another assigned blog!

hey, i'm assigned to write the bike and build blog again today -

Hey guys, So we got up in St. Anthony's Parish in Missoula, MT, which if the previous blogger forgot to mention, is awesome. Had breakfast at a nearby Lutheran church - good food, nice people - not a big surprise. There was a long prayer this morning; I am starting to chafe a bit at the amount of Christianity presented to us as if we were majority active Christians. But obviously we are all very respectful and really appreciate the resources given us; we couldn't do this without them.

We all got helmet mirrors sent from the Bike-and-Build office today; I guess to make people more comfortable riding since the accident. They take a few miles getting used to but they are pretty cool. Sort of give you a headache though.

To be honest, I really didn't enjoy the beginning of today's ride and I was planning on vanning myself the next time the van passed, up until mile 15. I just haven't had fun riding since the accident and if I don't care if I'm riding my bike and I'm not enjoying it, I'm not really sure why I should be. Not that the van is the best place to be either. Then I rode ahead without a group for a bit and that was better; there's always a tradeoff between companionship and biking at your own style and pace. The first place at which we were supposed to get on the interstate (first interstate of the trip) was under construction, and there was only one lane of traffic with no shoulder in the direction we were headed - not safe for biking. Hailey in the van shuttled us over that two mile section. Unfortunately, shuttling takes a while (disassembling and loading and unloading bikes), so we were split into our shuttling groups for the rest of the day. Biking on the interstate for the first time (two 5-mile segments) wasn't bad at all, since we normally ride on roads with just as many fast trucks, and some of those roads have less of a shoulder than interstates do.

Lunch was lunch - our giant 'box-of-fat' was present - thanks mail-drops! We also now have accumulated five or so 'box-of-crap's, which are full of random things that no one really needs but no one wants to throw away. Also a chair, a tatami mat, four or so cribbage boards, etc. We have too much stuff. Weird how one minivan-sized trailer can have more stuff than 29 people can use.

Also calculated on the ride that one case of peanut butter (whole foods donated a ton of cases of peanut butter) has about 40,000 calories.
100 calories/tablespoon * 16 tablespoons/cup * 2 cups/jar * 12 jars/case = 38,400 calories. We go through a lot of peanut butter. definitely more than one case a week, probably one and a half or two cases? not sure, i can't remember how many we started out with.

The last few miles of the ride were ok; pretty, not many cars, not on or right next to the interstate, near a river, took some fun 'totem pole' pictures with Anthony and Adrienne and our bikes. Probably going to go jump in the river soon. It is crazy pretty country out here. Dark dark trees and hills, bleached hay, dark river, light green grass, quickly changing sky.