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

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

Part one of the post.

Okay, so it's been a while since I posted here. Sorry. I've been busy. I've only had short moments of free time, and I kept on pushing this post back a day.

A lot has happened recently. I'll go day by day and try to recount the important stuff. I also have a ton of pictures to post. I also took a lot of videos but I still haven't figured out how to post videos here.

Day 13:
We left Missoula and rode 80 miles to Philipsberg, Montana. Another beautiful ride, but I didn't have my camera on me. We stayed in Granite County High School. Joel bought those sugar fruit slice candies for us but everyone else thought they were gross. Weird. Our dinner that night was sponsored by the local rotary club, and consisted of salad, lemonade, and "pasties," a meat/potato/vegetable meal wrapped in sheets of dough. They were originally made by miners' wives for lunch when the men were down in the mines. After dinner we went to an awesome ice cream parlor in town and I had huckleberry ice cream (two of the biggest scoops I've ever seen). I also got to play an antique piano for a few minutes. After ice cream we played a big game of tag on the school playground for over an hour. It was awesome:


Day 14:
We rode about 60 miles from Philipsberg to Butte, Montana (pronounced Byoot). The ride was realy scenic, going up over a pass. Here's a picture of a clearing shaped like a heart on the side of a mountain:


Here's a picture of a waterfall:


Some guys on the side of the road:


My view most of the day (I need to re-tape my handlebars):


Craig and Nick bought horns to trick out their bikes:


Some huge mountains:


We stayed at a really cool YMCA with a pool and a big slide and a hot tub. Here is a picture of Drew (crew chief) and Joel (project manager) sleeping in the YMCA before our friendship visit:


The friendship visit was with BSW (don't know what it stands for), an organization that helps people with a wide variety of mental disabilities. We accidently went to the wrong location at first, so when we finally arrived at the correct location everyone was sitting waiting for us. There was a ton of people there, and they all started applauding when we arrived. It was really cool. We went around and introduced ourselves, ate a delicious dinner, and then danced with everyone (there was a 3 piece band playing). Most of the time there I was talking about history and politics with a man named Jeremy. He knew more about all of the presidents than anyone I had ever met. Here are some pictures we took after the event (we were all given green t-shirts, Jeremy is in the red):








Here is a picture of "Our Lady of the Rockies," a 90 foot statue of Mary on the top of a mountain ridge in Butte that is lit up at night:

Location:Shoshone, Wyoming