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| Well after about 4 months and over 4000 miles later I successfully rode my bicycle across the United States of America. Stoked is an understatement. |
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| These two ladies were waiting for me on the beach with a bottle of champagne when I arrived on my final day. |
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| This is what most of the ride looked like after leaving las cruces, new mexico, Got up to some knarly speeds leaving the mountians. 40 + |
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| Stayed with about 10 warm shower hosts while on this trip and every one was different and great in their own way. Here's a couple I stayed with just outside silver city, NM. they gave me my own Rv to sleep in, baked about 2 dozen chocolate chip cookies for me and fed me homemade pizza and beer till I poped, awesome folks. For those of you who don't know about the warm showers website, it's just like couch surfing but for bicycle explorers. Warmshowers.com check it out! |
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| Mountians+white people= mining. |
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| Definetly popped my mountian biking cherry once I got west of texas,. Stayed with some dudes for about 4 days I met at the bikeshop in silver city, NM. Didn't expect to find the scene I did in silver city, just a small mtn. town but an awesome bike scene, It was just like being back home with my friends in richmond, va but with less tri colored fixed gears. |
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| One of the dudes has made trails that shoot through old mines hundreds of feet under ground. |
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| They even have a pretty dope skatepark which is never crowded. One of the dudes at the house I stayed at ( which is known as the bike house) is a teacher and he has started a program where he takes the kids on a 5 mile bike ride once a week to the skatepark, and If they dont have their own bmx bike they can put in work at the local bike shop to earn one. Usually 100 hours. |
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| 3rd floor of they bike house, They also do their own parades and make their own puppets to go on their bicycle contraptions. |
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| Lots of scenes like this heading towards Pheonix, AZ. |
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| Most of this trip I was excited to finally get to see saguaro cactus's in person and once I got a couple hundred miles into Arizona they were everywhere. These things are magnificant, it takes 100 years for them to even start to grom their first arm, and some are upwards of 30 feet tall. It was awesome to camp with these monsters for a few nights. |
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| Heading into and out of Pheonix was just like Houston, Texas or any othe giant city. Miles and miles of cars, glass, pot holes and no shoulders. |
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| Occupy Pheonix. |
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| Met these fellow bicycle explorers once I got into to Pheonix, they were coming from San Deigo and staying with the same person I was that evening. They were awesome and we all had a great time drinking free beers and shooting the shit all night. |
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| The dude I stayed with in Pheonix bike tours on these things ( penny farthings). For real, not even joking, he races them too. Pretty Badass. |
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| I did have a nice break leaving Pheonix for about 30 miles on this bike path which ran along side a canal and was full of cool tunnels like this one. |
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| The Pheonix bike path was also full of shredable obstacles. |
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| With only about 5 more days till California I cooked the rest of my food and filled this 2 gallon zip lock bag with my slop. It contents were 2 cans mixed vegetables, 3 lbs rice, 5 lbs canned ham(gross) half of a onion and what ever garlic I had left. tasted pretty good the first night but by day three of nothing but this and with the weather getting warmer It was time to go, I threw it out on day 4. |
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| Was kinda hoping for a better sign. |
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| Guess I rode past the center of the world, which when you think about it doen't make much sense. Also right after this I was rode through a migrating swarm of 1000's of angry bees, it took me like 15 seconds to get out of at full speed. 15 seconds doesn't sound like much but when your covered in bees it's forever. |
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| They weren't joking. |
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| Ok I get it. |
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| I guess the west coast is used to free loaders, no public rest rooms at all. |
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| They even made it hard for me to charge my phone, this lock was nothing compared to my needle nose pliers though. |
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| Andy lives on a hill in San Diego, I rode up this rode to get to his house. See that mountian in the way way back. Thats where I took the pictures of the wind signs. |
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| Andy and I got real safe and went mtn. biking. And let me just say this dude is an absolute Bad Ass! on a mountian bike. |
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| Pretty view while riding with Andy in the mountians. |
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| Doing touristy stuff in San Deigo, free organ concert, pretty epic. |
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| Awesome botanical gardens, also free. |
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| Pretty cool way to make some cash. |
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| So aparrently febuary is big wave time in San Diego, you can't tell from this picture but this wave is probably 8 to 10 feet. Conditions were 8 to 12 when Andy and I went surfing and HOLY SHIT!! those were the biggest waves I've ever been on in my entire life it was like being atop a 12 foot vert ramp before your dropped in. Just paddleing out was the hardest thing to do. At one point giant wave crashed on me and sent me through what Andy calls the washing machine, it just tumbles you over and over till you crash into the ocean floor then it sucks you back up and tumbles you some more. After about 20 seconds which feels like a life time it lets you go where you get to the surface gasping for air and hope that another one isn't right behind it. Well, there was and after being sent through the wash twice in a row I went in to shore to Dana like a sad puppy with his tail between his legs. Big waves are awesome but no joke. Hours later that night I was talking to Andy and leaned over to pick something up and tons of salt water just poured out of my nose, Wild. |
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| This guys awesome. |
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| The Pacific ocean rules. |
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| Where we are now. With .57 cents in my bank account and gas prices the way they are Dana and I decided to get jobs before we head back to good ol VA. We have ended up here at desert whale Jojoba. Which grows Jojoba trees for Jojoba oil the same kind of oil you get from killing sperm whales, so I guess you can say we are saving the whales even in the desert. And when I say desert I mean desert its a couple hours to the closest town and the only people who work here are the 12 to 15 mexicans who live in the labor camp on premises and they don't understand why the hell two gringos would want to work all the way out here. But 2 weeks in and things are going well we even get invited to come hangout with them at there place on Sundays (Our only day off) |
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| The Jojoba processing plant. |
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| Baby Jojoba cuttings, They take a while to re root, notice these were from last July. |
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| Its pretty old fashioned around here the women work in the green house and in the fields and the men drive the tractors and fix stuff. Dana transplanted all of these plants. |
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| Dana working in the green house. |
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| A Jojoba row, Probably about 5,000 acres of these things here. |
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| My tractor for 10 hours a day, 60 hours a week, for the next 6 weeks. Pizza party on me when I get back. |
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| The Jojoba seed. |
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| Our 20 year old trailer that we get to live in for free with water and electric, also our boss bought us a brand new fridge and micorwave for it, he also cooks for us a couple times a week, I think he's trying to get us to stay for the whole season just beacuse no one wants to live out here and they are under staffed for labor. So any of my friends looking for a change you can come out here and live for free and bank money, it just sucks cause theres nothing around. Also the coyotes are serious and the tanrantullas the size of your hand will jump on your face and bite you, and don't forget about the tons of rattle snakes and scorpions, oh and it gets up to 120 degrees in the summer. Other than that its the life. |
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| Whats your favorite movie in the Sonoran desert.............Water World |
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| Well thats it for now, more to come soon, untill then peace and watch out for the scorpions. |