We teleported to South Dakota... there, I said it!

So last we left off we were in rural Illinois blogging about rain and dogs chasing us... and less than 7 days later I'm in South Dakota and my awesome friend Stephanie Fei is yelling at me on Facebook that we haven't blogged in over a week! Yipes! So how is it humanly possible that in 7 days we got from the east side of IL to South Dakota/Nebraska? Easy... we drove here!

OK, so since we last blogged we have become the luckiest people in the world. First, a friend from CT (Adam McCaherty) hooked us up with places to stay with his family in both Sherman and Carlinville, IL. While we were in Sherman, I found out my old Air Force friends Regina & Chris Hatten were just down the road by St. Louis, MO, so we took somewhat of a detour and rode down to their place to hang out - man, was that awesome! It was so cool to catch up with them and Jeff & I had such a great time! Once this bike ride is over I am going to swing back by their house and steal their Pomeranian Charlie and his underdog sidekick, JoJo... seriously, I am.

Ok, so back to how the heck we got to South Dakota. Well, on the way down to Chris & Gina's, I had a phone interview scheduled with a potential job in the Denver, CO area where Jeff & I are relocating to after this bicycle ride is over. We were a little over halfway to the Hatten's when I received the phone call from the potential job, and although I had planned to be at a place where I could properly take a phone call, it had begun to rain on us about 10 miles before my scheduled call time and we just didnt make it. So where did I take the call? Standing under just enough roof attached to a sign that had a bike trail map on it that was literally able to keep just my head and phone dry while the rain continued to pour down on me. OH, and the whole time I was on the call Jeff was wandering around aimlessly in the rain waiting for me to be done. I must have done OK though, because I advanced to the next round of 'face-to-face' interviews in Denver, CO and will be taking care of that on Wed.

Thankfully with the potential job, all the stars managed to align and we were able to stash our bikes at the Hatten's and head out in a rental car towards Denver. What was that? South Dakota isn't on the way to Denver from Illinois? Lol... yeah, you're right, but I've seriously wanted to see Mt. Rushmore since I was BORN, so we headed up a little north of our destination and checked The Badlands & Mt. Rushmore off of our list of cool places to see in this lifetime. Now we are settled in at Scottsbluff, NE for the night and headed into Denver to look for apartments and catch up with Toshia & Jorge Chavez tomorrow night -- can't wait to show Jeff Colorado and introduce him to some folks from back home!!!

And that... is the story of how we ended up in South Dakota... as told by my flaky memory and sporadic mind...




~Styx & Bones

Sophie's Choice...

AKA: A dilemma offering at least two possibilities, neither of which is practically acceptable. I spent a lot of time riding the last few days thinking about some of the decisions we are faced with on this trip and the consequences and comedy that go with them.

For instance, when we reached Ft. Wayne, IN, Jeff and I were sitting at a diner near our hotel (and the 5 gentlemen's clubs around it) and Jeff suddenly looked up and said "Holy Smokes! We are in Ft. Wayne! I only planned up to Ft. Wayne!" Decision faced with: where to next? While the answer to this question literally changes every day, we have realized over the past few days of rain, wind, and brrrrrrrr 'cold' temps, we are not going to be able to tackle the 'Northern Tier' cycling route we had originally wanted to travel. That route would have had us going through South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and some other cool states we haven't been to but would like to see. Decision made: take an improvised route in a south-westerly fashion until we run out of gas or hit the Pacific Ocean... or Colorado... or wherever we decide is the finish. We've tried to get a little better at planning ahead, but even today we were supposed to end up in one city... and here we sit in a completely different city and will not even end up going through the original one we planned to be in. Weird!

So back to Sophie's choice. The first and foremost is: Highways vs. Backroads. Often when we ride we are able to decide between taking country roads and riding along highways. The obvious downfall to riding along a highway is riding down a road with cars going 60+ MPH and hoping all of them notice that you are there. Another downfall is... that its actually kinda boring. The great part about riding along highways is that the roads are always pretty good (hence, we go faster) and there are NO DOGS! :0) Riding on backroads is more enjoyable because Jeff and I can ride closer to each other and chit-chat without worrying too much about getting mowed down by a car. HOWEVER, when we are travelling on a backroad, we are traveling in the land of crazy wolf-dogs... dogs with the power to smell you from 5 miles away and somehow magically teleport itself to within 6" of you... sometime without you even noticing!

My first flat

So its like... "Highway or Backroad?" Well, I'm a little bored with the highway, so lets do backroad. 5 seconds later... BAM! There are two wolf-dogs and their little mangy friend chasing you down the road. The weirdest part for me is Jeff's reaction to getting chased by dogs! Yesterday we were chased by no less than one million dogs, and Jeff was like "this is like a video game! The dogs come out of nowhere and I'm, like, on them!" I swear... I'm on the brink of a meltdown, and Jeff is having the best time ever getting chased down the road by random and huge dogs! What a weirdo! Luckily, we now have a method for how to deal with dogs when they chase us --- I ride like hell and Jeff rides up on the dogs and yells at them to "stop it!" So far its been working like a charm. Yesterday, one GIANT black lab LITERALLY came out of NOWHERE and ran up on my left side. I dont think I've ever heard myself shriek in terror so loud in my LIFE! Immediately I started pedaling like mad and Jeff rode over towards the dog. Almost instantly the dog started galloping and I could tell he was most likely not going to rip my face off at this point. Jeff looks over at me and goes "I said sit. I dont know why I said that, but the dog looked confused and then started running like he was playing." Lol.

Didn't clip out of my pedals fast enough

So... Sophie's Choice for today? Ride in the rain to a free place to stay, or hunker down at the motel and try to make it where we need to go tomorrow? When weighing the options, its easy to see the benefits of both. If we stay in the motel and wait out the storm we get to be warm, dry, and can relax all day without a care in the world. At the same time, staying put in the motel causes us to lose a day of riding... and pay for another night of shelter. If we venture out in the rain and can actually make it to our destination, the payoff could be a free night at a new friends home with a home-cooked dinner and breakfast. Plus, we're now 70 miles further down the road. Since the weatherman seems to have been on vacation lately (the forecasts are more wrong than I've ever seen!), we decided to roll the dice and hope for the rain to let up. This... unfortunately... did... not... happen. 40 miles of riding in the rain and we're now hunkered down at a different shady motel in a totally different town than we planned on being in. Hey, you win some and you LOSE some!


Its not even 5pm yet, and I'm pretty sure I'll be asleep in the next hour. I'm so tiiiiiiiiiiiired.

Dog Day, then Cat Day... OMG!

Our first few days back on the road have been ROUGH (or should I say Ruff?) to say the least!
 

This is where the dog latched onto my rear pannier

Dog day was Tuesday - our first day back on the road. We dropped our rental car off in Bowling Green, OH and were on the road about 2pm. We had a short day planned, and literally nothing of note happened... well... nothing at first. We were out in the country riding along - Jeff was a ways ahead of me and I was bee-boppin along to my handlebar stereo system when I saw this house on the left with their door open about a foot. I figured someone was about to walk outside and presumed I'd wave at them like I always do when we see people out and about and we are cycling by. To my suprise, a person did not come out of the house. It took a second to register in my brain that the streak of fur and saliva speeding towards me was a pitbull, and in the course of about 5 more seconds, about a bajillion thoughts went through my mind. "Should I slow down? Should I speed up? Is speeding up going to piss this dog off even more? Do I yell at it? Should I grab my mace? Oh no, my shoes are clipped into my pedals... if this thing jumps for me I'm going to eat pavement hard"... among many others.

While this was all going on I hesitated and slowed down for a second thinking maybe this dog wanted to be my friend, but that seemed to make the dog's greased-lightning-like-speed go even faster. Suddenly the dog was ahead of me! I yelled at it, but apparently all that did was make it even MORE mad, as it lunged at my front tire and snarled in hate at me. I screamed to Jeff and pedaled as fast as I could. The dog fell behind for a second and then I felt my bike being pulled to the side, then lunged forward. I saw the dog hesitate for a second, screamed to Jeff again (this time he heard me), and the dog ran off. A couple miles up the road we stopped so I could freak out and calm down for a second. Thats when we noticed the strap on my rear left pannier that the dog had grabbed with its saliva soaked teeth --- there was a mark on it where it had grabbed on for dear life... then thankfully slipped off and thudded to the pavement.

Dog day scared me. Hard. Jeff rides a lot closer to me now. Oh, and a couple miles after our little break, Jeff was chased by a ferocious Boston Terrier. Haha.

Cat Day was Wednesday.

One of many roadblocks for the day

I just looked at how much I wrote about Dog Day, and Cat day just seemed worse, so I'll just hit the highlights here. It started out with our directions to tell us to follow a 4-lane divided highway for like 30 miles, but that seemed crazy, so we went an improvised "alternate route" where during the course of the day TWO black cats crossed our paths... and TWO jet black squirrels also crossed our paths... lol. This route took us to 3 different places where the road was under construction, blocked, and gated off... adding multiple more miles to the already 60+ mile planned day. For a lot of the day we were way out in the boonies driving past a lot of Amish farms and being chased by Amish dogs. Our directions kept telling us to go down various dirt roads... which was not a good sign since the sky was turning black with clouds. One particularly excited dog chased us down from about a mile away just as it started to rain (again) - it really freaked me out, but then I saw a tiny pony hooked up to a tiny carriage and all was awesome in the world again.

Yeah,something aint right here...

The last 20 miles of the day it was raining... raining and getting darker and gloomier. Good thing we got into Ft. Wayne, IN right smack in the middle of rush hour! Of course the bike route we were supposed to take in town was gated and locked, so we did the best we could on roads and sidewalks to get to the shady motel we were staying at. About 5 miles from the motel, Jeff went right to get onto a sidewalk by a school near a really busy intersection. I followed, but neglected to factor my speed, angle, rain factor, and pretty much anything else when I hit the 1.5" entry curb to get up on to the sidewalk. WIPEOUT! Good one too. Scraped up my ankle... fist-sized knot on my shin... and my handlebars literally spun 90-degrees to my wheel. But, luckily, it was all made up for when we reached the motel and we realized it was surrounded by about 5 different gentlemen's clubs - haha, I did say it was shady! And what greeted us on the way into our room? A black kitten all curled up and looking cute just waiting to cross our paths! So there it was... after 72 miles... cat day finally came to end with a lukewarm flip-flop wearing shower in a gross bathtub, a paper thin pillow, and a rock hard bed. And just when I thought the night was turning for the better with the Big Brother Season finale, guess what....the station cut out just when they anouncing the winner! Is this some kind of joke? I mean... seriously...

Welcome back to the trail I guess -- still lovin it -- still keepin' on truckin!

~Styx & Bones

All of our pictures are in different "Why Not Bicycle" folders in this picasa album: https://picasaweb.google.com/113448133157937829305

Bicycling Vacation!

Just wanted to put up a quick blog to say we had a GREAT vacation from bicycling back in CT and are now officially back out on the road cycling towards the good 'ol west coast!

Our time in CT seemed to fly by, and we were constantly on the run, but it was definitely an awesome time. Our first night in town we were lucky to grab dinner with Dave & Lina at our favorite place, The Cougar (chowder) Pot before they made it official and got all married up on Saturday. 

The next night our awesome friends from Unilever Trumbull met up with us in Milford for a little bowling action - shout out to Stephanie, Yaling, Caryn, Craig, Andy & Danielle - thank you for the great night! 

After that it gets blurry... Too much running around! But, on 9/10/11 we had the pleasure.of witnessing Dave & Lina's marriage at Jackson Gore in Okemo, VT. The ceremony was fabulous, and basically so was everything else!  The ceremony was fun and fit them very well, and we especially loved the speech given by Daves dad, Dick, during the ceremony... and how they all danced down the aisle on the way out!  It really was the best time, and it was great to catch up with Dave & Lina's family and friends - we've met many of them over the last few years, and really enjoyed seeing them all.  Seriously awesome time - I can't say it enough!

We were able to catch up with Jeff's mom and dad the next day and made it back to Ohio to keep heading west on this bike ride yesterday. It's amazing how many things have happened in the last two days of riding... But its Survivor/Big Brother night in America... So i'll be blogging about that tomorrow! Don't miss it!!!

Miss you all! Thanks for reading!

~Styx & Bones

Cleveland's HOT! And also cold... and also has Thunderbirds?

Does anyone else feel like watching an episode of the Drew Carey show?  No?  Just me huh?

Oh well, here we are in Clyde, OH today - almost to Indiana!  So far Ohio has been a set of extremes --- best AND worst roads, hottest AND coldest weather, and smallest AND biggest birds!  What?! 

A couple of days ago going into Cleveland the temperature was seriously 90, "feels like 100" with 5 MPH wind and a dew point in the high 70's --- it was seriously the worst day ever trying to make it 55+ miles through Cleveland to city center where we had a free night at a hotel.  At one point around lunch we were so overheated we went into the first restaurant that didnt look overly sketchy just to soak up their a/c for a while - very nice. 

As we approached city center I saw a bunch of people just baking in the sun on the side of a hill across the freeway just staring out in one direction over Lake Erie.  I was thinking maybe they were going to have some kind of awesome fireworks show that night or something, but turns out there was an Air Show going on and the USAF Thunderbirds were about 10 minutes from performing.  Just as we got into downtown Cleveland, we could hear them take off -- I had seriously never seen an air show so close to a major city before!  I mean, I've seen the Thunderbirds, but I've never seen them do their tricks and then fly around all the skyscrapers that made up downtown to come back around for the next trick --- it was VERY cool!

The last couple days have been windy, rainy, and cold!  We've been windswept sideways on our bikes, hailed on and it was definitely lightly raining sideways on us yesterday!  We met a couple of older gentlemen riding their bikes east -- its always nice to meet other cross country riders -- they are always excited for us and urge us to keep going!

Speaking of keeping going.... today is the day we peel off the trial for our friends wedding!  We have 40ish miles to knock out to pick up a rental car and get our behinds back to Vermont.  Speaking of that, why the heck are 1-week rental's so DANG cheap compared to 1 or 2 days???  Anyways, we haven't had a plan so far, so the question is... will we be back to finish, or is it moving time? 

Have a great rest of your week!
~Styx & Bones

Oh, sorry! I didn't see a car...

Lol... Camping at Geneva on The Lake in Ohio about 50 miles east of Cleveland. We rode our bikes into camp, just like we always do. We proceeded to pull various sacks out of our panniers, just like we always do.  Our neighbors in their huge houses on wheels tried not to stare at us with their puzzled looks as they saw an entire campsite come out of our bikes... Just like they always do. :0)

We are the lucky campers next to the water fountain tonight. Jeff and I were in the tent playing a rousing game of Uno when a lady came traipsing through our campsite and was startled when she heard us talking inside.

"Oh! I'm sorry! I didn't know anyone was here - I didn't see a car."

And you won't, my friend. You won't.

Goodnight all!

~Styx and Bones