Some Very Nice People Along the Way

Once again, the web site for the Trans Am bike trip is at: www.biketrip.qball.org

We've met lots of friendly people on the trip so far, store owners, other bicyclists, townspeople and the like who are excited for us and our journey, but we've been the recipients of three recent kindnesses that deserve particular mention. The first took place in Jeffrey City, Wyoming, where upon having our fill of pizza and old (but free) popcorn and Harly having shuffled through all the Abba songs on the jukebox, we decided to leave the bar/restaurant we were hanging out in to ride down the road to set up camp. We came across a couple from New Jersey with whom we had ridden earlier that day, and the husband handed Harly a wad of cash and told us to get a room at the hotel where they were staying (free hotel--how could we say no!). The next morning they called us into their room and gave us the rest of their food, since their trip was ending that day in Rawlins.

The second random act of kindness came only a few days later when Dan Meade and I were fighting some fairly strong headwinds trying to make it to the Wyoming/Colorado border with little food or water and a good 25 miles to ride before the next store. Upon arriving, we asked two young guys from Santa Monica (all good people are from Santa Monica, right Jennifer?) to take our picture in order to they snap the picture, but they also offered us water, olive and artichoke spread sandwiches on organic bread, smoked almonds, and Kettle Potato Chips (they were self-admittedly road-tripping in style).

My favorite moment, however, came in the town of Sheridan Lake, Colorado, just before Kansas (for some reason, people always seem to be really nice near state borders), where disappointingly the lake was nothing more than a big rain puddle and the only store with little more than two aisles of candy bar was closed by the time we arrived at 7:30. With the next store more than 30 miles down the road and not especially looking forward to a dinner and breakfast consisting of bbq soy nuts, my only remaining food, I was a little distraught, not to mention tired and hot. Everything turned around, however, when Harly struck up a conversation with a man who quickly became our new best friend in Sheridan Lake, David Splitter. David is a farmer who lives about 5 miles outside of town who not only went back to his house to grab us some cheeseburgers (two patties each), chips, and bananas for that night, but who also woke up to make us pancakes, eggs, and orange juice the next morning at 6 in the park where we were staying. Dinner, while always great on its own, is made even better with a little entertainment, which Daivd provided by bringing along three of his little kids who kept us smiling while we watched them try to lasso each other.

With our morale boosted by our encounters with these generous people, Dan Meade and I were feeling particularly ambitious last Thursday when we decided we'd try to break the 200 mile mark. The only snag in our well-formulated plan was that we didn't arrive at this conclusion until mid-day, by which point we'd only gone 50 miles, so by the time we actually made it 200 miles (and, thanks to erroneous addition, was really only 195--how frustrating), it was 4 a.m. Friday. That's right, we pulled an all-nighter, college-style, only this time on bikes. The sight of two sweaty (it reached 105 degrees on Thursday) young guys on bikes riding through the darkness with headlights strapped around their helmets, squished bugs stuck on their chests, and sunglasses still on (to keep the bugs out of our eyes) must have startled many a passing motorist that night. It was certainly a lot of miles to do in one day (both Drums had a priceless look on surprise and shock on their faces when we informed them of this plan), but our bodies held up just fine until sometime around 3:45 a.m., about 5 miles from our finishing point, when I drowsily slid off the road and ended up crashing in a ditch next to a corn field, completely knocking my steering alignment out of whack. A two hour impressive lightning storm north of us kept us oohing and ahhing between the hours of 1 and 3 a.m.

Fate continues to throw unfortunate twists Dan Meade's way, for, at a rest stop along a stretch of nothingness in Wyoming, he was fixing his second flat tire in as many days, felt the tire for air pressure, and satisfactorily gave it one more pump of air when the tube burst with a large hole in it. As just desserts for cracking up at what I considered to be a rather humorous unfolding of events, I suffered two flats of my own in the following days, while Harly, who had 7 tire changes in one day recently, must have done something really bad.

Take care,

-Nate