Long Update

This post is actually an email I sent out on Sept 30th. If I didn't send it to you it's not cause I don't love you. Send me an email, and I promise to write back.

The Short Version:

I made it to Austria, and it is nice here. Next week I have a seminar on how to teach, and the week after that I start teaching.

Long Version:

After Bike and Build my life became quite a bit less exciting. I worked at the Anchor Inn as a waitress, and slept, and worked, but made quite a bit of money. I also got rather sick of people. I have officially decided that being a waitress, even though if you work at the right place it pays well, it is not my dream job. I did manage to have some fun while I was back in Maine. I baked some cakes with my new Kitchen Aid Mixer that my grandparents got me for graduation. Unfortunately it was too big and heavy to make the trip across the big pond. In typical college/American tradition this usually occurred around midnight since my partner in crime Katherine Koch also waitresses and our days off never coincided . I also was able to have
a party on Louds Island with some of my friends. There was a full moon and sitting the Bushnell's Beach I realized it is one of the pretty places in the world. I guess I'll just have to go back there someday. I wanted to keep riding, but in Maine it was unsafe to ride home from work in the dark. My days off were usually filled either with sleeping, or attempting to get ready for Austria I did not get that many rides in. OK I will be honest I got two over 10 miles rides
in. My poor bike. I miss it already. It did not make it to Austria, because as much as I love it, it wasn't worth the $250 it would have been to fly it one way. It would almost have been cheaper to buy it it's own seat on the plane. I also finally got the quilt that my mother and I have been working on since the beginning of college put together. Now we just have to finish the boarder, put the back on, and quilt it. Yup it should be ready in time for my great grand children.

So after putting everything I own in a suitcase, and 2 backpacks I was off. First stop was Munich. In typical Suz fashion of leaving everything to the last minute I didn't actually know I had a place to stay in Bad Ischl until about a week before hand, and then I didn't know when I could move in until two days before I left the country. Oops. Although I was proud that I had one of my two bags pack a whole 40 hours before my plane left. They were on the heavy side. I knew that I could bring 50 lbs (23 kilos) per bag with me. So I am standing there checking my bags in, and my Dad asks me how much my suitcase weighs. I tell him quietly 23.8 kg. He then proceeds to ask me how heavy it can be. I roll my eyes and tell him 23 kg, and that I really can't take him anywhere. Luckily the guy behind the counter pretended that he didn't hear this discussion, and I was not forced to pay anything extra. Yup really can't take my father anywhere without him embarrassing me.

My flight was very uneventful I was in a new Jet so each seat had it's own TV. It was exciting. Linda and David picked me up in Munich. Back story: In high school Linda studied abroad at my high school for a year. We became friends. I then lived with her and her parents Rita and Hans when I was a nanny for another family in Murnau. David is Linda's brother who lives in Heidelberg. So in essence I blame her for my learning German. We then met up with Rita for lunch at the same restaurant where they took me the first time I came to Germany. It was where I stood before the bathrooms and wondered if I was Herr or a Damme. My German has come a little ways since that first day, and although I was super tired slipping back into German is going quite smoothly. Other highlights of the first week. I visited Rita and Hans in Murnau, and had a delightful evening with them and their neighbor Heidi. Linda and I baked The Chocolate Birthday Cake for one of Linda's friends. It turned out well although was not as
good as my Grandmother's. I went to Oktoberfest twice. The first time we just walked around, and the second time I met up with Art, one of the other students from Freiburg, and did what Oktoberfest is known for: drank some beer. It was a fun night. The next day me and my large
amount of luggage traveled from Munich to Bad Ischl. I survived changing trains twice. By the time I arrived I had decided that next time I travel anywhere for a year it will be only with my toothbrush and Pandy. Everything else I can buy when I get there. The last train ride was beautiful through the Austrian Alps. I managed to stay awake for the entirety of it.

In Bad Ischl my landlady picked me up at the station and drove me the 200m to her house. I was so relived that she did. I am living for the first month in a Ferienwohnung and then hopefully will be moving into a regular apartment. A Ferienwohnung is an apartment that is
used primarily tourist, and rented for the week. It has a kitchen with utensils, and a bed with sheets, and my own bathroom. Mine is quite nice, and located right down town. Bad Ischl is small, and so I can get to everything by foot. Although, I am still thinking about buying a bike to get around. First I have to get the more important things such as cell phone, and my own internet. I am sending this from an internet café, and miss Dave Getchel's amazing ability to find
Internet everywhere. This morning Karl, who is one of the teachers I will be working with, and the one that arranged the apartment for me woke me at 9:50 am. I had been laying in bed considering getting up, when I hear a knock at my door. I quickly throw on some clothes, and
answer the door. Oh well so much for first impressions. He took me out to breakfast, and showed me the school where I will be teaching. He also showed me where I can get a cell phone, and hopefully a mobile internet card. So soon I may be contactable! He seems very nice, and
I hope someone good to work with.

The Future: Tomorrow I head to Saalbach, and where I learn how to teach in a week. It should be interesting. I am excited because I will be meeting some of the other Freiburgers that are doing the same program as I am. It should be fun, and we are supposed to bring our hiking shoes. Therefore I conduced that there are mountains there. Then I return to Bad Ischl, and start teaching the following Monday. I'm nervous about jumping right into teaching. I know that in Karl's class I will be responsible for teaching the whole class although hopefully not on the first day, which is good. It will give me lots of experience, but nerve racking at the same time. He will be in the classroom with me though. I also actually read some of the emails I got from my program, and found a whole bunch of lesson plans. EXCITING! I will be responsible for teaching 13 classes a week, and will be working in two different schools. It is supposed to work out
that I teach 4 days a week. Hopefully I can get a Monday or a Friday off so I can do some traveling. I went to the train station today, and surprisingly the Ticket guy was very helpful.

Umm that is the news from this side of the ocean. I hope to post pictures of my new apartment soon.

I made it!

So we done did it. All 30 of us made it across the country on a bicycle. In then final three days of the trip I had one of my least favorite days of the entire trip from Brawely to Julian, and then the next day was one of my favorites. Brawely lies about 400 ft below sea level, but to get to the ocean we had one last mountain to climb. On the day out of Brawely we did 4,000 ft of climbing over 30 miles, and as the physic major on the trip pointed out the profile for the day looked like an exponential growth graph. That is not a happy graph to bike, because it kept getting steeper as the day went on. By the end of that day I was so excited that the trip was almost over because we not only had to climb lots but it was into a head wind in the desert. It is hard to get more demoralizing conditions to bike in. I was 2 hours away from the church for hours. First we had 30 miles to go if we could continue to go 15 mph, and what seemed like an eternity later there was 8 miles left at 4 mph. Me and just about everything were in a big fight. I did manage somehow to make it up that beast, and rewarded myself with a homemade ice cream cookie sandwich.

Shortly before we entered Julian we left the desert behind us, and the next day we climbed 1,000 ft through apple orchards, and then spent the rest of the day descending. It was amazing. There were some hills that we had to climb, but when you were ready for them to end they did. I could have kept riding for months in that sort of terrain, but the next day we ran into the ocean, literally. I dipped my front tire in the Pacific, took some pictures, and then carefully set my bike down out of reach of the salt water so I could run full speed into the water. In San Diego the Pacific is pretty warm, and the beach is beautiful. We had many cheering friends and family as well as normal beach goers who stopped to ask us what all the commotion was about. It was so great to tell people "we just biked across the country for affordable housing."

I spent two extra days hanging out in San Diego, but unfortunately got a stomach bug. It was not my favorite thing to have, but at the same time I would have rather missed hanging out in San Diego then not having been able to ride the final days of the trip. I flew back to Maine on Saturday night, and luckily by that time I was feeling better. My bike is still making its way across the country. I had to take it apart and put it in a box so that it could be shipped. I realized that I had really made it across the country when I looked at my bike sitting there all disassembled. I am keeping my fingers crossed that it makes it here in one piece.

I would like to thank everyone who helped me complete this trip. Thank you to everyone who that donated money, or gave me encouragement. My fund raising total was over $5,500, and after the trip was paid for my route will donate over $55,500 to affordable housing. Donation can still be made at bikeandbuild.org. We will be giving grants of various amounts to chapters of Habitat for Humanity in Orange County NC, Memphis, San Diego, and Winston-Salem NC, as well as another affordable housing program called Mountain Housing in Asheville NC. Routes that started in the North East will give grants to this section of the country. I would also like to thank Sherwood Olin, and the Lincoln County News for running my weekly updates.

Now it is time to be part of the real world of life after college. I think it is going to contain less biking and building, and more working. It was a fun summer. I learned a lot, had some fun, and have a pretty sweet shorts tan to show for it.

Hotness

Cartoon cacti really do exist. We hit the desert in Arizona this week, and instead of having bushes and trees in their front yars they have Saguaro Cacti. I wondered if nusries here sold cacti plants instead of shrubs, but have not had the time to investigate. I have been worried about the Arizona desert since the beginning of the trip, but it was actually in California that we hit our hottest temperatures. Today we rode 90 miles from Blythe to Brawley and I was sweep. We left the church before 6am, and when I arrived at 2pm the bank thermomiter read 104 degrees. We rode across the Empirial Sand Dune and it was beautiful, but I was diestracted by the fact that I was in the desert on my bike and it was hot. 6 miles from the church some of my fellow riders were stopped sitting under a tree. As sweep it was our job to be the last people into the church, but I really did not want to stop. We had been pushing it hard so that we could get out of the heat as soon as possible. But after running through the sprinklers on a stranger's lawn, life seemed so much better. Instead of the last 6 miles being tourture they were actually quite enjoyable. Then once we got to the church everyone took naps to try and recover from a very long day. I decided that of the places that I want to live some day the desert is not high on my list, but I also decided that air condtioning is amazing.

We have only three days of riding left till we dip our tires in the Pacific Ocean. I still can't believe it when I look at a map and see how far we have gone. I have rode across the country to a place where they have Palm Trees and Cacti.

Many updates

So I finally loaded all my weekly updates onto my blog now that we have only one week of the trip left. I do not know if anyone actually reads this anymore, due to the fact that I have not updated in literally months. Oops sorry about that. Now I must sleep so that I can survive the desert and cactuses. They are big and I was kind of excited about to see my first real cartoon looking cacti. I will update next week. I promises.

two for the price of 1

Sorry last week I did not report last week. I wrote it but then we
did not have internet for me to email it in. In the last two weeks we
have gone from flat Kansas to the Rockies to the desert of Arizona.
It is amazing to watch the landscape change in such a short time.

I had some of the best rides of this trip while in the Rockies. My
favorite stretch was from Gunnison to Durango. In these two days we
started off along the Blue Mesa Reservoir, and then road into Box
Canyon. We then went over Red Mountain pass on the Million Dollar
Highway. That section of road cost a million dollars a mile to build
back in the 1930's, which was profitable because of all the mining in
that section of the Rockies. The roads that we were on were amazing
with wide shoulders, and newly paved. This gave me room to climb up
safely, and then go down the other side fast. I got a new top speed
of 44.8 mph. It was great fun. The views were amazing everywhere we
looked.

After Colorado we crossed the four corners into Arizona where I stood
on a bronze circle and took a picture of an arbitrary spot on the map.
There I heard Polish, French, and Japanese so I knew I was in a
tourist place. The four corners lies on the Navajo Nation's land. We
have been on it for the past few days, and poverty is more evident
then at any other point of the trip. Along the roads that we were
riding on there are many empty bottles. We were informed by a cop car
that we had to be careful and ride far on the shoulder, because they
have a problem with drunk drivers 24 hours a day. Unfortunately the
shoulders were not always bike friendly. So far we have had not had
any incidences. It has been hard riding through such an area, because
I know that there are many issues that confront these communities
before affordable housing.

Tomorrow we are headed to the Grand Canyon, and camping on the south
rim. I am so excited, but also the realization that I only have 11
days left before San Diego is slowly setting in. Soon I will be
headed back to Maine.

Oh to flat

Quick up date from the road. We are now biking lots and are in the
middle of an 8 day stretch of biking. We have already crossed through
Oklahoma, and Kansas and today we entered Colorado. I think my legs
are officially in shape, and have for the most part gotten used to
biking many miles. Today I said "tomorrow we only have 68 miles. I'm
so excited." This week we have been averaging about 80+ miles a day,
and today was our second over hundred mile ride or century of the
trip. Most of the landscape we have been traveling through has been
relatively flat, and I have learned that wind can either be amazing,
or very low on my fun list. Headwinds are completely demoralizing,
but tailwinds are great fun. We had one the other day that without
peddling we were going 11.8 mph on the flat.

In these many miles we have seen many things. In the interest of
getting as much sleep as possible I will only list a few of them.
First we went through the Gypson hills which looked like what I
imagine Arizona will look like. They were red table top hill. We
experienced watching a storm come across the praries at us. It was
amazing to watch the entire sky turn black. It was also a little
nerve racking to know that we had no where to go. Luckily it just
missed us. We spent the night in Dodge City, and I learned the phrase
"Get the hell out of Dodge" which is synonymous with get lost or you
aren't wanted here. Apparently Dodge City was used as the set for
many Westerns and that is where the term originated. For the past few
days we have been following the Santa Fe Trail. I learned that They
averaged about 15 miles a day. In comparison we were flying on our
bikes. We were crossing in one day what it would take them a little
less then a week to cross. I was glad for this, because the problem
with the flat planes is they are a tad bit boring. To keep ourselves
mentally stimulated we have resorted to games I played on long car
rides as a kid such as the alphabet game using road signs, I went to
the store and bought an..., and a new game called contact. These
games help the miles tick by. Soon we will be out of the flat lands,
and into the mountains. Part of me is really excited get back to
amazing views, but the other part of me remembers to get those views I
have to climb up many miles. I know that in the middle of some assent
I will look back on the flat planes with longing.

Well I must sleep. I wish you all a happy 4th of July. I will be
spending it in Colorado Springs. It should be a fun time, but I doubt
their parade will be as entertaining as the Round Pond Parade.

My bike is back up and running. My new fork is blue, and beautiful, and looks exactly like one the I bent. I have broken it in with 350 miles in four states in the last week, and my little legs are tired. We have a day off tomorrow, Tuesday, and I am so excited to be able to sleep in till 9AM. I have gotten pretty used to our normal 5AM wake up, and stuffing all of my worldly possessions back into my backpack. This past week has treated me well. This week I was filled with quite a number of firsts.

We had our first day off in Memphis, and go to experience Beale Street. It was fun to watch the street performers doing back flips down 50 feet of the street. Because the majority of our group had come out with us we kept running into people we knew, and having to stop and converse, play ninja tag, and do other such shenanigans. We had a great time, but I have never seen so many cops out patrolling in my life. The actual day off was not that eventful. I slept in till 8:15, ate pancakes, read my book, and generally relaxed and avoided physical activities.

The next day I crossed the Mississippi for the first time in anything other than an airplane. It is a big dirty brown river. We left Tennessee behind us, and entered Arkansas. And even though I had run in with a Tennessee driver, I immediately began to miss the TN roads. For what ever reason in Arkansas there is a bump every 20 ft. By the end of the day I had more then a few choice words to say to the builders of highway 70.

Once we entered Arkansas it became flat. We stopped to talk to a crop duster and found out that in that section of the state grew "just about everything." I learned that it was so flat that it was possible to grow rice. I did not know that rice was grown in the US, but as soon as though about the amount of rice that is eaten in the US it made sense to grow it here. Also apparently if we had headed through two weeks later we would have had to fight off hoards of Misquotes. The thought of biking through swarms of biting bugs is not high on my list of things I want to do in my life.

We had two build days in Little Rock, AK. The first day we prepared a build site for a house that had been built in a parking lot and then moved to its foundation. They do this to promote Habitat. I think this particular house had been build at one of the local high schools. I leveled sand in the car port in preparation for the cement floor. It was the first time that I had ever leveled sand so I do not know if I made it level enough for the professional, but I was proud when the day was done. Our second day of building was actually debuilding. We worked deconstruction for the Habitat for Humanity Resale Store. We went into a house that was going to be torn down, and took out everything that could be resold. We took out the doors, the fireplace, the gas stove, the hot water heater, the air conditioner, and all of the baseboard and trim. I was skeptical that the trim would get sold because it had years of paint on it, but it was sold before we even took it to the resale store. I was impressed.

Out of Little Rock was my first century day. We were supposed to ride 104 miles, but I kind of sort of got lost making mine 108 miles. I apparently missed the turn onto 64, and didn't realize it for 10 miles when the lunch stop never appeared. We have a cue sheet that tells us when we are supposed to turn, and we had planned to have lunch at about mile 40. For about 5 miles there really was no place for our trailer to have pulled off, but then I passed a deserted parking lot. I stopped at the next flea market, and asked if they had seen any bikers pass by. She said "you are the first one, so you must be far ahead." At that point I knew that I was not far ahead, but far lost. I called the van, and started biking back the way I came. Because I was behind sweep, I had to ride in the van till I caught up with sweep. They weren't too far ahead so I was still able to get in over 100 miles. Because we were still pretty much in the flat section of Arkansas it wasn't one of the hardest day we have done on this trip. The next day we bike 92 miles through the Ozark. They were absolutely beautiful, but my legs were rocked by the end of the day. Some of our group members rode an extra 10 miles so they could get in back to back centuries. I was just happy to say that I did 200 miles in two days.

The next two days were shorter with only 74 miles. I know that I am getting into biking shape when I can truthfully say that the first 74 miler was easy. I tried to do the entire 9 miles that we were in Missouri no handed. I was not skilled enough to do two of the hills no handed, and I learned that my bike seat was not made to do 9 miles of no handed riding. I was rather sore by the end. Today my legs informed me for 74 miles that they were not happy with me. It was a very long day, but I survived. I am looking forward to resting them tomorrow. Then it will be back on the bike for a full week of riding. I haven't look too closely at our schedule because we have a rule on this trip that we don't talk about tomorrow until tomorrow, but I am sure that it will be amazing.