All of washington

Oh hey, right, I need to update you guys on all of Washington. Now that it's very much over and I have finished checking all of my email from the whole summer, since I did not really read anything this summer.

Spokane, WA to Wilbur, WA. We got really lost on the way out of Spokane - there's a bunch of highways, and roads under construction, and bridges, and imaginary bike paths, and a river, etc. Ended up with Noam on this crazy busy road - I think Washington highway 2? somehting like that...well anyway, we were on it all day. We played a CRAZY competitive game of g-h-o-s-t - that spelling game that you play on long car rides, and then had the most intense philosophical debate ever. mostly about free will and what controls people and how you think, and a lot of stuff. it was interesting. This was when I discovered that Washington looks just so strange, because, well, it does. I had no idea that the eastern half was a desert. Wilbur was camping at an RV park...THANK YOU to dinner crew for cooking for us, it is so much work when you only have a propane stove.

Wilbur, WA to Omak, WA - I woke up and just really didn't feel like getting out of bed, didn't feel like riding, caring about the trip, just had a lotta doubts. Started riding, had a truck come sort of close and the ride was just not going well, and maybe the paige thing was getting to me, i don't want to blame it on that, but there's no other real reason not to ride your bike. I wasn't riding well at all because i was frustrated, mashing pedals, swerving a bit, etc. when another rider got in the van at mile 9, i did the same. looking back on it, i really wish i rode that whole day, but i'm not sure i could have safely. ps, I'm not making any more Paige/accident related comments on this blog. She's still in all of our thoughts all the time; I don't need to mention it.

Omak, WA to Early Winters, WA - Volunteered to ride sweep with Chas and Chris, so much fun! Oh man oh man but seriously. We had one big mountain pass today, Loup Loup Pass, and it was really long - didn't reach the top until we were 20-something miles in. But fortunately Chris and Chas are very entertaining. Little-known-fact: Chris loves musicals and will sing 'My Fair Lady' songs to you as you go up hills. and Chas and I belted out plenty of Rent songs. And Chris and Chas had a terrific duet of 'I Feel Pretty'. We took some goofy pics, took a TON of breaks cause what else would you do on sweep, and then, right before the summit, we stopped on the side of the road. I put on all of Chas' clothing - jersey, helmet, hat, sunglasses, camelbak, and bike (!), Chris put on all of mine (yep, another little-know-fact: he can fit into a women's small jersey even though he's 6'4!!!), and Chas put on Chris's. Then we got to the summit, where everyone was waiting, and man were they confused. So funny. Rode down into the town of Winthrop (after re-changing clothes). THis part of the ride rocked cause we had about ten miles of serious downhill, going SO fast. Later caught up to Amy, watched her change her flat, and then we rode with her into Winthrop, which was to be our last town and last cell phone service for a few days, where everyone was hanging out, playing minigolf, eating ice-cream, buying books (I got a really cool one called 'Polar Dream' by Helen Thayer about the first solo expedition to a Pole by a woman - skiing to the North magnetic Pole. very interesting, you learn a lot by reading it if you're a science dork like me). Then we waited for FOREVER actually forever, two and a half hours, for everyone else to finally finally finally leave Winthrop, so that we could leave. We then had a pretty dehydrated (no one drank water in Winthrop, BIG mistake) twenty miles into Early Winters, another campsite.

Early Winters WAS AWESOME because there was a big swimming hole in a glacier-melt river that was SOOOOO COLD omigoshness really. But we all jumped in and got our heads under, even Hailey after a lot of persuasion, or maybe jsut a lot of Sam hip-thrusting in his chammys from the other side. We swam to the other side of the hole and climbed up on some rocks, had fun diving off (slippery, kind scary, but def worth it) and swimming back. Some people went back to 'shower' with biodegradeable soap later, but I was pretty wrapped up in reading 'Dharma Bums' by Jack Kerouac. Another really interesting book. Better than Polar Dream by far. And then dinner, THANK YOU DINNER CREW for cooking us dinner on a campstove again, we loveeee youuuuu. And then Bike-and-Build Prom, which was soooo much fun. Except I was exhausted and lame and left pretty early, but either way, asking Hailey to prom with Katy by cutting PROM? out of temp-tatts and putting them on her arm, and rocking the most ridiculous outfit ever, and taking some great pictures (CHAS PUT YOUR PICTURES UP IF YOU ARE BLOG-STALKING ME YOU HAD BETTER), etc. Fun.

Early Winters, WA to Rockport, WA. Riding with Noam, hit the start of the climb half a mile in. Not a long warm up. We climbed for fifteen or so miles, took one break to try to figure out a weird noise on her bike, couldn't figure out, so then we tried to figure it out while riding, so I kept dropping in front of and behind her to tryto figure out what side of her bike the noise was from, and then having her unclip and pedal clipped in and unclipped with different feet, etc - a big distraction from the climb, which was nice, because the climb was steeeep. But crazy beautiful with the Cascade Mountains and cascading waterfalls all around us - took another break later to stand under one. Also fun. It was pretty scary when the road took a big bend in front of us on a switchback, and we could see just how steep the section coming up was...really intimidating, but just go one pedal at a time. The problem, we discovered at the top, was that the bearings in her bottom bracket had gotten grit or something in them and needed to be regreased - at this point, it could wait till the end of the trip. Hit the top of Washington pass, and of course decided to go on a short hike to an awesome lookout over the Cascades. Definitely worth the walk, but maybe not how much time we spent there. I ate an entire Clif bar in one stop - haven't done that all trip I don't think - because I was so hungry at that point. It was not the wisest move though, since I was still on the bet that I could finish the trip without eating any more peanut butter, and most of the rest of my energy bars had peanut butter in them, so I had to be careful. Anyway, sick descent off of Washington pass, hit something in the 40s, then another climb up Rainy pass - not too long of a climb, but still worth posing with the sign at the top! Another CRAZY descent - it just kept going and going, at one point we had an amazing view of Crater Peak, which is THE mountain that I see as the Cascades. Picturesque. Things started to say 'Pacific' and it got really scary - so close to the end. Kept descending along a river for a long while, a lot of pretty waterfalls - looked a lot like 'Fairy Falls' in Yellowstone, that dark rock and ethereal, misty fall. Had lunch at mile 40 - no peanut butter was getting hard - vanilla soy protein powder and grape jelly sandwich was no good at all. A few more ups and downs of hills, then a really steep downhill to Diablo lake, which is bright green. Crazy. Lotta turns, really fun descent. Going 35-40 for a lot of it, so I got to take the lane, which was really fun until an SUV passed the car behind me, but didn't see me, so it almost pushed me off the road. Urgh. Swam in Diablo Lake, lost my Oakleys, found them (woooo relief!), then rode a few more ups and downs through a gorge, following a river the whole way for the rest of the ride. Had to go through a really scary long dark tunnel with Sarah and Adrienne - so afraid a car would zoom in without seeing our taillights. Washington finally started to look like what I thought it was - thick temperate deciduous rainforest, moss hanging off of the trees, etc. It honestly smelled a lot like an NJ forest, with the lichen and leaf mold and ferns and mistyness and mud. It was great, this feeling of 'this is the west, this is the Pacific' and simultaneously, 'this is home'. We passed a diner about 8 miles out of host, saw a bunch of bikes, stopped there, hung out so long that everyone left and we got swept, so then we left. Passed Cascadian Farms, the berry place - there are berries everywhere here, it's so cool. Finally got to host, more swimming (another campground), delicious dinner from Sam's family and Sarah's friend who did Bnb last year. The LONGEST grant discussion ever without deciding anything, ugh. Finally got to hang out a bit then sleep.

Ps Grants: we had $71,000 to donate from our trip, $35k goes to Providence Habitat because they provide our van plus a good orientation - build day, affordable housing talk, etc. $100 goes to most of our hosts to donate to a local affordable housing organization of their choice. $500 goes to each rider to donate to an affordable housing organization of their choice. The rest, $18k, we get to choose where to donate. A bunch of organizations apply to Bike and Build with a detailed grant application asking for between $500 and $10000 (all clustered around the higher end, of course), and we decide how much/if to fund each grant. Grants get given to trips that pass near those organizations, if a college group applies for a grant, their application will not go to a route with riders from that school on it, and also each route gets about the same number of grants. We got ten or eleven grants, so we all had to read about five pages about each grant, and then some of us became 'contact people' to call those organizations and ask them questions about their applications. I was the contact person for Bethlehem and Nazareth Farms in WV.

Rockport, WA to Everett, WA

Our last 'real' ride. We took SOOOO long in the morning because we had no need to go fast - sang our trip song, the Brandi one (look at Noam's blog for lyrics) quite a few times, took some naps, etc. Very relaxed. I rode with Liz and Chris for the whole day, took a coffee break with Kristian and Bribri and Noam, and then a ton of other people showed up later. Really nice riding, we were going pretty darn fast, it was through more of that really thick, enveloping, cool, misty rainforest for the whole morning, soooo nice. Waited so long at lunch, waited for almost the whole group to get in. Dancing, berry picking, just chilling out, great. One small scary part right before lunch - a car was broken on the side of the road and Kristian lent the driver his cell phone - seeing a bunch of bikers stopped around a car and not being able to see what was in front of the car was pretty unnerving, but fortunately all was fine.

After lunch, the really pretty, really fast part ended - the last 25 miles into Everett were on a really busy road, Highway 9 south, I think, and then biking through Everett - some pretty scary city roads, intersections, merging. A lot of 'I know I need to take the lane but this is ridiculous', three or four narrow bridges that were a little dark and no shoulder - turns out that all the riders after us got shuttled over that whole section. Not too surprising.

In Everett, we had to clean up our whole van and trailer - all of the 'it belongs to everyone, we can keep it' items no longer were valid. Big mess everywhere. Lot of old tires thrown out. Brandi went to the car wash - unrecognizable. Also Edgar got taken off at some point. Sad. Another very long grant discussion, then getting kicked out of a few bars with Noam, Chris, Sam, and Spencer in an attempt to hang out with all of the 21+ers in our group. Oh well. And also two Bnbers from our route, but wayyy before us - and 07 and an 04 (!) visited, that was cool.

Everett, WA to Seattle, WA. OUR LAST DAY. The morning was SOOO SLOW it was great. Did a ton of cheers outside, we all biked together through downtown Everett, much to the dismay of all of the cars. Oh man it felt like this day took forever. We were getting on and off of this 'Interurban Bike Path' a ton - pretty confusing, but it was nice to ride as a pack. Took some silly breaks - I think we spent half an hour dancing violently to 'Bad Romance' et al on top of a bridge that went over the interstate. Man, did we get honks. Hilarious. (CHAS PUT YOUR PICTURES UP). (PLEASE). Also we stopped for lunch in a church parking lot (thanks for driving the van Rosemary!!) and it was the longest lunch ever, mainly because we all fell asleep on top of eachother on top of the chips and jelly scattered everywhere. Oops. Bike and Burn Bridges has gotten extensive enough at this point. Finally Gabe and Kristian woke us all up, and we rode along a really pretty bike path along the water for 12 miles into Seattle. Rode through the city for a bit, up THE STEEPEST HILL I could not ride it if I was sitting on my bike, not cause it was too hard, but because my front wheel was pulling up. I stood up and got up it though. And then we got to the host, unpacked, everyone took their cell phones etc out of their jersey pockets, I got so nervous and felt like I do before really big hockey tournament games, like I had to prepare myself for somehting important. Someone said she felt like she was about to get married. Actually, I felt almost exactly like I did before Paige's funeral. Which wasn't sad, just nervous and like I had to act in a very specific way but I had no idea what that way was. The ride from the host site to the beach was so strange. Also it took almost an hour, and it was a six mile ride. We stopped soooo many times. To all catch up to each other, to rehearse Brandi, for the boys to go buy cigars (ew), to all catch up to each other, to all catch up to each other, to all catch up to each other. Heard a store playing 'here comes the sun'. Weird memories from that. I'm getting anxious and hyped up just thinking about it. Finally the last bit of riding in to the park along a boardwalk or sidewalk or something. Could see the crowd of parents and friends way off on the beach. Saw a bunch of 'Go P2S' signs chalked and taped up along the last few hundred yards, that was cool. All riding together screaming. Screaming shouting tipping yelling spinning my pedals saw a 'go Maddy' sign and Noam's family blur by (she didn't see them and I got to point them out to her later, haha), put my bike down really carefully, flung off my Camelback and shoes, and sprinted sprinted sprinted careening swinging yelling sand was flying running in a pack of windmilling limbs into the ocean. Screaming hugging yelling singing jumping arms around each other splashing playing goofing yelling smiling salt water Olympic mountains in the distance dunking singing watching parents on the shore look stern and confused why-dont-they-want-to-hug-me hahahahaha etc finally got out of the water, hung out with the 'orphans club', told eachother how tall we looked, and how grown up, and honey-ive-got-your-favorite-brownies-n-the-car and can-we-take-a-picture i-cant-believe-im-crying are-you-wearing-sunscreen and the rest of that, which was actually really fun, because these people are my family, and it was hilarious. And then talked to Paige's dad for a bit, and then a long while later, and said hi to Noam's fam and took a pic with her, aka tackled her into the ocean (sorry...but not really), and a big thank you to Mallory's dad for buying all of us nice champagne, and to Kristian for driving us all back after we enjoyed it, and it was very nice and peaceful, walking around the beach, looking out across the water, laying on the sand, just knowing that there is actually nothign that i was supposed ot be doing at that point, and sort of feeling weird waves of calm wash over me, and it was just incredible, the sense of 'this is what it is' when i was sitting not talking with a group of riders.

Later dinner that was nice THANKS PARENTS WE APPRECIATE IT but really we do, and showers way later, and then just hangning out at host cause we were sick of getting kicked out of bars. The rest of seattle was really fun and it's a super cool city and this summer was incredible and there's really nothing I can say that will make it make sense, so I won't have any parting words, other than that you should just go do whatever it is and forget everything else, cause it's not important.