Flintown!

Well, Ira and I have been in Flint now a couple of days. All along the way, after hearing we were headed toward Flint, people kept asking if we had our guns with us. I know it has a rough reputation, but Flint is actually a cool town. Run down of course, but not as crazy as people think. There are some rough neighborhoods, but a lot of the area is pretty rural, like where my parents live. Here is great photo of a yard near my parents house.


An old tree stump becomes a buried cowpoke. Awesome.

After first getting to Flint, my sister, her fiance, Jason, and some or our Flint friends were immediately off to the Frankenmouth Beer Fest in Frankenmouth MI.

My sister and I enjoying some beers!

They call this town little Bavaria, and because of their strong German heritage they love beer. Ira and I went last year to their Octoberfest and we highly recommend it!! Their beer fest also did not disappoint. Collected in one building were 50 different breweries all displaying their various brews for sample tasting. The breweries were mostly local Michigan and Great Lake states microbrews, but there were other national and a couple of international breweries present (Unibroue, Hofbrauhaus, Guinness, Newcastle, etc). Beside the general tasting area, they also had a small pole barn off to the side in which they were conducting two different classes in which we enthusiastically enrolled. Beer 101, and Beer and Sausage Pairing. Both were incredibly informative and delicious. The sausage in the second class was supplied by Kerns, a local sausage company. It was so good even Ira (everyone prepare yourselves) tried some. (Ira is a vegetarian for all you who don't know). Overall we had a great time. Lots of beer was drunk. Of course they only give you four ounces at time, but after 20 samples the ounces really begin to add up. My favorites were the Unibroue, a brewery from Quebec, Dragonmead Mircobrewery from Detroit, and Founders brewery. Bells was there of course, and we enjoyed drinking old favorites like Oberon. They were sampling their more common beers. Luckily though, we stopped by the brewery in Kalamazoo on our way here and enjoyed excellent hospitality and a few crazy brews which were excellent and not so common. Ira enjoying his Bells brew (in Kzoo) with our incredibly cool bartender, Wade.

After leaving the beer fest that night, we were still itchin' for some excitement so we meandered back to Flint to the Dakota Lounge for a little bit of bull riding. None of us were able to stay up long. Ira gave it a good try, but he kept complaining his Chrome biking knickers were slippery because he kept sliding the rear end of the bull before falling off. I was a bit surprised considering he purchased those pants a month ago and has worn them every day and not laundered them. They should have been gritty enough to hold him on.

We've spent most of this week just relaxing around my parents house along with a little bit of yard work. I don't know why, but I really think this picture of Ira with the weed whacker is a little sinister, but to most of you out there, it's just a guy with a weed whacker.

We helped my dad open the pool this week to get ready for some lounging on Memorial day weekend.

On Tuesday we hit the open road again. To the U.P.!!!!!

I should have packed my boots.

Our first five days of riding are officially over, giving us a week to recover in Flint. We rode rolling hills for the last few days and saw a lot of fields and rusted out farm implements.



There were nothing but small farms between Kalamazoo and Howell. It looked and smelled like the part of Wisconsin were I grew up.

What has eight wheels and is full of liquid shit?



This is the biggest tractor I've seen on the trip so far. I've heard they have titanic gps-guided machines for field work out on the Plains, but with it's six foot tall dualies in the front and rear, this manure hauler is the current title-holder. Imagine the torque this thing generates- sheer gearhead boner material.

The rural character of this place is pretty saturated. For long stretches, lone extended-cab three-quarter-ton pickups are the only traffic, and they are all caked in mud from the dirt roads and cornfields. The people are amazingly helpful when we get lost and ask for directions- quiet guys with burned-red faces, worn out camo and insulated flannel shirts, and stars 'n' stripes belt buckles, unexpectedly patient and interested in our trip. Their dogs are all either well-behaved or chained to something.



This place wasn't open when we rode through.



I'd like to think that this is some kind of local line-dancing hotspot.

We got soaked by rain on the way into Charlotte (pronounced shur-LOT) and ended up in a motel off the freeway. Watching the Ultimate Coyote Ugly Search on CMT was the perfect way to finish the day.




What up, Dukes of Hazzard? Everyone has some old car in the yard out here.



These people were neighbors.

This is the court house in Mason, which is a county seat. Historically this square was a meeting place for farmers and business people. Cool old architecture all around downtown Mason.



Not pictured but playing a key role are the cubic yards of fried food and gallons of cheap domestic beer that have fueled us through Southern Michigan. The little bars and cafes are great, but they make me very thankful for fruit and vegetables, and sometimes they make me want to puke french fries.



Andrea will post the rest of the S. Michigan story later...

Dunelands and Michigan Wine Country

We've been talking about this trip for a year, and you're all waiting for results! Hopefully our first week won't disappoint. It's been hard and exciting, and we took pictures.

The first night was at the Indiana Dunes at Beverly Shores. It rained a little and we ate a lot of eggs. The lake was beautiful the next morning.



The gas station where we bought the wood and eggs has the best softserv ice cream anywhere.

Here's the lake. All along the Indiana shore there are beautiful cottages. If you are rich and from Chicago, you may have one.



Wow, huge cooling tower. The mist made this look very ominous. It is some sort of power plant with water cascading out of the base. We got lost here and a guy in a pickup guided us down a dirt road to a village of pastel houses that looked like Loompa Land.



Andrea loves Michigan. This is the border. Shortly after we stopped for beers at the American Legion and watched a one-armed badass shoot pool. The tab was two fifty for both beers and they served us even though we are not vetrans.



This whole area was super pretty. There are so many old cottages and vacation homes. It is a little get-away for anyone who can afford it- I had fantasies about living in one of these places and zipping around in a antique British roadster. This fence is ancient and the house behind it is almost too far back to see.



We've been camping out for the past three nights. This is one of the nice moments. The a raccoon stole our trailmix this night and we fought over how I lost Andrea's flashlight.



I had no idea that Michigan had so many vineyards. It looks like France or something, there are some hilltops where grape vines are all you can see in every direction. It makes my feel justified in wearing my euro cycling cap.



This place was full of old people and the menu was super cheap. The party at the rear table were talking about all of the animals they had seen, and what was required to kill them. Standard small town fair, growing up in Northern Wisconsin I am used to this, except these old ladies were talking about totally innocuous creatures like squirrels, and the way to take care of them was "find a guy who's got a gun". I had an awesome chocolate malt that cost a dollar twenty-five.



I'm smiling cause there's no rain, I'm surrounded by grape vines, and I've only been riding thirty miles so my shoulders don't feel like someone's been stabbing them with a screwdriver yet. We've been averaging sixty mile days, which some people may think is pansy, but look at all of the stuff we are carrying. Try putting all of the stuff in you car, bedroom, dresser, and kitchen in a bag and dragging it up hills. It's actually more fun than it sounds.



Cheers, we will be in Flint soon and you will get another update!

The clock is ticking...

It's been a busy and stressfull week, but we have stayed our course and are leaving Saturday morning. Not much time to post right now, but things are stampedeing toward the critical point were we must have our apartment empty and be ready to leave. Depending on the time, our next post may be from the road.

Andrea Checking In...

Hello, this is Andrea checking in. People have been wondering where I was and why I haven't posted yet. The answer is connected with a clarification and correction I feel needs to be made on Ira's previous posts. In the past posts where he speaks of all the work "we" have been doing packing etc, replace the "we" with "Andrea" and you have it about right. I haven't had a chance to post because while Ira has been putzing on the computer, I have been the one doing all the organizing.
Just joking, Ira. The real reason is I am not the best writer in the world and am slightly afraid of this whole new blogging world. To warn you all, I do not spell very well either. All you english majors can go crazy with your red pens. Anyhow, just felt like I needed to get that out of the way.

The past couple of weeks have been strange indeed. We've been planning this trip for the past year and it is very surreal to be finally getting so close to our goal. I have been done with work for the past week and a half. Friday, April 21 was my last day.
Here are two pictures of my last day. I am unemployed in the lower picture. It felt good to be done with work. However, though I have no set schedule or pay check, I am still doing a lot of work at home. You can see from Ira's previous logs, packing and moving is always busy. Especially when you have Uhaul putting crinks in the works. The moving is done, but now we must get ready for our apartment sale this weekend. Then cleaning the apartment to get our security deposit back. And then... the road.

Ira's logs previously have been mostly about our gear. This has probably been one of the most difficult aspects of this trip particularly for myself. Finding the right gear for such a prolonged trip is very difficult. When you add my indecisive yet exacting nature with the fact finding cycling gear for women is much more difficult then for men, it has become next to impossible. However, we are starting to get there. The most difficult items to decide on were shoes, a saddle, jerseys, shorts and of course a swim suit. So reviewing that list, I realize, I am a total girl. The two things I care most about are the comfort of my butt and privates and my fashion asthetic on the bike. Well so be it. I won't go into description of all my gear, but I am sure you are all wondering most about the most important piece of gear I mentioned above, which would be my swimsuit. After trying on many swimsuits which made me look like a beached whale in spandex, I found this wonderful little number off the Esther Williams website.
I got a red and white polka dot fabric instead of the floral print. It's great. The bottoms come with a built in girddle! You've got the love the 50's designs. But believe it or not, the suit is incredibly comfortable! Hopefully I will have lots of excusses of using it.

Well, enough prattling. I need to get back to organizing my sale. More later.

In this post you can see our empty living room...

We moved all of our stuff on Sunday morning, in the rain. It was so wet that I started to notice fish swimming through the gutters as I carried boxes across the street to the U-Haul. By the time I had been working for a couple hours, there were large sea mamals such seals and manatees lined up on the sidewalk watching the progress. It was seriously that wet- requiring cardboard on the floors and plastic wrapped around every box.

Renting the U-Haul truck was a catastrophy, due to their thouroughly poor job of documenting our reservation. Andrea called a week before we needed the truck, they assured her that it would be ready, and then it was not. They even lied to cover their tracks. This was revealed by the exasperated owner of our storage space, who arranged for us to use the truck overnight, provided that we return it in the morning when they opened so that the people who now had our original reservation could use it. We started loading at 6:30 AM and finished at 11:30 AM, which actually turned out fine.

Compare this photo to the previous post:



It feels very strange to have everything gone.

Twelve more days and we will be on the road.

Tired.

I thought that quitting my job would give me more free time, but it was been the opposite. We have been packing full-time in order to get our stuff stored tomorrow morning. As you can see, it's almost done.
















That's all of our stuff, minus three bikes and some furniture. The next project is the apartment sale next weekend, where we will get rid of everything else.

Whitney at Rotofugi gave me a stack of stickers. As you may have read earlier, we have a deal where I will post their stickers in cities across the country in exchange for store credit. I'll be sending photos to their website so that you can track the locations and find them in your town.

Gray morning.

As I write this, hail is bouncing off our apartment windows and the gutters look almost frozen. In less than three weeks we will be on the road with nothing but a tent, raingear, our ingenuity, and the kindness of strangers separating us from the elements.

The apartment is half in boxes, the walls are bare, and at the end of the week our valuables will be in storage. A week later, the rest of what we own will be sold or disposed of, and a week after that we'll be on the road with only forty pounds each. All of our belongings, distilled to forty pounds- it's a liberating thought- a little scary too. Looking at the stacks of boxes and the half packed apartment, it still feels like a long way off.

Welcome to the future.

Andrea and I bought cellphones yesterday. It is my first one ever, and I'm not excited about the prospect. I love technology, but cellphones have got to be the tackiest manifestation it has ever taken. From the formless hardware design to the annoying ringtones to the blabbing in public places to the stupid belt holsters, I've yet to see them as a benefit to humanity. We are going away for a year though, so it is a necessary evil and I will make the best of it.

I spent 3 hours mopping the floor today!

We have gained the dubious honor, over the past three years, of hosting some of the craziest parties in our social circle. Last night was no exception.



Andrea and Emily made food.



Andy and I worked on the camp stove. I found this stove in a dumpster a couple years ago but never used it. There is something goofy about the burner, so I'm trying to figure out if i can fix it or if the burner needs to be replaced.






We started out with 2 cases, and ended up going through six!



This is early in the night. Andrea's aunt Dottie and her friend Deborah stopped by. Deborah and Jonathan have a place in Montana that we will be visiting when we ride through Glaicer.




Val made cookies- she cooks awesome food all of the time and brings it to events.



The appartment was packed all night, with people standing all over the sidewalk, from around 9 till 3. It was fun, but also pretty tiring. I had a chance to talk to a lot of people and actually stayed in good shape for the whole night.



Kat Raz started it out right. Andy had some mysterious Kerouac-esqe polaroid ready for a photo op.



I shot a lot of photos last night so email me if you want to see more... I didn't post most of them because after 6 hours of partying, pictures can be kind of unfair...



3 am and still going strong...



Thanks everyone who came over, as always I wish I could have talked to you all longer and hope we can hang out again before we leave.

Our going-away party is tonight! Andrea's sister Emily is in town! It will be lots of fun, I'll take some pictures if I remember(err- if I am not wasted).

We had "Eggs in a Basket" this morning- yum!

Tech update: Crucial card reader

One of the main reasons for this blog is to show off our travel pictures. We are not bringing a laptop so all of the updating will be from libraries and internet cafes. Our Powershot A610 camera requires a driver and software to transfer photos, which would complicate things considerably and lead to less updates. I bought an SD card reader that requires no drivers. It was $9 from Newegg and is super fast. I decided to get all meta with this picture of the device uploading pictures. Wow.

My steed from the North and our command center

This is my bike. It was made in Wisconsin in 1985. I eBayed the frame and fork, along with a few other bits. I built it as workhorse with classic lines.



This picture is from a few moths ago. I have since replaced the front rack with a Surly Nice Rack made of tubular steel.

Every day we make small efforts toward preparation. This week we have spent time arranging health insurance, ordering waterproof shoe covers and a card reader for the digital camera, discussing our exit with the landlord, setting up payment plans for my student loans, and trying to find the right dry-bags for our gear. It is exhausting. All I want to do after a long day of work is sleep and go out with all the friends that I won't be seeing for at least six months.

We have made a calendar to keep track of everything. It hangs on the wall, full of pencil marks, and counts down the days 'till blast-off.

Like a kid at Christmas

I just found out that a large amount of our stuff that has been on order will arrive soon! Very excited, will post pics. Should include trout pillow.

We also found a great storage space on the South Side that is cheap: 10x10x8 , $90/mo, first 2 months free, excellent security, climate controlled.

While we are not leaving for about 50 days, I will be done with work in exactly a month and will be focusing on final preparations for the trip. It will be nice to be done with my 52 hr work weeks, I won't miss that at all!

We are spending more time looking at maps. Our route through MI will take us to Flint, up the coast of Lake Huron, and into the UP.

I'm hearing requests for more pictures of our stuff...

I'd like to start with an inspirational photo:



That's Lake Superior, we'll be there in 3 months.

This weekend we're checking out storage spaces. It looks like it'll be $70-100 a month to store all of our things. And the storage places are in god-forsaken parts of the city. Places I have to look on Google Maps to find. It'll be fun.

I realize I'm boring you into a coma writing about all of the new gear we're buying for this trip, but that's the main thing that's happening now. Wanna see a picture of my sleeping bag? No? Too bad, here it is:





















The bag is from EMS, rated at 20 degrees. I don't know how often I'll need it, but Northern Michigan will be cold and I suspect the mountains will be too. I'll be sewing a liner out of a flannel sheet in the near future. The orange pad is made by Insulmat and it's comfortable. The gray thing is closed cell foam which is hard as a rock but very useful when the ground is cold. the Insulmat is 3/4 length so I may need the foam, who knows.

I have a couple other things on order:

• A green compressible pillow with pictures of trout on it

• an inflatable lumbar support.

I have a hard time getting comfortable so trust me, this isn't overkill. I'm sleeping on this stuff for the next year.

This is what it looks like all rolled up. I swear we are going to look like middle-aged german tourists with all this crap strapped to our bikes.

The call of the West will eventually lure me out of the city...

This weekend I saw a bunch of pictures of our friend's new studio in Montana. I don't have any of them availible to post but it is very close to Glaicer Ntl Park, which looks like this:













We are invited to stay with them if we make it that far. This fills me with excitement, which is good because I need to remember how little of this country I have seen and how great it will be to see more of it. Otherwise I will spend all of my money on stupid stuff and not be able to afford to ride to Glaicer and other amazing places. Another inspiring thing is that it was 70 degrees in Chicago this weekend. It made me remember that I love to be outside on my bike during warm weather.

I bought a new front rack for my bike, a Surly Nice Rack, just like Andrea's. You can see that i has a lot of room for stuff, like a sleeping bag and a couple of panniers full of gear.



























I also hope to mount a light or two on this thing. Sam and I have been talking about ways to mount a mini maglite on a rack, which would be perfect becuse they are really tough and waterproof. There are so many lights availible that I don't know what to buy. Most are more or less the same(plastic flashlights with a mounting apperatus) and then there are the battery pack variety that cost $300, which is way too much for me. Too bad, because they are almost as bright as the lights on a motorcycle and would be great for mountain biking at night, in a non-touring scenario. Check out the Chicago flag on my front pannier. Even though I'm not from this city, I've live here for six years now and I feel like I want to represent when we are on the road. I'll have to get a big Wisconsin patch for the other side(Does anyone know of one with girls holding beer and cheese?)

One thing I will really miss when I'm on the road is riding my track bike around town at high speed. I love to be on a light, responsive bike, darting in and out of traffic and flying through the crowded parts of town. Hopefully some one will let me take their bike for a spin when we are in New York and San Francisco. I've heard that those are both great cities for urban riding. Any doubts, check out some of the nail-biting action in these alleycat racing videos.

Instead of cleaning the house...

I'm wasting my time reading tour journals.

Machka.net: I've been using her packing list as a guide, somewhat. Its interesting to see what different people bring with them on the road

Crazy Guy on a Bike hosts a bunch of travellogs. Everyone has such different takes on how to do this. Here is an assortment of equiptment lists. Heidi Domeisen's account of her continental divide ride is particularly amazing.

Everything is gearing up for May. Andrea and I both gave our two-months notice, and both of our jobs were very positive and encouraging about the trip, going so far as to offer us our positions back when we return. It feels great to get that kind of response, and it makes our parents worry about us a little less as well. We feel very fortunate to have such great bosses.

The logistics of what to do with all of our belongings is a big project. We will rent a storage space, but most of our stuff will be sold in April. Anyone looking for a couch? A TV? Seriously, just about everything must go, I'll post the details later.

Designer Canadian Luggage

Last week I stopped by the bike shop and found that my Arkel mapcase had arrived. It was slightly smaller than I expected. I still think it will work well for holding my stuff while biking around North America.














Velcros onto the handlebars and rests against the stem.


















Unfolds to display map.




Has room for all of the stuff that is normally in my jeans pockets.

Andrea got one too, because neither of us really likes the idea of handlebar bags. I know that everyone has them and talks about how great they are, but I've never had the best results with them, nor used anything besides the map case. If this doesn't work, I will buy a different bag later on.