How the West was One. (With Pictures!)

We've been on Highway 1 since Tuesday, when we split off the 101 in Leggett, CA. The 101 had shifted from a pleasant rural highway to a 4 lane divided freeway with on and off ramps, so we were thankful to leave it. The first part of the 1 we had been warned about—steep uphill climbs through dense forest, the highway curving around the hillsides blocking the view around nearly every turn. It was a pretty steep ascent, but we were rewarded by the video game-like downhill ride—swooping around corners, leaning the bike to a 45 degree angle to where you feel like you could touch the ground with one arm, yeah. Pretty exciting stuff. Then...the ocean! Ocean, I've missed you. Somehow you got even bluer and more massive since I last saw you, in Eureka.


Highway 1 is incredible. Determinedly following the rugged coastline of California, it's breathtakingly beautiful. It is also terrifying, and seemingly defies about 500 laws of physics and engineering. My trusty map of the state did absolutely nothing to prepare me for the wonders of the 1, showing the highway as a gentle, friendly pink line on the edge of a perfectly flat state. Road maps don't help the bicycle tourist much, but even a topographic map would not have given me a true understanding of just how narrow and windy the road would be, or just how many times I'd relax into the sheer pleasure of gliding downhill into a valley only to realize that I was just going to immediately regain that lost elevation.

Somewhere between here and Oregon, the landscape changed. The moist, lush forests of the North turned to dry beige cliffs and rolling hills. The roadside plants have all morphed into luscious succulents and overgrown wild fennel, and the few groves of sweet-smelling pine that we encounter all seem a bit confused as to how they got there. Hwy 1 often literally hugs the coast for much of its path, and often doesn't have a guardrail, leaving you on the edge of a thousand-foot precipice, hoping your bicycle tires know how to maintain contact with the thin ribbon of road as it bends and ripples and arches its back through the cliffs.

Thankfully, a thrilling and dangerous road has its benefits. The road seems to scare off the majority of semi-trucks, Rvs, and general traffic. We sometimes get a whole 15 minutes without cars zooming by, during which I always revert to my fantasy of roads being built for only bicycles :). When cars do pass by, sometimes I wonder what they must be thinking of us. I know I make a terrible bicycle-touring poster child when I'm huffing up a steep hill, drenched in sweat and donning a “sweet-Jesus-make-it-stop” expression on my face. I keep telling myself that the best part of bicycle touring is how many calories you burn, and how jealous people must be when they see Ben and me guzzling down 5 pastries at a time and not even blinking an eye or gaining a pound. Or when we're streaming downhill at a cool 30 mph, about the only time that I feel as cool as the motorcycle tourists look.

There have been a few moments over the last few blazingly hot, ridiculously challenging days where I've sacrilegiously longed for a car to pick me up, to ditch my bicycle and panniers over the cliff's edge and straight up roadtrip it. But then there's always the nighttime. After the biking is done, when the hills only seem like faint memories and my mac and cheese dinner is the best food I've ever tasted...when we're sitting on a dark beach somewhere so far away from city lights that the milky way looks like a streak of white paint across the sky...that's when I remember why we're on bicycles.

Postscript: I'm writing this from San Francisco! Ben and I arrived on Saturday evening, and we've been taken care of by my good friend Sarah Newsham. We'll be here for a couple days, but on Wednesday I'll be heading up Kelseyville, CA for a 10 day silent meditation retreat! That means I'll be taking a break from both biking and writing for a while, but stay tuned...we'll resume our trip as planned on October 20^th, after the retreat. Happy revolutions everybody!

 Charlie on his 30th Birthday! Our awesome host in Cleone, CA drove us to Safeway to buy a carrot cake, Charlie's favorite.

 The Amazing Glass Beach in Fort Bragg, CA. Used to be a dump, now there's beach glass instead of sand.

 Ben, demonstrating his enthusiasm for being on top

 Sunrise from our tent the night we slept on a beach outside of Anchor Bay, CA

 This road is crazy!! Can you see Ben?

Ben and I, on one of our many bakery breaks--Tomales, CA

Border Crossing, Redwoods, and More Rain

The border was lined by shimmery green fields of what would soon be Easter lilies, completely unobvious except for the medium-sized 'Welcome to California!' sign. There seemed to be a bit of disagreement in just which border town was the “Easter Lily Capital of the World”...Brookings, OR, or tiny Smith River, CA. We left them to compete in peace, only stopping to gobble the fresh doughnuts from Brookings we had acquired that morning. In Crescent City, CA we stopped by the visitor center only to discover what we had suspected for some time: California has no cycling map! It was about this time that we realized just how spoiled rotten we had been by Oregon's DOT-produced coastal bike map, detailing distances, elevations, typical wind directions and more! No such luck in the Golden State.


The past week has been a blur, but here's a few reflections:
Despite the few torrential downpours we endured, Oregon treated us well. After spending the night in the Newport Travelodge last Sunday night, we got to experience a gray Monday afternoon touring the way many people choose to do: Supported! We wanted to keep biking, and our parents wanted to keep hanging out with us, so somebody suggested that we ride as far as we could while our parents carried our heavy panniers. It suddenly made so much sense, why people tour that way. You can go so far! You don't feel like you're actually might die on every incline! And, at the end, after we had biked 48 miles in just a few hours, we had a support team to cheer us on and tell us how impressive we were over and over again. Yes, they were our parents so they were pretty much required to do that. But it was so dang nice I think I might consider paying somebody to play that role sometime....sometime in the faraway future of course. I still treasure my touring independence :).

We spent one night in a campground just south of Florence. The next day we got a nice late start (our specialty), set off for a lovely day of hills and freshly layed asphalt, surprise sunshine and views of the expansive ocean. Then it got dark. We were dead-set on making it all the way to Bandon, as we had arranged our 2^nd Warmshowers host of the trip. We were once again soaking wet, as some heavy showers rolled in around dusk. We ended up biking about 8 miles in the pitch black, which was terrifying and felt pretty stupid on our part. Cycling through the pitch black with only 6 tiny blinking lights to guide your way can make a person rather dizzy. I had to take a little time-out when we finally got off the highway, had a little cry, and regained true cycling composure for the last mile to the house. We were justified only by the fact that we were presented with our very own surfer chalet at the end of the day's 72 mile journey.

Brian was the name of our host, a self-proclaimed anti-bicyclist who only took people in for the “cultural experience” it gave his children, who were growing up in beautiful yet homogeneous Bandon, OR. His profile was part scary and part hilarious, detailing exactly the kinds of people he wasn't interested in: Americans, engineering students, people who weren't interested in babysitting or cooking delicious food. He preferred foreigners, especially couples. He didn't care much about “our story,” so we didn't talk it up. Instead, we made a fort with his two young children, whom he left us with promptly after meeting us. He turned out to be a really nice guy, and even though he was serious about hating bicycles, it was somehow in the most endearing way possible. The house we slept in was not his house, but rather a friend's foreclosed mansion that another friend was sort of squatting in. There was basically nothing in the house except a few surfboards and hundreds of old surfer magazines. The electricity worked, there was hot water and a bathtub, so the three of us fell into a hard sleep as the rain fell even harder on the roof above us.

We spent two more nights in Oregon, one in the Humbug State Park and one in a campground outside of Brookings. The next day we entered California, spent a night in Klamath and a day biking through the unfathomable beauty that is the Redwood forest. And now here I sit in Arcata, surrounded by espresso and beautiful earthy college students and housed by Ben's family friends Amy and Rees. Their hospitality has been amazing, especially considering we called them about half an hour before we showed up in Arcata, Ben not having seen them since he went backpacking with them 10 years ago! We were all very enthralled by beautiful Arcata, as well as a lazy day off. Today, back to biking, the 101, and whatever surprises Northern California has in store for these 3 travelers today.

Portland, Raccoons, the Ocean and a Rescue!

Hello, again! I'm terribly sorry it's taken me so long to post. First it was just laziness, but for the past few days I've had trouble finding internet in these adorable yet wifi-less Southern Oregon towns. I'm writing this from Port Orford, Oregon. Here are a couple of things I had to say about the events of the last 10 days or so...enjoy!

Out of Eden. I mean Portland.


         Ahh, Portland. I assume most of you are already aware of this fact, but I'm here to tell you that it's true. Portland. Loves. Bicycles. In Seattle, I felt like we were part of a club, riding our bikes around the city with throngs of commuter-cyclists. In Portland, we were part of a support group. The whole city is adorned with bicycle paraphernalia—like somehow bicycles figured out how to join the ranks of bacon and moustaches and have infiltrated every t-shirt, re-usable shopping bag, tattoo and cupcake you can shake a stick at.


All of this was much to our advantage as Ben and I tooled around Portland for a few days. We ate amazing food, got to spend time with a lot of great people (Heather! Katelyn! Jamison! And our awesome hosts, newlyweds Nick and Lauren Insalata!). We hung out in soaking pools and coffee shops and backyard barbeques and pretty much didn't feel like we were bike tourists at all. Finally, after 3 full days in the youth utopia that is Portland, we forced ourselves to leave.


On the way out of town, a man pushing a baby stroller down a residential street stopped us by shouting “Hey where are you guys headed?” We were pretty eager to get on the road, but he immediately offered us a billion useful things, including the highly coveted Oregon Coast Bike Map. He turned out to be super friendly and helpful, named Greg, and in possession of two lovely twin babies of unknown gender. As he looked for the map, the babies started to fuss and he handed me two matching baby bottles and told me to feed them. And that is how I found myself, aiming two baby bottles into a stranger's babies' mouths, still wearing a helmet on the streets of sunny Portland. Look to Ben's tumblr account for photographic evidence.




If we wanted to be this wet, why didn't we stay in Juneau? Or just take a week long shower?


         Outside of Portland we met up with Charlie Sallans, who will be joining us all the way to San Francisco, and perhaps beyond! He's a really great friend of mine from Evergreen, and we're super excited to have another team member along. The first night out of Portland we made it 50 miles and spent the night in a peaceful but deserted campground in the Tillamook forest. We had some pretty brutal hills that first day, some of the steepest grade I've ever experienced on a bicycle, much less a bicycle with nearly 100 pounds of gear.


The next day we finally made it to the Oregon coast. It took us about 50 miles, a major downpour, and about 5 rounds of Tillamook cheese factory samples, but we finally made it! We stayed the night at the Cape Lookout campground, which is beautiful and highly recommended, even though a stupid raccoon ate my beloved chocolate pretzels.


Now we've been on the coast for a few nights, and it has been truly wonderful. Tell me, what is it about the ocean, that makes every one of us want to rip off our shoes and run like the hounds of hell are chasing us, into the surf? That's exactly what I did the first chance I got. And it's obvious that it's not just Portland that loves bicycles. The whole state of Oregon feels pretty fondly about us. Since reaching the coast, we've been on a fully marked route with a usually broad shoulder. There are plentiful campgrounds with 5 dollar hiker/biker rates, and bike shops along the way have showers, internet, and really excited staff. They love us.


On Sunday morning we woke to some of the nastiest weather I can imagine for fall, and that includes Juneau. There were literal sheets of rain falling out of the sky at a pleasant 45 degree angle, coming directly from the south (the direction we were headed). All the other bicycle tourist friends we had met in Pacific City informed us that they had no intention of leaving our luxury RV campground (which included an indoor pool and hot tub). We really wanted to keep going, so, telling ourselves it “really wasn't that bad,” and “we're Alaskans, for godssake,” we headed out into the storm.


Okay, so it was that bad. I can say for sure that it was the worst weather I've ever ridden in, because why would I have ever chosen to go for a bicycle ride in weather that bad? The rain was kind of a given, though it was the kind of rain that made you struggle to keep your eyes open it was so bad. But the wind caught me off guard—so off guard in fact, at one point it knocked me straight into a ditch! I'm pretty sure people thought we were insane. We thought we were insane. I had to force myself to not think of what being in a hot tub would be like, or a sleeping bag, or really anywhere more pleasant than our current situation.


We persevered for about 22 miles, when the most glorious thing appeared. A diner. The Otis Cafe. Practically weeping with relief, Charlie, Ben and I dragged our sopping selves into the miniature old-school diner, shocking all the other patrons as we soaked our chair cushions and stripped our wet socks off under the table. Everything was wet. We were freezing cold. I used my coffee cup as a sort of hot water bottle, drinking half of it every 10 minutes just so the waitress would come and re-fill it.


Let's face it. It was one of the moments that makes even an adventurous 25-year-old woman whimper, “I want my mom!” We were still about 30 miles from Newport, where we hoped to make it that night. I honestly didn't think I could muster the strength to get my wet frozen body to bike even out of the parking lot.


And then, in one of those rare, get-out-of-jail-free card moments in life, who should arrive but my own mother! My mom, savior goddess that she is, just so happened to be cruising down the Oregon coast in her Roadtrek on her way to a camping trip in Baja, but hoping to meet up with us for a night or two on the way. The timing could not have been more perfect. She met us about an hour later at the Otis cafe, paid for our meal, crammed all three of our bicycles and all our gear in her fancy Roadtrek (most likely not its intended purpose) and drove us the 30 miles to Newport. So yes, we cheated again. But let me tell you, it was worth it. We ended up getting a cheap hotel room which we transformed into a hurricane disaster zone with all our wet gear, taking thebestshowersever, and eventually meeting up with Ben's parents Bob and Bonnie who drove over from Idaho for a couple nights!


Moral of the story? It sucks to be wet and cold, but it's almost worth it just to get that feeling of beyond-words-bliss to be finally warm, overcaffeinated and safe in your mama's camper van. I know that won't always be the end of the story, but I'll always remember how dang good it felt when it was.

Life is Like a Bicycle

Yesterday morning, Ben and I loaded up our bicycles and started the day's easy revolutions by weaving through the fog-capped streets of downtown Seattle. We were joined by a healthy support team of Seattle's morning bicycle commuter community, but they eventually broke off one by one until it was just Ben and myself and our way too loaded down bikes. An hour or so later, when all our bike commuter friends were wiping the sweat of their brows, sitting down to a cup of coffee and their day jobs, Ben and I were still actively sweating, still actively biking, and trying without much success to navigate the strange industrial districts of South Seattle.

We eventually celebrated the success of discovering the Green River trail in Tukwila, which eventually morphed into the Interurban trail, both delightful off-road asphalt trails which led us over train tracks, behind factories, and eventually spit us out in the little-known town of Pacific, WA. For the rest of the day we had a devil of a time figuring out how to get from the end of the bike trail to Tacoma--turns out the back roads of the I-5 corridor are not especially friendly to two little cyclists from Alaska armed with the not-extremely-helpful google maps (walking directions) and some confusing bike maps.

But, we made it! To Tacoma, that is. And then we did something that would cause bicycle touring purists to go red in the face: we rode a bus. From Tacoma to Olympia. We were tired, hungry and hot (yesterday the Pac-NW saw temperatures in the 80s and 90s), and the bus was cheap, easy and had a bike rack. We didn't even feel bad! No sir.

 Something about having already biked across the country in a (relatively) pure way makes us not as strict this time around. You might even look at our trip thus far and call us "lazy." We've already stopped and taken days off in Friday Harbor, La Conner, Seattle and now Olympia! But then, that's what this trip is all about. Seeing old friends, taking time to smell the roses, and eventually, with some luck and perhaps a bit more discipline, we'll get to where we're going.

Today, we're resting and enjoying Olympia, my old stomping grounds. We stayed last night with my dear friend Anna Bunk, got beers at my favorite bar Skep & Skein with my friend Nathan, and even enjoyed late night hot dogs at Jake's. This morning we met up with friend Charlie at Sage's for smoked salmon egg benedicts. Oh, Olympia. After so much time in Alaska, I've forgotten that places could be like this! People are young, friendly and covered in all manner of feathers, vintage glasses, and child-like tattoos. I've already been asked what my sign is, at least twice. We tell people we're biking to New Orleans and people smile and nod and compliment us on our life choices, not always the case. *Sigh*. Being here is like being in an adult kindergarten--everyone wants to play, eat good food all the time and help each other. If only there were ways to make a living in this dreamland.

Alas! The way of a traveler, and a bicycle tourist, is to be constantly moving forward. I saw a quote somewhere that said 'life is like a bicycle--you have to keep your balance, you must keep moving..." So, tomorrow, we head out into the wild abyss of Southwestern Washington. Next resting place: Portland, where there are sure to be more attractive tattooed people, good beer, and great food. Until then, happy trails.

Back on Bicycles

"Let's Ride!" said the hipster bicycle-themed temporary tattoo I presented to Ben Friday morning, his 27th birthday, as well as the morning we arrived in Bellingham, WA. The 3 day ferry ride from Juneau proved to be a most excellent way to travel. We staked out our homestead on the partially covered solarium top deck, spreading out our sleeping bags on lawn chairs amongst all the other travelers. I spent the 3 days on the ferry taking naps, watching the texture of the water and mountains change, and people watching sometimes actually talking with fellow travelers, other times just wondering about them.

 Contained public traveling is interesting in that everyone is more or less going to and from the same places, but everyone is on a different journey. Some people were leaving a summer job with heavy pockets and dirty fingernails, others were moving away from their beloved homeland, some were just getting out of Alaska for a couple months of sun before the long winter, while others were bright-eyed tourists, cheering at porpoises and whales breaching off the stern of the boat. And then there's Ben and me.

We're just begun our second velocipedal adventure. Was it just too much fun last time, when we biked across the northern states all the way to New York City? Did we discover that it's just the best way to get to know a place, its landscape, and its random diners? Did we forget just how grueling and sweaty those steep hill climbs and 100 degree days could get? YES!! The answer is yes. So, because we are equal parts eager, adventurous, crazy, and couldn't really think of anything better to do this fall, we are back on bicycles.

This time around we're biking from Bellingham, WA all the way to New Orleans, LA by way of Los Angeles, CA. We're planning on taking our time, visiting people, and exploring the beautiful corners of this country from the West Coast to the Southwest to the South. Thus far we have biked about 40 miles, from the Bellingham ferry terminal to the Anacortes ferry terminal. We spent Friday and Saturday night out at Friday Harbor on San Juan Island, with my endlessly wonderful friends, Meagan and Lincoln Gable. We slept on their sailboat, cruised around the harbors, hiked on Orcas Island, and swam in a lake. Friday Harbor is basically the cutest town I have ever seen, and it was rather difficult to convince ourselves not to stay amongst the coffee shops, farmer's market, marina cafes, and bicycle friendly roads of San Juan Island. But, alas, the road is calling.

Now we are in La Conner, WA, spending time with Billie and Lauren, Ben's aunt and uncle. They're wonderful hosts and it's also difficult to not let myself just curl up in a cat-nap ball on the sunbaked porch, eating fresh tomatoes and peas and whatever other wonderful treasures their garden holds. But. Must. Keep. Biking. Next destination: Seattle. Although it might take us a couple days to get there. Please follow along! Here's to more (relatively) easy revolutions. Cheers!

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!