Confirmed: We really have no idea what we're doing

Day #: Stumbles convinced me to get up early and get ourselves on our way, but, I'm going to be honest here, my butt was absolutely killing me from being on the saddle for the 8 (or however long) hours it took us to ride the 78 (or however far) miles we ended up going the day before. My butt was so sore it was tender to the merest whispers of the wind, how was I supposed to perch the whole of my weight on a slim saddle atop my Cervelo? I just had to man up and do it. There was no questions about it, I knew this trip was going to hurt. After some goodbyes to Phys Ed and his wife me and Stumbles were on our way west! Not even knowing what we were really doing or where we were going for the night. We just knew we were on our way.

Until, 8 miles into that mornings ride, Stumbles' pedal fell off her crank again. Well....... It's hard to pedal one legged so I gave Phys Ed a call and he graciously drove the short distance we'd managed to put between us and Gettysburg, picked our sorry selves up off the side of the road, and took us to the bike store in Gettysburg so we could attempt to get our shit together. Stumbles got her pedal fixed and a new helmet so I couldn't make fun of her for looking like she was in elementary school anymore. We tried a to bend my rim back in to shape with some small success and I bought a new saddle. The best $100 I have ever spent, ever, in my entire life. I wasn't worried about my skinny little chicken legs for this ride. I wasn't worried about my pale complexion in the sun all day for this ride. I was worried about my ass. Only my ass, and this one purchase has saved my ass. It ain't like I'm sitting on a cloud, but it no longer feels like I'm trying to cut myself in half with my saddle.

After the bike store we took a nap in the grass. Made it 25 miles that day. I know, I know, we're pathetic. And I don't disagree, but we're gettin' there regardless of our lack of any idea about what we're doing.

Day $: This is it. This is the day we hit the mountains. This is what Stumbles had been fearing the whole time, and, probably, what I should have been fearing as well. My philosophy doesn't work fear into it though. I like to say things like 'It's all good' or 'no worries' or 'this is easy' the whole way through any adventure, even if it's not, because it gets me through the pain, and once all the pain is over I can look back and legitimately say 'that was easy' because it's over. Truthfully though, they hurt. They f'n hurt. We did 3 climbs on this day. 2 mountains, one hill between the two. That's how I would categorize it. 40 miles in the end, because the mountains hurt us. They hurt us bad. I reckon we rode 10+ miles at 9% on this day. Considering neither Stumbles or I am in shape, it hurt. It hurt a lot.

I could probably right some fanciful thing about how we conquered the mountains here. I absolutely could actually, because at the top of each mountain I could feel that we might actually make it all the way to the West coast on this insane endeavor of ours. I could feel the ecstasy of conquering something that was giving me doubts. Those sort of 'come to Jesus' (I don't think I'm using that how it's supposed to be used, but it's how I think of it) feelings where you don't actually know you can do something but you want to, and, then, suddenly, you realize you're already doing it. It's happening. It's going to happen. Some day next month I'm going to coast up to the West coast and, since I'm a wuss, probably cry a little bit as I look back and know I rode from the Atlantic for no other reason than I wanted to and I knew I could. I'm doing it, it's going to happen. That's all there is to it. Those sort of feelings, where you see all that coming true, make me want to write fanciful things full of imagery and impressive vocabulary (yeah right), but honestly I'm too tired to get fanciful for you right now. So, let's leave it at this: the mountains hurt, but they didn't kill us.

Day %: This is a notable day. Why? Because, the day before, we beat ourselves against mountain after mountain and we probably weren't ready for it. And we did the same against some other formidable hills and a mountain on this very day. The only thing that got us through this day was the antique shop. The cutest little antique shop almost at the top of this brutal beast of a climb. We were out of water, even though a car pulled over and gave us two extra bottles, out of energy, and out of desire to wage war against gravity. We reached the little store defeated with talks of hitching to a town because we just couldn't do the rest of the miles we'd planned for the day, and we needed a place to stay for the night. Camping wouldn't do it when we were wrecked like this. We needed a shower and warm water and shitty television. But we couldn't ride on.



Until the little antique shop. The sweetest old people inside. They gave us iced tea, brownies, fruit salad, pork sandwiches, bottles of water, and, the best of all, words of encouragement in the shape of 'you're done with the hills'. It was exactly what we needed in the middle of a sweltering climb. We needed it so badly and they were there to pull us out of the darkness we'd been sinking into. Such incredibly nice folk. And with that, we rallied. We fucking rallied and we fucking rode the 20 more miles into Somerset where we'd planned on making it for the day. It wrecked us, it hurt us bad, but we made it.

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I'm doing my best to get caught up to where we are now, but at the end of the day I'm usually pretty exhausted and can't muster enough heart to write. Sorry these are boring, but it's just us riding our bikes around screaming out Taylor Swift and Adele songs. Having catch phrases like 'summer of skinny' and 'let's just night bike to Cali'. Quite a damn good time actually, I'm loving it. And yeah we get flats and whatever and normal things happen, but that ain't worth writing about. We're having fun, and we're on our way! I'll write more when I can and, again, I apologize for the low quality of the blogs. I'll think up a fanciful one soon. Maybe.

(We've no idea what we're doin') 

Be happy y'all!

Beacon