Why-eh, is the Seattle-eh, so a far-eh, away-eh?

A wooly mammoth, not wearing his helmet. Green card.

Justin talking to management about signing Brett Favre to either the Broncos or the Rockies

Rosebud Indian Reservation, SD

Maso pulling sweep like nobody’s business

Sean gloating. What else is new.

Jonathan, pouring cement like a professional.

Danny and Isabel building a house.

We climb mountains.

Chong climbing a plant.

Peter trying to catch a taxi.

Susanna and I demonstrating how to build a land bridge.

Chong tearing up the road like a great ball of fire.

Our fire-fighting hosts in Martin, SD.

And on we go.

South Dakota. Wow, some of the most amounts of absolutely nothing I have seen in America. 105 miles today, and at the end of the day, the heat picked up, with a scorching sun. Around 100 degrees. But the day felt easier than a few of recent memory because we didn’t face headwinds. Pedaling into 10 to 20 mph headwinds sucks alot of the fun out of biking. We crossed through the Rosebud Indian Reservation. Beautiful prairie land with jagged mesa-like hills popping up all over the landscape. When we emerged, we popped out in the mountain time zone.

Crossed the Mississippi River yesterday! And this morning we got a pleasant mix of rain, thunder, and lightning, so we are hanging around like kids at summer camp.

Chris and I wrote a journal entry for the day before yesterday, so here it is…

Pontiac to Peru was a day for the ages. It was the day after our day off, where most the group went in to Chicago, and the 11 remaining BandB’ers had free reign of both of Pontiac’s 5 star diners. It was a 62 mile day, and we got wet.

Eventually, us sweepers came upon lunch. We hung out under a tree and a gazebo top with some kids who were just enjoying a rainy day in summer. Being a short day, much of the leading edge of the peloton had left lunch by the time we had arrived, and in the drizzle, the trailing edge of our pack decided to get some soup at a local diner. Ariela, both Al(l)i(e)’s, Lauren, Maso, Caroline, Elizabeth, Suzanne, and Chris, and Raj bought Jake a hot chocolate. The diner stop parlayed into a dollar store excursion, and the dollar store excursion parlayed into a missed left turn, which led us to a series of enticing road signs for a certain ‘Historic Weber House’.

Upon Jake’s insistence, Raj, Maso, Lauren, and Chris hit up the Weber house which was a storybook house and rather expansive surprisingly spacious home garden. The owner of the house, Ted Weber, greeted us. By fortune, we arrived at the same time the local rotary club was receiving a tour, and we hopped on that train for free. Raj at one point demonstrated his limitless wit and unsurpassed tact with the quick comment, “What sir, you don’t recognize a fellow rotarian!?” This gentleman, Raj’s interlocutor, later spontaneously donated a slick $50 to us before we left! The gardens were sweet, and Ted is apparently a famous radio man who knew Eleanor Roosevelt, and whom everyone knows.

Alot of people finished the rather short day in record time, but by the time us sweeps got around it had started to rain legit. Pontiac was a small town focused around a late 19th century courthouse, surrounded by square streets of quaint shops, second hand shops, and historic murals. As we pulled into Peru, we entered a Catholic town with a little bit of a more suburban flair. A nice place, great hospitality at the church, and arguably the best breakfast the next morning. We arrived after some searching for the church and found everyone playing basketball, snuggling in napping piles, and eating three musketeers, with us sweep riders a distant memory in their foggy minds. The End.

Other notable events are our first delayed start  in Clinton Mississippi. Alot of people were quite bummed about the delay, but I kind of liked how it felt like a snow day where we were all deliberately ordered to do nothing and waste time. I think this photo of Chong and Maggie sums it up. And Maggie won. Hal, I would be extremely proud.

So once we caught a break in the clouds, half the group decided to go for all 80 miles of it, but we got caught by the lightning and had to wait it out and eventually get shuttled. So much for EFI Justin.

I’ve been meaning to set down more of my thoughts on this trip. Talk about how natural it feels to be on a bike for so long each day. Unlike work, where you constantly need to think about each thing you do, on a bike all you have to do is keep your legs spinning. The work becomes part of the involuntary. Talk about how many orioles I’ve seen. Or some of the mini-adventures we’ve had: wineritas at the JEV vineyard. But another time I guess. I think documenting days down is great. But sleep is more attractive, so I’m gonna have to settle with having this be a Zen experience: live it for the moment and not necessarily for the memories.

Crossed into Indiana and today into Illinois. If you look to your left or right you will see one of two things: corn or soybeans. Does it make sense to grow this much?

Friday we were supposed to have our first century, but due to a number of reasons, it was 118 miles. That’s how we ride our first century in style, into a great big hose shower.

It’s amazing how the landscape changed so quickly from midwestern city drabbery to rolling Amishland hills as we headed in to Gambier, home of Kenyon college where we stayed. Although I can’t be certain. All the cities are turning into one big mush in my head. One of the disadvantages of not keeping a journal. But the extra sleep is probably more valuable than the itinerary on paper.

I’ve also been thinking a bit about affordable housing. Like all important issues, a lot of the picture isn’t pretty. It’s obvious when we go in to a build site, and the house has been broken into recently (Youngstown), and it’s difficult when you learn about some of the families’ problems as well. Although all of the families I have met seem to be very responsible people.

I still think about how hard they are working to raise a family and make ends meet. A striking moment came as I pulled out of the pouring rain into a Wal-Mart to find a replacement battery for my odometer. I spoke with the women working the watch department, popped in a new battery, and asked her what the time was to reset my clock. She went down the aisle to go check a clock. I asked half-joking how come she couldn’t treat herself to a new watch if she worked the watch department, but she said she couldn’t afford it with the bills. I don’t quite understand why some should work on minimum wage but I am not faced with those same challenges. It doesn’t quite seem fair. It also comes in to play when we practice what is known here as “donation magic” i.e., we try to get shit for free. Food, drinks, figurines, whatever; and it’s a ton of fun getting ice cream for free after 80 miles. These churches, and now here at the Dayton Sinclair Community College, have bent over backwards to feed, house, and take care of us. A waitress donated $20. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? But these really aren’t new questions for me, and I think the answer is that it’s great that everyone chips in regardless of who they are.

Lastly, today we went to visit the Wright Brothers Museum. How cool is it to make the first airplane? The amount of rigorous garage science these two bicycle builders did was pretty incredible. To part, here is Wilbur’s thoughts as they waited to develop their first photograph of their first flight, unsure as to whether the shutter button had actually been clicked.

“In the photographic dark room at home we passed moments of as thrilling interest as any in the field, when the image begins to appear on the plate and it is yet an open question whether we have a picture of a flying machine or merely a patch of open sky.”

Wilbur Wright 1901.

This morning we left Warren Pennsylvania, a town tucked in the endless hills of Pennsylvania, its entrance marked by a sulfur-smelling gasoline refinery along the Allegheny River. We arrived last night after an 80 mile ride from a much more quaint pretty tourist town called Coudersport, PA. I don’t know if it was the sun or the heat or the exercise, but I was drained physically and mentally of something after that ride no matter how much I ate, drank, or supplemented with electrolytes. But the ride did have some highlights including tearing it up with Sean and Justin, and culminated with a big fat donation of ice cream.
So this morning, riding out, I was grumpy as hell, left our overnight location with the last of us, and chugged a Red Bull to try to wake up. Heading out, I passed a half-dozen men in their 40s or 50s parked with lawn chairs in front of a small electric plant. Half-awake, I whizzed by their On-Strike signs. But after I passed by, I remembered how another bike and builder told me how the best part of Bike and Build isn’t the biking and getting to a destination, it’s the stops and people you meet on the trip.

So I turned around, backtracked, introduced myself, and explained what I was up to. And then I asked them what they were on strike for. They told me they were striking for living working conditions. Their biggest demand was the problem of ‘straight work’. Basically, the linemen and meter-servicemen work an 8 hour shift, and then they have 8 hours off, but after that, they can be called up and told to be at work immediately after those 8 hours. The strikers asked me, how can you raise a family like that?

Another complaint was the inequality in pay from chief executive to linemen. Is it fair that the chief executive of PennElec/FirstEnergy makes $16 million? “They’re using the economy as an excuse to screw the worker. With the economy the way it is, they can get scabs and contractors who can’t find work elsewhere.”

I asked them how long they were on strike for, how many workers were out, and what happens after. They’ve been on strike for 5 weeks. 500 workers are on strike. And the strike could go through Christmas. I’m a big Woody Guthrie fan, so I’ve got a completely emotional connection to union men and women. I then thought for a moment, could I really sit in a lawn chair and protest for 5 weeks? And be out of work and keep doing it for months? Even if I agree with everything the workers are striking for, I still think I would go crazy in a lawn chair with a sign for so long. Then at the end there is no guarantee of course that they get their jobs back. I asked them how they are going to support their families: “It is going to be tough.” That’s for sure.

So what’s the connection to affordable housing? Well, for one, affordable housing is not a complete answer. Like in healthcare how targeting a single disease is ineffective if you don’t look at the whole health of the patient and their environment, affordable housing is one piece of a larger picture for ameliorating poverty and empowering the middle class. In the same way that we calculate and determine what is decent housing for a family, we need to calculate what a living job is. The same thing needs to be done for decent education, nutrition,healthcare, and justice systems. But hitting on only one doesn’t really move us forward.

PS. I am now crossed into Pennsylvania.

Bessie is particularly appropriate, because I have this kickass figurehead with lightning bolts on my bike courtesy of my friend Andrea.