The Ozarks & Oklahoma

I drove the van from Little Rock to Clarksville which was kind of a bummer because it was our first century. I felt I missed out, but I was still able to get some riding in. Our route took us over the “Big Dam Bridge” which is a bike/pedestrian only bridge crossing the Arkansas River. I drove to the other side and got my bike out so I could ride over the bridge and meet up with everyone to ride back over it with them. It is either the longest or one of the longest bike path bridges in North America so I was glad I at least got that part of the ride in.

The First Presbyterian Church in Clarksville was a great host site. We had another huge pot luck dinner full of amazing dishes; there was a creamy chip dip with corn, green onions, cheese, & a bunch of other things that was a highlight before the meal. Afterwards we went to the Marci the pastor’s house so I could light some fireworks I picked up at a stand across the street from our second lunch stop. I couldn’t believe how cheap everything was so I ended up loading up on some big mortar shells along with roman candles & bottle rockets.

The ride into Fayetteville was awesome and made up for missing the first century. It was 92 miles so I decided to take some detours so I could join the century club as well. A couple of other riders did the same thing so they could say that they did back to back 100 mile days. Our ride took us through the Ozarks which was reminiscent of the Appalachians, but not quite as grueling. We were a little intimidated by the sign at the base which said the roads were “Crooked & Steep for the next 20 miles”, but they weren’t quite so bad. There were some cool switch backs however; we realized when we heard a semi that had past us a few minutes prior driving on another mountain slope about 300 ft above us and a few hundred yards to our left.

Fayetteville is home to the University of Arkansas and was a pretty cool town. Seeing all the Razorback’s apparel around made me think of the Capitol One Bowl game Luke & I went to where Wisconsin played Arkansas. We were treated to yet another pot luck dinner thanks to the members of the First Christian Church; Arkansas took good care of us, we were served breakfast and dinner every day we spent in the state.

Our ride out of Fayetteville was a ton of fun. The roads were great all day and we got to cross two state lines. We were on a road that ran the Oklahoma / Arkansas State line for about 10 miles, so we could cross into the left lane and be in Oklahoma, then cross back into Arkansas. That road lead us to Missouri, which we rode in for 9 miles before we crossed into Oklahoma for good. We got a lot of good pictures, and even though we got rained on for about 20 minutes, we all had a great time.

Our first night in Oklahoma was in Grove. The United Methodist Church we stayed at had a great view of the Grand Lake O’ the Cherokees. I rode down to go swimming with Maura, Renee, & Devon which was nice. I got to swim some more before dinner because our host Randy brought us to a camp site on the lake that he and his family manages. They grilled out for us which was great. The water level in the lake was about 7 feet over normal level, (it seems to be that way everywhere), so we found a tree in the water we could climb up and jump into the lake. We caught a great view of the sun setting over the lake from the church as well.

The next morning we were delayed by some bad weather. We entertained ourselves after breakfast by throwing the football around and playing ping pong. We even got a few more games of around the world in. I drove the van again, but I wasn’t too upset about it today. It was really windy today and the only roads we could take were not cyclist friendly. Every one made it in OK, but some people were kind of rattled.

Bartlesville was a great town to have our day off in. Our host Leon and all the other people at the Church of Christ were great. We were well fed and even had a personal escort, Andy, who drove us around town. We all went out last night because it was Rachel’s birthday. A few of us guys decided to do some facial art with our beards we’ve been working on for the last month, something that seems to always lead to a fun night; last night was no exception.

Today was nice too. I went into town with a few other riders, courtesy of a ride from Andy, and we saw some of the sites Bartlesville has to offer. We first stopped at the Phillips museum, which is dedicated to the history of the Phillips 66 oil company which was started in Bartlesville. It was pretty interesting but the highlight of the day was lunch at the top of the Price building, the only sky scraper designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. It was really unique, not that we excepted anything less, but the food was also fantastic.

Tomorrow we’ll be fed by the church members here again then be on our way to Ponca City. We have 8 consecutive riding days coming up ending with the big 124 mile day into Colorado Springs. Hopefully everyone holds up fighting the winds of the Great Plains, working together will definitely become more important as wind becomes a more consistent factor. Not sure if I’ll have internet until I get to Colorado Springs so my next entry may be a while.

By the way, we got on the news in Little Rock. Go check it out at
http://www.todaysthv.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=67784&catid=2
http://arkansasmatters.com/content/fulltext/news/?cid=75211
Look for me, I'm wearing a bright pink hard hat.

Little Rock is awesome: who knew?!?

We just got done with our second build day in Little Rock and it has been a blast here. Little Rock is a really pretty town, with tons of things to see and do. We actually had a tail wind coming in and arrived early on Tuesday even though it was almost a 70 mile day, Dennis Plato & I got here by 11:15. We've been staying at a Presbiterian church right in the middle of downtown which has been great. We're within walking distance of everything and the people here have taken great care of us. The Minister here, Flash, has been a fun host and Scott the organist/cook has prepared fantastic meals for us every morning and night since we got here, we're kind of spoiled by now. Anyway, after showering with a hose in the church parking lot with some other riders, I walked up to the riverwalk area with some people to get a bite to eat. I ate kind of a discusting amount of chinese food without even slowing down, then I watched another rider eat the biggest burrito I had ever seen in my life; it looked like a baby wrapped in a blanket, no joke. We wondered around a little more and made it back to the church for our weekly affordable housing meeting. I went to see Indiana Jones afterwards with some other people then went to bed; some people didn't wait until after the movie and slept through more than half of it, can't say I blame them.

Yesterday we split up and half of us went to a site where a prefabricated house built in a church parking lot had been moved and was waiting to be dropped onto its foundation while the other half did some work in the Habitat Restore. We did some prepwork setting anchor bolts for the exterior walls, cleaned up debri from around and under the house, and did some work preparing a car port. Nothing too exciting but we got done early which left some more time to explore.

A few of us walked up to the Bill Clinton Presidential Library which was cool. It's right next to the Heifer International Center, which is supposedly one of the most environmentaly friendly buildings on the planet. I made it back to the church in time to get a good nap in to prepare for a fun night out.

After a great dinner, we all took the trolly to a minor league baseball game courtesy of Julie with Habitat, she got us all free tickets and even got us mentioned on the big screen a few times. We had a tone of fun together at the game and had even more fun going out afterwards. We headed down to the river walk area and went to a few bars and ended up at this great deuling piano bar. The pianists were great and the atmosphere was loads of fun; they even did gangster rap at the end of the night, it was pretty funny.

This morning some of us, including myself, were kind of dragging from the night before. We didn't have a normal build day today, were were more like "Bike & Destroy" than "Bike & Build". We were tearing down a house set to be demolished and saving wood trim, appliances, fixtures, anything that Habitat for Humanity could resell in the Restore. It was kind of fun gutting a house, but I definately prefer building something rather than the opposite, especially when we have to take it apart in a way we can save the pieces. Taking a sledge hammer to everything might have been exciting, but no one would benefit from that. We had another great dinner tonight prepared by Scott, and have one more breakfast from him to look forward to tomorrow. We have our first century tomorrow into Clarksville, 104 miles. Unfortunately I'm due to drive the van so I'll be the only one on the trip who hasn't ridden a century by the end of the day. Oh well, we have plenty more before the summer is over.

One more thing, my mom has been updating me on what is going on back home with the flooding and sending me pictures from the gazzette web site. I hope all is as well as it can be. On a lighter note, I looked at most of the pictures of the most recent Rest Lake weekend, WOW! Glad you guys had fun and I wish I could have been there.

Memphis, Bike & Build style

So we just finished with our day off and I have to say that Memphis has become one of my new favorite towns. Beale St on a Saturday nights feels like Madri Gras. We had a relatively short ride in to the Methodist church we stayed at in Germantown, an eastern suburb of Memphis. After arriving, we played some basketball in the gym, showered up, and too a nap in preparation for a long night out. About 20 of us shuttled downtown in cabs which was kind of a hassle, but it got us there. A few of us tried out the local hot spot for BBQ, Rendezvous. I'm confident in saying I had the best ribs, BBQ sandwich, and baked beans that I've ever had; the hype definitely was not misleading.

After a filling dinner we started walking towards Beale St, but took a pit stop at a mall to get cash from an ATM, and it turned into an ice cream stop as well. Beale street was crazy. There were almost as many neon lights as the strip on Las Vegas, and the whole street was closed off to cars. Each bar had a stand outside so you could just buy a beer and walk down the street. There were some street performers doing acrobatics in the street, they were amazing. They did gymnastics style back flips down the street and finished with some serious air, they were above everyone's heads on the street for most of them. I tried to attach a video to the blog, hopefully it works.

We ran into the rest of the group who didn't go to Rendezvous shortly after getting there which was nice. We made our rounds between the bars and ended up all together at one small bar that we pretty much took over with our own dance party.

We got a late start the next day, and some of us made a trip to the "Exotic Italian Sports Car Show", which was a fundraiser for Habitat for Humanity. It was cool to see some of the cars, and it was nice to meet the people with Habitat that I had been talking to. They have applied for a grant from us so it was nice to put some faces to the application, and they helped us get dinner from the Macaroni Grill that night so it was also nice to thank them in person.

Our ride out of Memphis was an interesting one. There are two bridges that cross the Mississippi there, and they're both interstates. There was a walkway on the I-55 bridge, but we still had to jump on the shoulder for about 3/4 of a mile after crossing over to get to where we needed to go. No one likes getting onto the interstate on a bike, but the only other option would have added about 40 miles to the day. After crossing into Arkansas, we ditched the hills of Tennessee behind for some flat ground, but we had our first day with a consistently strong headwind. It was kind of demoralizing for everyone, but we rode in groups more so than we had in the mountains which helps get through the wind.

We arrived in Brinkley, AR to a warm welcome from the 1st United Methodist Church. They fed us a great dinner and were really excited to meet us. They're giving us a full breakfast tomorrow too which will be nice. Our next stop is Little Rock and we have 2 build days there which should be fun.

Rolling through the hills of Tennessee

Well I’ve fallen behind on my blog entries again, no surprise. We’re coming up on the end of my first week that I organized so I’ve been really busy trying to keep everything flowing smoothly. It’s been pretty draining since my second day we got somewhat lost. I had us taking a bunch of back roads to stay off the main highway going into Dunlap, and it was really nice until the intersections stopped having street signs on them. We got way off the cue sheet more than once, but at least I was in the front group and knew which general direction we needed to go so I was able to get us to where we needed to go, we left chalk directions for everyone behind us.

We stayed in Army National Guard Armories in Sweetwater & Dunlap. It was pretty fun but the AC in Sweetwater was broken and it was unbearably hot that day. We went to Pizza Hut for dinner using a gift card mom left me, (Thanks Mom). They gave us some extra pizzas for free too so we had left overs and it was really nice to eat in an air conditioned building. When we got to Dunlap after being lost a few times, we were relieved to find that their air conditioning was working. SSG McClendon & Donald were our hosts there and they were a lot of fun. They hung around with us until about 5:00 to joke around and get us all set up with cots.

Our ride from Dunlap to Sewanee was awesome. We rode up Daus Mountain Road, which brought us up a 1,500 ft climb over about 3 or 4 miles. It was really hard but everyone was happy to have done it when it was over. I couldn’t make it without stopping, I’m too heavy for a climb like that and could have benefited from a few more gears. I never thought I would be in my lowest gear, standing, working as hard as I could, and only be doing about 4 mph. I tried to capture how steep it was with some pictures, but besides looking down at the switchbacks, nothing really serves it justice.

The rest of the ride was rolling hills, but no big downhill, which made the big climb a little disheartening. Sewanee is a great town and the University of the South Campus is beautiful. We camped out on Lake Cheston just off campus, and we got to go swimming which was really nice. Myself and three other riders rode our bikes out to an overlook where we could see the valley below Sewanee and get a preview of our descent the next day.

We were hosted for dinner by the Monteagle Sunday School Assemble, which is kind of like a summer camp for families in a town 8 miles East of Sewanee. That happened because one of the women involved with the Assemble has a daughter who did the Southern US ride in 2006, so she contacted us wanting to feed us. We had a great dinner and a great time with all the residents there. They loved us and everyone wanted to be more involved next year. It sounds like next years group will get to stay in the Inn there and in people’s houses, I’m kind of jealous but I’m happy to be a part of what made that connection.

Coming out of Sewanee we had a great downhill run right away (finally reaping the benefits from the climb the day before). Some Sewanee locals took us along some great back roads for the first 20 miles, it added a couple of miles to the trip but it was well worth it. It was really nice to ride as a big group again and to get to know some of the locals. After parting ways with our guides, I had us on some nice back roads until lunch. I eventually brought the route back to the main highway because I didn’t want to repeat the trip into Dunlap and get everyone lost again, but in retrospect I should have gone for it because highway 64 sucks to ride on, its basically an interstate.

That ride brought us to Pulaski, TN; a phenomenal host site. The Mayor got us set up in the student housing for Martin Methodist College and hosted us all for dinner at his house. We got to swim in his pool and he even helped Travis & I cannon ball some innocent bystanders next to the pool. There were tons of Pulaski residents there and the food was awesome. Something else that made my day was after we all went around telling everyone who we were and where we went to school, one of the local women there started twirling her fingers in her hair and said, "yea well i got an astrophysics degree from the University of Indiana, and I'm an astronaut on the weekends..." and kept going like a character on Saturday Night Live. I might have been the only one that got it but it really made me laugh. Everyone there was extremely hospitable and helpful; we all felt at home and had a great time.

I drove the van coming out of Pulaski. I made some last minute decisions the night before to change the route and get us off of highway 64. I was kind of freaked out about it because some of the roads on the map looked really sketchy and I wasn’t sure what the conditions would be like. It was a good thing I drove the van; I went ahead with a map and ended up chalking a different route after finding that about 95% of the roads on the map were gravel or peoples driveways. It worked out really well because the roads that I ended up putting everyone on were a cyclists dream. Recently paved, scenic, decent tree cover for shade, and almost no traffic.

We came to Adamsville that night and got another mail drop. Everyone got a lot of mail this time, myself included; it took 4 trips to the van carrying mail to get everything, I even used a dolly for one of them. We stayed at a Methodist church there; they fed us and were really nice.

Today we had a short ride into Bolivar. We were on highway 64 all day which kind of sucked, but it wasn’t as bad as it was in some areas a few days ago. The church hosting us tonight is really nice. There are lots of rooms to sleep in and the youth director Chris who I have been talking to made us dinner and even brought his Nintendo Wii in for us to play, which has been a lot of fun for everyone. Tomorrow we wide into Memphis and will have our first day off since we started. I can’t wait and I know everyone else feels the same way.

Climbing Mountains

So I've kind of slacked a little bit in my blog entries, but we've had some seriously challenging riding days in the last week. We've been climbing mountains for 4 ride days in a row now. We've figured that yesterday was the toughest day of the whole trip, we went through two mountain passes and still put on almost 80 miles, (see my "final preparations/realizations" entry to see the route profile for yesterday). I really don't know how to explain to people just how much we've been climbing these last few days, I was told more than once to not underestimate the Appalachian Mountains, now I know why. I've spend about 90% of the last three riding days geared out, either in my absolute lowest gear crawling at 7-10 mph, or my highest gear cruising at 35-45 mph.



We've still been spoiled by all our hosts, we've only been on our own for dinner one night so far. In Winston-Salem we stayed at a church one of the riders family attends (he's from there). Riding in I was with a group which included a NC native who took us off the route into Old Salem to check out the cobblestone streets and go to a well known bakery. We got some sugar cake and it was about the best thing I ever tasted.

Taylorsville was alot of fun, but it was a tough ride coming in. It was really hot that day and alot of big rolling hills. Me and one of the other faster riders decided to get to the host site as fast as we could after lunch and were making great time until I got a flat on the bottom of one of the bigger inclines. That kind of took the wind out of our sails and killed our momentum. There was no shade and it seemed to take forever to fix, but it was the first flat I've gotten on my bike so I shouldn't complain too much. I ran out of water before reaching town and got pretty dehydrated so I was hurting pretty bad when we finally rolled into the host site, but I soon felt better after getting some more water in me. We stayed at a Baptist church that hooked us up at the local pool which was unbelievably nice after such a long hot day. They had a great dinner for us and there was a grand piano on the stage in the gym so me and one of the other riders who plays performed a bunch of songs. They even gave us mics which connected to the gymnasium sound system.

I drove the van to Alamont (Newland) the next day, and it was a good day to do it. It was our first big climb day, which I was sad to miss, but the road going up the mountain was under construction and miserable to ride. We did get to the Blue Ridge Parkway about halfway through the day which is gorgeous, but we had plenty of more miles on it so I wasn't too sad to miss the portion that day. We stayed at a little church in the middle of grazing fields, it was really nice and they fed us a great dinner and breakfast the next day.

The ride into Asheville was definitely the best of my life. We were on the Blue Ridge Parkway for over 70 miles. The climbs were epic, the descents were extreme, and the views were too good for me to really capture them with my camera. I couldn't stop smiling while taking my first long decent, it was about 8 miles longer than any other downhill ride I've done. We stayed at the YMCA in Asheville and had a build day so we were there for two nights. We utilized the hot tub and pool not long after arriving. Our first night the parents of two of our riders hosted us for dinner and it was great. Their house was amazing (on top of a mountain) and the food was great. Our second night we were hosted by Volvo, which was less than a 5 minute walk from the YMCA. They had an awesome BBQ dinner lined up for us, everyone stuffed there faces and loved everything. Peter Causer was the main organizer of the event and gave us a very entertaining presentation in their auditorium. He said some very nice things about me and Ryan Inc to the group which was touching, and presented me with an amazing Volvo Racing Jersey. Its got American Flags on the shoulders and is simply awesome. I really wanted to wear it the next day, but we have a policy about wearing our Bike & Build Jerseys so I decided to set a good example and stick to that. We're having a ride with some locals in Maryville after our build day tomorrow and I'm definitely braking it in during that. We were also all hooked up big time by Josh Reddoch with Cane Creek. They are a big bike component producer located in Asheville and they heard about us through Peters efforts. Josh provided every rider on the trip with ThudBuster seatposts and armwarmers. The seatposts have a hinged suspension system in them and are great for keeping long rides more comfortable. They retail at over $150 so it was an incredible gesture towards us, we still can't believe it. I didn't have a chance to switch it out that night, but tried it out today and so far really like it.

I already talked about our ride out of Asheville, epic is the only word that can describe it. We rode to a tourist town called Gatlinburg. It was the funniest little mountain town; there were two Riply's museums, indoor blacklight mini golf, go carts, a haunted house, any major tourist restaurant like the Hard Rock, and endless souvenir shops. We were on our own for dinner that night and alot of us went to a Mexican restaurant, then explored the town. We couldn't get over some of the stuff we saw, the T-shirts in some of the stores just can't even be explained. They all seemed to talk about Jesus and they were all more corny than any other shirt I've ever seen, but I don't think most of them were suppose to be that way. That might not be a great explanation but its the best I can do.

The ride today was a short one so we all slept in. I was riding weep so I had to stay behind everyone. There was one climb in the beginning, it might have been really hard a week ago but after the last few days, I hardly even noticed it. The majority of the rest of it was downhill and followed a Mountain river, it was really cool. We're in Maryville TN tonight and will have 2 work days with Habitat. We're staying in dorms and I totally lucked out and got my own room so I'm not really looking forward to leaving. Anyway, I have to wake up in a little over 5 hours to get ready for our build day so I'm calling it a night. Sorry I've been lazy about my blogging to those keeping track of me and thank you for those who have made comments, its nice to hear from you. We also had a mail drop today and I was overwhelmed with the stuff I got. Thank you so much to those of you who sent me thinks, (Jackie, Erin, and of course Mom & Dad) it was much appreciated.