New concept: Slack biking (slack winding? What do I call it?)

Alright y'all. Another new plan! I'm just gonna do short blog posts about short things... Go!

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On this particular morning Stumbles and I were riding out of Cedar Falls (I think it was falls) after spending the night at Doodles' house. Doodles is a friend of Stumbles' from the Appalachian trail. I'd never met the guy before, but he was awesome. Just having hiked the same 2,200ish miles automatically made us friends. Anyways, back to bike riding. We were riding our bikes out of town and directly into the wind. We've been doing this for days and weeks now as well as getting poured on the day before. After the 10 miles out of town we came to a quick decision, today was the day we were gonna try out slack biking. 

Us with Doodles

Here's where the concept comes from. Originally this is a hiking thing that came from our past hiking the Appalachian trial. What people would do is they would get a ride forward and then do the miles backwards. There are a few advantages to this. Sometimes it makes the terrain more favourable and most the time you leave your pack somewhere where you can pick it up once you arrive. That way you don't have to carry a heavy pack all day. That's the hiking version of it, but I tweaked it a bit for cycling. The plan was this: Hitchhike with out bikes 80 miles west and then ride with the wind at our backs for those 80 miles instead of with it in our faces. How lazy can we get? 

My professional hitchers thumb got the second truck passing by to pull over for us. I rolled over to his rolled down passenger window and quickly explained that we just wanted to ride with the wind. This was Dave (the first Dave, the second one is later) and Dave said to me "You lazy fucks. Put your bikes in the back." Turns out he is a super awesome adventurer who was big into train hopping back in the day. The ride was spent with him telling us of his adventures which turned out to be some of the coolest stories I've heard in a long long time. Go hobos.

It wasn't a problem whatsoever and riding back was one of the easiest days we've had. Other than the bridge that was out.... So we rode backwards to where we'd started the day off and stayed with Doodles again! And then we were out thumbing it again the next morning where second Dave picked us up with a reaction similar to first Dave's ("You lazy fucks"). But he enjoyed talking with us and gave us the hookup with a place to Stay in Sioux City a couple days in our future. Overall our slack wind plan was a great success I'd say! 

Trekking through what was once a bridge

Be happy everyone! 

Beacon

PS: This day, in Hoopeston Indiana, a small town newspaper starred us!

Cray