Cycling Coast to Coast

Since leaving St. Louis, our trip has been roughly following the historic route 66, and will be all the way to California.  Yesterday, riding from Vinita to Tulsa, we rode on 66 for 48 miles.  I found it really fun to see all the signs marking the road as the historic route 66, and all the business along the road with “66″ in their names.  We even stopped at the Blue Whale in Catoosa, a classic route 66 roadside attraction.

Most appropriately, our wake-up song when leaving Vinita was “Get your kicks on Route 66″, performed by Nat King Cole.  I’ve included the lyrics below, and we are hitting up most of the towns mentioned in the song.

Well if you ever plan to motor west
Travel my way, take the highway that’s the best
Get your kicks on Route 66

Well it winds from Chicago to LA
More than two thousands miles all the way
Get your kicks on Route 66

Well it goes to St. Louis
Down to Missouri
Oklahoma City looks oh so pretty

You’ll see Amarillo
Gallup, New Mexico
Flagstaff, Arizona
Don’t forget Wynonna
Kingman, Barstow, San Bernardino

Won’t you get hip to this kindly tip
And go take that California trip
Get your kicks on Route 66

Since we have internet access today, I’ve been busy uploading photos.  I brought both a point-and-shoot and my Canon DSLR on this trip.  The point-and-shoot is almost always with me, and the DSLR lives in the van during the day.  It usually only gets pulled out on days off and build days.

I’ve tried to be good about documenting this trip, but have found it to be difficult and sometimes frustrating.  I love photography, especially documentary photography—trying to capture the spirit of a person, place, or occasion in a series of still images.  I have to be in a separate mindset however, and find it hard to take good photographs while fully immersed in whatever it is I’m trying to photograph.  Thus, it’s hard for me to take photos while biking, or to try and capture what day-to-day life is like on this trip.

An added difficulty is that with my point-and-shoot, I feel like I have a limited and inadequate focal range.  Also, because of the delay between when the shutter button is pressed and the photo is actually captured, it’s hard to get good shots on the fly without people noticing.  I feel like it’s only good for posed shots.

My SLR is really my tool of choice, but it’s heavy, bulky, and expensive, so it doesn’t get to come with me on the bike.  Even if it did, I would have a hard time stopping to take photos.  When I’m on the bike, I just want to go.

I have more thoughts on the topic, but it’s getting late and I should be getting to bed.  This is actually the latest I’ve been up in a long while.

I have a bunch of albums on Facebook, and they should also be appearing on the Bike & Build website soon.

Right after my post about how scarce internet access is, we have another host location with internet access.

Today was one of the most fun riding days on the trip. As we were leaving Missouri behind and heading for Oklahoma (and passing through Kansas enroute), our wake-up music was, appropriately, from the musical Oklahoma and  “Carry On Wayward Son” by the band Kansas.  For breakfast, we got to go to a local family restaurant in Joplin, and were able to order off the menu.  Now, for those following along back home, that may not seem like a big deal, but for us, it is.  After many breakfasts of cereal or oatmeal, I really enjoyed the chance to have pancakes and eggs for a change.

The last few days of riding in Missouri have been long, but we’re finally getting a break with a few shorter days.  Today’s ride was 70 miles, and tomorrow should be in the 60-70 mile range.  We say that we ride an average of 70 miles a day, but the median is probably about 80 miles.  On these shorter days, everyone is much happier because we don’t feel as pressured to ride fast with few stops in order to arrive at the host at a reasonable hour.

Some highlights of the day include having almost the entire group stop to go swimming in a river (at 10am, nonetheless), taking photos in a giant field of sunflowers, and eating a massive amount of ice cream at lunch.

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.

This is a back-dated post.  I was responsible for posting to the trip journal on this day, so I’m posting the text of that post here.

After the craziness of the previous two days, today’s ride was the fun and relaxing ride that I (and I’m sure many other riders) needed. We had a century in store for us, but the terrain promised to be more forgiving than the previous couple of days. As we head further west, the heat becomes a greater and greater issue, so we try and hit the road early. However, when we woke up in the morning, it was cool and foggy outside, and it proved to mostly be a pleasant day, weather-wise.

Because it was such a long riding day, we had two lunches planned; one around mile 35 in Hartville, and another around mile 75 in Rogersville. I rode by myself at a relaxed pace for most of the day. When you spend every waking and sleeping moment with 30 other people for 2 months, after a while everyone needs their alone time, and as Kyle M. puts it, “your only private time is riding time.”

After first lunch, we rode through Amish country, and I followed behind a family in a horse cart for about half a mile before passing them. A few miles down the road, I stopped to take pictures of a huge field of hay bales, and the same family passed me. Once we reached the town of Seymour, however, I caught up with them again as they had “parked” the horse and cart at a McDonalds. I also took the opportunity to bike through the drive-in and get a small order of fries, something I’ve wanted to do since the beginning of the trip.

Right after the McDonalds, I turned onto US 60, which is a busy road with lots of truck traffic. Thankfully, there was a wide shoulder, but it wasn’t well paved. I also noticed dark clouds ahead, and started to hear thunder, so I pulled off the road and took shelter at an abandoned gas station while it rained. Once the thunder stopped, I got back on the road, but while the thunder had passed, the rain started up again, and I got rained on for a few miles.

Not too long afterwards, I arrived at second lunch in Rogersville, only to discover that Lenny and Allie had scored us some food donations, and so we had a huge tray of spaghetti bolognese and some Subway sandwiches. Most of the food had been eaten by the time I arrived, but I still managed to have a delicious bowl of spaghetti, which was much more appetizing than the PB&J sandwich I had been expecting.

I left second lunch with Emily and Lynn, and we rode together for the rest of the day. The last few miles before Springfield had some awesome rollers–hills with short steep descents that let you build up enough momentum to fling yourself up the next climb without having to pedal much, or even pedal at all.

Once in Springfield, we showered at our host location and had a delicious dinner prepared by our dinner crew. We had salad, chicken, and an awesome vegetarian stew. Nancy, who was from the Springfield Habitat chapter, provided us with the groceries, and also gave a short presentation about the great work the local Habitat chapter has been doing, and about the work we would be doing tomorrow, at the Blitz Build. But that’s another story, for whoever is doing tomorrow’s journal entry.