Bike and Blog - Keep on Cranking

I can't believe the trip is already more than half over. I wasn't able to blog for way too long, so here's a bit of recap since the fourth of July.

  

I got to celebrate America’s birthday in West Lafayette, IN. It was a lot more crowded than I imagined it would be. It took forever for the festivities to begin. Every so often we’d hear a few loud bangs and we’d get excited, but it was just the locals shooting off their own handheld explosives. I got 30 mosquito bites on my scalp, which was half as bad as the ones I had in between my fingers and on my eyelid. Sucks. But I’ll lose a little blood for America any day.

 

The past few hosts have been phenomenal. I’m still elated to see how wonderful Americans can be. I wish life was like Bike & Build, and the citizens of the world just went around helping one another. Everything would be so much easier.

I had cranberry French toast from one host, breakfast pizza at another, and macaroni and cheese that had been laced with chicken, Velveeta, onions, and something else that made my tongue do the tango. Until the past few days, ice cream had given me the most variety on this trip, but the hosts have been stepping it up. I’m worried because I know most hosts won’t be this awesome, but I’ll roll with that punch when it’s thrown.

My buddy JoBeth came out for our ride into Hartford City, IN (which was my first century!) woot. I thought she was going to hold me back, but she pleasantly surprised me. We went faster than I normally do, keeping up a steady 18-20 mph pace for most of the trip. Then she took me out to ice cream at Ivanhoe’s, which definitely takes the cake…err…cream for best ice cream on the trip. Their menu was a jumbled bunch of happy hullabaloo. I got tiger tails, which was frosted flakes, crushed whopper candy, peanut butter and hot fudge smothered generously over vanilla soft serve…………..it was………it was…….G....R…E….A…T.  My favorite day of the trip so far.

West Lafayette also featured us in their newspaper, the Journal and Courier. Even though they misquoted me, they did take my picture so that was cool.

We spent our first day off at a Lake house that was phenomenal. I tried water skiing, played a few games, and read a ton. The host was super nice and gave me some awesome advice about life that I can't wait to apply. 

We sped through Illinois in no time, and the terrain was flat. It made a bunch of memories from my time in AmeriCorps/Chicago flood back, but it was good stuff.

We made it to Iowa and had another day off, this time in Marshalltown, and my best buddy Erin came to visit. We went to the lamest fair ever! Then we hightailed it to Matchstick Marvels, got some smoothies, got lost, explored a sculpture garden, and ate at Perkins before wrapping things up with World War Z. Overall an awesome day that I wish could happen all the time.

Today was a build day that trumped all other build days. We finally got to put up some framing! I helped put the flooring up and we all lifted up the walls. Awesome moment. Got to meet the habitat family for the first time as well, so it was cool working side by side with the guy that will be living in the home. The lunch they had was spectubular and I can't wait until dinner. We even got to go to an aquatic center that had a super tall slide. I got a sweet video of the team performing some synchronized swimming, but video won't work on here. Sorry. Future Facebook.

Forgot to mention Christmas in Juliowa, but there was too much involved to elaborate...the pictures will have to speak for me.

Welp that's all I have for so thanks for listening with your eyes. Just shoot me an email if you want to see more pics of if you want some of the video. 

Bike and Blog - Sometimes Build Days Are Break Days

By "Break Days" I mean destroy! Our last build day was done at a Habitat home that was being renovated for a second family, which is rare, so the demo work we did there didn't seem likely to happen again. But the wheels of fate know how happy I get when I get to disassemble, cut, chop, tear and smash things up. Our fourth build day involved a lot of dirt and gravel moving for most of the team, but a few lucky others and I were able to smash up some concrete. Now, I know building is ultra important when it comes to creating a house, but sometimes destroying things is really what you need to do.

My group was given a sledgehammer and a goal: destroy. We started with a few large chunks of concrete that were littered among our mound of dirt. That was probably the most fun since the task was relatively easy. The building site manager decided that he wanted us to tear up the sidewalk as well. That's right, you read correctly, the sidewalk. You know, that line of cement slabs four to six inches deep that sensible people use jackhammers to break up? Well we got to use a sledgehammer. We probably only got through a solid three blocks, but we had a blast crushing stuff. Our supervisor said the concrete would have to be torn up because of all the cracks, so it wasn't like we were just destroying it to destroy it, we did had a purpose.

At first we just sort of switched from one person to the next, taking turns whacking away at the tan obstacles. But soon Emily thought it would be a grand idea to do one minute smash sprints, which devolved into 45 second smash sprints, which evolved into bang the sidewalk as many times as you have letters in your name, which mutated to include acronyms, which transformed into freestyle rap sessions. Wish I had it on tape for you guys, but I don't. Hope you enjoy the pictures though.

Hank, one of the Habitat guys, bought us all pizza for lunch and Habitat has provided our dinners which have been awesome so far. Thanks Habitat!

BTW our building site manager, Keith, was awesomely funny.

Last night we did end up hitting the Oregon District in Dayton, which was cool. A local bar had karaoke so it was funny to watch the team get on stage and make strangers smile as hard as we all did. There's a video but blogger wouldn't upload it so sorry. If you want to see some karaoke videos, just let me know and I'll email them to you or something.

Welp that's all I have for today. Good day, and tomorrow we have a 90+ mile day. The longest we've done so far so wish us luck. Thanks for listening with your eyes. Enjoy the pictures.

Bike and Blog - Flat Means Fast

Hooray I get to blog two days in a row. Can't believe how fortunate I am. Today was a lot smoother than yesterday, even though we biked about 79 miles and yesterday was only 55 or so. We've finally made it into the flat portion of our trip. At least I think we're here, it sure would be dreadful (who says dreadful anymore) if we were teased with flat and then mountains mountains mountains popped back up again.

I was all over groups today, riding with at least three separate clusters, but overall I did most of my riding with Chris, Danielle and Mike. Also had some good chit chat time with Zoe! She's awesome btw. Almost the entire day was spent on bike paths, so we didn't really worry too much about traffic, though every once and a while we had to scoot around a pedestrian.

Yesterday two Bike and Build Alums donated two gallon (or more) tubs of ice cream from a local ice cream shop. We got to eat them at lunch today and it was soo good. I've been screaming shouts of happiness from all the ice cream, but if I don't scream first the song doesn't work as well. The two flavors were pistachio honey and rainbow frozen yogurt (pistachio honey is displayed).

We stayed at Sinclair community college for the night, and the showers were as communal as normal. On the bright side, they had a workout room where we're sleeping so I was able to workout! Got to do some pullups but my number went down sooo low. Maxed out at 30 and now I'm barely pushing past 15. Heart breaking. They also had a rope we could climb and at least I could do that.

We may or may not go out tonight, so I won't get to blog about all the hullabaloo we wreak across the town, but you can pretend I'm rolling around and creating random flash-karaoke mobs in Downtown Dayton (where we're staying btw).

Tomorrow is a build day so I may even get a chance to blog three days in a row! Cray cray. Welp that's all I got for now, so enjoy the random graffiti I came across under a bridge, and thanks for listening with your eyes!

Bike and Blog - A Day in the Life...Finally

Totally been slacking on blogging, but I finally had time and access (partially because I was in charge of the journal for my team today, so I wrote that and incorporated a lot of copy and paste action) to write a post about my day. So here ya go. Just FYI, I did sweep today (which means no riders were allowed to be behind me).

Today’s 55 miles were riddled with complications. The day started normally, though my sweep partner Emily gave me the heads-up that her bike issues might slow down our ride. About 11 miles in, one of her spokes popped and we had to pull off to wait for the support van. Despite the bad situation, Emily and I exchanged stories and stayed cheery.


When Chris arrived in the van, music thumping, he hopped out and into his chamois. He’d been itching to ride anyway, so he was more than willing to trade places with Emily since her bike was out of order at the moment. Chris and I resumed the ride, traveling another eight miles to lunch. Another rider, Danielle, was having problems with flats, and was patching her tube when we arrived. She finished within a few minutes and left with our teammate Mike.


After a quick lunch Chris decided to change his seat, but to his horror discovered the screw thread had been stripped, rendering his bike out of order as well. He was forced to van himself, leaving me to try and sweep all by my lonesome.


About 15 miles from lunch, and two close calls with un-leashed dogs, I stopped at a traffic light and heard a call from my left. There stood Danielle, front tire loose, tube in hand. I pulled off and she said she’d gotten another flat, bringing her to a total of five for the trip. Since she had just patched the tube and replaced the tape, the reason her flats persisted was a mystery. Eventually we figured out it was just a bad patch so we replaced the tube.


The van arrived with Chris and Emily, music thumping, and the two team leaders jumped out with extra materials. As I watched Danielle, Emily and Chris break out into random dance from the current song, I thought to myself, this is what Bike and Build is all about. All three of them had bike problems in the same day, but they didn’t let the lemons sour their face. They turned the lemons into Bike-and-Build-ade (sorry for the horrible pun) and kept on a smile.


The van left and Danielle became my third sweep partner for the day. The remainder of the day rolled along normally and we arrived at the host around two. There was a lunch that we missed around 12:00, but kept on making that Bike-and-Build-ade. A few people managed to go to a festival in town, and I walked around the Ohio State outskirts with a few people. Another rider, Clair, even talked Brueggers Bagels (a local bagel shop) into donating some bagels for our breakfast, and she also got Jimmy Johns to give us some subs.


The host church (King Ave United Methodist) separated us by gender, placing us in spacious, air conditioned rooms. The showers were at Ohio State and amazingly private, instead of the communal cleaning quarters we’re accustomed to. Had some wonderful conversations with the members and the host even provided my favorite thing in the whole wide world! You scream, I scream, we all scream for ice cream. There was an ice cream buffet for all the riders, and I’m slightly embarrassed to admit I got four bowls.

Through the questionable weather and biking woes, team P2S persevered. We overcame the obstacles in our way, kept positive, and remembered why we are doing this trip. I thought the awesome dinner provided by the host filled me up and put a neat little bow on this gift I call today. Can’t wait to unwrap tomorrow.

Some previous bike and builders also stopped by and dropped off ice cream for tomorrow's lunch!! Woot woot to that. Already looks like it'll be a glorious day! Today's my dad's birthday, and I met a guy named Paul, coincidence (dad's name is Paul). Anywho, sorry for the lack of pictures, but I didn't have time/access for that. Hopefully next time I'll get some up. Welp thanks for listening with your eyes.

Bike and Blog - Sorry For the Wait

It's been way too long since I've blogged, and I apologize to everyone that wanted to follow my cross-country journey but couldn't without me blogging. Good news is that I've been snapping enough pictures to tell my story without words. Bad news is I can't show them to you yet because I can't seem to upload them very well. I'll keep trying and I'll try to keep you posted. Eventually I'll get them to you. The ones I have up will have to do for now.

Can I just pause and say so far the trip is awesome? Well I'm doing it anyway...THIS TRIP IS AWESOME! If you're under 25 it's necessary for you to do Bike and Build before your life ends. You think life's good, but you haven't lived until you've hopped on a bicycle and started riding from one side of the country to the next. I'm no stranger to meeting new characters, but seeing the determination and variety of success in so many people is inspiring. Whether it's watching the smile of a teammate as they conquer a 2-mile-long hill, or playing telestrations (don't ask me if that's spelled right) for an hour and seeing how creative people can be, this trip is giving me a lot.

I started the trip because I like helping people, but so far it's been the people that have been helping me. I already posted about how blown away I was with the willingness of my donors to give, and I'm getting blown away again by how amazing a group of young adults can be. I haven't seen any drama (of course that doesn't mean it won't occur later), but I have seen tons of hard work and I've seen more sweat produced than my previous gym dripped out in a week. All the creativity, happiness, and hard work is overwhelming.

I wish I could go into greater details about the amazing things that are happening on this trip, but it would be a book (might do that one day). I am keeping a journal, and feel free to give me a call if you want to hear about how things are, but so far I don't have regular access to internet or a computer. If my journal interests you, I'll be willing to share it with you at the end, but for now you'll have to settle for my sporadic blog.

If I can post more regularly I'll start to go into more depth about what's actually happening on the trip, but for now I'll just say that things are going swelltacular! We're in Youngstown, Ohio at the moment, but tomorrow we're moving on. Track me online if you haven't already. Go to Bikeandbuild.org, click on Providence to Seattle, and follow the route.

Welp, that's all I have for now so thanks for listening with your eyes. Again, I hope I can go into more depth soon, but hope the pictures provide a little window.

Bike and Blog - Yank My Chain (Part 2)

So I was going to wait until I actually started the trip, but meh I wanted to write one more post before I go.

I never realized how hard it would be to leave a job, but this last week has been tough. It's been weird walking through the gym and seeing members that I don't really know that still wish me luck on my trip. It's been sad knowing that my regulars will no longer be my regulars (whether it's a member that decided to start working out with me in the last month, or whether it's my regulars that have been with me since the beginning, it sucks having to say goodbye). Though, I will say that it's been great knowing that I'll never have to bother another guy about dead lifting, cleans, or plyometrics again.

I had to forego my sensitivity to germs (not germaphobia!!!) and give hugs to sweaty members after a good class because it might have been the last time I saw some of them. Even co-workers were giving out hugs and I loved every second of it (even with you Ali lol). Wish I could stay with the Planet forever, but a guy's got to do what a guy's got to do (sorry for the lameness of that).

Of course it wouldn't be an event unless one of my longest running members gave me a gift, (picture) and my coworker even painted me a picture (picture 2). It's been an awesome year and a half and it's been a blessing working with everyone at the gym. I can't wait until our paths cross again.

"How blessed I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard."

(The member gave me a card, a buttload of candy, and a 15 dollar subway gift card. Too nice to me!)

(Ana painted me a picture that I'd been asking her for since day 3 and a half. Thanks Ana! It's going up on my wall!)

Welp that's all I have for today. So until next time, thanks for listening with your eyes. 

Bike and Blog - Yank My Chain

I can't believe this Journey is about to begin. I've been itching to do Bike and Build for a little under 2 years now, and it's finally time to quit talking and start peddling. I've done all the pre-trip requirements, and all that's left is the need to raise 110 measly dollars (which I'm sure you'll donate by clicking here).

I was reflecting on the past couple of months and can't believe how far I've come. I started my training struggling to complete an 8-mile ride, and today I finished another 66-or-so-mile ride. When they told me I had to raise 4500 dollars, I can honestly say I thought no one would help me out and I would be donating my own savings in order to go on this trip, but that's not how it happened. You all came through, and it's overwhelming to know that I have your support. My friends, family, and co-workers simply gave me upwards of 4500 just because I asked (and maybe begged). God has truly blessed me with a wonderful support web.

If you've been following my journey at all you know that these past six months have been the hardest of my life. Situation after situation has sucked my bank account dry, but God kept me through it all and blessed me with generous people so that I did not have to give away the money that I did not and do not have. Though these past six months have been the hardest, they have been some of the most rewarding. I won't go too far into how bad life's been, because I haven't really felt it. Life's been crappy but I've been encouraged and haven't thought much about the bad times after they occur. If it isn't a member in the gym buying me a half pint of ice cream because I looked down, it's a coworker making me laugh when all I wanted to do was run away. If it wasn't my sister helping me when I needed her, it was my mother writing me a note telling me to keep my head up when all I could see were my laces. If it wasn't an old friend telling me how they missed me, it was my girlfriend surprising me with a gift I don't deserve. I'm not the best at expressing gratitude, so I won't attempt with some elaborate garnishment, but thank you to everyone who has helped me get to where I am.

In other news, my girlfriend bought me a new phone (lol cause she knew I wouldn't do it) so I can now text again. Feel free to send me a text just in case the number was lost during the sim card switch. I wanted to upload a few pics of food that I have, but they're on my camera and the cord is back at the house (which if you haven't figured it out, I am not). So you'll have to enjoy these lavish pictures from our ride today (pirated) from JoBeth...arrrr)

The guy's book is finished for the most part, my training is finished for the most part, and my fundraising is almost finished. I can finally breathe. I'll wrap up this last week of work, do some exploring in Boston/Providence, then bathe myself in the grease of a summer that boasts to be the most memorable of my life. Welp, that's all I have for this edition, so until next time thanks for listening with your eyes.