whoa man massive update drop

ok. haven't updated in forever. but i'm sort of using this as a journal and i dont want to totally drop the ball

missed dates:

7/13 marshalltown to ames
7/14 ames to carroll

i am convinced both of these are in noam's phone so i will find them and drop them sometime

7/15 - see previous post
7/16 - see previous post

7/17 - ride from sioux city to yankton, sd - yay a new state! this was another sunrise ride, except that the leaders sort of played a trick on us. we believed that the ride would be 90 miles, like the previous year's, except that in fact, the previous year had to make a 30 mile detour for a bridge under construction (nope, there are NO roads in south dakota), so we in fact got up at 4 am for a ride that was only 60 miles. i think Sarah and i had lunch around 8:45 am, or something ridiculous like that, and had a really relaxed and fun ride in which we both told eachother the complete history of our romantic lives. hilarious. there were other conversation topics i'm sure...but that was definitely the best. i would say the miles flew by, but hey, we got in and showered and unpacked the trailer and had a snack and made it to the mall and donation-magicked a discount on movie tickets for inception by 12:45. didn't like the movie. but it was soooo nice to sit in the movie theater. apparently going to dartmouth is a big deal sometimes - the pastor and some locals at the church were really impressed. i thought that was sort of strange. i'm used to just saying i go to school 'in new hampshire...it's small' but i was wearing a dartmouth shirt so i guess they knew. the pastor kept telling me that i was going places and going to do great things. that said, the locals from that church were super nice and welcoming and really tolerant of me asking a ton of questions. i don't remember any of the answers. and we had more affordable housing presentations and a VERY long family meeting, but it was mostly fun shoutouts.

7/18 - ride with chris into lake andes south dakota - don't remember the length - don't think there were many turns - medium/medium-long length day? oh wait this was just 70 - not too bad. oh but there was a lot of glass on the road in the beginning, that wasn't fun. we stopped at avon for lunch, which was pretty much the only real establishment in between - that and wagner, south dakokta. oh and there was a gas station 30 miles out, had a very needed snack break there.

best quote: paige: "man, it's like, a whole ten miles to lunch, and i had a snack bar early. guess i don't need a lot of food. ooh look chocolate milk! and knockoff hostess cupcakes! that's like, 740 calories...mmm yay!"

oh haha and chris and i made up relly detailed descriptions of our dream dates - like this conversation might have taken fifteen to twenty miles, if you include the time spent thinking the dates up. hahah so much fun. ride conversations are the best. this was also the day that amy and olivia took an hour and a half break to go run in a field of sunflowers!

lake andes is really small, 800 people - we stayed at a high school, dinner was not provided. so i donation magicked a big bucket of chicken, but we had to cook the rest. shoutout to our awesome chore crew - sam ben brittany sarah me - burritos turned out great and cooking was super fun. although i was jealous of everyone else's huge nap.

this was another town without ny cell phone service - getting pretty sick of that. if i do bnb or anythign similar again, i'm getting verizon - i dont like that i can be on the road without service - that's not safe. a lot of days, there is only service at the start and end of the ride, because in between is empty. but regardless, it's superpretty out here - took a lotta pics while riding. some headwind, but chris and i were flying at the end, that was fun.

7/19 - lake andes to winner, south dakota. oh what a ride. we were on the road (80 miles on pretty much two roads the whole time, maybe three roads) at 6:30 am. by 6:45, we had gotten higher up and sort of on a ridge between/along wheat fields, and it started raining. byu 6:50, it was a full-fledged and terrifying lightening and thunderstorm. this stopped 10 miles out, when the road promptly stopped being paved for the next 15 miles, because it was ripped up and under consturction and covered in piles of fine dark gravel. we were riding on the shoulder for most of that, right on the edge, where it was mostly smooth. i was riding along because i hate riding with other people in the rain, because it's rpetty unsafe to be near anyone if you aren't completely sure that everyone will keep a really safe distance and still yell out hazards, etc. and it was drizzling again. so maybe 20 miles out, the shoulder is too ripped up to ride on, so i'm ont he road, but there is a pile of gravel coming up on my right, so i want to swerve left, but i check and there's a car coming way too close to my side, so i hold my course, the front wheel gets stuck in the gravel, i try to jerk it out, my front fork whips all the way to the right (my bike frame is still moving forward) and i am perpendicular to my front wheel, and i flip over my handlebars completely as i crash, fortunately in a grassy ditch.

i was pretty shocked and had no cell phone service and was riding alone, so fortunately the van happened to pass me and paige gave me a huge hug (and gabe gave me a reasonable sized one) and gabe checked my helmet and bike, and i said i felt fine, and they parked the van and let me sit in it for a bit. i was very determined to finish the ride, so i forced down a granola bar and got back on the bike and rode really hard to lunch. i was still sort of shook up at lucnh (which was beautiful, overlooking the missouri river at some really pretty lake), esp since most of the ride to lunch was on loose-packed gravel over a paved road. so i took a nap at lunch. and then i took another one in the van at lunch. and then i finally set out and finished the last 40. props to thiese, noam, yayme-amy, and chas for being encouraging through that. not-props to brian and the scary donald-duck noises.

and then, drumroll, in winner, SD, noam and i went through a mcdonalds drive through! after a quite drawn out series of interactions with the drivethrough staff and manager trying to convince them to let us.

7/20 - ride from winner, south dakota to martin, south dakota. 102 miles. a really really pretty ride, just constantly WOW views, and we took an awesome haybale pic. rode with amy/katy for most of the ride, then joined up with chris after i had to return to second lunch (can you say headwind? we actually had a tailwind that day and that was the day i had to ride backwards!) because i forgot my gloves. then around mile 90 we met some bnbers by the side of the road who informed us of paige's accident. we comforted eachother for a few minutes and then finished the ride in the slowest, most nervewracking, desperate, miserable, grinding 12 miles i will ever ride on amazing roads in the most wildly and darkly beautiful scenery in the country. all ten of us in single file finally made it in. don't need to talk about the rest of that day.

i love you bnb family. we all love you paige. you are such an inspiration to me and i really looked up to you.

7/21 - sunrise and breakfast-buying with liz and mary and bribri. talking about the bike and build lost circus with brittany et all. five cups of coffee. packing. van shuttles to chadron nebraska, where we were supposed to ride to. uncertainly. support. camaraderie, war stories. walking in circles for a half an hour in a field trying to get phone reception. shellshocked, hugs, family meetings for hours, finding a bike path with sam and mary and riding the most cathartic four miles and chalking at the top of a windswept hill. climbing on a building with sam and anthony. running around a building in a crazy thunderstorm with anthony, and then into the middle of a weather channel-like hurricane scene with chris, and diving with my whole body into a huge huge puddle in the middle of the road during it on a dare. watching the storm with hassie after he warned me that my untouched cherry pie was getting wet. reading a lot of 'on the road' and having a distinct moment of 'it's weird that i feel like i understand this perfectly now'.

7/22 - sunrise wakeup and a cuddle-pile. we were staying in a church's basketball gym with a kitchen doubling as a food-pantry stocking center, so we were informed that our weird charity case had free rein over this, especially the ice cream. honestly, we each could have taken a half gallon for coping purposes and been done with it. walking forever to breakfast. breakfast ending up being lunch. walking further to walmart and donation-magicking a fifty-dollar shade tent. realizing later that i forgot a bunch of stuff in martin, sd. going running with noam, actually going to the library and checking my email (weird weird weird) on a computer. going to a yoga class at the library, getting interrupted at the end by a huge thunderclap and glass breaking - giant bigger-than-golf-balls hailstones raining down - biking back to the church as soon as the hail stopped - learning later that i was biking when there was a tornado that touched down at the other end of town. walking through the washed out town - down street with branches everywhere, broken glass, roof pieces detached, a gas pump nozzle pulled out of its holder (or the user just ran off mid-fill), giant puddles, no traffic lights at the intersection, people standing outside looking at their homes/buildings, tons of hailstone-holes pocking siding and storefronts, etc. getting back to the church gym, seeing all of our stuff spread out everywhere, people still looking sort of dazed, seeing the boxes of expired 'sold-by' overstock food, not knowing where we'll be staying tomorrow and remembering that a restuarant was giving us dinner tonight, getting told that the storm closed the swimming pool so I couldn't shower, thinking that this is a hint of what refugees feel like. or homeless poeple. funny perspective on affordable housing. but really really enjoying the company of bnbers and support and hugs and late late late family meetings and giant group hugs.

7/23 - still in chadron. we were going to miss a build day due to the memorial service, so we made up for it by doing storm-relief in the town. we broke into groups and spread out across the town, offering to move branches, pick up glass, one group helped move a broken roof, etc. gabe also got a radio message telling people to call in if they needed help. we as a whole had cleaned up twenty properties by lunchtime. doing a radio interview with chas and adrienne about bike and build. the interviewer was much more itnerested in recent events than bike and build. he only let me give two sentences explaining what the organization and its purpose was. we weren't that itnerested in talking about recent events. more property-cleanups. laundry showers hangout dinner another walmart run hangout bed.

7/24 - the drive from chadron ne to lincoln, ne. backwards progress, went the wrong way through time zones, etc. staying at hailey's parent's house on our way to paige's service in st louis. saw a huge railyard (biggest in the world) in north platte, ne. stopped at carhenge (stonehenge made of cars) in alliance, ne. made our own 'bikerhenge' by lifting people in the air and arranging ourselves like stonehenge. stopped at buffalo bill cody's 'scout's rest ranch' and leanred some stuff there. a BIG THANKS to hailey's parents for hosting us and giving us all real towels to shower with. went running there and played a huge and awesome frisbee game till after dark.

7/25 - the drive from lincoln, ne to st louis, mo. fun games along the way as enforced by the 'koolaid cruise director crew'. getting addicted to 'friday night lights'. my team winning the oreo game, losing terribly at jeopardy, kicking butt in the relays and waterballoon toss. giant waterballoon fight at lunch. meeting a group of high school church youth group kids ho had seen us in a nearby parking lot having lunch and piled into a minivan expressly for the purpose of saving us. thinking that we NEED to get out of the midwest sometime. getting to stl, the visitation for paige. meeting paige's bnb trip - p2sf09 - from last year. big shoutout they were supercool. both trips were allowed to stay in wash U dorms. classy dorms, seriously.

7/26 - the service in stl and other things related to it took up pretty much the whole day until 8 pm. playing a huge game of ninja with the p2sf-ers. intense ab workout with sam and ben.

7/27 - the drive from stl back to lincoln, ne. ew are, btw, driving in a nice coach bus that the bus company helped to donate to us, as well as bike and build alumni and their parents, and bike and build the organization. we also met up with christian and rosemary (directors - aka corporate) again, and met brendan (director of other trips), not to mention the founder and board member, marc bush. more friday night lights on the ride. a really good breakfast at 'lone wolf cafe' in stl, thanks guys for the free food! more frisbee and going running, shoutout to katy for letting our run include many sprinkler detours. again, shoutout to hailey's parents, they even made a bike store run for us this time!

7/28 - today. whoa. about to leave for chadron.

hassan's mother, i wish to assure you that hassan and i are friends, and hassie has plenty of friends, and that his little remnant of a mohawk is lots of fun to run your fingers over. he wishes me to inform you of this. hi! haha he was mock-crying that you told him you don't believe he has friends. hassie does, we all do.