Day 26

Day 26
Fort Collins, Colorado

Today we rode over the state line, riding about 60 miles from Cheyenne, Wyoming, to Fort Collins, Colorado. Wyoming was tough: 550 miles in 6 days.

Fireworks are illegal in Colorado, so we had to use them before we crossed the border. Our first crew stop was at the border so that everyone who had bought some in Wyoming could use them all before crossing into Colorado. Here is a picture of a windfarm right on the border:


Here is a picture of Wes setting off a smoke bomb in the road and causing a hazardous situation for drivers passing by:


Here is a cop who stopped because of what Wes was doing and almost gave Drew a ticket (the cop is behind the van):


Here is a picture if the welcome to Colorado sign:


Here is a picture of Brendle's bike computer just as the odometer read 5555.5 miles:


We staged up for an arrival around the corner from the Zeta Phi chapter (Colorado State University) of Pi Kappa Phi chapter house, where a bunch of Brothers and friends were waiting to feed us delicious Subway sandwhiches. It was really exciting for Joey and Nick because they are from CSU. Their house was pretty sweet. They had a room full of couches stacked into stadium seating four levels high in a TV room with a nice projector.

For dinner we went to Austin's American Grill, where I had a steak dinner. It was a really nice restaurant. I tried a bite of someone else's buffalo. I think it was buffalo meatloaf. I don't remember. It tasted vey distinctly different from beef. I would like to try some again sometime.

That night we hung out at the fraternity house with some of the Brothers who were living in the area of in the house over the summer. We saw some fireworks from outside the house, because it was the fourth of July. I met an alumni named Brian Day who was pretty funny.

We stayed at the local senior center for the night because Push America doesn't let us stay over at any fraternity houses that have summer residents.


- Posted from my iPhone

Location:Fort Collins, CO

Day 25

Day 25
Cheyenne, Wyoming

This day we rode about 100 miles from Wheatland to Cheyenne, and was our last night in Wyoming.

We stayed at Laramie County Community College in a huge gym with volleyball nets set up:


We played volleyball in there a bit at night. Also, they couldn't figure out how to shut the lights off so we slept wig all the lights on. There was a vending machine that was jammed so that you had to quickly grab one of the backed up drinks when you selected one. This worked once before we backed it up so much that you couldn't get anything out of it. It was somewhat entertaining. That day I bought a big jug of simply lemonade and a loaf of asiago cheese bread and ate it all.

Okay, so for lunch we went to the Wyoming Hereford Ranch where we had a sponsored lunch with the Lady Cowbells. They started out as the same organization as the cattlewomen, but when the cattlewomen changed to their new name the lady cowbells kept their original name. The food was pretty amazing, as expected, and the ranch was really cool. The WHR is the oldest continuously registered livestock operation. We ate in the sale barn (I think) where they would have auctions for livestock and livestock semen. The WHR once covered over 65000 acres and is world renowned for their white faced Hereford cattle. They mostly specialized in selling seed cattle that had very good traits and would be sold for lots of money to populate other ranches. I forget the correct term so I'm calling them seed cattle. The ranch had tons of history and some of the buildings had museum type displays set up for visitors. One of the barns the initials or name of every cowboy that ever came through the ranch carved into it's rafters. We didn't see that but we were told. The whole place was really cool because it gave me the feeling of what the old west was REALLY like, not just some tourist attraction.

Here are two old horses:


They used to work on the farm years ago. Their current owners asked the ranch to take them back for retirement, so WRH is keeping them until they die, letting them have an easy retirement at the place where they grew up. I thought that was cool.

Here is a stump that was carved into the distinctive Hereford head:


For dinner we had a friendship visit with the Arc of Laramie County. We had a picnic at a park under an awning. We played bocce and soccer. I met a man who had just recently gone to Washington D.C. and we talked for much of the visit.

I was talking to another man at the visit who must have been at least 35 or 40, and he told me about how in high school he had accidently been cut badly by a locker in a confrontation with a bully and had to be sent to the hospital. The next time he saw the bully he asked him why they couldn't just be friends instead of fighting, and I guess that got the bully to back off. It really struck me not only how nice this man was for wanting to forgive the bully and show him that it's easier to be friends than fight but how important it is to treat all people with respect, regardless of what disability they man have. It's been probably 20 years and this story is still fresh in this man's memory. I bet that bully has no idea how much this man thinks about being bullied in high school, probably the most memorable time of his life.

Anywho. I didn't really get those sentences out as clearly as I would have liked, but I'm trying to do this quickly.


- Posted from my iPhone

Day 24

Day 24
Wheatland, Wyoming

I don't remember everything because it's now the 22nd of July as I am writing this. The same goes for every post following this up until day 31.

The day was super windy. We had to tilt at ridiculous sideways angles as we battled a sidewind from Casper to Wheatland, Wyoming, about 125 miles. It was supposed to be our longest day, but the wind prevented us from making rack point. The whole team was racked. We rode farther than 125 a week and a half later.

We stayed at wheatland middle school. For dinner we met with the cattlewomen again. They cooked us BBQ beef sandwhiches and fried chicken (Alex doesn't eat beef...) and fruit and caramel bars and other good stuff. We had to drive miles down a windy (wine dee not win dee) country dirt road to get to the house where we ate. I was nestled amonst a group of tall trees that stood out clearly from the vast expanse of grazing lands that surrounded it. The owners told me that the trees were planted over a hundred years ago by their ancestors.

I don't remember a ton about this day in particular. I should have been more diligent about keeping up with my posts.

I don't know if these two pictures are from this day or the next, but here they are:


This is James, Kyle, Mike, and Kenny at a crew stop:


- Posted from my iPhone

Day 23

Day 23
Casper, Wyoming

We had a day off of the bikes in Casper. For lunch we had our first Kids on the Block presentation for a group of young kids at a local Boys and Girls Club. Kids on the Block is a puppet show that we put on for children to teach them about people with disabilities. Here is a picture taken from the crowd:


It was awesome playing with the kids at the club. It was a really cool place.

Later in the day we had a picnic with the Arc of Natrona County. It was pretty fun, we hung put and played some sports and ate some good food. The Arc in this county primaily serves children with mental disabilities, and is essentially a very specialized day care/after school care service. It is really interesting in that it started out as a support group of parents of children with disabilities in the area. They would offer emotional support and watch each others' kids when help was needed, and eventually the group joined the Arc, which is a national organization.

Here is a picture of some huckleberry soda:


- Posted from my iPhone

Day 22

Day 22
Casper, Wyoming

I don't remember this day very well, but as we were leaving Shoshoni (I spelled it wrong before) we ran into a group of cyclists from the University of Texas who were biking from Austin to Anchorage to help fight cancer.

We rode from Shoshoni to Casper Wyoming. It was a very long day, I forget the exact mileage. On the way we rode through a town of population ten, Highland, Wyoming:





Here's a picture from the road:


We stayed at Kelly Walsh High School in Casper. Here's a picture of the parking lot:


In the evening we had a friendship visit with NOWCAP, an organization that serves adults in the Casper area with mental disabilities. We had Pizza Hut pizza and hung out with a bunch of the participants and volunteers.

That night I watched Harold and Kumar 2: Escape from Guantanamo Bay.



- Posted from my iPhone

Days 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, & 20 ... and 21. (PART FIVE)

Part five of the post.

I'm not sure if this picture is from today or yesterday:


Here are some pictures that are definately from today:





At one point today we were riding at the same exact pace as a shadow from a cloud above us. It was AWESOME. It was really hot and sunny right in front of us, but were were in the shade the whole time. It lasted for at least a mile, maybe a few.

Today we are staying at the local high school. We had a sponsored dinner at a senior center right down the road.

On advice of Mike Keough, we wentnto the Silver Sage Saloon. At first we were really skeptical because it was just a boarded up window that said "DRUGS," but then we turned the corner and saw the actual Saloon. The bartender and his wife were very friendly and talkative. We all signed a dollar bill and taped it to the ceiling (I guess that's what people do there). They didn't make me pay for my soda. Jeez I keep on hitting the return key when I mean to hit the N or M keys, and hitting the N key when I mean to hit delete and hitting the shift key when I mean to hit the A key. This iPhone keyboard is too small.

Anywho, walking back we saw a drive through liquor store which was reall a bar with a window and a door bell. Wes and Dave got a free shot from a really nice (but very crazy) older woman named Jane who was running the place.


Oh, I forgot to mention that I bought a new air mattress for $15 at a KMart in Jackson. I still have my old one because I want to bring it back to Dick's and get a refund or a new mattress.

Tomorrow I have a 6am wake up. Hopefully I won't wait 9 days to post here again. And hopefully this post actually works, because I'll be asleep before it finishes uploading.

Sorry for not keeping in touch, everyone. I haven't sent out all of my thank you notes telling the address for this blog, so if you know anyone who would want to know what I'm up to, please pass it on.

Here are the rest of my state license plate pictures:

This post is going to be another day late because as I was adding pictures the application crashed. Oh well. I'll probably add the license plates as a separate post.

Also, this post is another few days late because of this terrible application that is so frustrating I can't even explain it, and lack of 3G coverge in Wyoming.

The last few days should be posted either today or tomorrow.

- Posted from my iPhone

Location:Shoshone, Wyoming

Days 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, & 20 ... and 21. (PART FOUR)

Part four of the post.













That night we ate a sponsored dinner at Calico, a really great gourmet pizza restaurant. We ate outside and watched little kids get beaten at soccer by kids who were slightly less little. On the way back our whole caravan pulled over to see this moose (again no antlers):


Day 19:
We stayed at a Presbyterian (I think) church that night. The next day was another day off, but it was packed with awesome things. We woke up and went to an all you can eat breakfast buffet. Delicious. Then we went white water rafting. It was mostly class 1 or 2, but there were some class 3 rapids. It was really really fun. We got to jump out (or throw each other out) at a few places along the 8 mike trip. Some memorable moments were James's bloody nose,
jumping in and climbing over the front of the raft just to have Alex thrown into me, pushing me back into the water, and looking back to the second raft passing through a wall of water and seeing Kent smash through the wave paddling like his life depended on it.

After rafting me went to a ski resort where we could use the pool and hottub and, most importantly, the alpine slide. It was bassically a bobsled couse made of concrete and plastic that you rode down on a little cart with a brake. It was awesome. I got a first person view of the slide, so remind me to show you next time I see you, because it's pretty cool. Here are some pictures:


(Fred, Jared, James)





We had subway for lunch and dominos for dinner. I went to a bike shop and bought a new back tire because my old one had a slash in it for a few days. This new one is called an Armadillo, and has a no-flat garuntee. If I have any problems in the first 90 days I can bring it to any shop that carries Armadillos and swap it out for a new one, which works perfectly for my trip. It is red on the side. You can see it in my next picture.

Day 20:
We rode from Jackson to Dubois, Wyoming. We racked out of the city and for a brief stretch of construction after lunch, so it wasn't that long of a ride. I forget, but I think it was about 80 miles. Here are some pictures from the place where we ate breakfast and started our ride for the day:





The elevation change from the place I am standing (6000 ish feet) to the tallest peak in th background (13,000+ feet) is taller than the highest mountain on the east coast.

Here is a picture of me and three other morans at a cool sign we rode by that day:




We climbed to over 9000 (lol, it axtually applies) feet at one point, which is the highest we will reach this entire summer.

We stayed at the high school in Dubois. We had a sponsored dinner at the school, cooked by the Wyoming Cattlewomen. Dubois was a cool little town, and we walked around for a litke bit. Kenny and Matt and I went to a gas station to get ice cream and we saw a guy drive up with road kill hanging out of his bumper, wash his front window, and drive away.

Day 21:
Wow, this is taking a really log time to type. I bet it's going to take an hour to upload, with all these pictures.

Today we rode from Dubois to Shoshone, Wyoming. It was about 103 miles. It was pretty hot (one sign we saw said 96 degrees), but as usual the views were really cool. The scenery started to shift to more badlands-like land, with colored rocks and plateaus, but with all the irrigation projects of the last century, there were still a lot of crop fields.

Location:Shoshone, Wyoming

Days 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, & 20 ... and 21. (PART THREE)

Part three of the post.







One great thing about Yellowstone is that people come from all over to see it. The parking lot outside Old Faithful was a treasure trove of exotic licence plates. I'll put all the pictures I have taken of license plates since my last post at the very end of this post. Mom, if you could do me a huge favor and make me an excel sheet of all the states I have and don't have, and then email it to me, that would be great. Thanks. Sorry for not calling much. I called a few times and it went straight to voicemail.

Here is a picture of my foot. I don't know why I have this:


When we got back we had pizza for lunch and Arby's for dinner. That night it rained real hard, and at about midnight lightning struck very close by the school and it started to hail really hard. It woke pretty much everyone up. It was really cool.

Day 18:
We rode from West Yellowstone to Jackson, Wyoming. We actually racked a fair distance because we couldn't ride over a really high, steep, curvy, dangerous pass, and ended up driving in to Wyoming from our rack point somewhere in Idaho, right on the border. Here are some pictures of the top of the pass:














This is Andrew Brendle; he took the pictures of me an then took this:




We had a practice arrival because Wes's family was there visiting. It was pretty cool. We paired up and got into two big pacelines and rode in traffic through town. We stopped in the middle of this little park, which was weird but cool, because there were tons of people there but only about four who knew who we were and what we were doing.

I had my first fall of the trip right after the arrival. I was going about a mile per hour and tried to hop up onto a curb, but I was holding my plastic clip covers in my hands and thus could not pull my bike up in time. I rode straight into the curb and flopped over. No damage to the bike, I just have no street cred in Jackson, Wyoming anymore.

Anywho, we dropped our bikes off at a house belonging to the lady who sponsored our team event that afternoon, a tram ride up to the top of one of the mountains at Jackson Hole ski resort. It was really cool. The view was absolutely spectacular. The we went up to about 10,500 feet, and we were still in our biking jerseys and shorts. It was a little bit cold, but definately worth the trip. On our way back down the tram I saw another female moose. Here are some pictures:

Days 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, & 20 ... and 21. (PART TWO)

Part two of the post.

Day 15:
We rode just under 110 miles from Butte to Bozeman, Montana. It was our first real century ride. The views were spectacular:








We stayed at Eagle Mount, a recreational and theraputic facility for people with disabilities. They have an accessible pool and lots of horses for riding. They actually had just been featured on the Today Show the day before we arrived, and had been given tons and tons of free stuff. Here is a horse:


That night I went to a bike shop (The Bike Pedler) to get my bike fitted, my derailed adjusted, my back wheel straitened, my back wheel retaped, and buy some new tubes. The people were very nice, and stayed open late for us. I went back after dinner and one of their fitters came in after hours to help us. He gave me a lot of free advice rather than having me pay for a full fitting when I already had a certain size frame. He moved me seat forward and down, and ever since then I have had very little pain in my Achilles tendons. I think I was stretching my foot out too far to reach the pedals when my seat was too high.

Day 16:
We rode from Butte to West Yellowstone, Montana. The Trans project manager from last year, Jeremy Jones, did a ride along. He is a beast on a bike. We talked briefly about Mike Keough, one of my chapter Brothers and one of his cyclists from last year (he had nothing but good things to say about you, Mike; he was telling us all about how quick you were to get packed in the mornigs, and about your little stand up routine at circle up to show everyone how easy it was to get packed on time).

Anywho, we racked through a big canyon because of safety (the guy at the bike shop said it was the most dangerous place in Montana). Weather wasn't the best, and we had a huge headwind to fight against, but the view was still great:


We stayed at West Yellowstone High School, located just outside the national park. We went to an imax movie titled Yellowstone (the theatre had Honest Ade!), and went to a BBQ place in town for dinner. I had a "Mad Dog" sandwhich, a spicy sausage with beef brisket (I think) and BBQ sauce on it. I went to bed at around 7 pm and slept until 730 or 800 am. I was really tired. Also, at this point my air mattress had broken, so I had been sleeping on the floor for a few days. The mattress has a slow leak (I think through one of the seams), so I can't find a hole to patch.

Day 17:
We had a day off in Yellowstone, but we still woke up somewhat early (early for a day off of the bike at least) and went to Yellowstone National Park. We got to walk very close to a herd of buffalo:


There were tons of other buffalo spread out throughout the park, way more than I expected. We also saw lots of elk, and I'm pretty sure I saw a female moose (or a male without antlers). Here are a ton of pictures of the different kinds of hot springs we saw in one area of the park; the springs were connected by boardwalks:




















We went to Old Faithful, and saw it erupt. I took about 10 minutes of video trying to catch it erupting, and finally it went off, so if I ever can upload videos I'll upload that one, it's pretty cool. Here are some pictures before and after (but not during) the eruption:

Location:Shoshone, Wyoming