Cycling Coast to Coast

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.