June 2012
1 post
13 tags
A Journey Through The South
3.5 Months. 14 States. 3300 Miles. 1,000,000 Fun.
Huge thanks to the many friends we made along the way who aren’t featured in this video. (Pretty much everyone) We love you.
Music: Delicate Steve - Afria Talks To You
May 2012
4 posts
14 tags
One Last
Alright friends, this is it. This is my last post.
We left the little town in New Jersey where we had been rescued and returned to the trail where I had suffered my crash the day before. You might be asking “why would they return to the very trail that led to the worst crash so far on this trip?” You’re absolutely right in questioning that choice because about thirty minutes after we started...
11 tags
Precipitation
Way back a couple weeks ago, we left the grey sky and comfort of Washington D.C. for our next big stop, Philadelphia. Before getting to Philly, we ran into a little weather.
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Just south of Baltimore, we found some rain, or rather it found us. The rain and no plan of a place to stay for the night stopped us in Lansdowne and kept us there for a couple hours while we attempted to wait...
9 tags
DC
You haven’t heard? Well we came to the nation’s capital and saw a few sites, now you’ve heard.
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After a long awaited arrival that was much delayed by lethargic protagonists and violent traffic, this story made its way into D.C. on no more unimportant of a day than Cinco de Mayo. We were greeted by my cousin, Jenny, in her quaint townhome, which sits a small stone’s throw by a weak arm...
11 tags
Old Dominion
It’s been awhile, friends. We promise you haven’t been forgotten.
To fill you all in from the last post, we came up from Savannah to Charleston to visit our friend Margaret. She’s our first tour acquaintance that we’ve been able to meet up with further down the road from when we originally met her. We had a fun time doing a lot of nothing and the relaxation, as always, was needed before we...
April 2012
9 posts
18 tags
Retrograde
The Catholic astronomers claimed that retrograde of the planets in the night sky was an elaborate loop-de-loop motion. They made graphic representations of the celestial tracks to better explain the geocentric system their math was meant to preserve.
The math was false. No planet circles the Earth. What the difficult astronomer Galileo knew, that no one else seemed to believe was...
8 tags
Low Country
Georgia, we barely got to know you at all. We’ve come and gone now, but, as it is at every border, we have a new state to find our way through and get to know before we prematurely leave.
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Across the Savannah River is South Carolina, but first is the Talmadge Memorial Bridge, which, for cyclists, is a lot like climbing a mountain to get across a river. The view of Savannah from above...
12 tags
North
By the time we made it to Jacksonville we had already been over Florida for a few days. Lucky for us, we weren’t actually done with the sunshine state and had one last stop before we headed up the Atlantic coast.
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Colton, our host, gave us the excited-local tour when we came in to town. This is a greeting that has never and will never get old. Our first night, we tried a good beer...
13 tags
New Route
It’s time for an announcement to all those interested in the route we’re taking.
We updated our About page a while back to clarify that we plan on riding around the perimeter of the country and ending our travels in Los Angeles. Still, we’ve received a lot of questions from people regarding our final destination. That’s the word for now. Until twenty five miles outside of Perry, our plans were...
13 tags
Panhandling
Reader, we blogged for you when we woke up in Alabama, and because of that we left late, too. It wasn’t far to Florida, though, and we were taking our cliche state-line photos in no time.
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As luck would have it, just as we were standing there wishing we had a way to take a photo of both of us, a man driving an enormous white pick-up turned around on the road and stopped near us on...
Read More!
As our blog has filled up with more and more content we have found that the format doesn’t allow for the site to load quickly or evenly. We decided to give you all a break and start inserting a link below older posts that says “Read More”. If you click on this link you will be able to view the previous post on a single page by itself.
16 tags
Gulf Coast
A month of Texas made for our appreciation of the short time we had in Louisiana, but our short time there did not prep us for how briefly we would stay in Mississippi.
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We set out from New Orleans after our time off and made progress toward the border with little to no problems, despite the strong winds hitting at our side.
A few tall and long and a few short and shoulderless bridges...
12 tags
NOLA
Two days before we left Baton Rouge we hadn’t known where we were going to stay until an old friend from high school, Krista McGrath, came to mind. After contacting her for the first time since graduating she was excited to hear about the trip and told us we should stay with her. Not being stupid people, we took her up on the offer.
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We had stayed in loose contact with her to make...
6 tags
Cajun Country
We left Lake Charles in high spirits, but we were immediately met with a flat tire before getting completely out of town, not the best sign of things to come. A few hours later, after some early showers, Andrew’s bike slipped from underneath him and he fell off. He caught himself, but catching oneself on asphalt with a loaded bike doesn’t go without injury. Fortunately it wasn’t serious. The...
March 2012
10 posts
11 tags
Lake Charles
A few miles outside of downtown Lake Charles we saw the most intimidating and dangerous road either of us has considered riding during this trip. The I-10 bridge is more than a hundred feet tall with no shoulder and has construction limiting two lanes. We shrugged and decided to get a closer look. After seeing it up close, we decided neither of us wants to die a miserable death on the...
8 tags
Farewell Texas
That’s right, we’ve left Texas. We are no longer in the largest of the contiguous states.
Before we crossed the border, we shared loving good-bye hugs with Valerie, easily our most mom-like host so far. After just two days, we were like family, but just like the families we said good-bye to when we left on this trip we said our thanks and hugged her before we got on our bikes.
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Houston...
8 tags
100 Miles of Shoulder
We made it to Houston after one short day and one very long day. It went like this:
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Day 1,
Leave Austin after three weeks of not riding bikes with gear and feel good about ourselves for not hurting too much. Stop in Bastrop, a town thirty miles outside of Austin. Talk, briefly with a train kid (freight train hopping young person) in a walmart parking lot. Stop in at walmart. Meet a...
8 tags
Until Next Time, Austin
Toy Golfer
Jude swings his plastic golf club poorly like a two year old. Maybe by his third birthday he’ll have his dad’s technique in mind. When he draws back, he’ll plant his feet and hold his knees in position. Twisting at the waist could come after he’s eaten his cake. After he fills up with sugar and runs like a fat kid; his new legs that don’t coordinate perfectly. He might, by chance,...
11 tags
South X
We had already been smitten with Austin by the time South By South West rolled around, so the week and a half long festival was icing.
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The first five days of SXSW is the interactive conference which is mellow for business hours and free parties afterwards. There were hundreds of well-dressed European computer-nerds meandering through town during the day and schmoozing at the open-bar...
14 tags
Austinitis
If the kite festival isn’t a wholesome and welcoming enough event to win people over then there happens to be more in Austin that could reel them in.
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Our host, Kadi, told us about an organization called Food is Free, which a good friend of hers is one of the leading members. They were having a volunteer day where they were placing and filling garden beds in the front yards of an...
“Thank you so much for everything Austin Texas.. Until next time, keep it weird.”
– http://bit.ly/wNMBEh
9 tags
Let's Go Fly a Kite!
A question we both always ask people when we get into their town is “what do I have to do while I’m here?” The least predictable answer we received in Austin was “the kite festival”. A festival for a city of over a million people, where you show up at a park and fly a kite.
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Early March, seventy five degrees, blue skies, thousands of smiling people, music, and a slight breeze out...
7 tags
Time to Get Weird
Hello again.
Back in San Antonio, we spent a long morning scrambling from hardware store to bike store and then repeating the whole process again because there was something else that we had to get. The constant drizzle wasn’t the biggest help, but, honestly, rain does feel relieving to ride in when we’ve been riding through the desert for a month.
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We found the most useful parts for the...
5 tags
God's Country
Friday, Feb 24th
Spent forty miles fighting headwinds that ranged between fifteen to twenty miles per hour while riding on a surface that was at least bumpy and at most safe. When we got into Hondo, we decided Margaritas first, then a place to stay.
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We landed at el restaurante azteca. We got a little surprise with dinner, one free margarita each. Thanks Rebecca, sorry we never...
February 2012
14 posts
“Just had our first experience getting kicked out of a park for camping against...”
– http://bit.ly/wNMBEh
15 tags
Malls and Malls of Desert in Every Direction..
From Marathon to Sanderson was a change of terrain. Not entirely different from the desert we had been passing by for the previous two weeks, but the hills lengthened and the horizon was lower and further away. We had the wind with us so our trip was a quick one.
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Sanderson had three things we like: water, fried okra, and a big bridge with nothing else around other than train...
4 tags
““I keep looking because if you scare me, at least you exist”
-Carley McKee
...”
9 tags
La Loma Del Chivo
On a suggestion from John The Bikeman in Alpine we decided we would stay a night in Marathon, thirty miles East. The place we were going to was a hostel called La Loma del Chivo.
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A little searching through the small town and we found what appeared to be a vacant wonderland of repurposed material built homes.
We walked around looking for someone and eventually we wandered...
“Stuck in Hondo, TX with a busted axle. Time for some ‘Aztec...”
– http://bit.ly/wNMBEh
7 tags
Big Bend
After Fort Davis, we made it in to Alpine and hoped for a short day of riding along with an indoor place to stay. We spent a long time in the library and going all over town, but we had nothing more than leads that were going nowhere.
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We resolved to eating at a Chinese buffet until we felt uncomfortably full and ready to sleep under a bridge. While eating, we received a message from a...
8 tags
“Rain in Terlingua, Texas
A gun for every ten fingers. Firearm from forearm...”
“After 6 days without showers we finally found a host in Alpine. He’s...”
– http://bit.ly/wNMBEh
10 tags
Lone Stars
The following day to our first frontal assault from wind was yet another day of frontal assaults from the wind.
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We crept toward a small town called Fort Hancock where we hoped we could find water to refill our bottles. We came up to a grocery store and saw three bicycles loaded with gear, fellow travelers.
We met Tim and Noah Hussin, two men riding across the country and shooting a...
5 tags
“Life
Boy, I tell you Life is a long word for such a short experience.
I would...”
8 tags
Texas, Ya'll
Welcome to El Paso and West Texas, a city and a part of the country that neither of us knows enough to blog about, but here’s what we saw.
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When we came into town, we went to the UTEP library to charge phones and maybe find a person on couch surfing to stay with. What we found is that Caleb’s phone charger went sort of, umm, missing, but a lovely lady’s phone had been left at the...
6 tags
“Airplane
Andrew takes his hands off the handlebars.
We are going downhill...”
9 tags
Over the Hump Day
We stayed in Truth or Consequences on Tuesday with a woman named Colleen. She was our second Couch Surfing host and she continued the trend of being welcoming beyond any expectations. We spent a long time talking to her and her daughter, Emily. They proved to be very interesting people that made us feel at home. Colleen, thanks for the lasagna, polenta, and the cookies. Emily, thanks for the...
7 tags
Bike Life
We’re starting a little behind schedule on the blog because we wanted to have content to post, but to have content we had to ride and to ride we had to be out away from towns and all those internets which leaves us without the capability of posting frequently as we go (it’s a perpetual cycle yuck-yuck). This is why our first post about being on the road is overwhelming with content and, ahem,...
January 2012
1 post
7 tags
Sore in the Shorts
After the confining cold of Santa Fe, we were ready to get out and ride around Albuquerque. It’s a town with plenty of bike paths and lanes, big hills, and interesting places.
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One of our first days we left the path to ride an arroyo. We rode it for several miles before realizing we were heading out of town flanked by interstate lanes.
Since we need shelter, clothing,...
