Minot, ND

So over 2400 miles down, only 1600 left. We are taking a much needed day off. My butt can take a break and I can wonder around town without getting on a bike seat. The last week has been quite busy, a lot of riding. We had one of the worst days so far from Devil's Lake to Rugby, ND. 20 or 30 mile an hour winds made pacelining a must, but after Isaiah dropped off our group because he wasn't feeling well, only Ian and I pushed through the 58 miles to the school gym where we were staying. After that we had our "Bike and Build Prom", which Kathy has undoubtedly talked forever about so I can spare you the details, but I was dressed in a marching band tux we found.

The day before was also no cakewalk. 118 miles from Crookston, MN to Devil's Lake, ND. The first 100 miles went very fast, a group of us averaged just over 20 mph (compared to under 12 into Rugby). We got a picture of our odometers as we passed 100 miles in under 5 hours, then the rain came. It was first just a sprinkle but ominous clouds in the distance told another story. About 8 miles later we got hit with a true windy Great Plains storm. Thunder and lightning on both sides of the road, 20 mph cross winds with rain that felt like it was BBs hitting your arms and face. I was riding about 5 to 10 feet behind Bobby and we were both screaming at the top of our lungs and neither of us could hear each other. We stopped at a rest area a few miles out of town to catch our breath and have Ian and Isaiah catch up, eventually Jessie caught us too after our 3 minute rest break. We finally arrive in Devil's Lake to Isaiah's dad waiting with a warm pickup truck ready to take us to his farm. We had a great time at Isaiah's farm - tractor tours, horseback rides, a hot tub(!) and great food. A good time was had by all, and to cap it all off we saw a wonderful thunderstorm in the distance at night, very awesome!

That is about all for today, time to explore Minot.

An engineer designing from scratch could hardly concoct a better device to unclog modern roads - cheap, nonpolluting, small and silent...
-- Rick Smith, International Herald Tribune, May 2006

Duluth, MN

Things I am thankful for so far:

We are almost halfway (over 1900 miles).
I don't have to bike tomorrow.
I still like PB&J
My bike hasn't completely died yet
There won't be many more hills for a while
There is Wi-Fi in the Temple in Duluth
The 70 miles of bike path we biked on today
Double Pace Lines
Batman
Riding through a wildlife preserve three days ago
My wonderful fellow cyclists who will always offer help when I need it
Great cell coverages on our rides in the middle of farm country
Generic brand cereals taste almost like name brand
Host stays

Things that I'm not thankful for
Headwinds
Winds from the East when we are going North
Taking three wrong turns going to Gays Mills and going 130 miles
Being in the lead when the first 18 mile detour happened and feeling guilty about not catching the error in the cue sheet
Headwinds
Chaffing
Sore butts
Sore feet
Poor cell coverage at many of our stops

Madison, WI

We have our second day off in Madison, WI. It is a great town lots of bike shops, tons of bike lanes, a lot of little cool shops, so many cool things to see. It is very much centered around the University here. While we didn't do anything crazy like sky diving, but walking around town, having some of the best ice cream ever (Chocolate Raspberry Truffle) was quite enjoyable too.

We are preparing for another century ride into Gays Mils, WI and we'll be crossing over the Mississippi in a few days, tomorrow will also be one month into the trip. At the same times it seems like just yesterday we started but also we've been on the road for a long time.

On our way to Madison part of the road was flooded (about 50 feet) so cars couldn't get through, but many people took off their shoes and walked, but a select few (including me) decided to take off our shoes and bike through. It was very fun, warm water, and a nice break from pavement.

There's not much else to report from Madison. Before I go I'd like to thank my Grandma for my package, many people were enjoying the smoked salmon. And thank you to Bruce and Nancy Bell for their donation to Bike and Build.

Janesville, WI

So biking across the country is something crazy right? But I decided that, you know, pedal across a continent wasn't crazy enough for me. Yesterday at our day off in Chicago a group of 11 of us decided we wanted to go skydiving. Yes that's right. I jumped out of a plane at 13,000 feet, free fell for a minute until I reached 5500 feet and pulled a rip cord to save my life. Don't worry I was attached to an expert who made sure everything went right. It was an amazing experience definitely a highlight. Email me if you want to hear more about it.

The rest of the day was spent napping in the church and then Arianna and I went to downtown and walked around, had great (and cheap) Thai food at Star of Siam on E Illinois (for those interested in good Thai food in Chicago). We also looked at the Tribune building with a bunch of rocks from places around the world embedded in the side. I must say Chicago was a great place to have a day off, especially since we had a 115 mile day getting into town. For my first century (over 100 miles in one day) it wasn't that bad, I actually felt really good afterwards. The last 20 or so miles were on the Chicago lakefront bike path, which was what I would optimistically call a warzone. There were tons and tons of walkers, runners, scooterers, long boarders, and cyclists, tons of cyclists. There were even triathletes trying to train in their aerobars (recipe for disaster). The views of the Lake were amazing and the beaches looked awesome, we even saw an AVP beach volleyball tournament going on with huge stands and huger crowds. At some point on the path we met a cyclist from Williams, turns out he knew a few of the same Ephs from Anchorage that I did. He also was a racer so I was able to update him on the goings on of the ECCC (Easter Collegiate Cycling Conference) championships. We were going around 18-20 mph through the people traffic, side by side, without too many close calls (don't worry I dropped back if it was bad) - we are definitely racers, we didn't feel uncomfortable riding inches from each other and other people at high speeds.

So the next day into Grayslake, IL was really short (40ish miles) so we spent a lot of time playing basketball in their gym and hanging out. At our presentation I met a wonderful couple that had just gone on a smaller cruise to Alaska. I was able to reminisce about home and tell them all the good spots to see that they missed. I had a nice night on a couch to get ready for another relatively easy day (70 miles, except for the headwind...) into Janesville, crossing the state line into Wisconsin. Again we traveled on country roads across the state line so there wasn't a sign, just like into Indiana and I missed the sign into Illinois because it was painted on a wall, not an actual sign.

Overall it has been a wonderful trip, I am getting awesome tan lines, improving my bike mechanic skills, and meeting tons of people wondering why there are 30 people dressed the same riding their bikes around their small town.

that's all for today, I'll go back to the church and sleep some maybe...

It would not be at all strange if history came to the conclusion that the perfection of the bicycle was the greatest incident of the nineteenth century.
-- Author Unknown

Bowling Green, OH

So here I am in Bowling Green, OH. Since I was in charge of writing the journal today I'll just post the exact same thing that will be posted on the B&B site since I need to do some bike work tonight (spokes keep loosening on people's bikes and I don't know why, I think it's due to overall spoke tension, or lack thereof, but I'm going to try a few things)

Here we go:

So today was long. Our longest in fact. A grand total of 96 miles (and I didn't ride those extra 4 miles to get a century). At the ungodly hour of 6 am we met at the church in Avon Lake, left the warmth of our host families' beds, ate a huge breakfast and loaded up the trailer. The only problem here was that the folks at Avon Lake gave us so much food we weren't sure if it would all fit in the trailer. Normally we play bag tetris with our duffel bags and just shove the rest of the food into the empty spaces. This time was different though, we needed to not only play duffel bag tetris but also food tetris. Our trailer was packed completely full - an impressive feat.

We started the day approximately fifteen minutes after a large rain storm passed overhead so the only thing we had to deal with was wet roads - not too bad. After taking a group photo in front of the "Welcome Bike and Build" sign at the church, we took off. Our 95 mile day was to have two lunch stops! So I was looking forward to a well fed trip. The first 40 miles were not that eventful for me and my huge paceline of Pen, Chris, Isaiah, Kathy, and Ian, and a few others that came and went. We arrived at the lunch stop after passing by Cedar Point Coaster Point, looking longingly at the numerous roller coasters. I then took off early with Bobby to go the next 35 miles to our next lunch stop.

Bobby and I took turns leading each other in the horrendous headwind. As the first group of riders we had to chalk every corner, but since we were limited in our amount of chalk - our directions were probably lackluster at best. After a bit of confusion in the directions getting into Freemont (I think?), OH, and passing the mansion of President Rutherford B Hayes we started to get confused. Our cue sheet said go 2.2 miles on Route 6 and then turn right onto Country Home Road and go 20 some miles. However we never saw said road, but we did see signs on Route 6 for Bowling Green so we just went on Route 6. Let me tell you, Route 6 was one of the worst roads we've been on. There was a pothole, roadkill ridden shoulder, which was barely wide enough to keep us out of danger. Several times we were inches from passing semis speeding along with seemingly little concern for our well being - a scary thought indeed. We plodded our way to Helena, OH at 75 miles, still no sign of our van and second lunch stop. After calling the van several times I get a hold of Dan who sounds like he said "I got stopped and am at mile 62". So thinking the van got a ticket we continued on surviving on bananas, energy bars, and the thoughts of an air conditioned church. For the record it turns out the van got "stuck" not "stopped" in the muddy shoulder and had to get towed out.

As we approached Bowling Green, Bobby's tire was getting flatter. A hold over from a flat earlier in the day, I found a slash in his tire that I assumed caused a small puncture. We pumped up the tire in hopes it would hold for the next 15 miles to Bowling Green. We got about 6 more miles and it started deflating. So quickly (since we wanted to get to the church) we put a new tube in and put a dollar bill at the slash site to keep the tube from coming out of the tire and getting a puncture again. The dollar bill, unlike most paper, doesn't disintegrate when wet. We finally found the mysterious Country Home Road and then at 3:30 found the waiting cool church with iced drinks and snacks. After showers at Bowling Green State University, we had a wonderful pasta dinner and had a great presentation and chat with some congregation members.

While it was a long day, everyone but us had two lunches and arrived before 6 pm, a long day for all. All of us seem quite tired since it was our longest day and are looking for a good nights rest.

A bit about me now that I'm done blathering. I am Anson Moxness. I am originally from Anchorage, Alaska and just finished my freshmen year at Dartmouth College, where I plan to be an Engineering major.

As with my blog entries I'll end with a quote, undoubtedly about cycling:

It never gets easier, you just go faster
-- Greg LeMond

Avon Lake, OH

So my first time through Pennsylvania... We got into Avon Lake, a suburb of Cleveland, yesterday and we spent today a build site in East Cleveland. Yesterday was an interesting ride because we went through East Cleveland (not the best part of the city) and through downtown. I am pretty comfortable in traffic so the latter was nothing noteworthy, so my story of the day comes from East Cleveland. So this area of town is as I said before not the best, lots of boarded up houses and the like. A couple block in I decided that I really needed to find a toilet. So I was biking with Eric, Katrina, and Reed (a Dartmouth mob to say the least), and luckily I wasn't the only one feeling the need for a bathroom. So we first checked out a natural food store, definatly no bathroom. I then went into every gas station mini mart for about 2 miles with no luck. At each one the scene was always the same. Everyone in the store would stop what they were doing and look at the small scrawny white kid dressed in tight colorful spandex and a bike helmet with funny looking glasses. Needless to say, I didn't fit in, at all. So about 20 minutes into our search we find a Subway store and go in - I see the friendly bathroom sign and try to go in, it's locked, we wait around for a couple minutes only to find out, it was out of order, great. Then I tried a pizza place in the same mall, no luck. Our over half hour search finally came to an end with a McDonald's about 3 miles from where we first saw the natural food store.

After miles and miles of rough road, we got to Avon Lake (after a "flat tire" that ended in ice cream). The church was wonderful, what was even better was we got to stay in host homes. So for two nights (we had a build day) we got a warm bed, home cooked breakfast and did I mention a bed? or that bed I'm sleeping in? Thank you to all the host families especially the Fischers for bring us into your homes.

On our build day in East Cleveland (again) we were hauling dirt around all day (very glamorous) but the Habitat house next door was sponsored by the Cleveland Cavaliers basketball organization and a bunch of stadium and admin workers (I think) were there and I got to talking with one and he asked if we had gone to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I said no and he asked if we'd like to, and I answered "sure". So minutes later he had called up a friend of his at the Hall of Fame and had gotten all of us free tickets for after our work was done! So that was defintely the highlight of the day, seeing all sorts of music memorabilia (and Dad, I got a picture with some of Jerry Garcia's guitars).

If anyone reading is wondering what the heck a cyclist needs on a cross country trip, it is chamois cream, keeps the saddle sores away and makes the butt feel better at the end of the day. Especially Assos Chamois Cream, probably a rarity besides a some bike shops, but it is the gold standard!

It is time for me to go to bed to get ready for our first over 90 mile day, maybe our first century, depends how much we get lost :P.


There is something uncanny in the noiseless rush of the cyclist, as he comes into view, passes by, and disappears.
— Popular Science, 1891

Westfield, NY

We are over 700 miles now! We are now in a small town in Westfield, NY, a cool 85 mile trip from Niagara Falls. We were in Niagara for the 4th and I must say, their fireworks were lackluster at best. But we did have some great Chinese food and walk around the Canadian side covered in casinos and too many lights. We had so much time thanks to our short 18 mile day into Niagara, sadly it was made longer by the fact I got my first flat (a pinch flat) right off the bat. But that was fixed quickly, but my tube was defective so I had to borrow Isaiah's tube.

Our route today led us through Buffalo, NY. and I was reminded how much I like driving in the city. I had a lot of fun even though we stopped every 300 feet for a red light. John, John, Bobby and I stopped at a Frank Lloyd Wright estate along the Seaway Trail along Lake Erie. I guess I would call it "Great", it was pretty big, I'll give it that. So far on our trip we have had 4 total days with no rain, the last two days were fortunately included there, so our 4th was enjoyable and our trip around with the Canuks.

So I'd like to say thank you to my mom and my grandma for their packages at the past maildrops as well as Mary Lee Griswold for her donation and Linda and David Duff for their donation and visiting us in Indian Lake. They brought us all fruit, chocolate and other foodstuffs, it was AWESOME!!! It helped me get through my tough day.

Thank you again to all the people I've talked to and who have helped me, I am having a great summer!

When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair or the future of the human race.
-- H.G. Wells

Rochester, this time it's in New York

We had our third build site and fourth build day today. Like our Portsmouth build, we were doing a lot of lawn work. This time we cut down a ton of brush in the back yard getting ready for a new Habitat family to move in and for another house to get build on the property later.

The last few days have been few and far between for internet, mostly I can get on for only a few seconds, not enough to write a blog entry. From Rochester, VT we went to Silver Bay, NY, crossing Lake Champlain via a cable ferry and we stayed in probably the swankiest (is that spelled right, or even a word?) YMCA in the world. It wasn't just like a workout place with some beds - it was a full on resort, with full meals, swimming in Lake George, kayaking in said lake, sailing, archery, tennis, and my favorite - shuffleboard. A bunch of us decided that we should try our hand at shuffleboard, and even though it felt like I had aged 60 years and should be on a cruise boat, it was a lot of fun, and I was doing pretty well.

On the way to Sliver Bay we stopped at an ice cream shop and I got a large oreo milkshake (sooo good) and figured out that I could take the waterbottle out of my vertical bottle cage and put it in my jersey pockets and then put my milkshake in my water bottle cage, it was genius, pure genius. I could make everyone jealous as I biked by drinking my milkshake at the same time, especially when the thermometer on my bike computer showed 100 F. Later in the day it started raining somewhat hard and I came up on Quang who had stopped because he hadn't seen anyone in a while and wanted to make sure he wasn't lost. So I offered him part of my milkshake for some energy (even though it was raining) and his response was "No thanks" then he thought for a few seconds and then said: "who am I kidding I am dead tired and someone is offering me a milkshake, of course I want some".

We had several other interesting days, days of pouring rain, days of huge hills, days of both, but luckily it has started to flatten out so our newly acquired skill (for most people) of pacelining will come in handy. We are still working out the kinks of the paceline, like I went straight on into a rock because it wasn't pointed out. I was fine, my wheel is out of true a bit and I had to drop back from the paceline to put my waterbottle back in the cage and I got to spend the next 20 miles to lunch trying to catch the pace line by myself. I came within 30 seconds but never did... It was a long day.

Another day one rider, Zach Hill, replaced a total of 5 tubes in one day, yes five (he also got 2 flats the next day). On his first flat the van left the floor pump with him with the intent to pick it up again, but Chris forgot to, so I carried the floor pump (a large pump) the 32 miles to lunch... It was an interesting day for all.

So I have had requests for pictures, but since I am not taking a ton and may other people are taking good ones I'll just use other people's. Here is a photo of Pen and I putting up a rain diverter at the Portsmouth build. We pulled up the shingles and the put down the rain diverter underneath them, a long process.

At our next build site in Lebanon, I also did roof work, this time it was much higher up and on a much steeper roof. I don't have any pictures of me doing work just yet, but I'm sure there are cool ones.

Also from that build site I was quoted in the local newspaper, along with some cool photos. The article was in the Foster's Daily Democrat from Dover, NH.

Here is another photo of me from our first day, some of us took a minor detour to Maine to get this wonderful picture (and notch another state)

That is all, we are off to see a movie in Rochester since it's the first big town we've been in so we might as well take advantage of it.




Mankind has invested more than four million years of evolution in the attempt to avoid physical exertion. Now a group of backward-thinking atavists mounted on foot-powered pairs of Hula-Hoops would have us pumping our legs, gritting our teeth, and searing our lungs as though we were being chased across the Pleistocene savanna by saber-toothed tigers. Think of the hopes, the dreams, the effort, the brilliance, the pure force of will that, over the eons, has gone into the creation of the Cadillac Coupe de Ville. Bicycle riders would have us throw all this on the ash heap of history.
--P.J. O'Rourke