Idaho Falls, ID

It's been so long since I've posted, I don't even know where to start. There have been so many amazing rides since Denver. Between Estes Park and Grand Lake, CO, we got to ride through Rocky Mountain National Park on Trail Ridge Road, the highest paved road in the US at 12,183 feet! It was breathtaking. Literally, I couldn't breathe. The views were pretty good, too. I climbed with Ellen, James, and Janine. Reaching the top was kind of overwhelming, and emotions flowed. The remainder of the day consisted of a 4000 foot descent and a beautiful ride out of the park. Our 94 mile ride into Vernal, UT, was a mentally challenging day for many people, I think. I had a lot of trouble with the last 30 mile leg of the day. The next day into Flaming Gorge was absolutely incredible, but so physically demanding. I rode with Will for the steep climb all morning, and then met up with James, Andrew, Beau, Sonya, and Tony after lunch to finish out the day in the ridiculously hot gorge. Camping by the reservoir that night was pretty cool, and we got to "bathe" in the not-so-clean water. The ride into Jackson, WY, was one of the best days yet, with an easy 30 mile climb followed by 55 miles of mostly downhills through a beautiful canyon along the Hoback River. And then our day off the following day was another fantastic day. We spent the two mights in Jackson with Jim and Emily Ambler, who are perhaps the most wonderful and interesting people I've ever met. They let 30 strangers sleep in their garage, on their lawn, on their deck, even in their living room. They provided us breakfast, lunch, and coffee, and drove us into Grand Teton National Park to look for bison. Which we saw from extremely short distances! It was unbelievable. We went whitewater rafting on the Snake River that afternoon, thanks to Colin's awesome initiative. I may have strained a shoulder musle in the process, but it was totally worth it. Mary's parents so generously treated the entire group to an evening at Chuckwagon, where we enjoyed an authentic Wild West dinner and show.

Yesterday we left Wyoming with two mountain passes through the Tetons and entered Idaho, our second to last state. We've had two great days in Idaho Falls at the First Presbyterian Church, where the congregation and Habitat staff have been so welcoming and hospitable to us. After a build day this morning, I got to go running around the falls with Ellen and Will, which is a rarity that doesn't always feel good but that I always get excited about. Our route for tomorrow's ride is up in the air for the moment, as wild fires might throw us off course. We have already learned that roads in this area of the country are not so easy to come by. It could turn in to a very long day...

Denver, CO

Day off #2! And I really don't know what to do with myself. Free time is such a foreign concept to me these days. Eli arranged for a massage therapist to meet us in Denver today, so I got a killer massage with Diane this morning. She was awesome, and my legs really needed it. Yesterday was our second century of the trip. We camped out in Anton, CO, last night, after some confusion with last year's route. Apparently if we had stayed in Limon as planned, yesterday would have been a 140 mile day, so we adjusted. We were super efficient yesterday morning and left Anton by 6:30, which was necessary since we didn't get into Denver until later than usual. The morning was windy and hilly and the scenery never changed. It was a tough 42 miles by myself into first lunch. But I can't tell you how incredible it was to come up over a hill around mile 35 to see "LOOK!!" chalked on the road. I looked up to see the Rockies barely visible on the horizon. I think it was an emotional moment for everyone on the trip. After first lunch, I rode with a good group all the way into Denver. My total mileage for the day was 100.1. After showering at a nearby gym, we headed to the house of a local Habitat worker for dinner. Hands down the best burger I've ever eaten.

Tomorrow is a build day in Denver, and then we move on to Boulder on Wednesday. After that we'll begin climbing. I'm so excited to see the Rockies by bike, but it's obviously a little daunting. I don't think I could have asked for a better group of people to do this with, though. Our family is pretty amazing. :)

St. Francis, KS

Today is the first day of the second half of our trip. Kind of sad. To celebrate we turned today's ride into a scavenger hunt/contest to do the most awesome and weird things and take pictures along the way. My group was Ellen, James, and Beau. We rocked it. Some of my favorites are Ellen proposing to the Pepsi truck driver, Ellen and James trading uniforms with KDOT men on the side of the road, Sonya eating 5 PB&J sandwiches in 2 minutes and 11 seconds... among others. It was a pretty fun day.

Kansas is an awesome state. Not as flat everywhere as I thought it would be, but mostly gentle rolling hills, which are great for riding. The sky is huge here, and you can see storms coming from miles away. The morning was a little hilly, but it flattened out more after lunch. James and I cranked the last 14 miles, probably averaging 26 mph? He coached me on how to pedal more efficiently. My legs are shot now. Tomorrow we will get into Colorado! Exciting.

Manhattan, KS

Thank god for days off. We've essentially had 2 this week, and I needed them both. We had our first century ride last week, 105 miles into Kansas City, MO, on Wednesday. Hitting 100 was such a rush. I took a picture of my odometer for proof. It was a long day, but I don't think it was as hard as some of our other rides. We actually had a tailwind for some stretches, which was a new experience. I probably shouldn't get too used to that, though. Thursday was a build day, but there wasn't much for us to do because of the rain, so we cleaned up the Habitat warehouse for a few hours in the morning and had the afternoon off. I really liked the artsy area of Kansas City that we got to explore. Friday was a 50 mile day into Lawrence. I got my second flat tire of the trip just as we were about to pull out from lunch. How appropriate for Friday the 13th. I think there were 12 flat tires that day. Yesterday was another long day, and it was one of my hardest days yet. The first 35 miles to first luch were awesome. I pace lined with Emily, Lee, and Dylan and felt great. The next 30 miles into second lunch I cranked hard with James, Andrew, and Lee. I wore myself out and got a little dehydrated, so the last 25 miles were a struggle, but Emily stay with me and reminded me to drink water about every 2 minutes. We got into Manhattan by 2, so we had plenty of time to go shopping for our thrift store prom last night. We had a dance party in the basement of the church before going out looking pretty ridiculous. It was awesome. Today is our first day off, but we spent the morning cleaning up tornado damage. I've never seen anything like it. I'm so glad we were able to help out at least a little. Now we have free time until dinner at our host church. We've all come to realize that United Methodists are the most hospitable people in the world.

Jefferson City, MO

I had my first crash today while riding sweep in the rain with Lee. I tend to drift without realizing it, and had to overcorrect when I almost ran into the railing of a wooden bridge. My back wheel skidded and I wiped out. Lee then proceeded to do the exact same thing. So I learned that wood is slippery when wet, and we took every wooden bridge at about 4 mph for the rest of the day. I have some pretty nasty bruises now, but our bikes survived the crashes. I'm glad we were on the Katy Trail without cars and semis to run us over when we went down. Other than that it was a great day. Lee and I took a nap at our host site in Marthasville before heading out around 7:45 this morning. We caught up to Liz, Anne, James, and Kevin working on a flat tire. The six of us rode together for a while until we got to a trailside restaurant where we stopped for brunch. My bottomless coffee for 50 cents, fried okra, and cherry pie were freaking awesome. Apparently the $2 burgers were pretty incredible as well. The rest of the day was relatively uneventful. It rained on and off all day, but at least it wasn't as ridiculously hot as it was yesterday. There were a ton of flats today, but other than Kevin and George, they all got fixed before sweep caught up. We got to the Presbyterian Church in Jefferson City around 4:30, after getting a little lost on the way in, for a total of 70 miles.

Yesterday was one of my favorite days so far. We rode from St. Louis to Marthasville, which turned out to be only be 50 miles. The first 15 were on highways, so it was awesome to get onto the Katy Trail. It's a gravel path, but the scenery beautiful, the terrain was flat, and the trees broke the wind for us. We got to the church by 1 and had the whole afternoon to chill. After dinner a few of us went for a walk along the trail, and we got to go swimming off of a bridge about a mile and a half out. And the we ran (!) slash walked back. I was thrilled that this attempt at running was successful/pain free, even though running feels completely unnatural to me right now. After our walk we stopped to get hot dogs and watch a little league game before going back to the church. Great day.

St. Louis, MO

I never realized how much I love trees and hills until we biked across southern Illinois where there are none. The wind is absolutely out of control. There were a few times when I could barely break 10 mph going downhill. Riding in the wind in heavy traffic is terrifying, so I was really happy when we got off the roads and onto a bike trail along the Mississippi River today. Tornadoes/ridiculous thunderstorms hit around 2:30. I was riding with Will, Kevin, and Emily when we started seeing lightning across the entire sky and heard sirens going off. We immediately tried to camp out under a carport, but some guy came running over to tell us that the man that lives there is crazy and would probably shoot us, so we kept moving. We found a deserted warehouse that felt like a scene from a horror movie to hide out in until the storm passed. We rode through the rain for the rest of the day, which turned into 73 miles instead of the predicted 63. It was a pretty awesome day. We're staying at UMSL tonight and tomorrow. Anne and Tony are from St. Louis, and their parents provided us with a fantastic pasta dinner tonight and are hosting a pool party tomorrow after our build day. I love parents!

Bloomington, IN

Today was a great day. We only rode 40 miles, so we had a lot of down time. We stayed in Columbus, IN, last night, which has a lot of great modern architecture and art, including some Dale Chihuly at the visitors' center. I spent the morning on a quick tour led by Lee before heading out around 9 or 9:30. I rode with Sonya at a nice relaxed pace, as we are both tired after pushing pretty hard for 90 miles yesterday. Our lunch stop was in a tiny town called Nashville, where I had the most delicious steak sandwich ever made. Nashville is a really interesting art community with tons of craft shops. After exploring for a couple hours, Sonya, Beau, Eli, Will, and I started the last leg of the trip into Bloomington. When we got to the Indiana University campus, Sonya and I ran into Tony, and we took a detour to a fountain that was too inviting to pass by on such a hot day. I am exhausted today, I think the lack of sleep is catching up with me. So I spent a large part of the afternoon in a reclining chair watching movies, a luxury we rarely get to enjoy.

Cincinnati was a cool city. Saturday was a build day, so we had two nights there. On Friday a group of us went to the Reds/Braves game which was a lot of fun. And it was followed by the most incredible fireworks show I've ever seen. Our build day involved taking down a ton of scaffolding in the morning and putting up insulation in the afternoon. It felt like a pretty productive day. The 90 mile ride from Cincinnati to Columbus on Sunday was surprisingly good, despite the strong winds. I got to try pace lining some in the afternoon, but I never rode at the front of the line. I was kind of hanging on to the tail end of the group.. gotta work on that.

Bethel, OH

Last night we stayed at the United Methodist Church in Georgetown, OH. It was our second mail drop, and I got a great package of shot blocks and crosswords from my parents and some awesome cookies and other consumable treats from Emgo. I also got a card from the office and a letter from my secret saint at Covenant. Mail drops are so exciting. The church provided so much good food, which everyone probably ate way too much of. The homemade jam and biscuits at breakfast were my favorite. We're now en route to Cincinnati, where we will have our third build day tomorrow. It should be fun to stay in a bigger city for 2 nights.

In the last 2 days we have been able to ride through some beautiful parks and forests. On Wednesday we saw Wayne National Forest on the way to Portsmouth, OH, and yesterday morning we went through Shawnee State Forest, which I think might be my favorite ride yet. I've been really impressed with Ohio so far, as I'm sure I will be with every state we see.

Huntington, WV

After Blacksburg, we headed to Hinton, WV, crossing the state line around lunchtime. I rode by myself for most of the morning, which I actually enjoyed pretty well. It was peaceful and nice to go my own pace. I met up with Lee, Will, Tony, and Eli before lunch and rode with them the rest of the day (except Eli, who had some unfortunate luck with his chain. 3 times.) We got to go swimming in the Greenbrier River when we got to Hinton. It was freezing, but kind of refreshing. Like an ice bath. We woke up an hour early at 5 am on Sunday to get an early start on a long day. We rode 30 miles up and over mountain #1 before stopping for our first lunch. Then we rode 30 more miles up Bolt Mountain, which was killer. Apparently there were some inclines of 13%. The downhill after was fantastic, though. I hit 44.8 mph, it was awesome. We had our second lunch around 1 before finishing the day with 30 more miles into Madison, WV. The people in Madison are incredible. They not only provided us with places to sleep, but bought us an awesome dinner and breakfast, and washed our laundry, which is no small chore. We also received a few donations from random people who heard about what we're doing.

Today we got to sleep in until 7, which felt like such a luxury. We didn't leave Madison until 10:30 or so, after going out for breakfast. I got to ride with Ellen all day. It was a nice relaxing 60-mile day, and we didn't hit any real hills until the last 20 miles. Tonight we're staying at the First Presbyterian Church in Huntington, WV, which is a pretty big town compared to where we've been. We'll probably explore some tonight.

Blacksburg, VA

Today was the shortest day of riding we've had so far, 37 miles. We left Roanoke this morning and headed up over the continental divide to Blacksburg. The hills were tough, but not as bad as everyone was mentally prepared for. The scenery was beautiful. I really love the Appalachians. We got into Blacksburg early, before the van and trailer, so few of us stopped for coffee in the downtown area across from VA Tech's campus. We have the whole afternoon to ourselves, which I think is going to be a pretty rare thing this summer. We're staying at the Blacksburg YMCA/Thrift Store tonight. They provided some pretty awesome snacks for us this afternoon. Everyone we've encountered so far has been so generous and excited about what we're doing.. I love it.

I might write about the last week's adventures at some point, but probably not so I'll recap... We left VA Beach for Suffolk (50 miles) last Saturday after 2 days of orientation, and spent Sunday cleaning up and repairing tornado damage. Monday we rode 70 miles to Emporia, with the first half on the highway (not a good idea, don't ever do that). On Tuesday we moved on to Victoria, which was about 60 miles, and we began to see some hills towards the end. Wednesday we really started getting into the foothills on the way to Lynchburg, where we put sheetrock up in a Habitat house. On Friday we rode to Roanoke. I was on sweep with Joe, which went smoothly after some confusion with the directions around Bedford. Everything is absolutely as awesome as I hoped.