation about everything from immigrants to pioneerism to the government to welfare to the war in Afghanistan. As it turned out, Mountain Mike and Ben and I agreed on more than it seemed at first (what-the-hell-are-we-still-doing-in-the-Middle-East, we-should-learn-to-be-more-self-sufficient...) though there were still some big disagreements (when-all-else-fails-follow-the-ten-commandments, why-can't-those-damn-indians-just-leave-the-past-behind, those sorts of things).

It was about an hour into the debate that Mountain Mike asked us what the hell we were doing in Caputa, and we told him about our bike trip. He then proceeded to tell us all about his past, how he used to be a prosperous business man in the twin cities, had a wife that was a whore (his words), tried to convince him she wasn't a whore, then went off whoring around with the deputy sheriff. Well he decided he needed to leave that life behind so he packed up a few essential possessions on his horse and spent the next 2 years traveling through the west, sleeping in ditches and killing rabbits for food. He somehow landed in Caputa, married his third wife Linda (a sweet lady who had lived her entire life in that town and who only wanted to see the ocean before she died), and now spent his time trying to life off the grid as much as possible. Which is why the townspeople called him Mountain Mike. He spent a lot of time that night trying to convince us to come out to his place, but we declined on account of the numerous dixie cups of wine and ginormous beers Ricky had been serving us all night.

The next morning we decided we wanted to say goodbye to Mike and Linda, so we followed his directions out to his place. We found a delapited trailer covered in sheets of wood, some rusted out vintage trucks, a chicken coop, a huge garden and a horse yard. Ben started up towards the door, and a little cat poked its head out. "Oh, cute, a kitty!" I said. He took two more steps and a tidal wave made up of at least 20 cats exploded from the front stoop, descending on Ben with menacing hisses. There were kittens, young cats, old cats, cats with gooey infected eyes and cats with torn up ears. We waited for the tidal wave to disperse enough to reach the door, but just then Linda and Mike burst out into the sunshine, wearing the same clothes as the night before.

We spent the next hour getting the full tour of their place. Mountain Mike was just glowing (Linda explained they didn't get much company) and immediately divided us up by gender, sending me off with Linda to harvest some veggies while he dragged Ben off to explain the finer details of fixing antique tractors by hand. The cats just stood by and watched, licking themselves and fighting over a dead bird.

By the time we left, Mike and Linda had given us 5 pounds of freshly harvested potatoes and carrots, several stalks of horseradish, a jar of pickled beets, two ginormous cucumbers, a 3 pound bag of dried pinto beans and a bag of 5 pickled eggs. I think we were so stupified we forgot to tell them there was no way we could possible carry all that with us. Mountain Mike got all misty eyed as he shook our hands and sent us on our way, telling us he hoped their life was an inspiration to live off the grid more than depressing. He told us he had never slept so well at night knowing he could provide most of what he needed for himself. His parting words to Ben were..."I just wanna know one thing, son. How in the HELL did you convince a pretty lady to come with you? All the women I know would NEVER go on such an adventure." I think he forgot for a moment that we were bicycle tourists instead of run-aways on horseback sleeping in ditches and eating rabbits, but I still took it as a compliment.

And that's all I have time to share for today. Hope you enjoyed hearing about some Great Faces we've run into here in South Dakota. Happy Revolutions!

This One Time, in Spotted Horse....

We've been slowly rolling our way across the great state of Wyoming over the past week. After two nights in Yellowstone, we stayed with a delightful couchsurfing family in Cody, Wyoming. From Cody we biked around 50 miles to Greybull, where we camped for the night next to a cheery old man riding across the country on his motorcycle to visit his kids. He blasted off a few hours before us in the morning blasting a Jack Johnson song and howling at the wind.

Then came The Big Climb. After crossing the Continental Divide, and a few more steep hills in Yellowstone, we were pretty sure we would be scotch free as far as inclines go for the rest of the country. Then we happened upon a topographical map of Wyoming at a rest stop somewhere along the line. Turns out there's a mountain range that dips down from Montana in northcentral Wyoming, called the Big Horn Mountains. Turns out they're Big. As in, 9,030 feet at the pass. We started at an elevation of just over 4,000 feet, so that means we climbed 5,000 feet, over a period of 18 lovely miles.

After having a mini-panic attack at the beginning of the climb, based on how non-existent the road shoulder was, how hot the day was and how many semi-trucks were coming screaming around every switchback, Ben calmed me down and told me we could take as many breaks as we wanted to. Goooo sloooowww. That's the name of the game here, folks.

Somehow, we made it. It took us all day, and I'm pretty sure it was the hardest physical thing I've ever done. My body literally started shutting down from exhaustion in ways I didn't know where possible. I couldn't really breathe deeply without laughing or crying or vomiting or some weird combination of all three, so I just giggled and looked at cows. But we made it! There was one final steep climb and we made it to the blessed green sign that announced we were at Granite Pass, 9,030 feet above sea level. And good lord, it was beautiful.

But that's not what I wanted to tell you about today. See, there was this one time, in Spotted Horse...

We haven't seen too many other cyclists along the way, probably because it's late in the season and this isn't a very popular route. But we did meet up with this lovely Southern Californian, Jessica, somewhere between Cody and Greybull. We've been riding with her off and on, and ended up staying with her in Sheridan. We rode mostly together yesterday, about 73 miles (which is a personal record for me) east of Sheridan, which put us right smack dab in the middle of nowhere.

We saw on the map that there was a dot (which we assumed was a town) called Spotted Horse, so we thought we'd inquire about a place to camp and fill up on water there. When we finally got there, we quickly discovered that there was no town at all, just a bar with a collection of RVs behind it and a sign that said "Spotted Horse, Population: 2." We entered the bar, and 3 sets of bleary eyes turned to look at us. The woman behind the bar took one look at my empty water bottles and said, "I hope you're not looking for water...wait a second, did you bike here??"

We spent the next half hour or so explaining to the bartender as well as the two other people at the bar why on earth we would be riding our bicycles across middle-of-nowhere Wyoming. The bartender looked at Ben with squinty eyes and said, "You're not a tree-hugger are you?" Ben claims she was asking because of my hairy armpits, but I'm sure she was looking straight at him. She quickly got over any issues she had with our potential tree-hugging qualities, and demanded that we set up camp right there, in Spotted Horse. She told us we couldn't possibly keep going, because there was nothing for 37 more miles, and then we would get to Gillette. We kept trying to tell her that all we needed was nothing, just a place to pitch a tent, but the message wasn't getting through.

At this point she came around the other side of the bar, grabbed Ben by the arm and ushered us out the door. She was a tiny woman with flying blonde curls and crocs, and introduced herself at least 3 times as Colette. She dragged us happily over to the side of the bar, ordered us into her golf-cart, and started the engine. It was around this point that we realized she was rather intoxicated. There didn't seem to be a way to politely get out of the golf-cart, so we just held on a little tighter and smiled nervously. She drove us about 100 feet to one of the campers behind the bar, where she told us we could stay for the night, it would only cost us one hundred dollars, hahahahahaha. Just kidding. No, we didn't have to pay a thing, just as long as we got off the road before dark! We graciously thanked her and got back in the golf-cart to drive the 100 feet back to the bar door (no wonder she couldn't understand why we were biking across the country, these people don't walk anywhere).

Something confusing happened as this point. She was in the process of asking us our names for the billionth time, and introducing herself again, only this time she actually took her hands off the wheel and reached over to shake Ben's hand. Apparently golf-carts work just like cars and you shouldn't really take your hands off the wheel while driving. We somehow ran straight into a low cement wall, and in the confusion that followed, we realized Colette was no longer in the golf-cart but actually suspended in front of us with her legs straight up in the air!

Attached to the cement was a thick wire fence which contained a burn pile full of cardboard. Colette had somehow managed to fly out of the golf-cart, do a flip in the air and land upside-down on the wire fence. Miracle of miracles, she was completely uninjured but absolutely mortified and confused as hell. It was extremely difficult not to burst out laughing as soon as we made sure she was okay, and we spent the next 45 minutes going over again and again what may have happened with her. She swore us to secrecy and said she would never live it down if we told her friends back at the bar. She was also extremely concerned that we would have somehow filmed it and put it on "Veebo, or Beeboob or whatever that internet crap is..." (she was talking about YouTube.) We assured her nobody had filmed it.

This funny little lady took quite a liking to us after that incident (especially Ben) and kept slapping his butt and giving me huge wet kisses until she finally let us in on her secret water stash.

Moral of the story...don't drive when you only have to go 100 feet? Don't drink and drive? Don't take your hands off the wheel, even if it's a golf-cart? You tell me. I think it was my first drunk-driving accident, and I'm super glad we all came out okay. We'll always have Spotted Horse....

A Yellowstone Birthday

   Hello from the Cody Wyoming public library! Ben and I spent the last couple of nights in Yellowstone National Park, including, but not limited to....my 24th birthday! Don't worry, I have been mentally preparing myself for weeks now by referring to myself as being 24. So it's nothing new.
   We woke up on my birthday in our super sneaky stealth camping spot, which we had discovered the night before after downing a pizza and a pitcher of beer and befriending some excitable old men from Boston in West Yellowstone, Montana. When we woke up the next morning, we discovered that not only was our chosen tent pitching location only about 50 feet from the road, the entrance to Yellowstone was just about 100 yards away from us. So we heralded in my 24th year of life by stumbling out onto the sun-baked road, dodging the long line of tourist-filled RVs and motorcycles on our way to find some coffee and cinnamon rolls.
   I had the idea that perhaps we would take it a bit easy on my birthday, catch up on some reading, journal writing, basking in the sun....it quickly became obvious that that was not really an option for the day. Turns out Yellowstone is BIG. And mountainous. Two factors I didn't quite absorb fully on my last two automobile visits to the nation's first park. So we spent my birthday doing a "light" day of 47 miles. 47 happy miles.
   Yellowstone is beee-yoo-ti-full. The rumors are true. But apparently word has gotten out, because the place was literally crawling with traffic. Mini-vans full of exhausted looking parents and squealing children waving their electronic toys around. Bands of motorcycles blasting AC/DC carrying chubby leather-clad couples. Massive RVs as big as buses with cute names like "Featherlite" and "Freedom." They weave the roads in droves, stopping at each lookout to take 5,000 pictures then crawl back into their air-conditioned vehicles. I couldn't help but get a little jealous when we started up the 50th hill of the day, dripping sweat and breathing in car exhaust, but I still maintain that we are more "free."
    We stayed that night at the Canyon Village campground in Yellowstone, in specially reserved "hiker/biker" campsites. We biked down to the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone just as the sun was setting and had a picnic of boxed wine, camembert cheese and triscuits. As it happens so many times on this trip, the sleepy satisfaction I feel at the end of each day makes every drop of sweat, every incline, every numb toe worth it.
   In other news, my body seems to have given up the majority of it's daily protests about why I would be forcing it to do such a strange thing for so many hours a day. I can feel more feet for at least half of the day now, and even my butt seems a bit happier with the situation. Still feeling the heat. Getting a little nervous about the wind rolling across these wide open states. Still a little boggled about how nice these rural western people are. Still making revolutions, though not all of them have been easy :)

A couple of photographs (stolen from Ben's tumblr blog)

To Bozeman!

This morning I woke up in Bozeman, Montana, on a lumpy pull out sofa bed with the bright orange sun in my eyes. I've never been so grateful.

Ben and I biked all the way from our camping spot at the I-90/hwy 247 junction to Bozeman yesterday (67 miles in total, or my biggest day yet!) I hadn't really had any major physical complaints yet, apart from the strange numbness in my feet and hands, but yesterday I got the joy of experiencing butt blisters for the first time. That's right. Butt blisters. Part of me naively thought I would be solid on the butt front, as I have a relatively ample one at my disposal. But turns out my extra padding does nothing but slump to the side as my bike seat gets right in there and finds the exact location of my Sitz bones. Apparently this is a common problem for bikers, as there are oodles of products out there to rub on sore buttocks' and prevent more chafing. Sorry for the graphic details, dear readers, but this is my life now.

We stopped in Norris, Montana for a lunch break. Norris consists of two intersecting highways, a handful of dilapidated houses in a sea of rolling farmland, the Norris Bar/Antique Store, and a surprisingly bustling outdoor furniture store. We dismounted in front of the furniture store, at which point a plump woman came scurrying out and insisted we "rest our hands and bums" and sit for a while. So we pulled out all our various snacks and ate under a newly constructed gazebo for sale just as it started to rain. We put away several sticks of string cheese, an apple and peanut butter, a bag of sea salt and vinegar chips, some radishes and snap peas from the farmer's market in Townsend, and some pastries from our obligatory Wheat Montana stop that morning. Delicious! Folks, quite possibly the best thing about biking all day every day is that you can eat whatever you want. I swear fitness gyms would increase their membership rates by the thousands if they changed their tactic and started advertising the amount of calories you can gobble up if you only burn 10,000 calories a day or so.

The last half of the day was beautiful, but challenging. We followed the Madison River downhill through charred canyons with black toothpick tree trunks reaching towards the sky (we found out later the region had suffered a big wildfire just a month ago). We went over loads of "slow rollers" as Ben calls them---rolling hills that don't seem like a big deal when you're driving, but are endlessly frustrating when on a bicycle. It started raining pretty heavy about 20 miles out of Bozeman, and we got to try out our rain jackets and fenders for the first time. We finally made it to Bozeman around 8pm or so, and rolled right up to the home of Emily Wallace, a friend of Ben's who spent the summer in Juneau last year, working at Gastineau Guiding! Exhausted, soaking and dragging our sore bums behind us, Emily greeted us with hugs and cold beers, shooed us into the shower and made us delicious curry. 

So that's a little backstory to why I'm so incredibly grateful to be where I am right now. I was just telling Ben...if nothing else, bike touring makes you appreciate the little things so much more than you ever could otherwise. I don't think I've ever enjoyed peeling off wet biking shorts, standing under running hot water for 15 minutes, or waking up on a lumpy sofa bed so dang much. All these things we take for granted. They're incredible, really.

The Ol' Up and Over

   Hello, everyone! Thank you for joining me on this thrilling cross-country adventure fueled by "easy revolutions." Ha, ha.
   So! Today is the 3rd day of the bike trip for me (something like day 11 or 12 for Ben) and I'm sitting in the public library in Helena, Montana. Which means, for those of you without a super savvy sense of the Montana map, we've already biked something like 140 miles, and we just made it over the Continental Divide.
   This morning found Ben and I waking up in our super sneaky "stealth camping" spot...some random field, definitely owned by somebody, where we waded through hip-high marshy grassland until we found a small grove of bushes (and thistles) to make camp in. This morning we woke up, biked a few miles to the impossibly quaint village of Avon, Montana, where we ate our first diner meal of the trip: omelettes, biscuits and gravy, eggs, sausage, all washed down with an everflowing mug of diner coffee.
    As we started to gain elevation a few miles out of Avon, Ben announced cheerfully that we were in for "the ol' up and over." And that's just what we did. As the temperatures climbed through the 90s, we climbed a few thousand feet on a skinny highway shoulder. Ben let me set the pace (seeing as how I'm not quite the seasoned ciclist he is) and I definitely elected to take a few breaks on the way up. But we made it! The Continental Divide proved to be fairly disappointing. We biked up a dirt road that advertised a "scenic viewpoint." We managed to see a bit of the dry rolling mountains all around through the wildfire-infused haze, and got a bored looking motorciclist to take our picture. Then we proceeded to head downhill for 6 miles plus a few more into the lovely city of Helena, Montana.
   I only have a few more minutes on this public computer, so let me share a few observations with you. The trip so far has been wonderful. It's Day 3 for the adventure duo, and we're still getting along. We joked the first night about how it was like we were moving into together...except instead of an apartment we have a tiny 2 person tent (plus all of the American countryside) and instead of jobs all we have to do is bike all day. The scenery is outstanding. Montana is very dry right now, and the only lush green we see is a sure indicator that someone is sacrificing a significant portion of water on their manicured lawn. There's lots of fields of hay, cows, and some horses. The cows all seem to be the most curious about us, looking up sharply all in unison and giving us a good long stare until we bike past. The truckers seem to be our most kindred spirits so far (for whatever reason), giving us a good solid wave of a hanky, wink and a nod as we pass each other on the highway. People have for the most part been incredibly sweet. Several people have told me to "call our mothers frequently" and "be safe out there, pretty girl." The asphalt is littered with broken glass and butterfly wings. And I don't know that I've ever been so sore in my life.
   I was anticipating the sore legs, but what nobody told me about was that my body would have to completely readjust to the bizarre position of bike riding before I felt normal again. My feet go numb about 15 minutes after every break. My hands are pretty consistently numb as well. I have definitely located my Sitz bones, as they are throbbing nobs located somewhere within my glutimus maximus (I have so much padding that doesn't seem to do me a shred of good!). But still, I'm trying not to complain. It's just too good. I've decided that I'll give it a week, and any weird pains that still exist I'll investigate further.
   Well, I'm out of time. Here's to some more easy revolutions, everyone.