Just a couple a dudes trying to do something

f*ck the haters

2010-10-07T13:22:00.000-07:00

JK!

But srsly, fuck em cuz WE MADE IT!!! P.S. like our fonts??? ;D

In all seriousness, though, we did actually "make it," which is to say, "we made it."

We've been here in The Bay (Gay) Area for a while, but we've been so occupied with things that this is the first time we've been able to sit down together at a computer and reflect on the past week or so. Like our workmanlike prose? ;)

At this point, we politely (though forcefully) request that you settle back in your ergonomic loveseat, allow the gentle glow from your computer's screen wash over your pimply faces, prepare your index digit for a heavy dose of linkology, and read the following:

We'll pick up our story in Carson City, town of wonders. After purchasing donuts at the Nugget Casino (which features "The World's Rarest Collection of Gold" -- ??!!%%*?), we wrote a blog post at Eli's homely home. You see, we were couchsurfing with a nice guy named Eli, who happens to be a world-class BMX bike rider (not JK). It was grrrrrrrrrreat! Then we decided to wake up (the next morning, you idiots!) and ride our bikes to meet Pistol Pete, who had ridden beyond Carson City and nighted in the town of Genoa, N(e)V(ada), the Silver State's oldest incorporated town.

Everett talking.

Pete was lucky enough to have found hosts in Genoa to the tune of a father-son duo who turned out to be the biggest couple a stoners we ever laid eyes on! The situation was like this: Todd paints airplanes by night, and by day teaches his 18-year old son Everett the Ways of the Herb. Everett works at the local General Store, and goes to Burning Man whenever he possibly can in order to unite intimately with upwards of "30 chicks a night without even trying, man." These guys were a riot, and provided us with a delicious breakfast frittata. They put Tostitos on top. You should try it sometime.

California's state marker sucks a big one

Soon enough, this recast trio o' bros was on its way into California's Sierra Nevada range, the armpit of the world, if the world were to maintain its armpit hair and odor meticulously, that is. We had a seriously serious climb up into the Sierras via Hwy 88 up and over what is locally and globally known as Kit Carson Pass. We were surrounded, practically engulfed even (omfg), by a smorgasbord of pleasant visualities: trees, rocks, slopes, rivers, streams, clouds, gravel (JK), skies, dingbats, wombats, Louisville Sluggers, X-Men characters, and other examples of God's Bounteous Creation (GBC).

Emelio makes sure to always wear his helmet when doing "the look-back"

Once we heaved our sloppy bags of flesh over the peak--nearly 9,000 feet asl(?)--our bicycle wheels started turning on their own for some completely obscure reason, as if friction ceased to exercise its full influence on our persons and/or bicycles. It was almost like we didn't have to exert as much energy as we'd had to on the way up to the peak! We liked this.

We assume this barn belongs to some rich guy who maintains it for exclusively aesthetic purposes (we don't mind; just saying)

We Three Kings cruised down a good ways until we hit an area called Silver Lake. Alex, who sympathizes with Mussolini's political ideology and shares many characteristics with a troglodyte, described this lake as "basically a mini Lake Tahoe without all the bullshit." Please note: Alex has definitely never been to Lake Tahoe. Also please note: Emelio's little jokes are hurting Alex's feelings. Please refer to a pic for a pic of our nearly-island-like campsite; it certainly was a campsite worthy of raising as our own beloved son. Pete, we should mention, when considering whether park rangers might oust us from this prime piece of not-paid-for real estate, was just about as paranoid as a 13-year old girl smoking her first joint in her parent's basement. In the end, no ranger confronted us and we spent another peaceful, illicit night under the stars.

That's the island where we camped in the background; Alex failed at wearing it as a hat

The next morning might have been possibly and perhaps our most glorious bit of riding in a long while. We basically slid down the Sierras like a slime-covered child on a moist Slip-n-Slide. Which is to say, our descent was fast and furious. Eventually, we pulled off the main road and flew down a magical, forest-shrouded back road that offered numerous views out over Sierra expanses. We even saw snow!

It's just a picture for cryin' out loud

Eventually, however, we got to Placerville, CA. Other names for this town might include 1) Whackerville, 2) Don't-Go-Backerville, 3) Stuff-it-in-a-Sackerville, 4) I'm-gonna-smack-yerville, and 5) The ShitPit of California. Placerville was hot and carfilled and we even made PB&Js at the local McDonald's.

We'll always be thankful that Pete taught us this awesome trick

Our evening ended in Folsom, where we heard a local blues band play a rousing medley of "Folsom Prison Blues" and "On the Road Again." The hot bartender danced with us and even said that we made her night, but held out when it came to any kind of meaningful sexual activity. No biggie; we had a good time anyway!

Folsom Freaks

That evening, some interesting stuff went down that you guys might be interested in reading about. You can read all about it if you simply continue reading our blog, "Just a couple a dudes trying to do something".

We cycled from the bar to the city park and threw down on the only patch of grass that wasn't being pummeled by godforsaken sprinklers. Unfortunately, this minuscule camping area placed us in a highly visible spot, directly adjacent to a large graveyard, I mean parking lot (cars are coffins!). A few hours after dozing off in our sleeping bags (it was so nice out that we abandoned the tent and slept 'neath the 'stars), we were rudely awakened by a local swine moonlighting as a Folsom City Police Officer. This donut-loving oinker asked us what we were doing, to which we replied, "Sleeping, you horrendous fuck." JK! In reality, we let Pete do the talking, and he placated the greasy lardass with the fabricated story that we were riding cross-country to raise money for the American Kidney Association (as Pirate Pete put it to us a day later, "Everyone knows someone on dialysis."). The Donut-Muncher took this information to heart, bid us a good evening, and let us off the hook.

HOWEVER.

Roughly three hours later, the corrupt and vile version of that Hog Lieutenant appeared at our side, holding a freaking strobe-flashlight (apparently, such devices are manufactured and distributed to cops) and aiming it into our freaking faces. This Porker was a much harder fight than the former, but ultimately Pete's elan under distress saved the day once again. The Bozo the Cop impersonator eventually got the point that we were just a couple--I mean trio--a dudes who meant no harm to anyone except perhaps he himself, and left us to our slumber.

THE NEXT DAY>>>>>>>

We hopped on the American River Bike Trail first thing in the morning (we had slept no more than about 50' from its origin) and rode it like a docile Shetland all morning. The trail was quite pleasant indeed and we entertained ourselves by saluting our fellow cyclists with whom we shared the trail that lovely morn. However, we found the hello-saying in short supply along this Californian corridor. It seemed that these Californicators had picked up on our congenial Midwestern sensibility and the nano-chips that had been implanted into their electro-souls at birth (by Steve Jobs himself; who else?!!?) was unable to process our overly-human attempts at communication, thus restricting their ability to respond. Basically, we said hello with increasing enthusiasm, vigor, and volume to all those that we passed (let's say 200 people or so) and received a reciprocal greeting no more than a half dozen times. FREAKS!!!!

Alex and Greg ride the trail. Incidentally, that guy on the left would most likely not give a shit if you said hello to him.

One native Californian, wherefore, broke the mold in a sushi-rific fashion. It was Greg, who was basically a real-life superhero. Greg rode up to us and asked us if he could accompany us for a ways. "Yes," we retorted. He was interested in our story so we gave it to him like a bully giving an atomic wedgie to Dweebus McNerdlington on the first day of third grade. After a good long chat-sesh came the money-shot: Greg proffered a magnifercent lunchbonus down our gullets. "Hurrah," the three amigos dijeron (look it up, jerks!). Refer to our last post for a pic of the goings-on.

You can't tell from how cool he looks in this picture, but Pete actually isn't from California!

After eating some vastly undercooked fish (Zagat apparently knows little to nothing about good food), we proceeded to go somewhere on our bikes. This place happened to be Davis, Californyuh where we were greeted by the CouchSurfing host of a lifetime. IT WAS JASON!!!!!

Jason lives in a pretty remarkable community. It is a block of 20-something 1950s-era homes that share one sprawling, contiguous backyard as well as a central community household. You see, some years back now, after sharing a bong during a group reading of Robert Frost's "Mending Wall," a couple neighbors decided to remove their fences and ended up founding a transformative residential experience on the outskirts of this quaint university town. One by one, the other houses on the block joined in the effort. Today, the backyard wends its way in and out and around a dizzying residential landscape of homes, gardens, bee'shives, chicken coops, murals, orchards, children's playthings, lawn furniture, patios, hammocks, and etc. The community household hosts multiple shared meals each week as well as cultural events and programming. This living situation is the closest thing to Utopia that we've ever seen. Unreal.

Peace,

Love,

& Frida

After freaking our neeks with le grand tour of le grounds, Jason enlisted us to help prepare the evening's meal, in a ritual shared by humans the world over since time immemorial. His particular house is a communal living arrangement of its own and we happened to be staying with Jason on the night he was responsible for cooking for the household of 6. We cooked and then proceeded to EAT yummy food with a very interesting assortment of Davis characters. Alex slept on the couch, Emelio above the laundry, and Pete in the grass. We are such HIPPIES! OMG LOLOLOL!

What a din-din!

Known as "A Session"

We regained consciousness early the next day well before the horrifying star of fire emblazoned itself on the horizon. After getting some coffee from a place where you can purchase coffee, we saddled up (read: got onto our bicycles) and set off for the final riding day of biketour2010.

The day began rather lovelely, with a sojourn through delightful walnut (maybe, or maybe another type of thing) orchards. However, other than the hot air baloons overhead, not much more was really remarkable about this final cycle-day. We wound up fighting against some frustrating wind gusts and battling up a few minor but nonetheless not-fun hills on the way to Vallejo, where our ferry lie in wait like a patient pack-mule.

Anyways, these three doods were sure relieved to get to Vallejo's ferry terminal. Our spirits were high; even the extremely freaky dude who kept talking to himself while hunched dangerously over his laptop didn't bum us out or even scare us. With tickets purchased, we loaded our horses (aka bicycles) onto the deck and boarded the ferry. Soon enough, the motor sprung to life and our watermobile transport-thing was chugging its way 'cross the San Francisco Bay!

When was the last time you saw a windswept beard?

This final leg of our journey, a ferry ride into San Francisco, was a relaxingly cathartic experience. We three guys just basically took it easy on some seats inside, making small talk and letting the peace of our completed journey permeate through our wearied bodies. Eventually, the Golden Gate Bridge appeared on the horizon, and the boat nearly tipped over from the rush of globular tourists who rushed to one side of the cabin to slime their slobbery faces all over the glass.

Our stop was the historic Ferry Building San Francisco. Steve Bingham was waiting excitedly for us at the ferry terminal, and our joyous reunion was immediately preceded by Steve saying, "Holy shit you made it." Steve and Pete met each other, and then our loyal third man made his way out into the city to find his pal. We can't tell you freaks enough how great it was to find Pete and ride with him for the last five or so days of this monumental journey; he sure made it fun and more-than-a-couple-dudes.

Steve, no pictures, please!

After riding a bit around the Embarcardero--one of S.F.'s famous boulevards--us couple dudes and Steve caught another ferry, this one on its way to Marin County. Marin is the landmass directly north of San Francisco, across the Golden Gate Bridge. It plays host to many communities, including San Rafael. Steve bought us each a drink on the boat ride over to celebrate our arrival; we drank to friendship.

Steve had brought his bicycle so that he could ride us the last few miles to his home. He led us through downtown San Rafael and up to the house in an area called Terra Linda; it was more than a few miles, up some significant hills and through some traffic, but Steve held his own like a pro! We couple dudes were definitely impressed.

Marin County bike advocates recently celebrated the opening of this bike path that runs along Hwy 101!

When we rolled up to the house, Francoise was waiting for us in the driveway, and she was so happy to finally see our hairy, putrid-smelling selves. We had some nifty photo-ops and lumbered through the door into their spacious and beautiful home. It certainly was an emotional experience to arrive here, at the place where Sylvia spent much of her life. Over the course of the next few days, we spent our time with Steve and Francoise, having long breakfasts that blended into long lunches that blended into long dinners. We just basically relaxed big-time, sitting back with these two wonderful people and talking and laughing and sharing many stories about Sylvia.

It was a very interesting experience for us to be somewhere without the urgent need to move on, but Steve and Francoise insisted on us taking it as freaking easy as possible, and we even watched a movie together one night! On Sunday night, Steve drove us across the Silver Portal Span into the city so that we could attend one of the most far-out free music festivals on this blessed rock we call home, the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. After Emmylou Harris nearly bored our beards off, we made our way to the funktastic freaksounds pouring out of the Rooster Stage to find Sharon Jones and her band, the Dap-Kings. These guys and Sharon were basically smashing the audience with a bombastic Soul-Hammer till our ears bled joyful streams of Faygo red pop. Steve remarked that it was extremely special to have shared that experience with us; we felt the same way about being there with him.

The rest at this point is history. We rode into San Francisco on Monday morning and met up with Emelio's good friend Jessi, who showed us a great time. We crashed at her pad in Oakland that night, and the next day we ventured out and explored Berkeley for a few hours, checking out music stores and book shops and freaky freakdudes and dudettes on Telegraph Avenue (believe us, they're freaks!). Emelio even chopped off his freaktastic beard! We met up with Iris, another Emelio-friend from Oberlin, who took us to a great diner where we purchased prepared food for consumption. Later that evening, we met up with more friends in the Mission District (a famous neighborhood in S.F. known for its fabulous alley-murals and Mexican-food) and had a delicious dinner party. All was well. For the first time in 66 days, we two dudes slept in different places. Our sleep, naturally, was restless as we simultaneously reached out and found no one beside us to grope.

The dudes with Francoise, dwarfed by our beards

We two dudes are currently at Francoise's high school (she still hasn't graduated, can ya buh-leeve it?!), where we gave a short presentation to a group of students and faculty about our trip. Francoise had been talking to her students about this trip and why we decided to ride out here; the group was very interested in hearing what we had to say and seeing our photographs. We really enjoyed talking to them all and especially hope that we were able to convince some of the students to make similar journeys of their own. One of the faculty members filmed our talk, if you want to check it out you should visit this link.

Our plans, thank you very much for asking (trouser-wearing jerkfaces), are more-or-less as follows:

Emelio will be hanging out in Palo Alto with his enemy Hunter McCurry, and tomorrow they'll be going whale-watching (not JK!!!!!). On Saturday, in a bizarre twist of events, he'll be taking a plane to China where he will visit his girlfriend Becca who is currently studying in Beijing. WTF, right!!!!!!!!! When he gets back, sometime at the end of October, he'll spend a couple nights in San Francisco before catching a train back to the good ole Midwest.

Alex plans to remain in the Bay Area for a while longer (read: about 5 days). He still has family and friends he has yet to visit. Then, he hopes to hitch a ride, along with his bike, up the Pacific Coast to Washington to visit a couple folks up there in that there state there. Amen. Once that's over and done with, his plan is to ride his bike down to Portland, OR to visit a couple people (ESPESH CLAIRE), then proceed by bike to Crescent City and Arcata, CA to see some cuzzies. Can't wait to see all these great people! Yum. When that's over and done with, it'll be back to the Midwest sometime in November. Can't wait to see all those great people back over there in that there place there in the middle of the country but not really (in the middle of the country, that is).

We gotta send major props to ya'll for sticking with us for the entirety of this blogtrip. You might not have picked it up from our frenetic and neurotic writings, but we basically thrived on comments from you guys on this blog.

Some statistics to close out our life (JK our blog):

We left on August 4th from Cleveland, and arrived on October 1st.

That makes 59 days to complete the trip.

We took 7 rest days.

Our longest day of riding covered 105 miles.

Our fastest speed was 43.9 mph; our steepest grade was 14%.

We passed through 10 states, 4 state capitals, 4 time zones, and 2 state fairs.

We crossed water via ferry 5 times.

We traveled over 3500 miles (a more exact figure will come once we learn basic arithmetic).

We have 1 beard each.

Peace out our brothas and sistas and everyone in between.

Our Last Day!!!!!!

2010-10-01T06:51:00.000-07:00

You guyyyyys! We're in a disappointing coffee shop this glorious
morning, sending out our last roadside post (don't freak yow neeks;
we'll have a longer post once we land in Frisco!).

Our ride today is 66 miles, from Davis to Vallejo. In V-town, we take
a ferry across the Bay, where we will meet Steve and Francoise and
some of their cycling friends.

The picture is of us couple dudes and our third bro, Pete, who is
still with us! That guy in the background is Greg; he met us on the
trail yesterday and bought us a mega-sushi-lunch in Sacramento! Wowowow!

Okay y'all! Wish us luck!!

We're almost there!!

2010-09-27T18:30:00.000-07:00

Hey all you kit-n-caboodle snickerdoodles and frisky-risky coonhunters!

Here we are, a couple a dudes, you know, us, Alex and Emelio, a couple a dudes... you know, us guys? Remember us, the ones who are on biketour? You know? The guys whose blog you've been following for the past eight weeks? Us? HELLOOOOOOO?????!!??? Well, whatever. Not like it even matters anyway to you bunch of phonies......

We last left you in Fabluous Ely, Nevada (parenthetical: Emelio just literally dropped the A-Bomb on Hiroshima AKA on this library's computer area. It smells so eggtastically repugnant that the guy to our left literally is standing up and finishing his session early, which is surprising because he wasn't even halfway through writing that Twilight fan-fic). Ely was the sight of Rest Day 2012 AKA Rest Day in Ely AKA Rest Day in Ely, Nevada. In the morning, we woke to 35-degree weather patterns and went out in frantic search of cover (read: warmth).

Our fireplace of joy manifested itself in the form of the pleasantly kitschy Silver State Restauraunt (read: Diner). Alex basically popped a chubby when, upon perusing the menu, perused a menu item that transplanted him back to his wonderyears in that dark, horrifying country sandwiched between the Fine Portuguese and the Illustrious French (and the Weird Monacoans(?)). It was a Basque Food Item Skillet! More specifically, it was generally a Basque-style chorizo skillet. You may be interested to know, unless you are a rube, that the Basque people have sizeably presented themselves throughout the Silver State such that many eateries currently offer certain original delicacies to tantalize the tastebuds. The Basques are also reputed to be reliable sheepherders.

Transition, we had an excellent breakfast and sure took our time in that there establisment right there, drinking coffee there and writing some postcards in that place.

As we were leaving, we were accosted by some dude (not one of us couple dudes, mind you, simply a different dude). He told us the tallest tale that'd ever snarked our furry ears, lying (through his teeth) that he was a cameraman with a crew of dudes traveling around Nevada filming basically whatever the hell they felt like with the intention of doing god knows what with the footage. We good-naturedly listened to his hellraising fib, bid the gentleman farewell, and spent exactly one hour calming each other down because we were in such a state of infuriation due to the fib-blasting we had just suffered.

But as it turned out, that dude was actually David, a nice and friendly cameraman from Vegas. He and his likewisely nice and friendly accomplice Jonathan bought us a delicious Mexican dinner that night, and boy were our ears red when we found out they had never told a lie in their entire lives! We talked to D&J for like, a good while, and enjoyed the night out on the town with our new friends even though everyone in the entire restaurant was openly laughing at us as we left (not JK).

That night, we fulfilled our destiny of lodging our grubby-ass bodies in the grubbiest-ass motel in town: El Rancho. For those of you looking forward to a smarmy description of the knee-nursing that went down in this $35.00 hotel room, you will be sorely disappointed unless you visit www.rubbingdisplaysinelynevada.com Let's just say that showers were had, awful (really awful) HBO was watched, and when Alex went to sleep Emelio spooned him.

You could hardly tell, but this place is run by some Fijians on the lam!

The next morning we rendezvoued with D&J, who were interested in capturing our bearded mugs on film! Can ya buh-leeve it! They basically dressed us down with questions about our bikejourneyundertaking, and got a couple sweet closeups of the maggots squirming around in all of our crevices. It was really neat, and we even got into character and started beating them with rolled-up newspapers while hollering, "Back, Paparazzi Scum!" Alex got a little annoyed when Emelio refused to put down the skull he was holding in his left hand for the duration of filming, but he didn't realize that Emelio is a Stanislavsky-trained disciple of the stage.

Oh what a surprise! Alex is talking about himself!

D&J filmed us riding out of Ely, on our way Westward along U.S. Highway 50. We should mention to you, our loyal followers, our pandering audience, our lamentable compatriots in this pathetic charade we call life, that US HWY 50 is commonly referred to, locally and globally, as "America's Loneliest Road." If only it was referred to as "America's Road that is Packed with Free Prostitutes," we would have been in a good place in our opinion!!

As it was, Nevada's Hwy 50 is very truly (seriously) an extremely people-less, yet desloate strip of pavement. There are four towns along this remote 280-mile stretch, and literally no human presence in between. We were surprised when we saw a few houses in the distance until we realized that they were absolutely abandoned and tipping over.

Along Hwy 50, there is a stretch of barren land that is decorated with years' worth of people's names

(and other messages) spelled out from rocks gleaned from the roadside

So we did it too. We're hoping this becomes a meme (check 4chan!)

Our bicycle-experience on this road was as follows: 1) Climb mountain range 2) Descend 3) Cross a gigantic dried basin 4) Repeat. Some of you may be interested to know that Nevada is home to more mountain ranges than any other U.S. state. We felt like we had to ride through just about every single one of them.

Bonus chips! And they said this road was lonely...

Okay this next part is REALLY cool, so you should definitely read it!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D :D :'(

We got into the-town-after-Ely (locally known as Eureka, but we both had actually found it GREEK JOKE GREEK JOKE!) just after night had oozed its way down the sky. After checking out a couple establishments, Emelio decided that he needed to sate his ravenous appetite for chocolate milkshakes with a chocolate milkshake. It was at this point that Dame Fate intervened. DJ's diner was slowing down for the night, but us couple dudes nevertheless nabbed a cushy booth adjacent to another booth that was occupied by a trio of dudes on huntingtriptour from Vegas. We got to chatting (asl?) with the bros, and they were freakin sweet! When the ringleader noticed that only one of us had decided to purchase consolidated energy, and that it was Emelio and that it was simply a chocolate milkshake, he asked us, "When was the last time you guys ate a decent meal?" We candidly responded, "Some guys in Ely bought us a really nice meal just last night!" He basically didn't care that we'd been well-fed in the past 24 hours, and with all the flair of a huntsman towering over his recently-felled mule deer, he offered to buy us dinner. Wowzachowza! Alex mistakenly ordered a basket of chicken strips and onion rings with a small vanilla shake, and Emelio correctly ordered a 12" cheese pizza to complement his large chocolate shake. Emelio was heard to say (by Alex) that it was the best meal of the entire trip, and Alex was heard to say (by Emelio) that he wished he had ordered a fucking pizza.

This food is seriously making Emelio salivate even now, and making Alex jealous also even now

Let's cut to the chase. We camped in Eureka on a stupid thing, then we rode for a long time the next day, passed a nice town called Austin, camped in the Nevada shrubbery, woke up and rode for a long time again until we got to a town called Fallon.

We heard coyotes yipping and howling nearby!

On the way to Fallon, we both realized at the exact same time (and even screeched it aloud to each other at the exact same time) that it was SUNDAY NIGHT. And on Sunday Night, in the United States of America, when it is Football Season, a Lot of People watch Football on the Television. So we went to a bar and ordered a lot of beer and watched the Miami Jets beat the New York Dolphins! It was fun, and Alex ate a burger that weighed about six and a half pounds. Three people talked to us at the bar: one was from Colombia, one liked the Raiders, and one was an almost entirely incomprihensible drunk/village idiot. The bartenders were hot: one wore a short purple dress, the other was short with an ample chest. Both happened to be female.

Unfortunately we had the rainfly on, so we couldn't catch

any sweet upskirts from the girls playing on the jungle gym

We slept in Fallon's expansive city park on a beautiful patch of woodchips, and missed the sprinklers by a margin of 1.73 feet. God bless America.

In the morning, we talked to a guy who was on house arrest (and had even spent 7 months in prison) because he was caught with shrooms at Burning Man in an explicit example of entrapment. We both marveled at the fellow's tale of woe, and immediately threw away our stash of shrooms, meth, heroin, peyote, cough syrup, and poisonous toads.

Alex claimed Nevada's capitol building in the name of peace

And then he claimed that the capitol grounds could stand for some proper landscaping!

Today we arrived in Nevada's state capital, also known as Irkutsk (JK it's Carson City). Along the way, we met a really cool dude named Pete who is also riding his bicycle to San Francisco! We decided to ride our bicycles with him today, and we hope to repeat the process tomorrow and the following day as we approach the San Francisco Bay. It's a little bit late to be mentioning this, but we are actually truly but four days from the end of this, our epic quest. Tomorrow we even cross into Cali-fornia, a state that we know practically nothing about and has little-to-no mystique about it whatsoever. Unbelievable.

Pete has replaced Emelio as Alex's #2

Now we're going to go gamble the night away. See you in Hell!

Alex always says a finger-prayer over his gold ring before dining at a casino

Love,

Couple Dudes, Walex and Welio.

Alex and Emelio Differ When it comes to Certain Music Videos, it Seems

2010-09-23T10:44:00.000-07:00

Hey guys, we just found the title out! No biggie! We have time to make such discoveries on a day like today, because to-day is............... REST DAY 2012!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For real guys, we decided to take a rest day here in fanciful funktastic Ely, Nevada, "Home to more motels than people (it seems)." Now don't freak out everybody, but Alex is currently exeriencing some extreme patellar complications right now at this moment in time. Basically, every time he bends his knee beyond 25 degrees, it feels like a highly-trained, deranged and sadistic dwarf is banging him in the side of the knee with a venom-laced ball-peen hammer. For those of you less up-to-date on certain laws of physics, that means two hammer bangs for every single pedal stroke on the bicycle. Read: this sucks.

Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut: This is a day for miracles. A day for joy. We have committed ourselves to treating ourselves like the kings that we are (JK LOL (not JK (and not LOL))). We shall be loafing in this library for as long as these witchy bookmarms permit, at which point we will head out to find the least-pricey and most-dirty motel room in town (for the record, it will be the first time we spend $$ on an overnight for this whole trip, so ha). Emelio will then commence with the nursing, perhaps swaddling and hopefully at times physically breastfeeding young Alex back to health. Certain details of Emelio's nursing techniques may not be disclosed on this blog due to their exceedingly smarmy nature. Please visit http://www.boysnursingboys.com/ if you would like to know more ;)

Anywayzzz, we left you last time in the depths of the Utah desert along the most supernatural stretch of highway we've been privy to, camping under the crystal night sky. We woke just as dawn peeked its curious little face over the bloodred cliffs to our east. It was September 15, and it was clear that it would be a very special one from its beginning moments. Many of you probably know that September 15 is a very significant date for Alex and Emelio; it was on that date last year that we lost our wonderful friend Sylvia Bingham when she was struck by a truck while riding her bicycle to work in downtown Cleveland.

Sylvia shared a house with Emelio in the Tremont neighborhood and was his first real friend in Cleveland (they were both new in town as Americorps VISTA volunteers). This is Alex writing now: she was my girlfriend and we were just beginning a new life together in Cleveland. She had moved to town only a few weeks before her accident not just for her new job at Hard-Hatted Women, but also to be near me and Jill (her best friend from high school back in California, who also happens to be the girlfriend of my brother David). Jill and I--as well as everybody else in our Cleveland community--were thrilled to have Sylvia in Cleveland. It was almost too good to be true. Her death was unimaginably tragic and all of us are still very much recovering from our loss.

In the wake of Sylvia's death I felt very lost. I found myself looking for some sort of direction, but found very few answers at all in the following months. It was during that time that I realized I needed to do something large and purposeful as a way of remembering her. Riding my bike across the country (from her last home in Cleveland to her first home near San Francisco) in her memory seemed to be a meaningful and appropriate thing to do. Cycling was important to Sylvia and has been important to me for a very long time as well. It is a statement of personal freedom, environmental responsibility, and fun! Some of my most lovely memories of Sylvia are times we spent riding bikes together. She was committed to living a car-free life and Emelio and I feel very strongly the same way.

Sometime in the late fall Emelio and I were having a conversation and realized that we had both been thinking independently about making a long, cross-country trek by bicycle as a way of honoring Sylvia and her dedication to living responsibly and joyously. It made perfect sense for us to do it together. We talked about it often throughout the winter, and in the spring our plans finally came together. Emelio's VISTA term was set to end at the end of July, so we committed to leave in the first week of August. From the beginning, we conceived of San Rafael, CA (and the home of Sylvia's parents) as our ultimate destination. When we get there, we look forward to spending time with Sylvia's parents Steve and Francoise in their home and at some of Sylvia's favorite places around the SF Bay Area.

With this background, it seems somehow fitting that September 15 (Day 43) turned out to be our most challenging day of riding of the entire trip. So you all must remember our Australian mate Matthew who oh-so-highly recommended the Burr Trail detour the day before.... well, we soon found out that he had sent our poor, frail American frames down a veritable TRAIL OF DOOM. A few miles into our day, we reached the end of paved-ville and entered world-of-pain-ville, a loose gravel/sand road that showed little mercy for us and our ill-equipped touring rigs. It was all we could do to keep from skidding out on the unforgiving surface, and this was on the flat stretch leading up to Capitol Reef National Park. At the entrance to the park, we were already a bit worn, but we lifted our spirits with sammies and even had the wherewithal to snap this cute little pic:

We had thought it was "Carnival Beef National Park" -- what a disappointing surprise!

A little background on Capitol Reef: it's claim to fame is a massive 100-mile long mountainous backbone of death called the Waterpocket Ridge. Early pioneer-heroes/white imperialits identified this geologic feature with a oceanic reef because it's a freaking dastardly barrier to pleasure. As soon as we set our watery eyes on that Reef, our knees started a-knockin' and our teeth started a-chatterin' and our penises started a-shrivelin' (even more than usual!) -- we knew we were in for a world of pain.

The Burr Trail boasts a quaint mile-long series of switchbacks creatively known as The Burr Trail Switchbacks. We might suggest a few other names for this loveable section of trail: "Darth Vader's Pleasure Tour"; "Stalin's Favorite Place for an Afternoon Stroll"; "The Darkest Place on Earth"; "Godzilla's Footsteps"; or perhaps, "The 'What The Fuck Were They Thinking?' Highway." This series of eight or so switchbacks basically very nearly transport you up the face of a sheer, freaking, rock, cliff. At times the grade must have been beyond 14%, seriously (seriously (for real)). The steepest section rises over 800 feet in half a mile. Our bikes would often hit a particularly thick layer of sediment, resulting in near disaster each time. Regaining the momentum necessary for continuing our pedaljourney required powers and skills that we very scarecely possess.

Green Day titled one of their recent hit songs after this road

Once past the "Boulevard of Villanous Calamity" (AKA THE BURR TRAIL), things got way easier.

NOT!

The road surface maintained its gravelly grimace, and relieved of the burden of switchbackery, streched straight off upward infinitely into the distance for miles and miles. Jeepers! We basically had to glaze our brains over in order to continue this impossible climb. Thanks, Matt!

Fortunately, a Jeeping Californian couple, as they passed us for the third time that afternoon, took pity on us couple dudes and presented us with an excessive amount of homegrown watermelon. We gratefully accepted their tribal melon-offering in the most anthropological way as they continued driving their Jeep.

Alex made a point to slurp this watermelon as loudly and defiantly as he could. Emelio sends his condolences to all those who have had the misfortune of dining with this Neanderthal around a dinner table.

With our stomachs sloshing around layer upon pulpy layer of red cucurbitaceate, we groggily continued our climb up Mt. Burr. Not long after, God sent a Prophet from Arizona to our rescue. It was one of the lesser-known prophets, a Mormon prophet in fact (JK!). His name was Kent, and he was Good. Kent pulled over, half drunk and sober, to offer us a ride "to the top of the hill" (Kent, 4:15-16). When we squeezed ourselves beside Kent's animal familiar ("Spot"), the Prophet cracked open a can of Ambrosia (Bud Light) and we sped away up the dusty trail.

Kent let us off on a magnificently magnificent summit in the midst of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, with views of all types of crazy shit that most of you will never get to see in your meager, pathetic existences (JK! We hope! AWKWARD!). The road from this point was actually rideable (aka not rocks or sand), and we cruised through a striking long canyon known locally and world-wide as "Long Canyon." At one particular point, we passed through a gulch, known locally and world-wide as "The Gulch." It would behoove us to mention that this stretch of riding is made available only to those willing to abandon all reason and survive the Burr Trail -- but the Long Canyon really is a sight (a good one, doyyy!).

We found a couple bicycles in the Long Canyon, and totally jacked them! Suckers!

We did encounter some steep climbs out of Grand Staircase-Escalante-Fire Escape, but our destination, the town of Boulder, UT was minutes within our clammy grasp. Upon exiting the Monument, we encountered a sign announcing the steep, winding grades that one finds within. We thought we would stop and take a pic, because we knew you would think it was a cute one:

A "sign" of our "despair"

Unfortunately, the Burr Trail was not about to take any photographic mockery laying down. As he snapped the pic, Alex lost control of his disobedient bicycle which tipped over and whose chainring ripped a malevolent gouge out of his fleshy inner-upper ankle. This was not something that Alex wanted to have happen at that moment in time, but it sure was funny for Emelio (though at the time he had to feign compassion)(JK!). The wound has since healed somewhat but at the moment it really did seem like it might hinder our forward progress.

:'(

After such a taxing day, we decided it was time for a little treat. And by "treat" we mean "dinner" and by "dinner" we "mean" "eating at the local eatery"! Our dinner was filling and we had beer. Characters encountered within the establishment include: Our waitress, who, in a winking contest with Sarah Palin would give the Alaskan Governor a run for her money; the rich, snooty New Yorker, who, in a talking-about-himself contest with Osama Bin Laden would give the Militant Islamic Fundamentalist a run for his money; the perky young Taiwanese exchange worker, who, in a having-been-transplanted-to-an-incongruous-locale contest with Elian Gonzalez would give the young Cuban a run for his money; the bombastic ambiguously European heiress from Texas, who, in a what-the-heck-are-you-doing-in-this-realm contest with this guy would give the Angeleno waste-of-space a run for his (lack of) money. On such a hard day it was key for us to give ourselves a taste of comfort. At the end of the day, as as the end of every day on this trip, we were glad for the struggles that we encountered and overcame.

Finding a campsite proved to be a little difficult in the tiny town of Boulder. Public lands were spare, but a we thought we might try our luck asking at a local lodgery marketed to rich hippies (Organic Garden! Zagat-rated Natural Foods Restaurant! Tibetan Peace Flags!) if we might set up camp on their spacious grounds. Emelio, in as polite a way as his smug little ass could figger out, approached the hippie-queen behind the check-in counter and asked whether we might set up camp on their spacious grounds. With a cold, corporate glare, the "alternative" Mother Earth-worshipper revealed herself to be a Capitalist hotel-baroness and issued a stern, almost violent refusal to our admittedly humble query. Emelio wishes he had had the gumption to grip her jaw with one of his suntanned paws and slowly crush her lower mandible into a fine powder which she then could have used to make into some type of stupid lotion or salve and sell for $38 per three-ounce tin. Sorry about this burtal rant, but this lady was a majorly rude hipocrite and it really annoyed the pants off of us!

We eventually made camp on a gravelly patch of earth next to a Dutch-filled Recreational Vehicle. What a day!

We woke early the next morning to pack up before the RV-campsite proprietor could find us illicitly camped on her site and charge us this. Our ride that day would take us through the town of Escalante (Austin, one of our Louisville agents in the field, recommended that we make a scenic waterfall stop between Boulder and Escalante, but Alex's ankle was hurting him such that it would have been an arduous detour. Thanks for the tip anyways, Austin!) The route into Escalante is along Highway 12, which proved to be an immensely spectacular road perched upon what is known as the Hogback, a ridge within Escalante-Grand Staircase (we dipped in and out of this massive park all day) that overlooks some dinosaurly-epic landscapes.

The day was splendid and the day was long, but eventually we rolled into the rather strange town of Tropic, UT (we never found out why it's called that; you can invent your own fun reasons!). It's a town apparently inhabited by equal numbers of German/other weird European tourists on BMW motorcycles and publicly flirtatious Avril Lavigne-wanna-be Mormon teens. We bought snack packs at the town grocer, then ate them (along with other supplements of alimentary nature) under the pa-V in Tropic's town park. That's where we slept, our tent nestled up next to the conveniently located prep table!

Next morn the epic detour continued.... OOOOoooo-EEE! We had a tough one, but our objective was clear and it was legit: Zion National Park. We knew we had over 90 miles to go, but we didn't know just what conditions we would be facing along this stretch (remember, we were "off-route", which means we were floating in a world of certain mystery). The day started with 10 good miles (read: about 2 hours) of climbing up to the area around Bryce Canyon NP. We didn't have time for a visit to Bryce, but the payoff came with about 15 miles of yem-yem-yemmy (!) downhill cruising through Red Canyon along a curvy-swervy dedicated bike path. It was no Bryce, but the hoodoos were still 100% of da hoo(doo)k. Hoo noo?!?!

Boy; Barrel; Hoodoo

That's when things got hairy. Twenty-something miles of wicked uphill riding into an even wickeder headwind left us battered and doubtful that we'd reach Zion before nightfall. But theeeeeennnnn...... we drank some milk! As it has time and again on this trip, it did the trick and we re-mounted our stallions for an all-out attack on the day's remaining mileageage. Once you hit the entrance to Zion you are basically entering into Martian-style alien spaceship-land. Throughout our mindbending 12-mile descent into Zion Valley, we experienced-- up close and personal--an endless array of massive, monumental, mystical mounds of ancient sand. They were pretty much freaking our faces off the entire time.

Two days earlier, while in the rugged depths of the Utah desert, we met a sweet couple from Boulder, CO and their mega-sweet 3-year-old son. At the time, they happened to mention that they'd be spending the weekend (as in when we reached Zion) camped out in the park's south campground. Looking to reunite with the friendly Colorodans, we made our way to the campground to "see what was up." The campground was massive (120+ sites) and completely booked up. We arrived feeling triumphant but then we were kinda like, "Hmmm...." After a few minutes of aimless tooling, however, we heard, like the call of a glorious angel (like from the Bible!) "Hey, you guys made it!" It was Alex, the kind woman from the desert. We'd found them.

The family that Sportsmobiles and Bicycles together, stays together

We were too scared to ask, but before things could even get awkward, they'd invited us to camp with them and join their budding family unit as two (strangely older) adopted twin sons (JK about one part of that last statement; you decide which). Let's just say they fed us, played with us (3-year-old Lake in particular), and talked to us about all sorts of neat-o stuff--especially their super-fun life of traveling the country in their Sportsmobile.

After many nights in the same tent, we finally conceived! The apple didn't fall far from the tree.

Rick (the family's patriarch) happens to be from the Cleveland area and we can't wait to hang out with them next time they make it out to the North Coast.

"I kick the ball!"
-Lake

We laid our tent down next to their super-hero quality vehicle for a quick visit to old la-la land. Then next day was to be a rest day, and by "rest day" we mean jam-packed with two of the most insanely scenic and thrilling hikes our sloppy bags of bones have ever had the privilege of walking. In the morning it was Angel's Landing, which is basically a hike straight up the face of a 2,000-foot high sandstone monolith. If it sounds daunting and/or dangerous, that's because IT IS! There are signs all throughout the park warning of the danger incurred when attempting such a hike.

The best way to experience Zion Canyon also happens to be in silhouetted profile.

At pretty much all moments during the 90-minute (for us; 3-hour for mere mortals) ascent to the landing, you are walking within inches of a sheer drop to the canyon bottom. Parents, don't be worried, we made it. Otherwise we couldn't be writing this blog, sillies! At the apex, the hiker is granted the equivalent of two stone tablets to bring down to the several tribes of Israel: a veritable G-dGift freakfest canyon viewpoint of wackadoobular proportions.

"I tried to chuck him right over the edge, but he has surprisingly good balance", Emelio and Alex simultaneously remarked.

Our eyes nearly jumped out of their sockets and did a 360-kickflip McTwist-to-fakie on this greatest halfpipe of all God's creation.

Totally radical stuff. Neek freekin.

The afternoon's bipedal excursion (read: hike) was wet. And Wild. And it was The Narrows. We unfortunately don't have any pictures of this walk, but we have an excuse. For the better part of the hike (this one took us nearly 4 hours) you are actually penetrating with your body the wet depths of the Virgin River. At it's northern end, Zion Canyon squeezes down to no more than 20 or 30 feet across, hence the name of the hike. At the same time, 600-foot high cliffs rise up vertiginously on either side of you, creating a sense of almost cave-like enclosure. You could basically consider us two spermatozoa fighting our way up the East-bound fallopian tube toward our Egg (read: the end of the hike). Upon fertilizing the egg (you know what we mean, guys) we turned around and made our way back downriver. The river flowed at a quite lively pace and the riverbottom was littered with stones of unpredictable size and nature. Good thing we remembered to bring along our handy-schmandy walking sticks or we would have ended up a couple a soggy dudes. Basically this hike was tiggity and we liked it very much. Amen.

The next day we had to get out of Dodge (read: Zion National Park). We had CouchSurfing arrangements for that evening in Cedar City, about 70 miles due North of the Park. It was mainly uphill but the wind was finally at our backs so we made good time. Interesting to note: this day marked the first time we rode on an interstate, specifically I-15. Scary as that may sound, we found interstate riding to feel much safer and more comfortable than riding on other seemingly benign stretches of pavement. Check that one off the old list!

In Cedar City we ate Frostys. Furthermore, we proceeded to the gracious home of our gracious hosts, the Dalton family. This family basically kicks major butt. A run-down of the get-down: Lynn is the father. He is a self-taught rockhound and he is very nice. He served us a delicious zucchini soup that had been prepared by his lovely wife Celine (nice name, eh?). Celine is the mother. She made us eggs in the morning. Iain is the son. He went on bike tour earlier this summer and showed us his awesome homemade panniers. Natasha is one of the daughters. She is a very diligent high school student and also very kind. Adrienne is the 6.5-year old daughter. She is immensely creative and playful and we had a lot of fun exploring her little special world (not JK). We played animals, she showed us the garden, and Alex played with her for like 2.5 hours straight (not JK; it was more exhausting than biking the Rockies). We showered up, did laundry, and had a restful sleep. Alex slept on the trampoline like a freak, but he really did enjoy it.

After running some AM errands in Cedar City, we booked it out of there on our way to Milford. We were cycling out of Utah's trademark landscape, leaving behind the cliffs, arches, bridges, mesas, buttes, gulches, gizzards, belches, bears ears, and hiccups. Nearing Nevada, the riding went even smoother than we could've expected, and we got to Milford in no time flat. After a very early supper, we made the uncharacteristic decision to keep on riding into the night. This seemed like a good idea for a couple reasons: we had plenty of leftover energy to spend, the next town (which would be our destination the following day) was 84 miles on down the road and we thought it best to knock out some of those miles before making camp, and we knew the road would be relatively empty and that the moon would be mooning us with its gloriously shiny derriere. Lo and behold, we cranked out 24 bonus miles before pulling off and making camp in the middle of freaking nowhere. Quite lovely, actually.

The next day, not much to report from a couple dudes on biketour from Cleveland to San Francisco, California, USA, North America, the Western Hemisphere, the World, the Solar System, the Milky Way, the Ziltra-Nova (2.*) MetaPlex, the Universe, the Cosmos, BABY JESUS. We rode up, we rode down. Some wind and sunshine just to spice things up. PS: We crossed into Nevada, the Silver State, the 36th state, the 7th largest (in area) state, and the most prostitute- and gambling-addicted state. Allahu Akbar.

That Emelio sure is a real old-fashioned Wild West gunslinger (and by that I mean "idiot").

Our evening's campsite was Baker, a eety beety leettle town. It's smallness, however, was offset by its pizza parlor where we ate some delicious pizza from that there parlor joint. We considered "pulling a Milford" and continuing on after supper, but Alex was feeling kinda wiped out and basically went to bed at 6 PM. End of day. ASL?

All I can think about is the "Honey I Shrunk the Kids" installation at DisneyWorld.

The final leg we'll cover here today, class, brought us from Baker to Ely. We were strangely drawn to this town by the blinding glow of neon lights from the overwhelming number of motels in this wacked-out, yet wackily fun locality. Example of wacked out and wacky fun: last night two pickup trucks drove around for hours with approximately 15 high school-age girls in each truckbed. The girls shouted out indiscernible messages and things and generally hooted and hollered all round town while the sheriff escorted them. With so many dang motels, this town hardly has room for a public park (our preferred small-town campground, you may have noticed). We were at a loss as to where we'd sleep until we found the high school football stadium. After making out for hours under the bleachers (JK you guys, EEEEEWWWWWW!) we found a dark spot and it was lights out.

Peace and blessings to all our people and non-people. We luv y'all very much ;)

This is our latest Blog Entry!

2010-09-19T21:07:00.000-07:00

Hello there you Yodelers and Chodelers! Can you believe it? We're on BikeTour!

Let's get down to BS (business). We've got a lot of animal dung to shovel down your throats, and we want it to be resplendent with linkage and photographic representation, so we're going to attempt to get the last nine days into this post AQAP.

Day 39:

We left Telluride on a frigid morning. It was difficult to depart from such luxurious accommodations, but we did. We had to climb up to Lizard Head Pass (10,222 ft above sea level (asl?)) through some stunning deep wilderness. It seemed like the mountains were engulfing us like friggin Marshmallow Man in Ghostbusters. The rest of the way was down down down into Dolores, CO--passing through some truly spanktacular valleys and et cetera. This was our last major day of riding through the Rockies; Alex was heard (by himself, the pompous braggart that he is) to say, "This is the end of an Era." In Dolores, we were mistaken--for the second time on this trip--for Phish fanatics. What the heck?!?

Alex pretends to read

Remember that story about how we got nailed by sprinklers in the middle of the night in a city park in Colorado? Unbeknownst to us, the producers of this trip had planned a sequel, and it was set in Dolores' city park! What fun!

A platform over the Dolores river; we peed off it.

Day 40:

In spite of its outwardly racist atmosphere, the Ponderosa Restaurant on Dolores' main drag offered a pretty wonderful, stupendous, scrumptious, tasty, yet delicious Breakfast Buffet for a measly-weasley $7. We basically loaded our faces with: WAFFLES! FRENCH TOAST! FRUIT COCKTAIL! HASH B'S! CERE! B's and G! C-ROLLS! M.E.! D! .! and MORE!!!!!!!!!

This food hates Mexican immigrants, but it was actually pretty tasty!

We rode out of the pine forests of Western Colorado, across another state border and into the increasingly desert-like world of Eastern Utah. This was our longest-mileage day since hitting the Rockies; we banged out 83.64 relatively smooth miles between Dolores and the day's landing point: Blanding, UT.

In Blanding, a city that lives up to its name, we hung out in the town square (A&W Restaurant) and purchased groceries (Ramen and beans) from a cashier (of androgynous countenance). We slept underneath a jungle gym in order to avoid a spontaneous outbreak of "Alex and Emelio Become Enraged Due to City Parks in Desert Situations that Massively Utilize Sprinklers Syndrome."

Day 41:

In "The Real Utah" making a "'U' via His Arms"

Alex, in his habitually boisterous and increasingly annoying way, quoth: "This was our first day of riding in 'The Real Utah.'" Emelio grudgingly agrees. Nevertheless, the scenery became much more craggly as we approached what turned out to be our evening's destination, Natural Bridges National Monument. This National Park Service-administered site contains three spectacular natural bridges (which are specific geologic formations; don't get them confused with arches or a Ranger will give you an ATOMIC WEDGIE) in close proximity -- an occurrence not matched elsewhere on this godforsaken planet. Needless to say (or is it??), we went to the park to check them out.

N.B.N.M. itself is relatively small; a one-lane road circumnavigates the rim of the canyons in a 9-mile loop. From this loop, there are multiple overlooks onto the three bridges and the surrounding rock formations. At least three trails down into the canyon depart from this loop; we were basically foaming at the mouth to bury ourselves deep, deep underneath these hard, massive chunks of rock.

Almost to the canyon bottom... Alex is actually physically literally ON the bridge!

We selected the hike down to meet Sipapu, the largest of the three bridges (second largest in the world only to the Golden Gate Bridge of course!). It was sweet and excellent and high-five-slappingly awesome. There was no one else around, and it was basically like a big rocky playground and we reverted into little idiot children and even crapped our pants (honestly!!). The canyon floor was lush and magical; looking up at Sipapu was disorienting and we puked (honestly!! (no, really, we did!!!)). But seriously though, the bridge was huge and it was great.

The preferred way to experience a natural bridge is in silhouetted profile

The best part of this evening, although, came just a bit later as we realized that we were running out of daylight and needed to find a place to camp, quick-like. Serendipitously, a group of thirteen lively geezers from Salt Lake City were on a sick bicycle trip themselves and happened to be camping at one of the Park's fully-booked campsites. We fooled those idiots into letting us couple dudes camp with them, for FREE! What luck! Seriously folks, they were really kind and interested in our trip and our lean young muscles. It was a super night. Thanks again to the Wasatch Mountain Club!

Day 42:

These outdoorsy people were even nerdier than we are!

We tooled around a bit this morning, chatting with the other cyclists and getting our proverbial shit together. No more than an hour into the day's riding, we encountered a really big Australian guy... riding a bike! Matthew (that was his name! (GET IT??? (Alex did that so we could have a double parenthetical; Emelio thinks he is an IDIOT (and now, Gawd, we have a triple parenthetical (ARGHH it's up to five now!!))))) gave us a really slick localtip. It went a little something like this: "Why don't you mates throw a shrimp on the barbie and take a ferry across Lake Powell so that you can meet up with the famed Burr Trail; I want a Foster's: Australian for Beer!" (JK sorry about the racist jokes Matthew, we're just doing it for our racist friends back home! You know we're down with the Aussies and everything that you're doing).

In all seriousness, Matthew was da bomb. Check out that load!

Matthew's tip led us, of course, to Lake Powell--a lake (JK it's a reservoir). When you picture lakes, you probably think of a bucolic tree-filled setting, with fauna galore. L.P. is slightly different, in that it is not like that at all. Our route to Powell was brutally empty, and after some extremely taxing canyon climbs (9% grade for nearly four miles) we stumbled upon some really, really barren desert and a horrible lakeside supply store (square footage: 24. number of people staffing this hole of a shop: 5) where we spent way too much money on paltry comestibles.

We had a hard time convincing the ferry captain that we weren't pirates, but eventually she/he let us on board!

The ferry across the lake, however, was a real delight. We chatted up some megababes (one of them was even Serbian!) aboard the vessel, and they gave us water and applesauce as well as a cucumber. Thanks, Ladies! When we got to the other side, we were hot. Not like that, you guys!! The lake beckoned to us like John Madden beckoning you to buy some Tough Actin' Tinactin. Our swim was both refreshing and in Lake Powell.

This is Emelio on his bicycle in Utah

We knew we would be riding into some truly back-country areas where campsites would be be both abundant and spectacular. Even so, we never expected to find as sublime a sleeping spot as we did that evening. As the sun set golden over the ruby-red canyons, we pedaled over a completely car-free and sand-shrouded Scenic Backway (From this website: A Scenic Backway is back country road or path that offers outstanding scenic beauty along with historical, recreational and cultural qualities. Backways have surfaces that vary from pavement to gravel with vary degrees of travel difficulty. Backways are generally recommended for vehicles with high clearance and four wheel drive. When planning your trip along a backway it’s advisable to bring preparedness items such as food, water, spare tire, & maps. Cell phones often do not work in the back country. Always tell someone your travel plans).

The final switchback before we hit the campsite of our dreams

Things looked great. And then, just in time, we saw her across a crowded room: the campsite of our dreams. In the Land of Many Contrasts, this was just the contrast we needed. Smooth, sculpted white stone mounds billowed up from road. To the west, a range of distant mountains and the blazing, dipping glow-orb. To the east, a radically striated cliff-monster that stood watch like either a massive ancient headless ancestral Puebloan Sphinx or a crumbling fascist temple of terror (see pics for pics).

A boy, a sunrise, and their oatmeal

We made a fire, roasted mallows, and camped out under the open starlit sky (that means we didn't use the tent, doy!).

Note the lack of tent; consider us a couple a Davy Crocketts

"sublime"
-Alex

"What an ass"
-Emelio

It's beddy-bye time for a couple a beat dudes. We're just simply gonna hafta finish the story when we wake up tomorrow! (...if we wake up!!)

We knew you guys would think this was a cute one!

Utaht we wouldn't make it...

2010-09-13T10:46:00.000-07:00

...to Utah. But we did you bunch a naysayers! In fact, we're here
right now, just check the pic for a pic. It's definitely not the
Rockies out here, although we did just hit 41.9 mph going down an 8%
grade into a canyon, yowza! We probably won't have service for the
next few days, so by the time we get to a "com-puter" we better have
23 comments on this post. Make it happen people!

-A&E

Hot Springs Time Machine

2010-09-10T16:17:00.000-07:00

Raingeared-out Alex rides into the Mountain Mist

Okay you jokers. So we had this really excellent surprise to reveal to you--the one that we built up like a couple of Dubai real-estate developers on meth--but then we were totally SCOOPED in 1920s-esque yellow-journalism fashion by none other than our Pueblo couchsurfing host, Jenny K---!! "Can ya buhleeve it?!"

If you read the comments (which you probably didn't (and to which you most certainly did not contribute)), you would have seen that Jenny revealed to the whole "global online community" our plans to sally forth into the wild, wet world (WWW) of the Coloradan hot springs!!!!!!!!!1!!!!11oneone.

BUT FIRST

Before we could soak in the hot springs, we had to transport our hairy and not-hairy bodies (respectively) to the hot springs. We decided to ride our bikes. It was a pleasure to ride the 30 short miles from Montrose to Ridgway. Over that distance, we executed a gradual climb of about 1,000 feet up to the base of the San Juan Mountains/Mt. Sneffles Wilderness Area. The approach into Ridgway was heart-flutteringly scenic, as the monumental mountains made magnificently magical mirage-like miraclelands M&Ms mmmmm. Mamma Mia!

Just outside of Ridgway, a wonderful bike trail beckoned us to mount it. "Okay," we implicitly remarked while mounting it. The trail brought us plum into town and to the doorstep of Ridgway's library that appears to be staffed mostly by cougars. No big surprise there--Ouchie Mama!

After blogging away four hours of the afternoon (not JK), we high-tailed it two simple miles outside of Ridgway to the Orvis Hot Springs. Disclaimer: the following narration may include allusions to situations that are appropriate only for mature audiences or nude boy-loving mega-creepers or mature nude boy-loving mega-creepers or boy-loving audiences or audience-loving boy nudes or mature loving boys. We've included this disclaimer because at the Orvis Hot Springs you get naked.

Ladies, one at a time, please!

In all seriousness though, folks, we had an overall soothing and wonderful experience in the springs soaking our naked bodies in the springs. We say "overall" because at the beginning, when it was still light out, we were unnerved by the amount of solo-soakers who were a) male b) over 40 years old and b.1) wearing sunglasses. Fortunately, the sun sets on this godforsaken rock and things got uber-chill once we couldn't discern the amount of creepers hanging out in the springs.

Since we couldn't take any pictures at Orvis (for obvious reasons, duhhhh you pervs!), we wanted to take some time to set the setting. Unlike some of the other spring-locales we've heard tale of in this state, at Orvis the pools are designed to resemble a natural alpine setting (in the better-known springs at Ouray, for example, we hear that the springs flow into standard poured concrete basins). In addition to the natural flagstone construction of the pools and walkways, the organic ethos of the outdoor facility is enhanced by exquisite landscaping, rough-hewn wooden seating/towel-hanging opportunities, and distant views of the area's Rocky horizon. You may even want to take your pre-wedding photos here, if not for the weirdos who might endeavor to insert their genitals into the frame!

Honestly people, we lived the springs up. We soaked for four hours, moving from spring basin to spring basin like a curious robinredbreast seeking out the choicest birdbath in the cul-de-sac. When our time was up at Orvis, we rode back to Ridgway and set up camp in the lovely town park (see previous blogpost).

The morning brought the sun and cereal. We ate a box a cereal. Then we went over to a quaint little Ridgway coffee shop, which turned out to be the #1 freak hangout in this otherwise chill mountain town. Specifically, we're referring to the bizzare barista whose brain was likely addled by the fallout from a weeklong LSD bender at Joshua Tree in 1972, that she shared with her far-out pal Lou who drove an orange Volkswagen. The hallucinations seem to haunt her to this day; we can only assume that beasts unseen to all but this coffee-wretch order her to speak in childish tones and respond to queries as to her state of being with the word "groovy." As we were paying for our beverages, she could not help to giggle maniacally for the duration of the transaction, in all probability remembering a four-hour hula hoop experience at Burning Man back when it used to be about the Burning (weed) and not The Man (corporations). Good-bye Ridgway!

We expected a relatively normy day of mountain bicycling between Ridgway and Telluride. All of our expectations were thrown into a Vita-Mix, however, when this happened. At first, we thought it was really cool because we finally got to use our raingear! The rain even subsided for a moment at the top of Dallas Divide (4,200,205 feet above sea level JK 8,900 f.a.s.l. (asl?)) and revealed Mount Sneffels in all its cloud-shrouded, sun-bathed majesty. On the way down from Dallas, however, the weather morphed from a pleasant drizzle to an obstructive obstruction to our progress and comfort. Sixteen miserable miles later, we landed in Placerville (population: tiny) and hung out in the general store with a weirdo from Shaker Heights for an hour so that we could warm up/dry off.

Emelio tries out his raincoat while Mt. Sneffles hides behind the clouds (scaredy-cat!)

When we hit the road again, Fortune spun her mighty wheel in our favor and the rain held off for the final twenty-mile stretch into Telluride. Our route along Hwy 145 traversed breathtakinger and breathtakinger landscapes: crystalline mountain rivers, fluttering aspens, ruddy canyon walls, looming peaks, and some birds. We hopped on a bike path a few miles outside T-Ride; it was smooth sailing all the way into town.

OR SO WE THOUGHT

Two miles out of town, Emelio hit a chunck of glass that instantaneously flattened his rear tube immediately on the spot. What appeared to be a major bummer turned out to be a flavorful stunner! "Why?" you are probably asking. Well, here goes: WE MET A TOTALLY CHILL MAMACITA WHO ENDED UP HOOKING US UP EXTREMELY! Megan was riding home from working the fields (basically landscaping Tom Cruise's house literally probably) and stopped to chat our brains out when she got the vibe that we were on biketour. Turns out, she has also gone on biketour! After engaging in some excellent conversation, she gave us a couple good localtips and left us to flat-fixing. We thought our days with Megan were over...

...but then we ran into her again later! Phone numbers were exchanged, and soon enough she was inviting us to dinner in her chill-ass crib!!!!

This shrimp is totally dwarfed by the Telluride surroundings. Grow up, jerk!

First, however, we had to find our evening lodgings. Emelio's friend Colin Raffel's family's apartment (please excuse the triple possessive; there's no better way to explain this) was our destination. Only one problem: in the course of arranging these accomodations with the Raffels we never asked what the name of their lodge was. We felt like Mary and Joseph looking for a place to birth the savior of mankind, sheesh!! Eventually we found the spot and checked in like your freaking mom when you're trying to get a smooch or two in the basement, golly Ma ever heard of knocking??

Let's just say that we owe the Raffels a portion of our firstborn for hooking us up with such an amazing place to stay. We can't thank you enough!! So the place we stayed was sort of in Telluride, but sort of not. To be precise, it was in a nearby (as in a few miles up the mountainside) town known as Mountain Village.

Get a load of our view from the Raffels' condo! (hint: they're mountains)

You see, while Telluride itself is a historic mining town with a spectacular nationally-registered core of Victorian-era structures, Mountain Village is a 1990s-era product of Telluride's booming real-estate market and burgeoning wintertime skiing/summertime festival culture. The way we understand it, a bunch of developers took a huge chunk of mountain and turned it into a jaw-dropping mountain village (we think that's where they got the idea for the name) of condominium lodges, detatched luxury homes, and upscale dining/shopping plazas. The Village, along with the town of Telluride, comprise one of America's most glamorous destinations (although we guess there are about 2,000 lucky, lucky year-rounders who call the town home).

After dropping off our bikes (and "stuff") at the lodge, we had to make our way back down into Telluride to meet Megan for supper at her abode. "How'd you get all the way down the mountain (and up to Mt. Village in the first place)?" you are perhaps pondering. Well, it's like this: there's a mega-nasty, freegtastic TOTALLY FREE GONDOLA that transports freaks like us (even our bikes) up and down between the two alpine communities, TOTALLY FREE OF CHARGE from 7:00 AM to 12:00 AM (midnight, you dummies!) seven days per week. Riding in this gondola is really really rilly fun.

While riding the gondola, Alex takes a couple "personal minutes"

At the bottom, we had a short walk to Megan's cute little place that she shares with two other mamacitas. She prepared us a delicious chicken dinner and we both ate it (even Emelio's stupid vegan ass)! We all got along great and had a lovely time, but eventually us couple dudes had to skip out in time to catch the last gondola "home".

Further highlights of our stay in Telluride:

1) An awesome hike to the bottom (and then the top) of Bridal Veil Falls at the eastern end of town.

"Bouldering" "up" "the" "veil"

2) Super-chilling and movie-watching in the condo (PS: DVDs borrowed from T-Ride library, which is tiz-ite).

3) Visiting Travis' radical bike shed for a once-over on Emelio's bike.

In all srsnss, you gotta hit up Travis' shop when you go to Telluride. Thanks for the great hookup, Travis!
Good luck with the new shop!

4) Another dinner with Megan and Hong (Megan's roomie); this time we played hosts.

5) General sense of deep relaxation imbued by the glorious natural and built environment of this special, special town.

Scopin' the views from the top of Bridal Veil. Try not to be jealous, losers!

We could elaborate on our time in Telluride, but we're tired of writing and, frankly, you really don't deserve any more than this.

But in one last call-of-duty, we shall reply to our commenting fans' virtual Inquisition.

Jon -- Our bloggering method goes a little something like this: we spend a lot of time writing things that make us LOL really hard and then have to delete because our families are reading (sorry families!), and then we get serious and try to get through the post, and then we spend a lot more time writing things that make us LOL really hard and then have to delete. Whenever you see a burn on Emelio, know that Alex typed it (and vice-versa DUH!). We basically spend about four to five hours on each post, and it's sort of a waste of time but we mostly enjoy it ^-^

Concerning our route: we actually haven't made too many diversions from our Adventure Cycling maps (if you cared to know, we're currently on the "Western Express" route, having left the "TransAmerica" route back in Pueblo). Telluride was a small detour off the map; the Black Canyon was a longer one only because of the hour-long climb to the top. We'll be traveling through Dolores, CO today and on into Utah tomorrow. Through Utah we're hoping to make some more small trips off the map, simply because of the glut of National Parks near our route. We pass through Cedar City near the border of Nevada; we travel through immense barrenness in the Silver State; we hit civilization once again in California (passing through Sacramento, Davis, and finally into San Fran). If all continues well, we expect to be in the Bay Area before October raises its ugly, horrific head.

Hunter -- whenever any strange formatting shows up in our post (which is happening all over this friggin post), be assured that we are loudly cursing Blogger and punching each other in the face out of fury.

One last thing: we don't have many links because WE'RE CURRENTLY IN THE STATE OF SPENDING TOO MUCH TIME ON BLOGGER AND DON'T WANT TO DEVOLVE INTO CARDIAC ARREST! Time to go!

luv yall,

A.E. (American Eagle)

Morning at the campsite

2010-09-08T06:28:00.001-07:00

Just a quick post this morning (7:24am Mountain Time) to show you our
flabbergasting campsite in Ridgway, at the base of the San Juan range.
Feel free to say, "holy moley!"

Make sure you didn't miss yesterday's blog btw!!!!!!!!!

Ah, well, back to the bars. The Coors Light sure is cold out here!

Rocky II

2010-09-07T13:37:00.000-07:00

Emelio maifesting man's domination over nature.

We left you last 4.5 miles from Monarch Pass next to a lovely little campfire. Maybe you saw it in our last blog entry? Although maybe you didn't because we only saw one (1) comment after that post.

[Guys: what gives??? Freakin look down. You see that big rectangle with lots of squares on it? It's called a keyboard. You can push those squares in a particular sequence to create things that we call "words". When these "words" are combined in such a way, we call it "language". And when you put some "language" on our blog, it is called a "comment". And when we couple a dudes see "comments" on our blogs, it validates our freaking existence. WE LIVE FOR COMMENTS. WRITE ANYTHING, INSULT US, WHATEVER. That is all.]

Our campsite caught fire!!! JAY-KAY

On the morning of Sept. 4 (day 30-something, we don't really know or care anymore just get us out of this hellhole JK!), Emelio woke up very early (OMG!) because it was chilly-willy and he was uncomfortable-bunfuntorble. [Emelio's note: Alex thought it would be funny to write OMG back there, which is rude] He rustled up some fags and lit them on fire to stay warm. An otherwise uncomfortable morning was made the opposite of uncomfortable due to a boy and his flames.

Now we will tell you about our climb. It was 4.5 miles and it was up a 6% grade and it was the morning and so traffic was calmer and so we could look at the mountains more easily and it took an hour and fifteen minutes (including a stop to fill our water bottles (which were nearly empty by that point) from a trickling mountain spring) to get to the Pass but we did it and it was good and great! The feeling of elation one gets after accomplishing something like climbing a 11,312-foot peak on a heavily-loaded boy-powered cycle is difficult to put into words. Basically, we couldn't wipe the goofy grins off our goofy, greasy beardfaces for like an hour after we summited at Monarch.

Alex depraving Mother Earth of her precious resources

At the top, there was a really chill place to stop and hang with other chill mountain people. We saw many forms of wildlife: the mountain biker, the matching-bright-orange-shirt-wearing older German couple, the cashier and her weird kid, the Harley-Davidson rider who thinks he has something in common with us because he rides a two-wheeled machine (hint: he doesn't!), the rich couple from Crested Butte and their well-groomed Aryan children... what a place!

Monarch Pass is right at the Continental Divide: we can pee into the Pacific AND the Atlantic from here!

After relaxing on the Divide for a good while, we gathered our wits and our tits and it was bombs-away! Colin had asked (IN A COMMENT ON THIS BLOG) how fast we go when we're descending one of these peaks, and in a textbook example of "Ask and Ye Shall Receive," here it comes: our mach speed going down was 37.5 mph. Surprisingly, this is not the highest speed we've reached on our trip so far (that being 39.8 on a supersteep hill in S. Illinois). Can you believe it?? On this particular descent, however, the wind was full-force in our mugs and was a real impediment to us reaching insane speeds. We're both hoping to hit much higher speeds when we have the chance to descend in the future under calm wind conditions.

48 miles from Monarch Pass we rolled into Gunnison, the first substantial town to the west of the Continental Divide. Because Gunnison plays host to Western State College, it might be better named Funnison; after all, crazy co-eds love to attend University!

We had a delicious dinner at the Gunnison Brewery (hamburger on one hand, Boca burger on the other hand) along with one local brew each. After that we spent the final three or four hours of the evening hanging out at the local supermarket, charging phones and eating supper and generally chatting it up with some curious locals. Eventually, we made our way over to a quiet city park to set up camp.

A peaceful, uneventful night of rest seemed very much in the cards. But then..... around 1:00 A.M. Alex awoke to the rather alarming sound of a medium-to-large amount of liquid being thrashed against the rainfly of our tent. "What's this?!? A Super-Soaker attack perpetrated by

a band of local roustabouts?" Alex mused. "ZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzz," offered Emelio. Alex reluctantly peeked his head out of the tent like a baby wallaby emerging for the first time from his mommy's marsupium to find that the sound he heard was, in fact, being caused by the park's automatic sprinkler system which was presently drenching the tent and our precious little bikey-wikes. We wished it were a bad dream, but knew that the only thing to do was suck it up and move the bikes and tent out of this impromptu "Splash Zone."

That done, we crawled back up inside our sleeping bags and dozed off again. But then, wouldn'tchaknowit, no more than about 30-45 minutes later, Alex again woke to the same durn horrific sound and this time it wasn't a Super-Soaker attack either. UGH! Another set of timed sprinklers!!! We were so annoyed and so chilly by this point (low temp that night in Gunnison was around 36 deg Fahrenheit) that we basically moved our tent out into the alley behind some poor sap's vinyl-sided car-house (read: garage). By the grace of God, no more interruptions were launched upon us for the rest of the night/early morning.

Alex writes postcards while drinking coffee.

Next day, we waited out the cold in an uber-chill coffee house on Main Street in Gunnison before returning to (our fave!) City Market to do business over there with those fine people over there at City Market. We bought cereal and milk and ate it on a bench in an empty lot next to Wal-Mart (not JJ). Breakfast of champions!

In spite of some pretty stunning landscapes all through the Curecanti National Recreation Area and the Blue Mesa Reservoir, riding that day was kinda basically comparable to a big pile of feces.... BECAAAAUUUUSE, in a mega-nostalgic throwback to our days of riding in Western Kansas and Eastern Colorado, the winds again flagellated our poor little defenseless hineys. At one point, we became so frustrated (almost scared, in fact) by the brutal gusts, that we were forced to lamely walk our bikes along the highway for a spell.

This was a neat store!

Ultimately, though, all the hard work of climbing through the gales was rewarded by what we've both agreed was the most glorious descent we've experienced thus far. While coming down from Monarch Pass was the height of rush-of-blood-to-the-head territory, the landscape surrounding us at that point was somewhat one-dimensional; thick pine forests up to the tree line and barren peaks above. During this descent, on the other hand, our eyes were treated to a Thanksgivingly-robust feast of angles, colors, and textures. Everything that makes the Colorado landscape great was laid out their before us as we rode into the glow of the afternoon sun. And as if that wasn't enough, once at the bottom in Cimarron, we came upon a painfully quaint little country store offering all sorts of doodads and trinkets, not the least of which were choco-shakes (Emelio) and cherry pie a la mode (Alex). From there it was another mile or two 'til we found a creekside campsite that basically knocked our socks off. In the end, the day was more than salvaged!

"I can't wait to get on Facebook!!!" "Why?" "Because I haven't been on in two weeks!"

-overheard in the library right this moment

The next day was a very pleasant day of riding, made up of a couple nice long climbs followed by a couple nice long(er) descents. The second of the day's uphill stretches took us off our route for what turned out to be the most "worth-it" detour we've incurred so far. It was a long and winding road that led us up to the south rim of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison and one of America's newest national parks. Check the link and the pics, because words can't do this place justice. It may not be as grand as that other canyon, but for steepness, narrowness, and depth, the Black Canyon has them all beat! It's only about a 1/4 mile wide, but 2,000 feet deep, with dramatic, sheer cliffs falling straight down to the wildly running Gunnison River. An incredible sight to behold!

Alex accidentally fell over the edge. Don't worry he wasn't even injured!

And while the views from the southern rim road are the most iconic (and most commonly taken), we couple dudes were privileged enough to experience the canyon in an even more thrilling canyon-experiencing way: by hiking down it! The trails are so treacherous, in fact, that we needed to be issued a special backwoods permit in order to hike them. Perhaps the rangers were fooled by our grizzly beards, but we were nearly in over our heads. We made it out without a scratch, but man-oh-man, that hike was sumthin' (check pic for a pic).

If this looks really freaking steep, that's because it WAS. We are AWESOME (not really but yes really)

That evening we found a lovely young couple in the large-ish, slightly more down-to-earth town of Montrose. Scott and Jenny have been hosting cyclo-tourists for a number of years now, and say that they've probably put up 75-100 cyclists in that time. So we're basically just a measly, oily drop of spoiled milk in the capacious bucket of their hospitality. They fed us tasty snacks and Jenny wouldn't let us out the door this morning without loading our bike-sacks with complimentary Clif bars (yom-yom! ;P). Another "shining" (we baked that bun fresh for you, Scott and Jenny) example of relentless American generosity.

Maybe we've been riding slower than we had thought!

In case you forgot, Emelio's stepdad Rick has been keeping geographic tabs on us via this snazzy GoogleMaps link. Oooooooohhhhhh..... look how far we've gone....... Bookmark the link to follow our daily progress.

Another recent evolution in the life our our WebLog, is the Creation of a YouTube channel where we're posting sweet vids of our life on the road. Videos already posted include the Monarch Pass climb and riding out of Cotopaxi, CO along the Arkansas River. Subscribe to Alex's channel for further video updates.

Thnx for reading our latest blog entry. We hope you've enjoyed it! Now we're going to do something awesome but we're not gonna tell you what it is because if we did there wouldn't be any suspense to this story and you wouldn't be as inclined to log on and read our next entry so we're not going to tell you what it is that we are about to go do right now that is going to be really great.

MUCH LOVE

Alelio & Emlex

We made a campfire!!

2010-09-03T19:27:00.000-07:00

This is it! Pretty jealous, right??

We have a great solitary campsite only a few miles from the summit of
Monarch Pass. We're at about 10,000 feet now; Monarch is 11,300.
Tomorrow, we'll have about an hour of difficult riding, then we'll
cruiiiiiise nearly 50 miles down the mountain all the way to Gunnison!
Heck yeah!

Send us stuff!!!

2010-09-03T13:58:00.000-07:00

Hey you guys! Here's a pic of us in the totally radical mountain town
of Salida! It's seriously great and neat and cool and good!

This is a quick note to let you guys know that since we'll be stopping
in telluride for a couple nights soon (Thanks to the generosity of The
Raffels! They have a sweet hookup waiting for us in the 'Ride!), you
can mail us stuff like letters or cookies or small pets so we can have
fun opening/eating/grooming them!! Just send to:

Emelio DiSabato
General Delivery
Telluride, CO 81435

Don't feel obligated of course, but it would be lovely to hear from
you all via the US Postal Service!

Okay time for us to climb Monarch Pass! Yowza! Wish us luck!

<3
A&E

Have you ever seen a bighorn sheep in its natural habitat...?

2010-09-02T21:19:00.000-07:00

Cuz we have suckers!!!! And by "a" we mean "approximately 20 ranging
from juvenile to full-size big"!!! Yes that's right today on our
Conquest of the Rockies pt. I (Rocky I).

So we finally figured out a way to update the blog from the road,
using Emelio's iPhone. This is our first time trying the New Way, and
we can only include one pic. Additionally, the posts will be a bit
shorter than you're used to for a variety of reasons which should be
obvious you morons. Also, before you read this next part, remove
yourself from the proximity of any firearms, cutlery, and window
ledges: we can't do links!!!!!!! Oh nooooooo...... :,(

We'll be able to do regular posts when we get to a computer, so don't
freak your neeks.

Right now we're eating a gourmet campingman's supper of strawberry
cereal bars and shortbread cookies+peanut butter. Welcome to
Yumsville!!! We're camped in a weird little town called Hillside that
might be a ghost town; we're not sure, but the only resident appears
to be a horse that freaked out Emelio.

Okay then, so this morning we ran into some bicycle-maintenance
shenanigans. Emelio's front brake had been acting screwy, and he tried
to fix it but to no avail. We both also had to take time to mend our
punctured tire tubes (when we got those flats recently, we swapped out
for new tubes rather than patch the holes by the road). Eventually we
enlisted the help of a great local bike shop. Problem solved! But
departure delayed!

We finally escaped Pueblo around noon (JYYC we luv that town) and rode
the final 30 flat miles to the very base of the Rockies and the town
of Wetmore (shout out to Alex's G&GC). There was a nice little store
where Emelio ate candy while Alex ate beef.

And that's when the real fun began!!! Ohboyohboyohboy!!!

We started our ride this morning at roughly 4,700 feet of elevation.
We had to climb to 9,200, our day's mountain pass, in 13 miles.
DAUNTING.

The ride up the pass, on Highway 96 (which we've been on since the
middle of Kansas for the love of Pete McDermott), was relentless aka
it didn't level off until the top aka it didn't relent much at all. We
chugged along at a 5 mile/hr pace for friggin a long while!!

Along the way, the insane beauty of our drastically new environs
basically socked us in the kisser like a Buster Douglas left hook
circa 1992. We were marveling at the Wet Mountains (which is the name
of the range you peabrains) like a couple a lunatics. Since we're not
speeding by in cars, we're able to see amazing stuff like A HERD OF
BIGHORN gathered on a small rock outcropping like Beyoncé on stage at
the Super Bowl halftime show.

Anyways, getting to the top was a mighty fine accomplishment if we
don't say so ourselves which we just did. In fact, you can see for
yourselves how pumped we were up there if you'd just scroll down and
check the pic!

The other great thing about getting to the top of a 9,000 foot
mountain is that YOU GET TO GO DOWN IT. We were flying like the
hapless Jamaicans from Cool Runnings except we didn't blow it by
wiping out and embarrassing our entire nation in the process. Srsly
guys, that ride down (complete with humongous views of distant
mountain ranges) was Exhiliraring with a capital Exhiliraring.

Since we departed so late today, we got to watch the sun set over the
mountains but we also got to ride into darkness and pretty dang cold
temps. Thankfully, though, we made it to this creepy place and we're
snug in the tent. We weren't sure how to hide our food stock, so we
just piled it in our sleeping bags and texted all of our friends who
are bears asking them to come maul us and eat our food too.

Okay y'all time for bed! Cya.

We're giving up on this trip and coming home...

2010-09-01T16:28:00.000-07:00

SIKE!

...In fact, we're approaching what promises to be the most exhilarating stretch of the entire tour and we can hardly contain our bladders (JJ, it's our enthusiasm).

We knew you guys would think this was a cute one ;P

Sorry it's been awhile, we just haven't been able to get to a com-puter in a long time since we've been busting our humps across the dusty roads of West Kansas and Eastern Colorado!

Right now, we're sitting in the office of our shazaam-tastic hostess, Jenny K---. SHE BASICALLY ROCKS! We're in Pueblo, Colorado where she essentially runs the show in the environmental scene around here in this place that she calls home here in Pueblo, Colorado, USA, The World. We both think it's about time to explain just how we've gotten away with not dropping a penny on accomodations in the near-month that we've spent on this lonely (but often not lonely!) road.

In short, we have relied heavily on a couple little numbers we like to call Couch Surfing and Warm Showers!! These are sites on the 'web where one can locate potential hosts for overnight accomodations. They function based on the hospitality and trust of strangers. For example, as we're approaching any town of substantial size, we can log on to these two websites and search for people who are willing to open up their homes to us couple a dirty and weary dudes. We usually send out a few messages to the people who look the coolest (aka have probably gone rafting in the past month aka love Blink-182 aka are into just chillin' out and talkin to us about different sorts of things and stuff) in the hopes that one may be willing to shelter our stricken and increasingly emaciated bodies.

The agreement is highly casual; guests can expect sleeping space in someone's home for free (which might mean couch, or futon, or air matress, or spare bed, or dog cage, or floor, or musty crawlspace, or boat house, or carriage house, or undercarriage of automobile, or swaddled in arms, et cetera and so on). Usually, however, what you get is a lot more than a place to sleep. Since you're staying with a resident of that city, a "Couch Surfer" (AS THEY ARE CALLED) is often treated to a very rich experience of the place--one that would be hard to find at a motel or under an interstate overpass. Our hosts this past month have been altogether carnivorous in their desire to eat meat and by that we mean be nice to us!!! (Shout outs to Lisa, Anne, Beth/Forrest, Austin, Shawn, Callie-from-Carbondale, Emma/Kyle, Jenny K---). So we suggest you try out those websites and acquire some temporary human pets. Seriously, though, if this sounds cool to you, DO IT. It's a wonderful way to meet wonderful peeps.

Emels got the first flat of the trip in the middle of nowhere on highway 96.

He successfully fixed it even though he's a generally useless human being.

MEANWHILE...................

Let's get back to our departure from Hutchinson, Kansas. We left pretty late (since we were busy blogging all over your faces!!), and were expecting to reach our destination (our intended destination was L---) after nightfall... a risky proposition, at best. BUT THEN! 20 miles outside of the stoppage point, we encountered this freaky deaky bearded guy smokin a cigarette next to his pickup truck by the side of the road. Alex thought, "It's 'lights out' for us! This guy's gettin' ready to stab!" But it turned out he was wrong. In fact, it was just Terry, a super chill ageing deadhead Kansan mountainbiker who loved what he was seeing!!! Terry gave us this super chill local tip. The local tip was, stop early before dark, hit up this extremely tiny town called Seward (population: roughly 35), and totally eat at Mom's Diner! The dude even busted out his celluar and phone book (srsly) and friggin called the place to prepare them for our pungent arrival!!!! Such a good tip, this is why:

1) The roads in Seward are literally sand (Alex even fell down because of it, hilarious!!)
2) Kids ran out of their home to greet us (how did they know we weren't locals?? LOL JJ)
3) A dude and his sister, visibly inebriated and brandishing Budweisers, together with a couple random children, were driving around a golfcart at dusk and chatted us up big time
4) The mayor of Seward was also our waitress
5) Her mom was the cook and makes the best pecan pie we've ever had
6) The drunk golf cart operator was the husband of the mayor/waitress

SEWARD WAS THE BOMB!!!! Thanks, Terry!

Grain elevators like this one are a fixture of any self-respecting Great Plains town.

The notorious Kansan winds started to become a factor the next day (Day 24 (of our bike trip (did you know that we are on a bike trip?? you should check our blog))). Nevertheless, we made it over 88 miles to our next destination: Ness City, K---. This--a rugged town full of ranchers and oil fieldhands--was the last place in the world we expected someone to make fun of us for having untamed beards, but the moment we walked into the local watering hole, a corpulent drunkard let loose on us. Sheesh! The others in the bar, however, sure were nice and ended up schooling us hard on the ways and means of a Kansan farmer. One fella, in particular, learned us:
1) Wheat sells for $5 a bushel
2) It used to be $11 a bushel
3) One grain elevator moves about 2 million bushels of gran in a season
4) If oil is found on your property, you will pull in $60,000 PER MONTH.
5) Wheat is planted in the fall, and harvested in the spring
6) What we thought were giant crops of wheat are actually crops of milo
7) Much of Kansas was settled by Germans who had gone to Russia when Catherine the Great was looking for farmers; decades later, after being stripped of some of the freedoms promised them, they moved on to the Great Plains to farm
8) Silage is the leafy matter from grain crops and is used as livestock feed

This bar-goer was a great source of knowledge, and our time talking to him was just one example of many agricultural lessons learned in the Sunflower State. This, overall, was interesting to us.

Most of the time, nodding donkeys like this one are the only things keeping the grain elevators company.

FAST FORWARD TO NEXT MORNING

Everything about this day was pretty much cool, except for the six-plus hours of excruciating bike riding which absolutely sucked due the fact that the winds declared a jihad against our Westward progress. The last 24 miles were especially painful, since the afternoon gusts often broke 40MPH. YOWZA!!!! The night before, we had determined ourselves to put another notch in our belts (by that we mean get another Century don't you understand our cool touring lingo you MORONS???). HOWEVER, just shy of 60 miles, we struggled into Scott City and couldn't make another pedal stroke. Get it? Stroke?

Let's pretend this is show-and-tell. We're showing you a picture of Emelio's locks flowing

in the wind and telling you that it was overwhelmingly windy out here in this wild country.

Hopelessly disheartened, your heroes [sic] rustled up some grub from the local greengrocer. After a blustery dinner in an otherwise pleasant city park, we were riding through town lookin' a little lost we guess, because in swooped KYLE THE REALLY NICE YOUNG BAPTIST PASTOR WEARING SUNGLASSES!! He immediately asked us, from the cockpit of an enormous automobile, if we were looking for a place to sleep. "Y-y-yes!" we blubbered. Kyle led us to his church's newly annexed Youth Center and basically gave us free reign over the palatial facilities, including but not limited to: couches! shower! kitchen! flatscreen/dvd combo! We rented a flick (There Will Be Blood), watched it, and ate some Reese's cups. This was a mega high-five-slapping coup. Zeroes to Heroes, Baby!

AFTERWARDS....

The next morning, expecting the same infuriating and time-wasting amount of high-speed wind, we devised a plan to hitchhike out of Scott City as far west as anyone was willing to take us. Call us wimps, but you guys are the ones sitting at your computers reading our stupid blog eating cheese-doodles!!! JK we luv u guyz.

The plan was foolproof, except for these three factors: 1) It was Sunday 2) Nobody drives on Sunday because it's against God's Law 3) We were trying to get from Nowhere to Nowhere (no hard feelings Kansas, you guys were great!).

After two-point-five hours (during which one guy actually stopped and gave Alex the best beef jerky of his life!), we hit the jackpot. Rex, which was this guy's name, offered to drive us down the road a spell... but ended up driving us all the way to Leoti (nearly 25 miles) out of the goodness of his heart! On the way, we got some more excellent learnin' about Kansan agriculture and wind power (for we passed 33 massive turbines).

Then, tragedy struck. But don't get too worked up. We're fine. It was like this: we got out of the truck, unloaded our bikes, waved goodbye to Rex, and felt good that we had benefited from his generosity. But our smiles faded as the TRUTH dawned on us: we'd left our bike helmets in the bed of his truck!! DANGNABBIT! This was actually a pretty freaking depressing thing, and no matter how much we tried to stay positive, we were a little bit bummed for the remainder of that day.

But no matter! The show must go on!

The winds were still challenging us all over the place, but we decided to tough it out like a couple a macho-nachos and mounted our steeds (read: "bikes"). Something that happened that cheered us up a little bit was when we got into Colorado, totally out of the blue! Emelio thought it would be fun to approach the sign announcing the border and then climb on it like a child:

We don't exactly need a caption for this one

So then we got to Sheridan Lake, another sparsely-populated main-streetless town (Eastern Colorado, you might not realize, is a heckuvalot like Western Kansas), and something totally wackalicious happened. Someone called out, as we passed by, "Emelio!"

"BWUH???" Emelio thought, freaking out in his mind about what had just been hollered out to him in this place that was so far from home. But wouldn't you know, he scoped to the right and spied none other than BRENDAN, the great guy we rode with between Cassoday and Hutchinson!!! AMAZING! Turns out, Brendan had broken down a few towns back, was picked up by sympathetic locals, and was hitchin' a ride all the way to Colorado Springs. We exchanged hugs and stories, talked with his lovely benefactors for a spell, and ultimately camped in their backyard after failing miserably to hitchhike further down the road.

The family of four and their dog (note Brendan on the far left and the mangey mutt on the far right)

THE NEXT MORNING...

...just as we were waking from our slumber and steeling ourselves for another brutal day of wind, Jamey (one of the great dudes who let us camp) offered to drive us down the road on his way to the farm! Alex and Emelio were all, "Okay!!" and it happened! We got a great 8-mile head start on the day, and on the way were able to see an amazing rainbow stretching across the horizon in a perfect 180-degree arc (lifer!). Once again, it was hard to get much of anywhere, and after almost 60 miles we threw in the towel at Arlington, literally the smallest town we've camped in yet. Rumor has it only three houses remain occupied in the entire municipality. Surprise surprise, we failed at hitchhiking for a while before finally eating Ramen and laying our heads down to sleep.

THE NEXT DAY:

the winds had subsided!!! God Above took pity on us poor cyclists, and gifted us the speediest day of cycling we've had yet. It seemed even speedier, given our sluggish pace over the preceding days. We were eating up miles like a llama eats tuna casserole, and on top of that, the freakin' Rockies appeared on the horizon, coaxing us onward the whole way!!! Seriously folks, we couldn't stop staring at those tempting mountainous shapes in the distance. Approaching the Rockies over the course of a full day is really a treat only bicyclists and mule-riders can devour.

A "sweet" cafe in Sugar City!!!!!!!!!! Note the elevator (locals drop the "grain" part!) looming beyond

This day was even more spanktastic because our endpoint was Pueblo, the place in which we had planned well in advance to take a whole day of rest which is TODAY sillies!!!

This cup of coffee from the Sugar City Cafe was fifty cents,
but we had to do self-serve refills because the waitress was lazy. NOT JK!

This is what we've done in Pueblo:

1) Attended the Colorado State Fair! The grand champion steer was auctioned off for $54,000!!!
2) Ate pizza with our lovely hostess, Jenny K--- and her really interesting friend W---!
3) Slept like a couple of freakin babies!
4) Ate a local delicacy: The Slopper!
5) Bought new bike helmets!
6) Wrote this blog entry!
7) Inhaled oxygen!
8) Defecated!
9) Scratched our itches!
10) Blinked occasionally whenever our eyes felt like it!
11) Tamed a bear!
12) JK on #11!

Alex thinks the car might be ruining the shot here. What do you guys think? Let us know in the comments section.

We hope you have enjoyed reading this! Today is September 1st; we consider this the turning point of our trip, as we'll be in some drastically unfamiliar terrain (to us Ohians!) for the rest of the journey. You can expect some pretty insane pictures to show their faces on this blog, as well as some excellent stories and funny commentary since we're such a hoot! We are both really extra-pumped to hit the mountains, even if it is a tad daunting. Wish us luck!

AND FOR PETE'S SAKE, CHECK THE CONSARNED LINKS

Love,
Emelex

Your Prairie Home Companions

2010-08-26T10:59:00.000-07:00

Hey jerk! Get a car!

Soooooooo......... the town of Fort Scott, as some of you sharper-pencils-in-the-pencil-case may have deduced, is named after the thing of Fort Scott. In the evening, we couldn't really find a good spot to stay in the town, so we went over the the National Historic Site of Fort Scott and found excellent camping on the grassy campus. In the morning, we had to get out of there before the park rangers came and tazed us... but after leaving and cooking some yummy pancakes, we went back to the National Historic Site of Fort Scott and TOOK A MONDO THREE-HOUR SELF-GUIDED ALL-EXPENSES-PAID ALL-INCLUSIVE TOUR!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The cost of entry was only three bucks for Alex, and Emelio got in free because we convinced the ranger that he was under 12 years old!!!

The site is basically amazing and super-interesting, especially for a couple a (nerdy) dudes like us. It is a restored US military fort that was built on the "Permanent Indian Frontier" in the 1840s. Eventually, the idea of the permanent frontier dissolved and the army sold the fort to civilians and it eventually became the center of a new town called Fort Scott. After the Kansas-Nebraska act (1854 you idiots! Don't you remember your Social Studies examinations?), the era of "Bleeding Kansas" came into full swing. Basically, the pro-slavery and anti-slavery interests in the U.S. sent pioneers into Kansas in hopes of swinging the territory to be either pro-slavery or "free soil." We found out that John Brown (of Harper's Ferry fame) launched some attacks in Kansas during this period! Fort Scott itself was a really fascinating example of Bleeding Kansas: two military buildings were converted to hotels, one of them pro-slave and the other free soil. They faced each other across a lawn no longer than a football field!

This is Fort Scott.

After our fort visit we dipped into a local diner called the Nu-Grille, a lovely historic restaurant open continuously since 1946. Juiced up on grease and milkshakes, we hit the road and "road" 78 miles to the very itty-bitty municipality of Benedict, KS. The city's population was 102, so when we hit the town there was a huge celebration and the mayor even changed the city's record books! JK LOL. We found a quiet park and set up camp next to a slide, and were cooking a gourmet dinner of couscous and sauteed mushrooms (can ya' buh-leeve it!) when local dog-walker Steve Jones came over to chat! Steve was a really great guy, had seen cyclists pass through before, and dagnabbit wouldn'tchaknow he came back with a big box of choco-ice cream for us to share! Thanks Steve!!

The next day we hit some pretty nasty winds (gusting 'round 30mph!!) on our way to Cassoday, another achingly tiny village in rural Kansas. This was really the first day of our trip (20 days so far) that we could say, "The day wasn't hot!" and that sure was a relief. We both agree that the most memorable part of the day's ride came on the last stretch into Cassoday. We had finally hit the storied open Kansas pasturelands, and the sky was huge above us and the horizon stretched for miles and miles. The sun was setting to our left, the clouds were really deluxely golden-pink, and on our right the moon was making its slow and deadly ascent into dark blue dusk. Really top-notch riding.

In the morning, as we were setting out from Cassoday, we happened upon ANOTHER BIKE TRAVELER!! He was just packing up his tent (strangely, we camped in the same 110-person town but in different parks, and so didn't encounter each other the night before), and thought it would be totally rad if we all three rode together! His name is Brendan, and he's riding from Philadelphia out to the West Coast. Alex and Emelio had a really nifty time riding with someone else, and sure hit it off well with Brendan. After 40 miles of riding and gossiping like Prairie Chickens, we hit the town of Newton and tumbled into CJ's Pancake House. Dee-lish!

40 more casual miles, and we were in Hutchinson at Harley's Bike Shop picking up the key to our nighttime lodgings, Zion Lutheran Church (labeled on our map as a cyclists-only lodging!!). We had a little work done on the bikes at the Shop, and then took some time ourselves to do some basic tune-ups outside the church.

Alex and Brendan adjust Alex's front brake while two creepy bikes watch.

Just as we were 'bout ready to go off to pick up some groceries, who should roll up but BEN AND JAMIE WHO ARE ALSO RIDING THEIR BICYCLES ACROSS THE COUNTRY TOWARDS THE WEST COAST OF CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!! "Holy crap!" we all said.

In the end, we composed a massive feast in the basement of Lutheran, ran our yappers on and on about our respective bike journeys, compared gear and tan lines, and popped in our Red Box movie, Shutter Island. Let's just say that we got pretty creeped out by the movie and generally had a rollickin' good time last night. It really is something special when you can camp with three other bike travelers.

Eyyy!!! Mangiate, bambini!!!! Molto bene!!!! L'italia e la pizza e la bicicletta a la Roma!

Well, that's all for now you freaks! We might not have computer access for a few days, as we're going across some pretty desolate terrains until reaching Pueblo, Colorado at the base of the Rockies (sheesh!!).

Before we could leave Hutchinson Evangelical Lutheran Church,
Emels felt the need to bounce on the bed like a juvenile delinquent.

Remember to check our winks!

Love,

Emelioalexland

The Wind in the Willows (SIKE!) Prairie Grass

2010-08-24T14:41:00.000-07:00

Dear Diary,

Alex and Emelio are back in Public Libraryland, throwin' together a ragamuffin blog post once more!

This time, We Have Found It (the public library, that is) in Eureka, Kansas (okay you geeky Greekaholics, look back a couple words for the fun joke!). The library here is nice and new, and for a time we were sitting across from a young man who kept on making a strange monotonous humming noise from his greasy mouth while listening to nu-metal (probably) on his earbuds. Alex was annoyed, but Emelio couldn't stop lolling!

To pick up where we left off, we rode the Katy Trail on Day 16 for 95 miles, yowza! Like we said last time, the Katy Trail is lined with lovely towns and often follows the north bank of the Missouri River. The trail is very flat, and we were speedin' along at a speedy speed. Around 7:00pm, we hit up a trailside restaurant, cleverly called the Trailside Restaurant. To Alex's shock and awe, the T.R.'s nightly special was ONE DOLLAR HAMBURGERS WOW WOW!! He gobbled up a couple a those babies, while Emelio ate a suprisingly yummy veggie burger. They also had $0.75 drafts of Miller High Life Light (we had never heard of that beer before and simply refused to purchase it at such a devalued price in these dark economic times).

Indulging his inevitable MEAT RAGE...
and at prices unkown East of the Mississippi.

When we got back to the trail, we still had some miles to go, and ended up riding into the Heart of Darkness. With two flashlights strapped to the cockpit, Emelio took the lead. Unfortunately, Emelio gets a little skittish in the nighttime. Two things basically freaked his face: 1) a stupid idiotic 'possum bolted in front of his tire and made him squeal and 2) he thought he saw a twelve-foot spider and, in an attempt to avoid it, crashed to the ground and nearly caused Alex to crash as well. Yowza! Emelio didn't really get hurt, but we decided to camp at the next trailhead we encountered so as to avoid horrible nighttime evils.

Turns out, the next trailhead would make a magnificent campsite: right on the banks of the Missouri, with a boat ramp leading down to the river. We walked down in the moonlight to splash off our nasty sweat-and-limestone coating (Katy Trail is made up of a crushed limestone called "pug") and sit and contemplate the surroundings like a couple a freakin Platos.

We woke up bright and shiny and hit the trail hard, since we were going for a 120-mile day to make it to the evening's post! We stopped at a trailside hostel for water refills 20 miles in, and were pleasantly surprised to find a couple more bike travelers (Chris and Michelle, coming from NYC on their way to SF) emerging from the place. They were heading in the same direction as us, and we decided to spend some time together on the route.

We lined up with Chris and Michelle for a nice shot!

Chris and Michelle were mapping their route using an iPhone, and knew of a shortcut off the trail. Alex and Emelio were like, "Oh cool!" and we hopped off the Katy and into the streets. This route took us through Missouri's capital, Jefferson City (huge capitol--a scaled down replica of the one in D.C.), and along Route 50 all the way into Sedalia, MO. Even with the shortcut, we made it a 105 mile day, our FIRST CENTURY EVER!!! (century=100 miles on a bike in one day or 100 years of time if you believe in that sort of thing) If you're bad at math (Al Gore), that means 200 miles in two days, SLURPAGE!!!

We were hyper-pumped to get to Sedalia because Jacob VanSickle, local dweeb, hooked us up with sweet lodgings: HIS PARENTS' HOUSE!!! Thanks Jacob!!! We got cool showers, a great fridge to raid (including homepickled pickles and Buitoni), shelter from a nasty storm, and many many hilarious pictures of Jacob when he was a younger and even dweebier dweeb. JK we love you Jacob! And your parents THANKS Mr. and Mrs. Jacob!!

After a very relaxing mattress-y sleep, we made ourselves a hearty country-style breakfast and took a relaxing ride back onto the Katy Trail for its final 40-mile run westward. Rather than push ourselves too hard after a couple long days, we decided to end early just outside Deepwater MO, in maybe our most tantalizingly tubular campsite yet. It was basically an African safari wonderland! We saw a buttload of Great White Egrets, hawks, herons, wild turkeys, and other flying pokémon.

If this doesn't get your engine humming, then just whatever!!!

Day 19: We rode as far as Nevada (pronounced locally Nuh-VAY-duh, lol!) before really lunching. Once in Nevada, we really lunched!! Bagel and cheese (and meat for one, avocado for the other!) sammies; blueberries; gourmet macaroni and cheese salad; three peaches; seven Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls; a half-gallon of Vitamin D milk; yum wow yum yum wow!

Not long after, and against our better judgement, we walked over to the Nevada MUNICIPAL POOL!!! Alex's fourteen-inch-thick layer of back hair prevented him from sliding down the slides effectively, while Emelio's baby dives were an embarrassment to himself and the greater Nevada community. It didn't matter, because it was HOT and the pool felt AMAZING!

COWABUNGA!!!!

We crossed the border into Kansas, and ended up in the fabulous city of Fort Scott. Fabluous, that is, in spite of the fact that friggin everything shuts down on a Sunday evening. We couldn't even find a place to knock back a couple cold brews when we had such a craving! Danggg.

Gorgeous old Fort Scott. Veddy quiet.

But anyway, it was sweet to be in this historic old Western town. The main streets through the place were paved in brick, and the storefronts remain standing in all their architectural glory. There's a great story to this little town, but you'll have to wait until.............. next time!

PS: didja remember to check da LINKS?

We're not not in Kansas anymore!

2010-08-23T15:30:00.000-07:00

Okay you sneaky snorkelers, here we are a couple a guys back making some blog posts!

We've been in some pretty rural areas the past couple a days, so computer access has been wanting. Bear with us!!!!!!!!!!!
We crossed into Kansas yesterday: yeeeehaaaaw!! Right now we're sitting in a public library in downtown Chanute KS, so today's post might be abbreviated and relatively link-less.

REWIND! REWIND! Back to St. Louis.... it all seems like a crazy delirious dream.......
In short, Alex and Emelio picked up St. Louis, swaddled it closely, and made it our lovechild. We woke early to take the town on, and by golly did we take it.

City Museum in STL. Eesa-crazy, mon.

First: breakfast at a really sicknasty local (the South Tower Grove neighborhood) eatery, the Local Harvest Cafe. Emelio half expected it to be overrun with disgusting Oberlin grads selling hearty carob-nut vegan cookies!

Then, we biked off to world-renowned Forest Park -- a massive greenspace in the middle of St. Looey full of extremely free extremely fun stuff. Time was short, so we spent it in the zoo (PENGUINS! GORILLA GORILLA GORILLA!) and checked out a tiny portion of the large and expanding Art Museum. SO FUN!

Emels almost drove this schoolbus off a roof. What a silly!

Then we rushed off downtown to take on St. Louis' revered City Museum. The place is basically a giant playground for kids and adults alike, housed in an old 14-story shoe factory. Time is running out on this public library computer, so just freaking take our word and shove your bratty kids in the car to give them and you the experience of a lifetime. Ferris wheel! Caves! Circus! Bars and restaurants! Cantilevered school bus! Holy schnikes! THEN we went to the amazing Arch and spent 5 hours (almost) staring at it and some other cool stuff.

A weird hulk of steel we kept seeing. WHAT THE HECK!!!???

THEN FOR THE EXPERIENCE OF A LIFETIME, we friggin trekked out to THE CHEESECAKE FACTORY (thanks for the $50 gift card, Susan!!!!!!). Let's just say that we stuffed ourselves so bad that we almost puked all over each other's beards. God bless America.

We both felt as terrible as Emelio looks. Really.

Okay okay next day next day! We took the train out to the airport, rode a short distance, and hopped on the eastern edge of the fabulous Katy Trail. The Katy Trail is America's longest rail-trail at 230+ miles. We loved it omg!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The trail is chock-full of freakadelic informational kiosks and cute little railroad towns. Through those kiosks, we learned that 1) Missouri has only 0.5% of its original priarieland left (depressing); 2) Daniel Boone is often confused with Davey Crockett; and 3) Prairie chickens mate in the springtime in "leks" and the males' mating call is known as a "boom" (shaka-laka).

Alex showing off his--ahem--"trail mix" alongside some of the
Katy Trail's super-zingy interpretive materials.

YIKES only 4 minutes left on this computer! More blog posts to come when we can commandeer some other town's library!!!!!!!!!!!!

LOVE Y'ALL!!

-E&A

Bet y'all are freakin' ya neek!!!!

2010-08-17T21:06:00.000-07:00

BECAUSE WE'RE POSTING AGAIN MOW!!!!!! (flip the "M", idiots!!(DUH!!!))

Finally hit this trail after 83-some miles of one road!

Well gosh golly we made it all the way to St. Louis today! Basically nothing eventful happened, because we took the extremely flat though not very scenic Illinois State Route Thirteen nearly all the way to the big fatty LuLu. We did make a delicious stop at Ankle Weight Gossip Queen. Then Emelio excitingly forgot his camera at some stop sign and noticed that it was gone seven miles later, so he had to hitchhike back to get it (fortunately, his Automobile Support Angels turned out to be quite congenial and altogether very wonderful! Thanks John!). When Emelio finally made it back to where he had left Alex with the bikes, Alex was seated on a noisy knoll taking a half-way nap all by his lonesome but it sort of looked like he was praying. Another cool thing was we ate some really good croissant and cheese sandwiches while pirating a bench umbrella combo that actually belonged to the Frigid Frog (and their subsidiary, BBQ Panther) even though we didn't even order a single "Frog in a Blender" Slushy from the poor suckers.... BURN!

Alex had to trim his moustache before lunch because he kept biting it when he was attempting to eat food!

SO ANY-WHO! We made it to Belleville (Illinois), a southeastern suburb of Holy Saint Looney Bin, around 6:30pm. At which point, we still had no clue where we were going to be staying this evening. All of a sudden, Emelio took responsibility for the situation and made multiple phone calls to his coworker Elizabeth in hopes that lodging might be acquired while Alex ate some Sweet n' Salty Honey Nut Chex Mix. He says: "It's really good, maybe you could buy it for your cousin or neighbor as a wedding present!"

She may be indoors in this photo, but Callie is an outdoor maniac!

In the end, Your Heroes decided to wedge in with two of Callie-from-Carbondale's good friends from nerdy outdoor camp, Kyle and Emma!! We rode the Metrolink into the city center (through East St. Louis, over the Mississippi {Hello, Missouri!}, and past a bigass freaky rounded steel assemblage of some sort--WTFF?!?!) with our bikes on board, then rode them through beautiful Tower Grove Park for the last 2.4-3.1 miles (taking our day's total over the 86 mile mark). We chatted with our kind hosts about the city for a bit before leaving them alone long enough so that they could to go to bed. Let's just say that our beards are tingling with excitement right at this very moment.

Check this freak and his frog eyes! Found him hungry and haggard on the Metrolink!

We're taking one of our patented "Day Off To Explore A Scary and Dangerous Urban Center" tomorrow -- Kyle and Emma seriously whacked us over the head with how fu-reaked out we're gonna be at how tight Saint Kablooie is. Tomorrow's blogpost just might knock your socks clear off your waxy eyelashes (wtf were they doing there anyways?!).

That's all for tonight ladies and germs,

From,
Love,
-Aleleio
Amen.

PS REMEMBER TO CLICK THE LINKS!

You guys are wondering why we haven't posted lately?

2010-08-16T20:59:00.000-07:00

...have you ever stopped to consider that we might be busy riding our friggin bikes across the biggest country in the history of the WORLD YOU LOSERS?????

LOLOLOLOLJKJK we luv you guys!

State line! This is just after we crossed (via ferry, again!) the Ohio from KY to Cave-in-Rock, IL

Okay whew so here we are in Carbondale, Illi-"bringin the"-noise. We've been through a lot of great places in the last week, including three states (KY IN IL) and countless burgs... we will now attempt to briefly sum up our experiences while highlighting the best parts.

Unlike the Lord, we rested on the eighth day (in Louisville). Beth and Forrest were so lovely to us that we simply had to stay for a full day. And it turned out to be a DOOZY! In the morning, we met up with Austin, one of the buffest guys either of us had ever hung out with. We thought we were gonna get our faces punched in, but it turns out that Austin is also one of the nicest guys we have ever been made aware of!

Austin took us to a really rad Looville eatery, Lynn's Paradise Cafe. IT WAS FAR OUT!! Austin had taken a lengthy bike trip himself once before, and he sympathetically picked up the tab before we could blabber a protest out of our moist, rubbery lipps.

Alex hanging outside Forrest and Beth's place in Butchertown, with Austin too! Notice that their house lies on the
river side of Loaville's floodwall, making their rent mondo-cheap.

Okay to cut to the chase, Lewisville is the bee's knees and we loved it. Austin took us all around by bike, and we seriously recommend that you spend your next vaycay there. (Quick neat things: stunning Victorian neighborhood, 21C hotel with nasty mod art, the they're-still-building-it Big Four bike/ped bridge, wicked sweet jazz trio at Nachbar).

So the next morning, Day 9, we rode out early from Luhvull -- it turned out to be another ridiculously hot day, so in the afternoon we needed to stop for an air-conditioned break. Worked out to be a pretty great stop for us. We rolled into Tina's Horseshoe Lounge, your basic piece-of-shit-hole-in-the-wall-smalltowncornerbar. To get to the point, we loved everyone there and they loved us. Particularly kind was Wild Bill, a self-proclaimed RiverRat TugboatCaptain who insisted on paying for our entire lunch AND THEN HANDED ALEX A $50 BILL.

The extremely overwhelming kindness of strangers on this trip has continued to overwhelm us extremely. From our gracious gracious nighttime hosts, to the curious people on the street, to the old timers in the bars, humanity (in the Midwest, at least) has been good to us couple a dudes.

These horses were super curious when we were packing up on the Mattingly Family Dairy Farm! We even touched them.

...have you ever stopped to consider that we might be busy riding our friggin bikes across the biggest country in the history of the WORLD YOU <a href="http://nationallampoon.com/files/2009/05/8-kimmy-gibbler.jpg">LOSERS</a>????? LOLOLOLOLJKJK <a href="http://www.futuredead.com/swanson/fairschool/shirts/2ts-sike.jpg">we luv you guys!</a> Okay whew so here we are in Carbondale, Illi-"bringin the"-noise. We've been through a lot of great places in the last week, including three states (KY IN IL)... we will now attempt to sum them up briefly while highlighting the best parts. Unlike the Lord, we rested on the eighth day. Beth and Forrest were so lovely to us in Louisville, we simply had to stay for a full day. And it turned out to be a DOOZY! In the morning, we met up with Austin, one of the buffest guys either of us had ever hung out with. We thought we were gonna get our faces punched in, but it turns out that Austin is also one of the nicest guys either of us had ever hung out with! Austin took us to a really rad Looville eatery, <a href="http://www.lynnsparadisecafe.com/">Lynn's Paradise Cafe</a>. IT WAS FAR OUT!! Austin had taken a lenghthy bike trip himself once before, and he sympathetically picked up the tab before we could blabber a protest out of our moist, rubbery lipps. Okay to cut to the chase, Lewisville is the bee's knees and we loved it. Austin took us all around by bike, and we seriously recommend that you <a href="http://www.gotolouisville.com/index.aspx">spend your next vaycay there</a>. (Quick neat things: stunning Victorian neighborhood, 21C hotel with nasty mod art, the they're-still-building-it Big Four bike/ped bridge, wicked sweet jazz trio at Nachbar). So the next morning, Day 9, we rode out early from Luhvull -- it turned out to be a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FhndWwWt8I">ridiculously hot</a> day, so in the afternoon we needed to stop for an air-conditioned break. Worked out to be a pretty great stop for us. We rolled into Tina's Horseshoe Lounge, your basic piece-of-shit-hole-in-the-wall-classic-bar. To get to the point, we loved everyone there and they loved us, especially Bill, the guy who bought our entire lunch AND HANDED ALEX A <a href="http://www.foreverwedstore.com/50dollarbill.jpg">$50 BILL</a>. The extremely overwhelming kindness of strangers on this trip has continued to overwhelm us extremely. From our gracious gracious nighttime hosts, to the curious people on the street, to the old timers in the bars, humanity (in the Midwest, at least) has been good to us couple a dudes. Second example: that night, we were in Payneville, KY ten miles outside our intended destination when <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siWmOSByIOg">thunder rumbled</a> in the distance. We stopped to ask a couple dairy farmers if we could set up camp on their yard; their acquiescence would have been enough. BUT NO! The milk matriarch brought us out a <a href="http://www.gifs.net/Animation11/Geography_and_History/Native_Americans/Smoking_native_2.gif">peace offering</a> of cheese sandwiches, watermelon and pop! AND THEN! The next morning, she brings us out a friggin bag of GOODIES! And when we opened it for lunch at Great Gazebos of America #7, we found she had slipped a TWENTY SPOT into the package! Oh man, such generosity... amazing! The day was <a href="http://www.accelerator3359.com/Wrestling/pictures/earthquake.jpg">uberHOT</a> but we made it as far as Owensboro, KY where we spent a barnburner of a Friday evening. We stumbled upon a pleasant riverfront promenade where a jovial group of bums were banging out Beatles covers like they were lima bean milkshakes. Later on, we still didn't know where we'd be laying our heads that evening when we wandered into the courtyard of the International Bluegrass Music Museum. There we found a local <a href="http://grizzlymountainrevival.com/">country rock quartet</a> slamming out the jams like a bunch of hellions with poison ivy. Fortunately, we met Shawn, a really kind young guy who--after some serious hinting on our part--worked up the guts to offer us filthy couple dudes a place to stay for the night. We slept wonderfully in his (and Amber's) lovely guest bedroom and even scored a home-cooked breakfast the next morning before heading out. Thanks Shawn!!! Before leaving town, we returned to the Bluegrass Museum for a tasty little visit. It was neat; we bought postcards.... perhaps you'll be receiving one in the mail?!?!?!?!?!? (not you, Loco). Since we hung out in Owensboro for a bit that morning (and with a super great guy named Josh who was great!), we had a shorter ride on Day Eleven of our Journey. We rode to Sebree, KY (pausing briefly under a skid-row awning to wait out a torrential downpour) -- where we ended up having the <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0366551/">wildest night of our young lives.</a> Our stop Sebree was basically a cross-country bicycling Mecca. The Sebree First Baptist Church has been bunking cyclists since Adventure Cycling mapped their first cross-country route thirty years ago. Eight years ago, then, the congregation voted to become an official "Cycling Only Lodging" locality! Translation: SICK LODGING!!!!!!!!!!!!! Our evening only got better. After slapping nearly 50 high fives about the kitchen, lounge area, mattresses, , large-map-of-where-passing-cyclists-are-from, and air-conditioning, we hit the (tiny) town. Specifically, to the Purple Palace Opry. Alex and Emelio have agreed that we can never adequately express how mindblowingly amazing the Opry was. You walk in, and what you get is a big general-store-converted-to-ballroom filled with elderly Kentuckyians, getting down to some insane live Bluegrass classics. A 8-member band occupied the stage, two-steps owned the dance floor, and in walk a couple young tie-dye wearing freakazoids. Needless to say, they embraced us (literally, on the dance floor. Man, that Carol can dance!) and forced us to participate. We had a <a href="http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Blastoise_%28Pok%C3%A9mon%29">blast</a>. Okay dang we have to wrap this post up! So much to say, but it's already midnight-thirty and we have to get to bed! We rode into southern Illinois yesterday, and made camp on the Ohio River in a small park in the city of Rosiclare. This morning, we conquered some mega hills (S. Illinois... who knew??) and wound up in funky Carbondale, home of Southern Illinois University. Our host, Callie (not <a href="http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#%21/photo.php?pid=3906217&op=1&o=global&view=global&subj=1416300014&id=565588594">that Callie!</a>), has been thematically gracious and we are enjoying our evening! BUT IT'S LATE! MORE BLOG POSTS TO COME SOON! ALSO PIX TO COME SOON! Next up: St. Louis!!!! A&E P.S. remember to check our <a href="http://wii.kombo.com/images/content/news/blurb_link_evo_20080715.jpg">links</a>!

Second kindness example: that night, we were in Payneville, KY ten miles outside our intended destination when thunder rumbled in the distance. We stopped to ask a couple dairy farmers if we could set up camp on their yard; their acquiescence would have been enough. BUT NO! Pam, the milk matriarch promptly brought us out a peace offering of cheese sandwiches, watermelon chunks and pop! AND THEN! The next morning, before we can roll out of dodge, she brings us out a friggin bag of GOODIES! And when we opened it for lunch at Great Gazebos of America #7, we found she had slipped a TWENTY SPOT into the package! Oh man, such generosity... amazing!

Alex checks out a huge coal barge on the Ohio, from Owensboro's developing riverfront promenade!

The day was uberHOT but we made it as far as Owensboro, KY where we spent a barnburner of a Friday evening. We stumbled upon a pleasant riverfront promenade where a jovial group of bums were banging out Beatles covers like they were lima bean milkshakes. Later on, we still didn't know where we'd be laying our heads when we wandered into the courtyard of the International Bluegrass Music Museum. There we found a local country rock quartet slamming into some jams like a bunch of hellions with poison ivy. Fortunately, we met Shawn, a really kind young guy who--after some serious hinting on our part--worked up the guts to offer us filthy couple dudes a place to stay for the night. We slept wonderfully in his (and his wife Amber's) lovely guest bedroom and even scored a home-cooked breakfast the next morning before heading out. Thanks Shawn!!!

Before leaving town, we returned to the Bluegrass Museum for a tasty little visit. It was neat; we bought postcards.... perhaps you'll be receiving one in the mail?!?!?!?!?!? (not you, Loco).

Since we hung out in Owensboro for a bit that morning (and with a super great guy named Josh who was great!), we had a shorter ride on Day Eleven of our Journey. We rode to Sebree, KY (pausing briefly under an awning along Owensboro's entertaining [to us] skid-row district to wait out a torrential downpour) -- where we ended up having the wildest night of our young lives.

Our stop Sebree was basically a cross-country bicycling Mecca. The Sebree First Baptist Church has been bunking cyclists since Adventure Cycling mapped their first cross-country route over thirty years ago. And then, eight years ago the congregation voted to become an official "Cycling Only Lodging" locality! Translation: SICK LODGING FOR A COUPLE DUDES!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Our evening only got better from there. After slapping nearly 50 high fives about the kitchen, lounge area, mattresses, large-map-of-where-passing-cyclists-are-from, and air-conditioning, we hit the (tiny) town. Specifically, we hit the Purple Palace Opry.

Video clip of the Purple Palace Opry... it was a regular hoe-down!

Alex and Emelio have agreed that we can never adequately express how mindblowingly amazing the Opry was (video to come soon!). You walk in, and what you get is a big general-store-converted-to-ballroom filled with elderly Kentuckyians, getting down to some insane live Bluegrass and Gospel classics. An 8-member band occupied the stage, two-steps owned the dance floor, and in walk a couple young tie-dye wearing freakazoids (us, DUH!). Needless to say, they embraced us (literally, on the dance floor. Man, that Carol can dance!) and forced us to participate. We had a blast.

Okay dang we have to wrap this post up! So much to say, but it's already midnight-thirty and we have to get to bed! We rode into southern Illinois yesterday, and made camp on the Ohio River in a small park in the city of Rosiclare. This morning, we conquered some mega hills (S. Illinois... who knew??) and wound up in funky Carbondale, home of Southern Illinois University. Our host, Callie (not that Callie!), has been thematically gracious and we are enjoying our evening!

Our campsite in Rosiclare, right on the Ohio. It sure was pretty in the morning!

BUT IT'S LATE! MORE BLOG POSTS TO COME SOON! Next up: St. Louis!!!!

A&E

P.S. remember to check our links!

Why we like pepper spray

2010-08-10T18:19:00.000-07:00

Because it scares the poop out of the stupid dogs always tryin to chase us!

But for REAL folks, today we had nine to twelve dogs try to chase us down and munch on our bodies. Whenever that nonsense happens, Emelio whips out his handy bottle of mace (endorsed by U.S. Postal Workers for REAL) from his handlebar bag and aims it in the stupid mutt's horrible face. Since we're traveling on a route that was mapped by Adventure Cycling, these mangy hounds must have been smacked in the face by a blast of pepper spray before; whenever we hold the bottle out to the yapping yippers, they stop dead in their tracks. We haven't had to spray yet! (We do have an extensive and exciting plan for furious car-drivers who try to be too aggressive. The details are confidential, but let's just say it involves macing and then robbing the driver).

Yesterday we took a ferry! We left Ann's place bright and early after a breakfast of eggy-wegs in a basket and with a bounty of goods for our panniers (sammies, zucch bread, fresh fruit, and MORE choco cake). Our first twenty miles of riding took us through some of Cincinnati's lovely East Side, inlcuding Eden Park where we caught our first, breathtaking glimpse of the splendorous Ohio River. After navigating through downtown past the Underground Railroad Freedom Center and the under-construction Great American Insurance Building, we were out west of the city, and soon enough found ourselves at the launching pad of the Anderson Ferry.

Let's just say that the A.F. (Anderson Ferry) is S.I.C.K. (Sweet, Ill, Cool and Kooky)! Ann gave us a great tip to get there, and it was super totally worth it (a seventh grade girl from the nineties wrote that last clause). The A.F. was further from Cincinnati than we had expected; definitely a service for locals rather than a tourist freakfest. We arrived just as the ferry was returning from the Kentucky bank with some automobiles... after they disembarked, we boarded with our bikes for a serenely spectacular ride across the Ohio. The morning was still cool, and we were the only passengers for the trip across. It rocked.

Things kind of went downhill from there. And then uphill. Then downhill again. IF YOU CATCH MY DRIFT! Basically, we were hitting some mega-hills, and when it's breaking 95 degrees out, they're not the most entertaining thing to encounter.

The rest of yesterday was pretty normy -- the heat was killer, we passed through some nasty industrial zones, and traffic made us want to eat regurgitated wheat germ. At the end, though, Alex and Emelio (we) stumbled onto a fabulous historic Kentuckiana landmark, and decided to sleep with it. Guys, not like that!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We just camped behind it!!!! Check the pic for a pic.

So in terms of sleeping that night, let's just say it was hotter than H-E-Double-Hockeysticks... so we barely slept at all. We made it our business to wake up way early, however, so that we could beat the next day's heat.

Okay then, Day 7! We did get up early for once in our lives, and were rewarded with approximately eight minutes of cool riding. Then the tyrannical heat-beast awoke from its own slumber and proceeded to tenderize our collective meat.

The morning reward came in Madison, Indiana--after crossing back over the Ohio via a majestic ponte. Madison really pushed all our buttons -- in a good way! The main street was long, dense, and historically preserved... the neighborhood streets were intact and free from suburban grasp... the businesses were 100% local... the lonely lady terrified by our sidewalk-bikeriding hid behind a pig sculpture... what a place! We recommend you spend your honeymoon there.

We made it to Louisville (after harvesting tobacco to calm Alex's raging addiction) by 4:00pm, and were met by our local concierge (her name is Beth and she is very accommodating!), who led us across a massive bridge spanning--yet again--the large and beautiful Ohia Riva.

We've decided to spend a full day tomorrow in Louisville, which looks to be a really great (and historic) city. We'll report back soon! Make sure to check our links!

Days 3 & 4

2010-08-08T18:22:00.000-07:00

A couple a dudes reporting in!

We had a very good Day of Rest (as the Lord might say) in Columbus on Friday. In the mornin', Mamma Emelio rustled up a downhome, country-style, homemade waffle breakfast. Then we fastened our suspenders, hitched up our Levi's, and let our guts hang out in preparation for the Ohio State Fair excursion!

It was Alex's first visit to the fair, and he was, to put it plainly, BLOWN. AWAY. Never before had he been privy to such an affirmation of the state the two of us so proudly call home. And after the fair, Alex was more proud than ever of the great state of Ohio. A rundown of the highlights: chickens, geese, turkeys, rabbits, cows, swine, butter cows, ice cream, newly birthed lambs and calf, a blue whale, the big yellow slide, Smokey the Bear (ragging on the Tribe's pitiful season--seriously), the natural resource center, bbq pork sandwich, a festive parade (including the All-Ohio marching band), a pig that was "square in the shoulder, square when he's comin' atcha"; Grizzly, Ohio's four-time largest pig, weighing in at 1200 lbs (testicle weight estimated at 50-75 lbs), an uproarious monkey show, the fine arts pavilion (you GO girl!), and many more. For a fun game, in the comment section, guess the spectacle listed above that we didn't actually spectate at (choose no more or less than one or you are disqualified).

OKAY now for the account of day THREE!!!

We left Columbus after gettin filled up with pancakes (thanks Ma) and headed out of town by way of the delightful Olentangy Trail (big ups). After getting through some slightly dreary west side scapes, we hooked up with (not in that way!!!) a few nice country roads and eventually hit this SWEET trail. Ten miles later, we were going through delightful London, Ohio -- and even hit a water oasis provided by the London Baptist Ministry! We had this off-road trail nearly all the way to Yellow Springs -- a truly beautiful trip in the central Ohio countryscape.

Once we got to Yellow Springs, we knew we were in the right place. A few budding "alterna-punk rockers"and some "anarcho-preteens" were playing guitar on the curb, and pointed us in the right direction through downtown (they even had piercings!!!). On our way to our host's abode, we were met on the road by none other than Lisa, our host, ON HER BIKE! She said she knew it was us when she saw our load.

Yellow Springs, for those who don't read books, is a small hippie town best known for being a hippie town and also harboring the ungodly institution liberals hail as "Antioch" which we believe is Greek for "Sin-Land." JK! While Antioch is currently closed, the college is expected to be accepting students (if you can call them that (JK!)) in the fall of 2011.

Our night in Yellow Springs was amazing. We spent the steamy, waning hours of the afternoon lazing around the pool with Lisa, Don, and a few of their friends. Then, Lisa prepared us a delicious meal (we're not worthy!) which we shared--along with lovely conversation--in a beautiful al fresco setting. After dinner, Lisa graciously toured us around the town center and we stopped for an ICE CREAM ATTACK. Back at the house, we zonked out on her super-comfy futon.

Next morning, get this: we go to a local breakfast joint, and The Lovely Katie (our friendly and cute server) bought our meal for us! Wow-wow-wow! She had been on a long bike trip before, so she got it. High-five!

NOW FOR DAY FOUR, in LIMERICK FORM:

We awoke at the crack of the day

Took the Miami Trail the whole way

Many beautiful folks
Many juvenile jokes

And in Newtown tonight for our stay!

DAY FOUR, now in CONCISE PROSE FORM:

The Little Miami Scenic Trail was an amazing experience today. For us, it occupied 99.8% of our trip. It runs along the Little Miami river, a beautiful aquified ramble chock-full of canoes and us (when we went in for a dip, that is!!!). The trail passes through a few gorgeous little Ohio towns that have really taken advantage of its presence (it used to be a railway) and developed parks, bike shops, ice cream stores, and more along the way. People packed the trail, and many were delighted to hear of our adventures (and chagrined to realize that we mocked them afterwards behind their backs!!)(JK!). A really interesting guy named Jeff joined us for about 10 miles on the way, talking with us about hookers and truck drivers, which we found fascinating! NOT JK!

We rode the trail all the way to Newtown, got off for 1/4 mile to our host's house. Ann received us warmly with burgers (ham and boca) and chocolate cake from Chicago (not JK). We mapped our route for the next two days, with great Ann-support, and now we're writing this blog!

Okay night time!

We love you!

Make sure to check our links!

A&E

Day 2

2010-08-05T20:15:00.000-07:00

After a less-than-cinchy day of riding we are thrilled to be here in Columbus, the capital of the Great State of Ohio and breeding ground of such vermin as Emelio, James Thurber, and Lil' Bow Wow (ever seen "Roll Bounce"!!!????!!?). We were received this evening by Emelio's fanclub (their presence was rewarded by due compensation from the authorities, of course) and a delicious home-cooked meal prepared by the 'rents.

Yesterday, Day 1, we were joined by David Nosse (Al's Bro) on our way to Oberlin--where we had a lot of good times with some Oberpals and even went swimming [illicitly]!!!!!!--and then we rode alllll the way to fabulous Charles Mill Lake (80 miles total to our campsite) <-- and speaking of our campsite, we found the SICKEST/ILLEST/SWELLEST campsite in the area, as far as we were concerned. It was a little peninsula jutting into a branch of the expansive lake, really nice and secluded, pretty much 4 feet from the water. Check the pic for a pic. Once we found the spot, we went for a dip in the lake but the area we were in was suuuper shallow and the muddy bottom scared Alex BIG TIME (jk it scared Emelio). We saw a really nice blue heron, and this morning saw four more all chasing each other around and jockeying for territory. Our good buddy Myles was kind enough to lend us a camping stove at the last minute and Wednesday night provided us the opportunity to cook with it for the first time. It gave us trouble at first, but we gave Myles a ring and he expertly instructed us on how to ignite the burner. We got it going and ended up with a darn-tootin' tasty pot of macaroni (Emelio's heritage--ahem--expertise came in handy in achieving the al dente sweet spot). A couple blueberry muffins from Alex's aunt Debbie for dessert and we were a couple a happy campers.

After eating, we were wiped and ready for bed. We loaded into the tent (with rain fly attached) and realized that it was smoking hot inside there without any air flowing through so we decided to remove the fly. We then climbed back inside the noticeably cooler tent just in time for the first distant lightning strike and low rumble of thunder. We decided to be safe rather than sorry, so we jumped out again and re-installed our rainshield. With the fly back in place, we got back into the tent one last time, just a couple minutes before a pretty substantial thunderstorm rained down on the greater Mansfield region (Mill Lake being very much a part of it). We were put to sleep by the sounds of cracking thunder and pattering rains.

So day two came, and we basically want to encapsulate the enormity of the day in a couple Hemingwayesque sentences. It was hot. We were on our bikes for nine hours and ninety miles. We saw many beautiful hills and farmlands. Emelio's legs gave him a good amount of pain towards the end, but we made it!

Well, we're all showered up and ready for bed (here's hoping we get tucked in during the night, c'monnnn mom!). Tomorrow we have a day off of riding, and we'll be attending... THE! OHIO! STATE! FAIR! The stateliest fair for the fairest state.

Night y'all!

Time to go!

2010-08-04T04:30:00.000-07:00

Hi Guys!

So it's 7:30 am, day of departure. Thanx to all the good people who came out to our joint going-off event last night; we had some good fun and played some excellent volleyball. Delicious spread of food as well.

Running a lil' late, but hey what can you expect?? We're passing through Oberlin this afternoon, Emelio has the hookup with some neat people there, hopefully we'll have time for a swim too. Staying in Mohican Park tonight; Columbus on Thursday yeeeehaaawww!!!

A couple a dudes

2010-08-02T18:55:00.000-07:00

Hi Guys!

So here we are, just a couple a dudes, Alex and Emelio to be exact, sitting around making our blog about our great bicycle adventure. At the moment, we're frustrated with our test of the cooking stove. It doesn't seem to be working so well, so we might just have to run out and buy a new one tomorrow, sheesh.

Also, we just ate rob and mara's pasta, so we're feeling better, even though lots of stuff needs to be done. Tomorrow we tie up the loose ends, say farewell to our Cleveland community, slap a couple fives, and try to get some rest before our Wednesday morning departure.

We're a little stressed out about getting everything ready, but it's pretty exciting anyways. We'll put some pictures up for you to scope don't worry!!