4200Miles

9/23 Day 61: Alma, CO to Green Mountain Reservoir, Heeney, CO 56 miles (2927 miles)       Summit this! The crew more than 2 miles high.     Hector had told us the night before to expect breakfast at 8AM sharp and his girlfriend, Amy, did a bunch of prep that night on a huge bread, egg, bacon, and cheese scramble thing that only needed to be put into the oven the next morning.  When we got downstairs, we found that we were really the only ones awake except for Bill, the old prospector who lived in the house and his giant (literally, a giant, making it the size of a normal dog, apparently it happens in a very small number of litters) Jack Russel Terrier, Jack, but the breakfast was already cooked in the oven. We made a pot of coffee in the still house and dug in on the scramble while we talked about all kinds of things with Bill, from gold panning to Jack Russel genetics to the value of certain crystals in the surrounding mountains. With all the ea...

9/17 Day 55 Ordway, CO to Pueblo, CO 52 miles (2735 miles)                       It took us a long time to get on the road today. We slept in a touch, since we had stayed up late, and we had a hard time leaving the driveway as we got pulled in to interesting conversation with our hosts, distracted by picture taking, and I gave Sean one of our tires since his back tire was worn all the day down to the tread and wouldn't last him too long before it was totally useless. We set out around 11 or so, and found it tough going right away. The wind was strong, and blowing right in our faces. We gutted out 12 miles down the road to a small town next door where we stopped for hot dogs and fries to fuel us up for the rest of the day. As we ate, another cyclist, James Weitze, pulled up just to chat with us. He is a west to east cyclist and had been on the road about 6 weeks when we met him. We talked around our food as we traded stories and a...

Our last mail drop will be in Lolo, Montana so if you have been dying to send us something, you better do it now! Please have your package arrive by Oct 4 to be sure it beats us there. MANDI BLEIDORN GENERAL DELIVERY 11815 LEWIS CLARK DRIVE LOLO, MT 95847 p.s. Matt will update the blog as soon as we find some good wireless, hopefully tomorrow.

9/11 Day 50:Toronto, KS to Newton, KS 101 miles (2281 miles)         Erin, Mandi, Ben, Charlie, and I all woke up just before the sun today so we could get an early start on our first 100 mile day. The wind, which is always a factor in Kansas, was a 5-10 mile an hour North cross-wind that would be some of the lightest we'd seen since entering the state. This, combined with a predicted temp. somewhere in the mid to high 80s and a lot of flat nothing to ride across made it an ideal day to put a boatload of miles away. We struck camp quickly, ate a couple loaves of monkey bread with some coffee, and were riding by 8. The first thing I noticed when I got on my bike was just how fresh my legs felt and how little, comparatively, my ass hurt. It's amazing how just one day of rest can take you from feeling like you'd like to just take a train to Oregon to feeling like you could pick up your bike and carry it there. Luke and Joe told us that there was a place about 25 mile...

9/7 Day 46: Ash Grove, MO to Lincoln Park, Pittsburg, KS 72 miles (2080 miles) The sign says "Turnback Creek" but we figured it was joking.                We woke up today, made breakfast, said goodbye to Shelly and John (who told us not to miss out on the huge pie selection at Cooky's Diner in Golden City, MO today), and left the park excited to finally be done with Missouri's tough terrain and to enter Kansas.  We had about 20 miles of hilly riding left until things gave way to gentle hills with long, slow ascents. There was, however, another bridge under construction on the route. John and Shelly had warned us about it though, and told us they had been forced to take the bags off of their bikes to get past. We found out why immediately upon arrival. The  bridge was totally missing, and there was something of a small cliff for us to climb in order to rejoin the road. I managed to carry my bike whole up the slope and then Ben tie...