Cycling Coast to Coast

The last week a half has been very eventful, and also lacking in internet.  After Portales, we biked to Roswell, where we had a day off, and then a hard full week of riding (the longest stretch on the trip) before arriving in Flagstaff, AZ.

Unfortunately, I had to miss a few days of riding early in the week due to the Plague.  There’s been some sort of stomach bug going around, and at the height of the Plague, about a third of the trip was sick.  Symptoms usually included stomach upset, and some combination of vomitting and diarrhea.  A couple people were so sick, and so dehydrated, that they ended up having to go to the hospital to get IVs.

New Mexico and Arizona have been absolutely beautiful.  This is my first time in the Southwest, and words really can’t describe the landscape. 

We were originally supposed to have a build day in Flagstaff, but that fell through, so instead we had a day off.  Riding in, it was amazing how quickly the landscape changed from desert to pine forests, as Flagstaff is at about 7,000 feet above sea level, nestled in the mountains.  The day we arrived was the first Friday of the month, which happened to be Flagstaff’s First Friday Artwalk.  I had a lot of fun walking around downtown and visiting the various art galleries and little shops.  I even went dress shopping (!), and bought a cute dress at a store called Rainbow’s End, to wear in Las Vegas.  The day before Flagstaff, in Winslow, the leaders surprised us by letting us know that when we get to Las Vegas, we’ll be staying in a casino hotel on the Strip!  Everyone went nuts, and then quickly started making plans about how to get “normal” clothing for Vegas, since nothing we own on the trip is really appropriate for going out.

While in Flagstaff, we also got to visit Roden Crater.  Sophie’s dad, James Turrell, is a famous artist known of working with light and space.  Roden Crater is his work-in-progress masterpiece.  It’s kind of hard to explain, but Roden Crater is an extinct volcanic crater, and he is working to construct a series of tunnels and rooms within the crater with open spaces that allow the viewer to see the sky and observe certain celestrial events.  It was beautiful, and I would definitely like to return once the crater is open to the public in 2012.

After Flagstaff, we had one day of riding to the Grand Canyon, and then a day off.  We stayed up to see sunset at the Bright Angel Trailhead, and then the next morning, we woke up early to see sunrise at Mather Point.  Devon, Jess and I hiked part of the Bright Angel Trail in the morning.  Jess and I only hiked to the 1.5 mile resthouse before turning around, but Devon went all the way to Plateau Point, a 12-mile round trip hike. 

It’s hard to believe we only have 10 days left of the trip.  We’ll be in Santa Barbara in only 9 days.

12 states down, 4 to go. (12 states, if you count the few miles we did in New Jersey, West Virginia, and Kansas, even though we didn’t stay in those states)

We’re now in New Mexico, and in just over 3 weeks, we’ll arrive in Santa Barbara, which is a pretty scary thought.  Tonight we’re staying in a dorm at Eastern New Mexico University, and I never thought I’d say this, but after this trip, dorm accomodations seems luxurious.  There’s a computer room with four computers hooked up to the internet, a lounge with TV, plentiful showers, and enough dorm rooms so that we can each get our own room.  Unfortunately, since we are staying at a school, we aren’t being provided meals, but a bunch of people worked some donation magic on the road today and we’ll be getting 12 free pizzas from Pizza Hut, and a free ice cream cake from Dairy  Queen for dinner. 

Yesterday, we were in Hereford, TX, self-proclaimed “Beef Capital of the World” because of the large numbers of cattle and feedlots in the surrounding area.  Biking in, we could certainly smell it.  Two more unusual smells that we noticed however, were the aroma of petfood, and yeast.  When we asked our hosts about it, they told us that Hereford boasts a “cow recycling plant”, where dead cows are turned into rawhide chew toys, and Texas’s largest ethanol plant.

While in Hereford, we also got the chance to finally see the movie “The Dark Knight”.  It was absolutely amazing. Heath Ledger was superb as the twisted Joker.  To make our movie-going experience even more exciting, two riders on the trip, Katie and Charlotte, were extras in the movie!  Not to give away any spoilers, but their big screen-time comes in the chaos after a funeral/memorial parade.  As the charcter Harvey Dent (played by Aaron Eckhart) pushes through the crowd, you can see Katie and Charlotte in the background.  Charlotte is particularly noticeable because she’s wearing a pink scarf.

Today was our 7th build day.  We’re actually staying at the Habitat for Humanity office in Amarillo, where they have a huge basement of interconnected rooms for us to sleep in.  The house we worked on today is for a family of Somalian refugees.  It’s a six bedroom, two bath home for a single mother and her 14 kids!  Most of the work we did today was painting, both the exterior and interior.  A few people also went to the Habitat ReStore to help out.

Just in the last few days, I’ve been having some lower back pain, probably due to my bike fit.  I got a professional bike fit at Belmont Wheelworks before the trip, and that had been working great for me during the trip, until recently.  I’m unsure what changed, but I needed to get refitted.  A few other riders also needed to get fit, so there was a van shuttle in the afternoon from the build site to a couple bike shops.  At the first bike shop, Bicycle Depot, the owner Randy was nice enough to set all of us up on a trainer and offer a few fitting suggestions, though he couldn’t do a full fit for us.  He also let Jose have the run of his shop to do some bike repair for Lauren, and didn’t charge us for any of it.  Unfortunately for us, there was a big triathlon in Amarillo last week, and a MS150 ride this coming weekend, so the bike shop was sold out of a lot of stuff.  So, after visiting Bicycle Depot, we hit up another bike shop, Hills Sport Shop, to finish picking up all the things that other riders needed.

Yesterday evening, after dinner, we all visited the Big Texan, a huge Amarillo tourist trap and home of the “free” 72 oz steak.  The 72 oz steak challenge is for one person to eat a 72 oz steak, a baked potato, three fried shrimp, bread roll, and a half salad in 1 hour.  If you finish it all, the meal is free.  Otherwise, it costs $72.  Many of us simply ordered a second dinner at the Big Texan, but Jorge made a valiant attempt at the steak challenge.  We all cheered him on, and at the end of the hour, there was only 9.8oz of meat left.  Even though he didn’t get the free dinner, he did Bike & Build proud.

Welcome to Texas!

After the miserable heat yesterday, lots of people (myself included) were actually asking to wake up earlier, so we can get on the road earlier.  We are now waking up 2 hours before sunrise, and hitting the road at civil twilight (about 30 minutes before actual twilight).  This means that we were treated to a beautiful sunrise when on the road, and that we also had more time on the road before it got really hot.  Lunch was at mile 38 in the town of Sayre, and everyone was in and out of lunch before 10:30am.

We are also now hitting the part of the trip where the towns and roads we ride on are very sparsely populated.  The only town along our route was Sayre, where we had our lunch stop.  Also, usually our cue sheets are formated in a table, and there are lots of turns.  Today, however, the cue sheet was very simple:

“Go to the stoplight

Turn left and go right around the courthouse

Take a right on the other side of the courthouse

Go on 152 until you have gone 77.81 miles

Turn left onto S. Main Street, the First Baptist church is at 601 S. Main Street”

The Texas state line was around mile 62, and of course we all stopped to take pictures.  I was surprised that the state sign didn’t proclaim Texas as the “Lone Star State”, or any other slogan like you see on other state signs.  Instead, just below the “Welcome to Texas” sign, was a smaller sign that read “Proud Home of President George W. Bush”.  Oh, Texas.

Today we left Route 66 and rode on SR152 for most of the day to Cordell, OK.  The last few days have been shorter rides in the 60 to 70 mile range, but today we’re back up to 83 miles.  The weather has been getting noticeably hotter, but on these shorter days, we arrive at the host location early in the afternoon and so miss the brunt of the heat.  Today, however, was a long day, and a real scorcher.  At 11:30am, it was already 103F, and as I was sweep, I didn’t get in until about 4pm. 

As we ride along though, I find it really interesting to see how the terrain and vegetation changes.  So far, we’ve seen a lot of grazeland and livestock in Oklahoma.  Yesterday, I noticed that the earth is now reddish-colored.  Also, up until today, Oklahoma has been relatively flat, but today we started to climb up to the Great Plains.  It was a hilly day; not steep, but lots of gradual hills that when summed together (and with the heat) really wore me down.

Yesterday, we had a fun ride from Chandler to Yukon.  As we were riding along, just west of Arcadia, suddenly we saw a giant modern sculpture of a soda bottle across the street.  Of course, we had to stop to check it out, and turns out it was a gas station/cafe called Pops that has over 500 varieties of soda (LaVerde’s, take that!).  It was awesome.  I bought a t-shirt, and enjoyed an awesome chocolate milkshake.  The building walls are glass, and filled with shelves stocked with multicolored soda bottles.