Treats

Ooooh what have we here. In response to the thousands of e-mails I get daily, asking what is that we do to ride 100+miles a day and ride through Gary IN without being shot "dead or alive"(FYI that's Jeremy's favorite song on Rock Band.) I have decided to let the readers indulge on our healthy, safe, quick, nutricious, organic, original, flax-seed,herbal, eating habits.

Shall we?OK Well then we wake up to a nice Breakfast of donuts and fresh-baked goods in your local bakery. That last us well into noon and after-noon.

We stop for a break and get us none other than all natural, safe-tested, non abeepting Energy drinks. Colors, flavors, and prices vary on participating at your local gas stations.

And to end the day we blow the monthly budget at Eddie's Grill and buy a medium-rare 32 OZ. Steak with onion rings and Sleepy mushrooms. Complete with rinkadink red potatoes, salad, some appetizer and cold drinks. Anyone else wanted to follow our routine can and will see immediat results.

Jeremy enjoys the sights of Chicago at the Michigan Sea.

"For all of you who don't habla espanol, el nino is spanish for....the nino" This right here is spanish for Bakery. Found inside are hundreds of goodies and treats to make one's sweet tooth think it died and went to a delicious Mexican bakery. Good thing Jeremy was with me or he wouldn't have understood or known what to do. Yep those 2 years in Paraguay are paying off as we speak.

After hours of searching we failed miserably of finding the Illinois sign, so we had to make do with a train wall all tatooed up. But you know what they say, Beggers can't be choosers.

Someday, when this is all over I will take off my bicycle helmet and put on a new one. "This is my sanctuary right here. This is what makes things right. Struggle. Victory and Defeat."

Gary, Indiana. Rated R for violence

Well this is it children. I dunno how to put this, I guess just be brief and to the point. I'm doing this from the phone so I don't have much time. Tomarrow we ride. We ride through Gary, IN. They say it's the murder capitol of the world. The locals say it's scary, they say they wouldn't go through it. Don't wear blue or red for fear of the crypts and bloods. Don't go through after noon, for that's when they wake. Never take side roads. Go straight. Fast. What does that mean for us? Don't know. Am I scared? Dead scared. I'm weaponless now. all I have is mace. Will it last? Hope so. We leave at dawn. follow west on the 20. Don't stop for nothing. If we get a flat we ditch the bikes and never look back. We run and pray we make it out alive. If we do, the reward is chicago. If we don't it is the end of our life in mortallity. Why would anyone do this? Glory maybe, who knows? What do we do? We ride. We ride and do not stop. Run fast. Jump high. NO FEAR!

good times, great oldies, cool 94.5 valley weather!

Here we are in Michigan. We realized that Chicago is not as far as we thought, so we did some sight-seeing.

I got my first dang flat. We we're about a mile from our campsite at 8:00PM. a big ol' nail punctured the tire, tube, and rim tape. It was all frosted shredded wheat. FYI we did 109 miles this day. AFTER doing reserch at the county like cool Mitch and getting flat, and getting other kip bike fixed, and eating at 2 restaurantes. And I'm cool too.

Try to find "Where's Waldo?" and by where's waldo, I mean "Where's Kimball?" This will be a neat activity for the children, should be easy since I'm in my clown Stock Supermercados Paraguay shirt.

Another state off the list, and we keep
cruising right along towards our destination of Chicago. I thought that Lincoln's boyhood home was Coolidge. Maybe they made a mistake. Say wups!

We found a neat 50's AKA Ferrari cafe in the town of Bryon. This was one of the friends we met along the way. She's kinda cute huh? Well I've seen better, one in particular. Makes you think huh? ok then turn the page.

Now the fun really ends.

We camped out behind a church and a lot of kids came to visit. Scott was enjoying the treats we gave him. And I love eating Mountain House. Right here(above) is a classic photo of my speed-o-metre. Jeremy's first real day of acual riding we shattered all records like Micheal Phelps/Scott, and rode 100 miles in less than 7 hours. Jeremy's head is all big now.

This was a neat shot in the morning in Ohio. The fog created a nice ambiant. The roads are very straight and flat and in that we can cruise with an average speed of 15 mph.

Hey comes jeremy all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed ready for a week of beep of 500+ miles in 5 days.

Josh's last day on the trip, he had tears in his eyes as he exited the airport onto the airplane. He said this was prolly his favorite vacation and he's excited to do it again.

Josh and I had bike prollems with the kip bikes late saturday night. I hate these bikes. A couple of broken spokes and a broken chain we had to repair. we were medio successful. Josh also made a prophecy that one or both of these kip bikes won't live to see the Pacific Ocean. I'll cross my fingers.

This week went by all fast

let this be a warning to all the animales that get in front of the freight trains. this is a classic shot. poor little fish. This was the one time Josh was in front of me leading the pack and a deer jumped out in front of him and drilled it. we've seen lots of sleeping animales. they're always all close to the road though i dunno how the cars don't wake them up. the raccoons have been a common sight to see as well. "Coons!" "They keep gettin into our back porch, mama just chase 'em off with a broom." "no, not racoons ya idiot....."

This is a big ol' wooden horse that the Trojans used against the Spartans. I think they remixed it up a bit. Amish style, you know to keep you on your toes.
This guy is all cool, we slept in his back yard and he cooked us dinner. it was raining all dang day and we were able to scrub ourselves with soap at his house. his name is Lee, he's all funny and he's mad at his kids school cuz they only allow 2 bathroom breaks the whole nine week. so he said he's gunna kick someones trash cuz that's not right.

This was the first house that let us stay in their yard. We applied what cool Pierre taught us and we started knocking on doors asking if we could sleep in their yards. I felt like I was back in the mission again. People still lie to us and give horrible excuses and don't give references but at the end we found a humble man that let us in his property. It was all neat and we saved some gold a la vez.

We're in Ohio now. we've seen more Amish and it's neat. We told the ground to take this picture and it did it for us.

I like these classic signs. Words to live by.

too bad I don't have a safety belt, but I'm still riding a million miles. Wow I changed my shirt for once, I hope Loverly notices. So now Josh will be flying home tomarrow this was a good week we did about 350 miles we think, i can't do the trivia question anymore cuz i don't even know, the dang Speed-o-meter keeps jumping. He's getting a little jumpy lately. Now we're just cleaning all the gear and bikes and planning for the next route with Jeremy D cuz I'm a jack a word and planned kinda bad. Now this next week we'll have to do lots of miles to do with not a lot of time. But it should still be neat and all fun. I'm glad i'm not in college but this is prolly harder than it. kinda like the mission too.

1000 miles are over

Josh is dead after the second day with bad knees. But he's still a happy camper.

Here's Lake Erie. they say it looks like an ocean cuz it's so big but I saw land on the other side so nope, no good. The beach was all neat, instead of sand it had all kinds of flat rocks to skip on the water and the whole shore was a big ol' rock as I went out to swim. then I cut my hand on a rock.

Bout dang time we got out of New York. It took forever. Pennsylvania should be neat now. maybe we'll see more Amish.

Here's a classic shot. we went to rest and to leep and someone got my camera and took a photograph then returned it unharmed to my bag. Later the owner of the property told us to get the beep off his land. he wasn't really friendly but he was huge so we couldnt do anything about it.

Here's the 2 freight trains that go down the road at 15 -20 miles an hour. Josh wanted to name them Ace and Gary but I don't know about that one cuz that's nasty. We met a neat French guy yesterday. He liked to say the s word and use American cusswords. His name is Pierre, "that's his name in French." He's going cross country too but the other way, and he's only camped once, the rest of the time he knocks on peoples doors and asks to sleep in their backyard. He's like a modern day Adam Dalton. Josh and I are thinking of doing that one day, you know to be adventurous, After all I haven't shaved the whole trip and I have a thick beard and people are already calling me Grizzly Adams. They also say I look like Jack Harrison. "Keep ya'll busy."

Taylor's section: Done

I'm stuck in traffic at the bridge to get to the American side. Josh and I like to transform our bikes into cars and we just ride in the road and it works fine.

Here is Niagara Falls. we went to the Canadian side. So now I can say I rode my bike to Canada twice. The view was a lot better over there. AS we took this photo Josh took off the helmet to show respect for the viewers, but he left it and we came back and it was gone. so the helmet got stolen dang it. oh yeah and last week was when Taylor's helmet got lost. so now we have 2 bikers and zero helmets. we don't know what to do now. we might just have to go back to the office.

Try to find Josh in this picture. you'll have to zoom in. He tried to be like an olympic athelete and raise his bike over his head.

The last picture of Taylor as he finishes his portion of the trip and gets into the taxi. Now Josh entered into the scene and he'll be my rodman for a time being. So Taylor is gone that means the clown song will be on repeat the next few days. Now I have another trivia question for the readers. How many total miles have we done(Sunday being the last day)? And i'll take a quick poll from the viewers. Josh started this leg with virtually no basic training. will he make it? and if so how long? I'll be hearing your responses in the comments posts. they bettter be some good ones without any colorful language this time.

A typical day for a cross country biker.

This was a classic shot. What it is is: a different church at every corner of this intersection in Palmyra, NY. it goes from the top left to clockwise: Methodist, Protestant, Baptist, Catholic. That's kinda neat. I also wanted to show off how cool my camera is and how it's better than Jana's minus the 4 foot lens. (I'm kidding Jana don't ruin my blog now.)

Taylor eating a wild pear. There was no Partridge though, a la pinta. Bottom: is a nice patriotic fire hydrant in a town that I forgot the name.

Nice action shot of looking at the map and peddling down the Erie Canal. trying to avoid the clown song as much as possible. I hate the clown song and it's always playing.

Another neat Castle. It was a Church but got bought out or handed over to be something else.

Now this is what Jana was going wild about; an Amish farmer with his huge ol' Belgium horses. He had a thick beard and no rubber on his wheels just steel ones. What was neat though that on the back of the trailer was little triangle reflectors, I guess the good ol' Government made them put it on, now it's not as authentic and dropped 2 points. I think they wanted to put brake lights but realized you can't plug it into the horse so it didn't work.

This is Taylor and I at the Hill Cumorah. If you don't know where that is just ask your local LDS Missionaries and they'll be more than ready/happy to explain.

A Typical Day

Now then I've had a few anonymous requests that the public wants to know what we do on a typical day, so i'll run it through as best as it can get:

5:30AM my alarm goes off
5:31AM I shout out spanish swearwords and realize I'm all sore and tired.
5:32AM sit there.
5:55AM kick Taylor cuz he's not awake.
6:00AM usually up and about trying to get my beep together or eating a balanced breakfast wich includes of oats and raisins and chocolate milk and a banana and hard boiled egg or two.
7:00-8:00AM take forever trying to leave camp.
8:00-9:00AM riding at a slow pace cuz body can't function at full performance.
9:00-10:00AM clown song is playing
10:00 or 10:30AM eat a treat(granola bar or banana or egg)
12:00PM distance traveled: 20 miles. It's weird every dang day no matter what happens if we leave at 7 or 11 AM we only get 20 miles by lunch, I think it's a sign.
12:30 or 1:00PM try to find a local library to do research at the county like Mitch does. We also charge batteries or use the toilet talking trash.
1:00PM eat something whether it be other fruits and vegges we pick up along side of the road or stop at a rinkadink local food smoke-a-joint. IE. yesterday we ate at a neat hotdog stand that had salt potatoes. and it was all good.
1:00-2:00PM usually find a fruit stand where we buy corn or peaches or plums or other foods and grains.
2:30PM there's usually a good headwind by this time.
2:00-3:00PM Clown song is still playing and it's on repeat. but still get a lot of miles covered.
3:00PM eat corn (apple, peach).
3:07PM throw cob (core) on Taylor after I already got hit by his.
3:30 PM wishing we were at the campsite.
4:00PM find another fruit stand and/or fill up with water.
4:30PM burned from the sun.
6:30PM pull into campsite (no later than 9:00PM).
7:00PM set up the tent and take out our crap and put onto table.
7:01PM rest.
7:01.30 secondsPM get eaten by mosquitos.
7:02PM scrub ourselves with soap if shower is available.
7:30PM eat din dins, which contains Mountain House I like that a lot, or Sardines and bread, or sometimes just snack on whatever cuz we ate something before.
8:30PM look at map to see where we're gunna camp tomarow night and how many miles we'll do.
9:30PM I do an account of the day's work in my little booklet.
9:45PM read the Book of Mormon.
10:30PM enter tent.
10:35PM Leep!
Middle of the nightAM wake up to drain the main weasel and that's it, THE END!

*note that during the day Taylor and I have our kip bike prollems and also a few KOM races up the hills.

I'm making a fire. and stoking it. and I'm jon.










this is a sign that tells us to watch out for horses and buggy's. Prolly didn't know that one. We haven't seen any amish though.














I remember one time working on Gantzel road with Josh D. we saw Bowser driving down the road in his little blue car waving to us. Now I know where he lives. It's a neat ol' castle with a knight that guards the door. So today is Wednesday and New York is a long ol' state, I'd say my pick of favorites for the New England states is Maine. So I don't have much time the librarian is kicking me off and I hate these apple computers. I spent half the time figguring out what I was doing. thes computers are cheap and all slow. I'm nevr buying a dorky a MAC. So I'll post more later.

Week 1: gone.

After a week's worth of dealing with my stupid Kip bike, and I hate my bike similar to how Biff hates his tar, It broke down on Sunday. and by broke down I mean it would just be in nuetral. I never knew a bike could do that, but I would be peddling and it would be going nowhere. so today(Monday) Taylor towed me to the local bike shop and I bought a replacement. But it's still a Kip bike so I dunno what to do with that one.
We finally got into New York. FYI this was the first state sign that we've seen. So those of Maine and/or the Shire, or Massachusetts are currently unavailible. Well you know how the saying goes, "beggers can't be choosers."

Our diet consists of stopping a fruit stands and buying fruits and veggies and I've never eaten raw corn off the dinghy, but it's prettty dang good especially going down hill 25 miles an hour then drilling Taylor with the cob when it's done.

This is the first flat of the trip. it happened a few days ago when Taylor rode over an inch long thorn. the tube was almost destroyed. It took about an hour to change and we continued on wih the day's travels.

Here I am with a famous Indian of the Northeast. His name was Wind in his Hair. we saw him after we stayed at the indians campground.

Now then we've been biking for a week. Trivia question: How many miles did we do the first week? you have to guess dang it and I'll post the answer later. We've been fortunate enough to have had a shower at all the campgrounds we've been at. So I've been able to "scrub my self with soap gunna eat everybody!" and that's been nice cuz when I deposit the dirty clothes in the bag and take them out to wash they reek so dang bad. One of the campsites we warshed our clothes and they don't get clean very well. They're still brown and dirty and my shorts smelled like fish for some reason. But It's been the neates thing still.