So first night in town was good, all said and done. The next day we venture off to Boulder to go meet up with Heather's friends from back home. These chicas are awesome, too. We meet Val, Crider, Cougar, and Gordy at the Reservoir in Boulder, which is like a little beach area where iz ok to drink and have fun. We end up partying with these girls, who also play ultimate, all week long. Except for Heather, who decided that grad school was more important than biking to the coast... BOO!!!!! Who needs grad school anyway?
So me and Laura just stay and kick it. Every time we tried to make it back on the bus to Denver, we failed miserably cause Boulder was just too cool. Gordy was also just bumming for the week cause she was about to leave for Europe, so we travelled around town a lot with her in the city. We went tubing one day, went to the dog park another, all around fun really. Squeeze came and met us later in the week and we all went tubing with some of her friends the day we actually made it back to the bus to meet up with Iris in Denver... Which also failed because Iris had already left for Boulder, so we pretty much just turned around and came back.
But not before meeting up with my buddy Tom who had been in Denver for a while now. We met up at the same bar that Squeeze's roomate works at and hooked up some free drinks. We rode around in Tom's very badass Entourage car to go have some tequila at this bar across town, then we went back to a place called Earl's where my other buddy, NicWhitesCarver, works as a manager. He hoked us up too, and by the end of the night we were plastered, yet again, and made it back to a party going on at Squeeze's. Tom also made it by Earl's for a drink, I think... but we lost him later. Thanks for the ride and the place in Frisco, though, Tom!! (He also ended up hooking us up with a very badass condo in Frisco a couple of days later... Tom's an all around badass, as it turns out.) All I really remember about the party is meeting some Australian guys and the bartender at Earls who happened to be friend of NicWhitesCarver and Squeeze. That and Squeeze was pissed I was "using" her room, even though nothing happened Squeeze!!!
Then Debauchery at GRUB followed, always fun. At an after party Laura ended up playing beer pong with Cougar and putting a naked lap on the line. Laura wins, and the Coug does her naked lap. Then, after some shit talking, we all decide to do another naked lap with five of us and a naked dog (we took Luna's collar off) who took out Laura around halfway through... Tearing the meniscus in her knee and bruising her patellar tendon... Good times!! She would keeping biking, though, for at least another leg of the trip (no pun intended).
What else... we also met another roomate of the house we were staying at, Claire... She did a half naked lap with us... One of her buddy's was staying in town as well that weekend, I think his name was Chris, and he was one of the other naked runners. There's a great bagel shop we went to all the time, i think Joe's... Went to the river on Sunday with the Okie crew and the girls tipped over almost everybody that floated by for about an hour... The Sunday night drama was truly a thing to behold, and we ended up crashing on the girls floor again with a few extra ultimate players... That's about it, we went back to Denver for one more night before we left on the road again for Steamboat Springs to see Austin!
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
To Denver!!!
Finally out of Kansas and into the even more barren Eastern Colorado. Luckily, Thomas' dad met us the last night in Kansas and we had a SAG wagon all the way into Eastern Denver. We were able to go a lot faster without all of the gear and made really good time. So we made it to Iris' friend's house where we said our final goodbyes to the Husky's (Thomas and his Pa) and we were able to shower and I got to play some good old legend of Zelda, Nintendo. Old school. So now its just Iris, Heather, Laura, and me still biking, soon to lose more... We all went out a little Mexican place and had margaritas. Iris was doing her best to stay awake (too much altitude, not enough attitude) before we left to go visit my friend Squeezy (aka Caitlin) who worked across town. We met up with SqueezWa and had some drinks at her place while Iris caught a nap in the car, trying to recharge for the fiasco that would happen later that night. So Squeeze gets off work and we decide to go downtown to go bust a move at some club or something. The race is off, with shots at the bar and Laura and Squeeze both have something to prove to the other about how much they can drink. Good times were had by all. So we start bar hopping and go to a place where Squeezy's roomate worked downtown. After some free rumplemints shots, its off down the road to I don't really remember where for still more rumplemints shots.
Squeezy proves her point. When the time comes to leave we are all pretty drunk and Iris' friend goes to get the car from down the street. Laura is belligerent and so we carry her to parking lot to wait for what seems like forever for Iris' friend to get back. She finally does, and she is major stressed out at this point by all the drunkenness and the fact that about 7 drunk people are about to climb in her car. Laura loses a shoe, somehow, and Squeeze lost her camera... All around hilarity. So we finally make it back to Squeeze's house and eat some delicious doritos and cream cheese to finish off the night, and then its off for a week in Boulder and GRUB!!!
Squeezy proves her point. When the time comes to leave we are all pretty drunk and Iris' friend goes to get the car from down the street. Laura is belligerent and so we carry her to parking lot to wait for what seems like forever for Iris' friend to get back. She finally does, and she is major stressed out at this point by all the drunkenness and the fact that about 7 drunk people are about to climb in her car. Laura loses a shoe, somehow, and Squeeze lost her camera... All around hilarity. So we finally make it back to Squeeze's house and eat some delicious doritos and cream cheese to finish off the night, and then its off for a week in Boulder and GRUB!!!
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Kansas is awful, Lawrence doesn't belong there.
After a good July 4th week in Fayetteveille, it's time to hit the road again from Lawrence, Kansas. I love that place. We caught a ride there with Iris' mom and also picked up a couple of more people on our way. We leave with 6 folks, the original three plus Laura Gunter, my friend from St. Louis, a friend of hers who dropped out after a half day (knee problems), and a 16 year old kid named Thomas who lived Fayetteville. He would be on the trip with us to Denver where he met up with a church group for the week. We stayed with Iris' half brother and he took us out to a bar with a kick ass band.
So we obviously wanted to ride as far as we could each day to get the hell out of Kansas as soon as possible. We did pretty good the first day, around 85 miles, to right outside of Manhattan. We were at a gas station where we met a guy and his twin daughters who offered us a place to stay. They were pretty awesome and a nice little farm place outside of town. We cooked dinner and showered up and went to bed.
The next day was another 85 mile day to Concordia. We got into town late and it was raining pretty hard and we didn't really have a hit on a place to stay except maybe the city park. Iris was going to check that out and passed by a fire station that offered to put us in the extra rooms for the night. This place was awesome, it had showers, a computer lab, a huge TV, and we could make it home. We would be trying to find places like that a lot more along the way.
80 more miles the next day to Smith Center. I liked this town a lot. There was a campground there which would have been fine to stay in, but other people wanted showers and whatnot so went to check out the scene. I was happy with camping, so me and Laura went to the pool to hang out for the rest of the day. After the pool closed, we ran to meet up with the others at the bar street and they had found us a place to stay with a painter named Chris(???) He was a nice guy and had just finished a house so was celebrating and bought us some beer and a pizza. We shut down the bar and slept in his back house, but the most ironic part was that the three who didn't want to camp ended up camping anyway behind his house. Apparently the back house was too hot, but I was too drunk to care, plus there was a matress, which I hadn't seen in a couple of days so I was all for it.
The next day was our first century day!!! Woohoo and shit! We made it into Oberlin that night pretty late and went to a pizza pie shop, really the only thing open in town. We asked around for a place to stay but we were just directed to the hotel down the road. We stayed in a tiny hotel room, so small we had to lock our bikes up outside. At least we had a warm shower, though.
The next day was pretty light, only about 70 miles, but it would be our last night in Kansas, so we were pretty ecstatic. We stayed in St. Francis, the last town before Eastern Colorado, with a high school physical education teacher named (???). His family was nice; there were a bunch of kids running around playing with neighbors when we got there. The town seemd pretty nice, too, especially in comparison to the tiny towns we had been passing in the last week. Thomas bought us all ice cream in celebration of finally making to Colorado, or at least being close enough.
Kansas is NOT flat. It's actually like a stair step up all the way to Colorado. We were just happy to be going less uphill when we did, and that was few and far between. The headwind was tolerable on most days, I remember only one bad day in particular. But I was so sick of seeing corn and wheat fields and nothing else I was happy to be in the Colorado desert.
So we obviously wanted to ride as far as we could each day to get the hell out of Kansas as soon as possible. We did pretty good the first day, around 85 miles, to right outside of Manhattan. We were at a gas station where we met a guy and his twin daughters who offered us a place to stay. They were pretty awesome and a nice little farm place outside of town. We cooked dinner and showered up and went to bed.
The next day was another 85 mile day to Concordia. We got into town late and it was raining pretty hard and we didn't really have a hit on a place to stay except maybe the city park. Iris was going to check that out and passed by a fire station that offered to put us in the extra rooms for the night. This place was awesome, it had showers, a computer lab, a huge TV, and we could make it home. We would be trying to find places like that a lot more along the way.
80 more miles the next day to Smith Center. I liked this town a lot. There was a campground there which would have been fine to stay in, but other people wanted showers and whatnot so went to check out the scene. I was happy with camping, so me and Laura went to the pool to hang out for the rest of the day. After the pool closed, we ran to meet up with the others at the bar street and they had found us a place to stay with a painter named Chris(???) He was a nice guy and had just finished a house so was celebrating and bought us some beer and a pizza. We shut down the bar and slept in his back house, but the most ironic part was that the three who didn't want to camp ended up camping anyway behind his house. Apparently the back house was too hot, but I was too drunk to care, plus there was a matress, which I hadn't seen in a couple of days so I was all for it.
The next day was our first century day!!! Woohoo and shit! We made it into Oberlin that night pretty late and went to a pizza pie shop, really the only thing open in town. We asked around for a place to stay but we were just directed to the hotel down the road. We stayed in a tiny hotel room, so small we had to lock our bikes up outside. At least we had a warm shower, though.
The next day was pretty light, only about 70 miles, but it would be our last night in Kansas, so we were pretty ecstatic. We stayed in St. Francis, the last town before Eastern Colorado, with a high school physical education teacher named (???). His family was nice; there were a bunch of kids running around playing with neighbors when we got there. The town seemd pretty nice, too, especially in comparison to the tiny towns we had been passing in the last week. Thomas bought us all ice cream in celebration of finally making to Colorado, or at least being close enough.
Kansas is NOT flat. It's actually like a stair step up all the way to Colorado. We were just happy to be going less uphill when we did, and that was few and far between. The headwind was tolerable on most days, I remember only one bad day in particular. But I was so sick of seeing corn and wheat fields and nothing else I was happy to be in the Colorado desert.
Monday, August 4, 2008
Missouri was easy
After Evansville the next big stop was St. Louis. We say goodbye to Chris and head out for Wayne City where the couple from the Winery picked us up. Nothing very interesting happened today except I found a bag of jawbreakers on the side of the road... and that was exciting. The floods did divert our route a bit and we had to take the freeway which wasn't as hectic as I thought it would be.
The couple, Brent and Beth Young, were amazing to us. They picked us up and we met most of their little girls, who were adorable!!! We ended up sleeping in the girls room in bunk beds, which was really cool and reminded me of when I had a bunk bed as a kid. They sent us off the next morning with Dairy Queen shirts (they owned one and a subway), good for me cause I only had one non-biking shirt at the time. Thanks so much for the hospitality!!!
So we were off to St. Louis, finally, and made it to Praderborn, a town with a bar and a church. We stopped in the bar and met a group of bikers (vrooom vrooom kind) called the Praderborn Rat Pack. They were really nice to us and gave us a bunch of paraphanalia including bandanas and coozies. One of the guys mailed us a bunch of cherry moonshine that we ended up drinking later in Colorado, more on that later.
So we made it around nightfall to Columbia, a suburb of St. Louis. We stopped at a bar there and waited for Mike Mertz to come pick us up. If you don't know Mike, you should. I met him through ultimate a couple of years ago and he is nothing if not a scholar and a gentleman.
We had a good night bumming around St. Louis until we got rear ended in the middle of the night. Our bikes were on the back of his car on a rack, and Iris' got pretty smashed up, keeping us in St. Louis for a couple of days while she waited for repairs. We really wanted to get to Solstice in Tulsa, so we hitched a ride with Addison, one of Mertz's friends, to the tourney and had a blast as usual at Solstice. Heather flew home and if she doesn't regret it, she should... You hear me Heather!!!!
Then a week of kicking it in Fayetteville and the dreaded Kansas was the next part of the trip. Don't worry, as soon as I get back home I'm taking the Katy (sp?) trail from St. Louis to Lawrence to make up for lost time.
The couple, Brent and Beth Young, were amazing to us. They picked us up and we met most of their little girls, who were adorable!!! We ended up sleeping in the girls room in bunk beds, which was really cool and reminded me of when I had a bunk bed as a kid. They sent us off the next morning with Dairy Queen shirts (they owned one and a subway), good for me cause I only had one non-biking shirt at the time. Thanks so much for the hospitality!!!
So we were off to St. Louis, finally, and made it to Praderborn, a town with a bar and a church. We stopped in the bar and met a group of bikers (vrooom vrooom kind) called the Praderborn Rat Pack. They were really nice to us and gave us a bunch of paraphanalia including bandanas and coozies. One of the guys mailed us a bunch of cherry moonshine that we ended up drinking later in Colorado, more on that later.
So we made it around nightfall to Columbia, a suburb of St. Louis. We stopped at a bar there and waited for Mike Mertz to come pick us up. If you don't know Mike, you should. I met him through ultimate a couple of years ago and he is nothing if not a scholar and a gentleman.
We had a good night bumming around St. Louis until we got rear ended in the middle of the night. Our bikes were on the back of his car on a rack, and Iris' got pretty smashed up, keeping us in St. Louis for a couple of days while she waited for repairs. We really wanted to get to Solstice in Tulsa, so we hitched a ride with Addison, one of Mertz's friends, to the tourney and had a blast as usual at Solstice. Heather flew home and if she doesn't regret it, she should... You hear me Heather!!!!
Then a week of kicking it in Fayetteville and the dreaded Kansas was the next part of the trip. Don't worry, as soon as I get back home I'm taking the Katy (sp?) trail from St. Louis to Lawrence to make up for lost time.
Hoosier Hospitality
We bounce from Louisville and immediately cross the border into Indiana and on the road to Evansville, two days away. Today was our first crash... mine. My front tire got caught up in the space between the road and some railroad tracks and I fell pretty hard in the road. As I was falling I looked for cars coming from behind me, which turned out to be good because it allowed me to fall and come out with only one scratch. No cars were coming, thank Jebus, but you knew that part.
So we stop at Hawg's Tavern bar on the way and have some crown shots... and some jello shots. The bar was a typical biker bar and the bartender, Caroline, ended up liking us and our story and hooked us up with everything for $5 plus sent us on our way with a dozen jello shots. I liked that bar.
That night we ended up staying in a little bed and breakfast/ vineyard called Scout Mountain Hideaway, owned by a guy named Mike who was a very cool guy. They had people coming in the next morning so we actually stayed in the barn out back, but we did get to use their hot tub and finish off the jello shots we picked up from the bar.
We leave the hideaway and are on the way for Evansville. On the way we stop at a vineyard for a tasting and it turns out the bartender knows Mike pretty well. He gets some grapes from Mike for the wine. We also met a couple there who had a couple of kids with them and they offer to put us up a couple of nights later if we were coming through their area. We would meet up with them later. We stopped a little while later for lunch and a guy comes up to us and asks us about the trip and all and says, "Yall ever heard of Hoosier hospitality"? He then throws down $40 and says "Well I'm buying your lunch, welcome to Indiana." It's like Southern hospitality, but in Indiana, I love it.
So we make it to Evansville and meet up with a guy named Chris who taught college there and was the ultimate faculty adviser for the college. He ended up taking us out and buying us dinner at a great little German brewery. Then we went out in town to 80's night at some bar in town and danced maybe had a drink or two... or three. The next morning we set off for the rest of Indiana.
So we stop at Hawg's Tavern bar on the way and have some crown shots... and some jello shots. The bar was a typical biker bar and the bartender, Caroline, ended up liking us and our story and hooked us up with everything for $5 plus sent us on our way with a dozen jello shots. I liked that bar.
That night we ended up staying in a little bed and breakfast/ vineyard called Scout Mountain Hideaway, owned by a guy named Mike who was a very cool guy. They had people coming in the next morning so we actually stayed in the barn out back, but we did get to use their hot tub and finish off the jello shots we picked up from the bar.
We leave the hideaway and are on the way for Evansville. On the way we stop at a vineyard for a tasting and it turns out the bartender knows Mike pretty well. He gets some grapes from Mike for the wine. We also met a couple there who had a couple of kids with them and they offer to put us up a couple of nights later if we were coming through their area. We would meet up with them later. We stopped a little while later for lunch and a guy comes up to us and asks us about the trip and all and says, "Yall ever heard of Hoosier hospitality"? He then throws down $40 and says "Well I'm buying your lunch, welcome to Indiana." It's like Southern hospitality, but in Indiana, I love it.
So we make it to Evansville and meet up with a guy named Chris who taught college there and was the ultimate faculty adviser for the college. He ended up taking us out and buying us dinner at a great little German brewery. Then we went out in town to 80's night at some bar in town and danced maybe had a drink or two... or three. The next morning we set off for the rest of Indiana.
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