Cycling Coast to Coast

Apologies for the long gap in posts; internet access has been very scarce, and very limited when we’ve had access to it.

Today we’re in Joplin, Missouri.  Tomorrow will be our 33rd day of the trip, and the half-way mark (time-wise).  The halfway point, distance-wise, is coming up in a few days.  We’ve biked over 1,700 miles so far from Boston.

Since Pittsburgh, we zipped through Ohio and had a half build day in Columbus.  There, the Habitat chapter had 9 homes on the same cul-de-sac nearing completion, and we got to help with some of the interior work.

We passed through Indiana and Illinois quickly, spending only a couple of days in each state.  We had another half build day in Bloomington, IN, where Indiana University is located.  The cycling movie “Breaking Away” was filmed there in the 70s, so the night before the build day, we all watched the movie.  On our second day in Bloomington, we watched “Real Genius”, and I’m sad to say that although it’s supposed to be a must-see for all MITers, it was the first time I’d seen it.

Indiana and Illinois was also the flattest terrain on the trip so far, which was awesome after all the mountainous climbing we did in the Northeast and Pennsylvannia.  The day into St. Louis, however, the trip leaders decided to play a prank on us.  Every morning, all the riders get a cue sheet with turn-by-turn directions for the day’s route.  The cue sheet also includes an elevation profile from Topo, the mapping software the leaders use to design our route.  For our ride into St. Louis however, Kyle M told us that we were hitting the Ozarks, and the elevation profile showed a very hilly day with ridiculous amounts of climbing.

In case you didn’t pay attention in Geography, the Ozarks are not in Illinois, and in fact there are no mountains in Illinois.  The elevation profile on the cue sheet was a contrived profile for the Adirondacks.  The ride into St. Louis was long and hot, but it was flat.

St. Louis was our second day off.  Our route has days off in some really great places to visit (Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Roswell, Grand Canyon), but it seems like we’re always so tired that all we do is sleep and run errands on the day off.  My day off consisted of sleeping in (until 7:30am), running errands at REI, seeing two movies (Hancock and Wall-E), and getting ice cream.  Somehow, our trip managed to get in contact with Joe Torissi, the president of the Missouri Bicycle Federation.  He was really great in providing us with rides to REI and the movie theatre, arranging for dinner, and then taking a few of us to ice cream in the evening and giving us a tour of the Hill, the Italian district of St. Louis.

After St. Louis, we actually did hit the Ozarks in Missouri, but the climbing has been easy compared to the mountains out East.  Yesterday, we had an awesome build day in Springfield, MO.  The habitat chapter there is in the midst of a Blitz Build, building a 2-bedroom home in 7 days.  We had the unique opportunity of helping out with the Blitz Build.  The professional contractors that were donating their time for the build were obviously much more efficient than a group of volunteers could ever be, but we provided some needed manpower and helped raise the roof trusses and install some insulation.

So that, in a nutshell, is what the last couple weeks have been.  As we head further out west, and as we hit less populated areas in the Southwest, internet access will likely be even more sporadic.

We do have a trip journal that will be updated as internet becomes available, and some photos posted online.  I’ve taken a lot of photos so far on this trip, some of which are uploaded on Facebook, but most of them haven’t made their way onto the internet yet.  Hopefully the next time I have internet access, that will be remedied.