Scott's big bike trip blog

Back in Boston!

scotteric — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 11:59:54 +0000

Got back home Friday and got to spend the whole weekend with Amy and Sunday night with a few friends. Sooooooo glad to be home. Paige made me the awesome trophy pictured here!

Berryville, va!

scotteric — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 23:59:12 +0000

Wow, so this is the last night of camping! We’re in Berryville, va. Todays ride was really great even though it was shorter, we ended up sharing the road with the Potomac Peddlers ride today, they were doing a century ride with 20 40 and 100k (67 mile) options. It was super cool to pedal with a big group of cyclists for a portion of our ride. We’re camping in watermellon park, which will be hosting a bluegrass festival for 4,000 people next week. The staff were super cool and talked to us about our trip for a while as we ate ice cream at the camp store. Tomorrow I drive into DC and turn around to meet Annie on her way into DC. Then I’m going to meet everyone else at 6 for a photo op crossing into the city.

Virginia pt 2

scotteric — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 02:22:12 +0000

Tonight we’re staying in Luray, VA. We ended up sharing the road with the dr100, a metric century ride. I thought that was a great sign that we’d picked a good route

We’re currently camping at a great RV park whith great showers and nice lush grass. I just got back from meeting up with Kalee, a friend from College in a town called Sperryville which was about halfway between where we both were. Sperryville turned out to be awesome, we ate at the pizza place that was next to the general store, that was next to the fancier resturaunt. A nice bonus was that we could go to the general store to get beer from the amazing selection of singles they had to bring back to the pizza place. Kalee has been following the blog (hi Kalee!) and she’s impressed that I’ve managed to make it across the whole country. While that’s no small feat, I have to say I’m wicked impressed that she’s got a full time teaching job, a second job, AND is going to school for her masters. Also, I forgot to get a picture of the two of us together. Maybe someone could draw us their version of what that may have looked like

Ok, anyway, I should go to bed now. DC is just around the corner!

Virginia pt 1

scotteric — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 22:35:52 +0000

So we’ve been in Virginia for a while, we stopped in Breaks, Damascus, Wythville, Katawba and Raphine so far.

We stayed at a hiker/biker hostel in Damascus and talked to a few Appalachian trail hikers. I’m glad I didn’t decided to hike the AT it sounds even harder than crossing the country by bike

Katawba had an awesome farmers market the night we were there, I got tamales and pumpkin squares (ok, three pumkin squares). They were awesome. Sadly there were no showers and we had to sleep behind the general store. However it was only three bucks each, so I can’t comlain too much.

I ate the best ice cream Sunday ever in Lexington on the way to Raphine, and the hot shower at the hotel was probably one of the best showers I’ve even taken

Kentucky!

scotteric — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 00:01:26 +0000

So we’re almost through Kentucky! I’ve been really suprised by how cool its been to ride through Kentucky. Our first night here we spent in a Baptist church basement in their bike hostel/rec room. Though I was only there for a short while since I had to drive the car to pick Cynthia up and drop Yeyo off at the train station withb his bike. Yeyo had to go to Santa Cruz to start his new job a little earlier than planned. We were really sad to see him go. After the church. We had an awesome homestay with a couple Beth and Gerry who moved here from Trenton, NJ a few years ago and then discovered that they were just off the transam route. They built an amazing house and fed us fantastic breakfasts and dinners for two days since we decided to take a rest day there. We also shared or first night there with Jack and Lauren, a couple from Australia ans Ireland who were very funny.

We camped near Falls of the Rough, ky the next night.

After that we stayed at Barbara Prairie’s house in Berea, KY where we again ate an amazing meal, played with her cats and got to sleep in real beds again

Tonight we’re camping in the rain leftover from a hurricane in. the Gulf in Buckhorn, KY. Its Yaney’s birthday today, so it’s a pretty sad celebration unfortunately since we didn’t really get to make dinner due to the downpour, thankfully Barbara thought to get us some birthday treats while we were in Berea so we’ll at least have that

Also, I have pepper spray in my pocket now, so I may end up pepper spraying some Kentucky k9′s.

Illinois!

scotteric — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 00:00:59 +0000

So we got out of Missouri, though our last night there was our best by far, we stayed at Al’s Place, a hostel run by the city of Farmington. it is seriously one of the most awesome things about missouri, which was honestly one of the hardest states to ride though. Its the state I feared the drivers in the most, and also the first time I felt truely threatened by a dog (in this case a large pitbull that was fast as stink and very excited to see me).

Missouri!

scotteric — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 01:32:15 +0000

We’re in Missouri! Stayed last night with a green party supporter/code pink organizer named Midge who made us awesome pasta and beanloaf. She was one of the Camp Casey supporters as well. Tonight we sleep on the lawn of the courthouse in Heartville, mo. I have to say, the Ozarks are way more challenging than I thought they’d be. Not a lot of elevation gain, but lots of ups and downs, tons of shifting from highest to lowest gears. Working on finalizing our schedule for the rest of the trip. However Annie made copies of the maps for us today, so Yeyo and I now have our own copies for the next couple of days at least. We also saw the payday loan/accountants office in the second picture. Seems like a bad idea, either the accountant is bad at math or they think you are……

It rained like crazy as we were about to leave the courthouse, and continued to do so all day. So we sagged to the next hotel in Houston, MO. Then we stayed put for the day other than a trip to the Chinese Buffet down the road.

Today we made it to Ellington, mo. We’re starting to do shorter days due to the Ozarks, which aren’t much on paper but are brutal to ride. Constant up and down action, steep grades, no shoulders, impatient drivers. Ugh.

Missouri!

scotteric — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 20:59:57 +0000

Eureka! (Kansas)

scotteric — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 01:09:50 +0000

We’re getting pretty close to the end of our trek through Kansas. Can I say again how cool Newton was? We had a pretty strong headwind for much of our ride. We stopped in Rosalia which has two retail outlets, the Old Hat and a Post Office. The Folks in the Old Hat were extremely nice and we found Paul who we rode with in Nevada’s name in the biker register they’ve been keeping. He’s already five days ahead of us!

More Kansas!

scotteric — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 14:26:23 +0000

So its been a while since I posted. Since my last post we’ve been challanged by brutal headwinds, early wakeups and confusing directions. I did manage to eat a milkshake followed by a banana split at the “Fridgid Cream” in Ness City, YUM.

At one point we literally found oursleves asking people (Inmates? Employees?) at the Kansas State Mental Hospital how to get out of the Kansas State Mental Hospital, which for some reason doesn’t have street names on google maps. We stayed at the bike hostel off the Peace river in Quivira next to the Quivira wildlife refuge. The couple that run it are awesome and its donation only which is super cool AND they made us an amazing dinner. They have a whole bike room that includes two well used tandems. I was pretty much about to die by the time we got there, about 15 miles before the hostel Yeyo and I were lying down in a church yard napping, I would have been happy to spend the night sitting there if Vernon and Yaney would have let me

Now we’re in Newton, KS for two nights for our rest day camping in the public park (don’t worry Amy, I put my tent in the middle of some trees and near some picnic tables, I promise I won’t get axe murdered!).