We made it to Washington

Yesterday we crossed our last state line into Washington. We were on a bike path so we didn't get a chance at the state sign for pictures which was sad. We had a short ride yesterday so we decided to have some fun and have a scavenger hunt which included things like dancing with strangers and finding the largest leaf. My team didn't do very well, but it was still fun. The most entertaining part was the singing category where you had to make up a song for the judges. Some of them were very good. Today we rode to Wilbur (the town not the pig from Charlotte's Web). We're camping tonight and tomorrow we head to Omak where Kristian (aka corporate) will return to our route and ride the rest of the way in to Seattle.


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Location:W Main Ave,Wilbur,United States

Idaho, a vacation destination

I had no idea that Idaho was so beautiful. We arrived yesterday in Wallace, Idaho where they filmed Dante's Peak (staring Pierce Brosnan). It was a cute town with some mines you could tour nearby. It was weird to have a day off from riding but still change location. Today we had a really easy ride to Coeur d'Alene. There is a mountain pass between Wallace and Coeur d'Alene, but it would have required us to get on the interstate again so we shuttled from lunch which was at mile 30 to the other side of the 4th of July pass and had only 6 miles on the other side. So it was a really wasy day with most of it spent on bike trails. We spent the afternoon at the beach swimming in the lake and wandering around town. Tomorrow we have our last build day of the trip. It's wild to think we're almost there.


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Location:E Wallace Ave,Coeur d'Alene,United States

Montana is Beautiful

I now understand why people live in Montana. It really is very beautiful. We have had some fabulous views during our rides worthy of being on a postcard or displayed on your wall. Two days ago we had our second to last build day in Missoula. We were working in a development called Potter Park where all the streets were named after things or people in Harry Potter. It was pretty cool and Paige would have been going crazy there since she was absolutely obsessed with Harry Potter. There are a few streets I saw where I didn't know where the name came from and I'm sure she would have been able to tell me instantly. We did a lot of different projects at the build site. There were three houses being worked on so we were doing everything from drywall (again) to priming, which was what I was doing. Missoula was very pleasantly surprising. It turns out to be extremely bike friendly and overall a pretty cool place to be. I wrote the journal entry for the Bike & Build website for our day into Lincoln so you can read that to learn more about that day (it will be posted here: http://bikeandbuild.org/rider/route.php?route=P2S&year=2010). Yesterday we had an interesting ride into Superior, MT because we had to spend a few small sections on I-90. The first section was fine because we had a giant shoulder and the speed limit is only 5mph higher than on the other roads we've been on. The second section had several bridges where we pretty much lost the shoulder that were a lot more exciting. Because of the uneasiness the interstate caused yesterday we are shuttling today to Wallace, ID. We would have had to be on the interstate for over 30 miles going up a mountain. I think it was a good decision and I'm perfectly happy to spend as little time on I-90 biking as possible. To be clear it is legal to bike on the interstate out here if it is the only way from A to B.

Teton Pass conquered

Today we started our day with a sweet climb up Teton Pass. I really thought I was going to have a lot of trouble with it and would have to walk up some of it. I didn't walk at all although I did stop a lot. It would have taken about the same amount of time to walk and I know this because there was a man with his dog (who was very well behaved) who started at pretty much the same time and finished at about the same time. We kept leap frogging each other up the mountain. At the top we had snacks and a dance party and lots of pictures. We also cheered on other cyclists at the top. One guy we cheered on twice because he was climbing Teton Pass three times today. The decent was really nice and not nearly so scary as I thought it would be. We had a tail wind before lunch and it was really flat. After lunch we got some head winds and some rolling hills. Overall it was a really nice ride with relatively low traffic.

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Location:Mesa Falls Scenic Byway,Ashton,United States

Back in the saddle

Today's ride from Dubois to Jackson was a success. It was a beautiful day and I was worried about getting up the mountain on our route but as it turned out we didn't have to climb much of it because they are doing construction so we had to ride up in the back of a pickup truck. We had some very nice views of the Tetons on our decent and I'm pretty sure my mouth was hanging open the entire way down in awe of what I was seeing. It's remarkable that I didn't swallow a bunch of bugs. For the rest of the afternoon we biked toward the Tetons and they got bigger and bigger until we were pretty much right next to them. I felt like the view was wasted on all the people zooming past in cars not even bothering to stop and take it in. I really like being on my bike because I feel like I get so much more time to see things.

Yesterday we had a shake down ride in preparation for today. I had replaced my tires so I was riding brand new Gatorskins. 7 miles into the ride my rear tire exploded. The sidewall had blown out. I'm going to send it back to the company since it really must have been a manufacturing defect. This is at least the fourth Gatorskin that has has the sidewall fail on this trip and it has always been on nearly new tires. I loved my old set of Gatorskins because I hadn't had a single flat on them yet, which would lead you to ask why I replaced them at all and to that I have no good answer. I even thought I would get a flat with the new ones because so many other people had had problems with them. I should have just saved myself the trouble and not bothered replacing them until I actually got a flat. I've learned my lesson although the new tire on the front is holding up just fine so far. Hopefully I haven't jinxed myself by saying that.

Tomorrow we tackle Teton pass which apparently has up to a 13% grade. I'm a little intimidated and my only real goal is to make it to the top even if I have to walk a little.

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Location:Seneca Ln,Jackson,United States

The journey continues

This was written yesterday but i was unable to post it.

Today we are headed back to Chadron from Lincoln and tomorrow we will catch up with our route in Dubois, Wyoming to ride on Friday into Jackson. It was really good to get to go to St. Louis. We stayed in the dorms at Washington University so we all got real beds. A number of people from Paige's trip last year came and stayed in the dorms too. Usually it's really awkward when two Bike & Buils trips meet but it really wasn't so bad. It was good to hear stories about Paige from people who knew her in similar circumstances but had different experiences with her. The memorial service on Monday was nice. I forget at times about how short the time was that I knew Paige. Hearing stories about Paige from her high school days and from her childhood was really neat because the same spirit we all saw and loved has been there forever. Paige knew who she was and wasn't afraid to be herself. Caring, intelligent, spontaneous, creative, wonderfully odd, and so much more that was her.


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For Paige

So as most of you probably know by now one of our group leaders, Paige, was struck and killed by a truck three days ago. It was an accident and no one did anything wrong. If you want to know more about it you can go to the Bike & Build website at bikeandbuild.org. Paige was an incredible person who had an incredible zest for life. I know I am a better person for having known Paige. My plan as of now is to continue on with the trip, which I know is something that many of you probably don't want me to do but I feel like I need to in order to heal. I don't know yet if I'll be able to get back on my bike, but I do intend to try. Tomorrow we are starting our trip to St. Louis for the memorial service which is taking place on Monday. After the memorial service we will return to Chandron, NE where we have been the past couple days and skip ahead in our route to Wyoming so we are where we are supposed to be. We will still make it to Seattle on time.

Today we were originally going to go to Mt. Rushmore but we scrapped those plans in favor of helping clean up in Chadron after a nasty hail storm blew through yesterday and a tornado touched down on the other side of town in a trailer park. We spent the day cleaning up yards and fixing windows. It was good to be able to go out and do something for the community after they have been so great to us.

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Location:Lake St,Chadron,United States