Day 38 – Alliance, NE to Chadron, NE

July 7^th:

A morning spooning session happened because it was actually pretty cold outside… in July.  Our spooning game is on point.

This was a great, easy day!!  We only had to ride about 55 miles into Chadron, and we had tailwinds the whole way!  In my group was Jessie, Sean, Gino, and Sam.  We had some hills to climb, but for much of the ride we booked it at about 20 mph.  It felt so good!  The morning traffic consisted of a helicopter flying over our heads.

The scenery in the first part of the morning before the first water stop was what we’ve been seeing in Nebraska this whole time…

The hills were getting bigger, but the wind was still significantly helping us get over them.  It is truly remarkable what a tailwind can do.  Since we’re riding to the west, we always expect to battle against a headwind (some days are worse than others), so when we have a tailwind it is such a reward!

The scenery changed DRASTICALLY before the second water stop!!!  TREES, YOU GUYS.  We didn’t even realize how much we missed trees until the road suddenly led us to a TON of them!  It was so exciting that we all screamed!!!  We started seeing signs for wildlife, too!  The only wildlife we’ve been seeing are cows and whatever roadkill we nearly run over.

We made it to Chadron!

Since we got to the host really early in the afternoon, we decided to go for an afternoon hike at Chadron State Park!  We got some great views!

We got back around 4pm, and the man who drove us to Chadron State College to take showers told us that he also does this for a Bike & Build route!!!!!  I know I’ve mentioned this before, but anything that comes up related to B&B fills me with such pride and happiness.  Just the fact that they also ride through here and stay at the same church made me ecstatic!

I was in bed early because the next day was a 112 mile ride, which was a frightening thought to say the least.

Day 37 – Oshkosh, NE to Alliance, NE

July 6^th:

The gym we’d slept in the night before had no A/C, but we kept the door in the back cracked open, and since there was a nice breeze from the storm that had rolled through, those of us who slept by said door got a good night of sleep!  It was a shorter day of about 82 miles, but it was supposed to be a windy ride according to the weather.

It was a great photo opp day from the get-go:

My riding crew was Amanda, Zack, Sarah L, and Adam.  We were making the most of headwinds that were really holding us back.  Overall, we were more in the middle of nowhere then we’ve been yet.

At some point during the morning, Zack and Adam had schemed this plan that we’d take the train the last 20 miles of the day into Alliance.  For our entire time in Nebraska, we’ve been following a coal train that seems to just go back and forth, honking SO LOUDLY along the way.  We’ve been yelling back at it, sometimes “WE KNOW YOU’RE THERE” or “SHUT THE HELL UP,” neither of which seem to faze the train driver who continues to sound the horn.  Anyway, they decided that we’d jokingly tell the team at the next water stop that we actually only had 10 miles left to go before we were done with our day.  We honestly were kidding around and didn’t think it would actually happen.

BUT IT DID.  We hopped a train into Alliance – we got permission from the conductor.

And what a great day to do it because it was gross and windy and hilly and just all around not a fun day to ride your bicycle.  We didn’t tell our teammates that we had done this, however, until we took a photo in front of Alliance’s main attraction, some weird thing called Carhenge…

It was sort of mean to make them wait until we sent them that photo on the GroupMe, since they’d been calling us the entire time trying to get in touch with us and thinking we’d missed the lunch stop.  But it was all in good fun.

We had homestays that night, and I got to sleep like a baby in the home of a woman named Ms. Bauer.  She was so kind to all 6 of us that she took in for the night.  We crammed into her car on the way to her home:

Day 36 – North Platte, NE to Oshkosh, NE

July 5^th:

I rode this 93 mile day with Patrick, Sam, Flora, and Kyle.  This was the first time I rode with Sam all summer!  She’s had quite a bit of bad luck on this trip that’s kept her in the van for much of the journey, so she was the last teammate that I hadn’t ridden with yet.  We were prepared for a hot day of around 95-100 degrees – one of the hottest days that Nebraska has seen this summer.  As a team, we decided to get as many miles in as we could in the morning to avoid as much heat as possible.

We saw a buffalo right after we left the first water stop!  I’ve never seen a buffalo in real life!  And I watched it pee.  Oh, the things that excite me now (Nebraska is kind of boring).  I don’t like the environment that we found them in though.  They need space to roam!  It seemed like they were being kept there temporarily, and hopefully that was the case.

We biked through the town of Sutherland where we had gone to the rodeo two nights before!  Here’s a random mural in Sutherland (I’m sorry – I’m really running out of photos to share from Nebraska… you’ve seen what you need to see in previous blog posts).

We had a little bit of tailwind in the morning, which is always nice!  To pass the time that day, we decided to tell movies scene by scene.  Actually, we didn’t plan on doing this.  Someone asked Flora about a movie she had watched the day before, and suddenly it was like reading the movie subtitles… kind of.  Flora went through each scene of The Longest Ride, which is a Nicholas Sparks movie that I would likely never see anyway.  Plus, I don’t really watch movies, so it’s not like it ruined it for me.  It took Flora 40 miles to explain the movie!!  Luckily, we were riding on flat ground so it wasn’t too hard to talk and ride.  It was even easier for us to just listen and ride.  After the second water stop, Sam went scene by scene for the movie Unbroken.  Then, since I don’t watch movies, I told and episode of Parks and Recreation, specifically the “Practice Date” episode in Season 2.

Suddenly, we turned off the highway we’d been on for days and we had quite the change of scenery!  It’s always hard to capture the scenery in a photo, but this is my best attempt with a panorama photo.

We stopped at a very crowded lake for lunch.  I don’t know what I was expecting, given that it was 4^th of July weekend.

The rest of the ride was hot but beautiful!  And I think being that I’m from NC and I’m used to 100+ degree days of 100% humidity, it didn’t feel that bad to me.  When you’re riding, you feel it much less because of the wind, so as long as you keep moving you’re good to go!  Some of my teammates struggled a little more than I did on this day, as illustrated by the sprawled out, motionless bodies lying outside the host as we waited for it to be unlocked.  Everyone was POOPED at the end of the day, but I didn’t feel too bad!  I think the movie storytelling really helped the morning go by faster.

I was so pumped that we had crossed into another time zone – mountain time!!  The women’s national soccer team played Japan in the World Cup final, but of course, I was in a town of 600 and there was no working wifi at the high school we were staying in.  I missed the first half, but fortunately, we went to a church for dinner which had wifi, so I was able to stream the second half of the game.  I missed some pretty epic goals, but the USA finally brought home the World Cup!!!  So exciting!

Day 35 – Rest day in North Platte, NE

July 4^th!!!!!!!!

We’re halfway to our Portland destination!!!!!!!!!!!!

This GPS image begs the question… WHY DIDN’T WE GO TO COLORADO???

We started the day by having to wake up around 8 so we could leave the rec center by 9am.  We originally thought we’d be staying there for two nights, given that we had a rest day there, but there had been a miscommunication between our ride directors and the director at the rec center.  Therefore, we were being kicked out.  Luckily, Kendra’s dad has some “in” with hotels…?  Yeah, I’m not totally sure what the connection is, but she managed to get us 5 hotel rooms at the Hampton Inn.  I call that a WIN.  We no longer had to sleep on the dirty hardwood floor of a rec center gym, but rather we got to sleep in beds!  Well, some of us would sleep on the floor, but we’d have nice showers, A/C, etc.  Anyway, it was sort of hectic getting everything together in the morning and heading over to the hotel, but we felt like such casual bicyclists on a 1.5 mile ride!  And we got to ride bikes (casually) on July 4^th!  Yay!  Oh, and Julia and I even spent some time at the skate park:

    

I worked on my blog at the hotel while some people went on a laundry/food run.  When they got back, we ate lunch and then shuttled over to Lake Maloney where we’d have a fun-in-the-sun kind of day!  People generally fall asleep on van rides, even if they’re not that long (this one was about 30 minutes).  There is no such thing as personal space.

Halle, our team’s Nebraskan, had her family meet us there.  Since she’s from a very small town, she knows her mayor, who just happened to be there on his JET-SKIIIIII and took us for a ride!!!!!  I rode with Hannah, and this was her first jet-ski riding experience.  She screamed and laughed the entire time, holding onto me tighter and tighter as we went faster and faster.

I spent much of the day in my hammock, having great conversation with teammates who came over to sit in it with me or stand around talking.  A relaxing day was much needed, and we got it!

A group of us drove back to the hotel to hang out for a bit – some of us cleaned our bikes, others watched Netflix or napped.  Of course, we wanted to see fireworks that night, so we looked up our options in North Platte.  We found a place, but we ended up getting there SO early.  As we were walking up toward the bleachers of this venue, we found one ramp with a sign above it, which made us question taking this particular entrance.  I call the next series of photos “Hmm… well… screw it.”

    

We waited around for about an hour and a half before the fireworks even started.  We used our time wisely by setting up a couple of massage trains.

We ended our 4K 4^th of July by watching fireworks and calling it a night shortly thereafter.  We had a long ride the next day to rest up for!

Day 34 – Lexington, NE to North Platte, NE

July 3^rd:

It was my van driving day for this 70 mile ride, but I was looking forward to spending the day with Emma in the water van!  No, the van was not moving while I took this selfie, but rather it was safely in park.

Since we were scheduled to have a rest day on July 4^th, our team decided to have our super patriotic ride on the 3^rd. I was really bummed to not be able to ride on such a fun day where everyone dressed up in crazy red, white, and blue gear, but Emma and I went in with the attitude that we’d make it a really fun day for everyone by getting creative with our chalking along the route, and only using red, white, and blue chalk, of course!  Flora had driven the van the day before and left a cute surprise message for us when we opened the passenger side door:

I’m including some photos of my teammates because the look SO GOOD in their 4^th of July attire.  I might still be a little bitter that I didn’t get to participate in this USA ride.

Emma and I decided to take a badass van drivers photo, if there ever was such a thing.  Our expressions are meant to say something like “if you mess with us, we’ll CHALK YOU IN THE WRONG DIRECTION.”  So threatening.

I’m so sad I missed the group photo – it’s a consequence of being in the water van and having to leave before everyone else so that you can chalk the route and they can follow behind.  But they just look so awesome that I have to include it:

Emma and I were having such a great van riding day!!!  We had a 4^th of July playlist ready to go, and at each water stop we would dance and sing to the patriotic songs that were blasting from the van to greet each team as they rolled in.  We were chalking fun messages to the team to keep them entertained along the route.  The “YAY paved road” is in reference to the dreaded gravel road that they had come off of earlier.

  

Lizzy and I were wearing the same shirt, so we took some photos to commemorate this twin-ship… I think it was hard for some to tell us apart, since our body types are so similar.

I’m also sad I missed the ride because it was actually a change of scenery!  There were these big hills that looked like mountains in the distance, which was a nice change of pace from the flat cornfields that we’ve been seeing for days and days.

Unfortunately, there was a slight incident at the second water stop, and while I won’t go into detail, I will say that Emma and Jen ended up having to go to urgent care.  They’re both fine in terms of being able to ride after the rest day, but it definitely put a damper on the fun day Emma and I were having.   Lindsay took over as my navigator, and we continued to chalk funny messages to our team the rest of the way.

We got into North Platte and hung out at the Rec Center we were staying at while we waited for the remainder of our teammates to come in.  Patrick had texted the GroupMe saying he’d found a rodeo about 30 minutes away that we could go to at 7:30!  Most of us had never been to a rodeo before, so when we took photos at the event, we joked that the caption should read “this is, in fact, my first rodeo.”  We also got to say “that guy is LITERALLY grabbing the bull by the horns.”  We spent hours watching humans versus horses, steer, and bulls.  All in all, it was pretty strange.  Jo, our resident Taiwanese teammate, had a hard time wrapping her head around the situation, although I think it was an experience that presented itself with culture shock for many of us.

  

If I had to summarize the events of a rodeo to someone, I would say the humans were either trying to stay on the bucking horses or bulls, or they were trying to lasso or wrestle the small steer (which I learned is the term for a baby male cow).  The rodeo clown had terribly awkward banter with the announcer, but one of our teammates did get a shout-out.  Kyle was wearing his Hawaiian shirt, and the announcer called him Magnum PI.  When we looked up a photo of this character, it was on point.  I wish I had a photo of Kyle, but instead I’ll include a photo of Tom Selleck as a reference.

When we got back to the Rec Center to go to sleep around 11pm (wayyyyy past our bedtime!), we found out that despite our understanding that we had been granted 2 nights stay, the director had only agreed to one night.  Our ride directors warned us that we needed to be out of there by 9:00am, which is not what 30 people who have been getting up at 4:30 am and have been looking forward to a sleep-in day want to hear.  We fell asleep not knowing where we’d be going the next day!  Oh well, it’s “4K ok.”

  

Day 33 – Chapman, NE to Lexington, NE

July 2nd:

We woke up to the sound of rain pouring down on the roof of the school we were sleeping in.  We all got a terrible night of sleep because the bell that signals the end of a class period for students and teachers was still scheduled to go off every hour on the hour… all night long.  And it wasn’t a dainty, calm bell – oh, no, it was more like a siren.  It was terrifying and I woke up each time.  I had crazy dreams as a result of whatever stage of sleep I kept falling back into – not deep sleep, I can tell you that much.  It wasn’t restful in the slightest.  But there I was at 5:00 am, staring up at the ceiling of the school gymnasium, dreading the idea of riding 90 miles on the same road in the pouring rain all day.  HOWEVER, the day turned out fine!  That miserable awakening was not foreshadowing, after all!  Phew!

I loved my riding group today!  It was me, Jo, Sean, Gino, and Vadim.  The road itself was flat and we had a wide shoulder, but it’s definitely draining to be going straight on one road ALL DAY LONG.  We passed the time by talking about our celebrity crushes, our favorite comedians, our families (especially Sean’s – he’s one of 11 kids!!!), playing tag in a cornfield, etc.  We also got three flats today, two of them were Gino’s and I got one as well.  The shoulder of the road tends to accumulate a lot of the gravel and other crap that gets kicked over from the road.  My flat was caused by a staple in my tire.  It was only my second flat of the trip, though!  Some of my teammates have had up to 6 already.  Yikes!

There was not much to see, unfortunately, but there was this…?

We biked through a college town, although truth be told, it didn’t look like an exciting place to get a college education.

The most hilarious part of our day was when we came across a sweet surprise in the road – literally.  It appeared as though a car or truck had dropped an entire box of packaged candy.  Someone said “ARE THOSE RING POPS???” and we immediately came to a screeching halt (for real though, our brakes are LOUD).  We decorated our fingers with two ring pops per hand and enjoyed our sweet treat!

Overall, it was a long day but we made the most of it.  I thoroughly enjoyed my ride with hilarious teammates that kept me laughing all day.  To entertain ourselves, we played “odds.”  As a consequence, Sean had to pedal in granny gear for a mile (on flat road, it’s easier said than done) and then he later had to pull Vadim for a mile – this means that Vadim didn’t pedal but rather just held onto Sean’s camelbak backpack so that Sean was pulling both of them.  I pulled Sean for a little while too.  We decided it was good resistance training for the Rockies!!!!!

The host in Lexington, NE was good to us and provided a great dinner, but I got my first warning that being a vegetarian in this part of the country may be less welcomed.  The host said to us “I hope we have enough varieties to meet all of your different pallets.  We have some dishes for those of you who CAN’T eat meat…” (she really emphasized the word “can’t”).  This was said in a sort of condescending way, which made me nervous for what’s to come.  I never had a problem on Bike & Build, but this is a totally different part of the country.  Worst case scenario, I’ll survive on Clif bars and bananas.  And beer, obviously.

Day 32 – Columbus, NE to Chapman, NE

July 1st:

Holy cow, when did July get here???

It was a VERY short ride day of 52 miles from Columbus to Chapman.  I think it’s our shortest ride day of the summer.  We had a quick dance party in the parking lot of the fire station and took a photo of all of us wearing the plastic firefighter hats given to us by our hosts!

My ride group only got about half a mile in before Lindsay’s pedal broke off and she had to walk up the road to find it, and then we had to wait for the water van to get there to bring the tool box so she could put it back together.  This took about an hour, so that was an exciting start to the day.  My group, minus Lindsay, took a photo to commemorate the slow beginning to this day:

Hannah and Sean were in the host van, and they waited for the water van with us for a bit.  Hannah looked like a flight attendant this morning, and it was photo worthy.

This was the only interesting thing to take a photo of today… a giant cowboy boot outside a truck stop.  How fascinating.

Other than that, it was flat with mostly a tailwind, so we really shouldn’t complain.  It was just boring and looked like this for most of the day:

I miss climbing mountains!!!!  But I know I’ll get plenty of that soon.

We got to the school in Chapman (which I think is an elementary, middle, and high school all in one), ate lunch, and then I spent the rest of the afternoon catching up on blogs.  It took me about 4 hours, I think.  PHEW.  At least it gave me some much needed alone time.  We later went to a surprisingly cool bar in town called Beer 30, where we probably got a little two rowdy.  I chose to not get quite as rowdy, as we had a 94 mile day scheduled the following day and I didn’t exactly feel like being hung over on that ride.

Day 31 – Omaha, NE to Columbus, NE

June 30^th:

We were sad to leave our awesome hosts in Omaha, but it was time to press on to Columbus, NE!

These are the kinds of snapchats I get from my brother at home, just so everyone is aware.  Since I’m away and I left my car at home, Kevin drove it to work when his car didn’t start one morning.  This is him taking a selfie from the inside of my car, thanking me for biking across the country so he has a car to take to work… after all, it’s the only reason I’m doing this trip.

We got a late start on this 93 mile day.  It started off SO INCREDIBLY HILLY.  I can’t even believe it.  Getting out of Omaha was so tough!!  But we did it and then the rest of the day was mostly flat, and we even got a tailwind at times.  We came across this weird man-made lake (which should maybe be brought down to “pond” status) that had tons of boats and houses on it, although the lake seemed like it was not completed yet.

All too much of the day was spent riding on the dreaded gravel roads.  However, I enjoyed the company of my all-woman ride group of Hannah, Martha, Kellie, and Jen.  We bitched and moaned about the gravel roads we were on, but mostly just laughed about how much they sucked to ride on.

The gravel road was called “46 ½”… what does that even mean??

We are used to having the water van crew chalk the route for us, which is easy to do on paved road, but not so easy to do on gravel or dirt roads.  We resort to other methods of marking the route, so we’ve become aware that we need to take a good look around at intersections to make sure we don’t miss a turn:

  

We saw this bumper sticker on a rusty old pick-up truck during our ride.  I can’t say I disagree… I very much dislike Oklahoma, or at least the areas that I biked through on Bike & Build:

Sometimes, you see cool old buildings and you feel compelled to take a photo and share it on your blog:

I saw signs for a camp called Camp Pawnee!!  I know we’re not in Indiana anymore so it hardly counts, but it makes me think of Parks & Rec and I love it!

After the lunch stop, we caught up to the group in front of us.  Just as we caught up, Sean fell off his bike!!  You’re currently wondering why I would be so mean as to include exclamation points after that statement.  Well, you see, we’ve had a contest going since the beginning of the trip to see who could maintain zero falls.  Everyone had fallen off their bike at some point, and the only two that remained were Sean and Amanda.  For a while, Hannah was in the running, but when she fell, Sean was right there to take a photo with her:

This time, it was our turn to take a photo of him on the ground.  He’d fallen because he was messing around with Brett, so it was his own fault.

I was sure we were not going to make it to the host in time to watch the USWNT play Germany at 6pm, but we made it!!!!  I got to watch the game in the fire station where we were staying with my team!  They won 2-0 and they are on to the finals against either Japan or England!  My teammate Julia sent me a photo that she found online of Amy Poehler showing her pride for the USWNT!!  Julia knows and understands my obsession with this celebrity.

Later, I went to the bar with some of my teammates and found out that I’m actually a decent pool player.  It may have been beginner’s luck.

Day 30 – Service Day in Omaha, NE

June 29^th:

After sleeping 10 hours that night, I was beginning to feel better that day.  However, I still had symptoms of a cold, and there was a sign outside the cancer hospital that said you were not allowed to visit if you had any of those symptoms (sore throat, head ache, cough, runny nose, etc).  I didn’t want to risk getting a patient sick, so unfortunately, this meant I was unable to participate in the service day events.  Another one of my teammates, Sarah G., was also ill, so we hung out together and wrote some postcards in the lobby while our team met with some inspiring cancer patients.  We still took part in the group photo outside the hospital.

We then went to the Omaha Zoo!  I’m still conflicted about my stance on zoos, but I still enjoyed my time there.  Zack looked like he was more prepared for a safari situation than a casual walk around a zoo:

The aquarium was our first and probably favorite attraction:

      

Then it was on to the jungle!  Monkeys were everywhere.

  

Some of us then went downtown for a bit to the old market district of Omaha.  You guys – I could totally live here!!!  It was so cute, and it included a delicious ice cream shop AND a brewery, which are two important amenities that any city I live in must contain.

  

We went to the ice cream shop as a team and, as usual, people asked about what we were doing.  We really stick out when we’re all wearing the same t-shirts.  Even at the zoo, we looked like one of the many groups of school kids on a field trip.  It’s great getting to tell people about our summer adventure and spread the word about the Ulman Cancer Fund for Young Adults!

Like I said, I think it’s so cute here and I could see myself living here.  Admittedly, I’ve said that about many places we’ve been through.

Julia and I went to an antique shop with all kinds of things.  It was certainly a place where one could easily get lost.  It was quite a maze.

   

SO MANY KINDS OF PEZ DISPENSERS!!!  Remember that candy??

That night, we headed back to our host family’s house where they made us fajitas!  As we waited for them to be ready, they served us all the chips, salsa, guacamole, and queso that we could ever want.  Oh, and beer too.  It was heaven.  I was thankful for such a wonderfully prepared meal and to spend time with their family of 6, including four kids ranging from 6^th grade to a freshman in college.  I think we convinced their only daughter, who is about to enter high school, to pursue a 4K for Cancer summer in the future!

I got another awesome night of sleep on the cozy bed before we departed for Columbus the next day!