Dairy Queen, A and W, Arctic Circle (only a rootbeer float though), Texaco, Ampride, Amoco (and a whole slew of other gas station/convenience stores), Hardees (which is now owned by Carl’s Junior)

Won’t eat that. Not yet.

‘It’s ridiculous to walk that far for a stupid animal.’ – overheard in Yellowstone coming out the mouth of a middle-aged woman… what the hell was she doing in Yellowstone?

It’s such an exhilarating feeling to bike through Yellowstone and show no fear for all the freaking motor homes as they pass. The culminating experience was definitely the ride out of the East Entrance, riding 35-40 down that awesome hill, taking up the whole lane, forcing cars to obey the speed limit.

Idaho

‘This grass is like high school grass.’ – Luke in Iowa during RAGBRAI

‘No, this grass is like bank grass.’ – Luke, quickly amending his statement.

‘Let’s just go over there.’ – Mark, while pointing to a city a little bit off the road in the dark outside of Valentine, NE, moments before totally wiping out due to the road turning into gravel.

‘I think I’m going to get Da Bomb.’ – Mark at a convenience store, getting his lunch which happened to be a huge red-hot burrito with a funny moniker.

‘You ugly!’ – Max’s way of telling me that someone in the near vicinity was totally, butt ugly (usually a white person, no offense).

Pho Found, Trip Over

‘Let’s just take the freakin’ train the rest of the way!’ – Mark and Max, after their first train ride.

As soon as we broke down and bummed our first ride, we had no qualms of doing it over and over again, although we only ended up doing it two more times and only when we blew a tire or something.

The inside of our tent was the site of many a killing. Bloody smears everywhere from where we smashed mosquitoes and other bugs.

Never trust a local to give you good biking directions. Half of them don’t know what a bike is.

‘Dude, that person should NOT be wearing a Superman T-shirt!’ – Mark, gawking at the largest man in the world wearing a baby-T with his midrift showing. The word ‘midrift’ automatically perks up any room, but this guy totally ruined the image for Mark.

Make sure you buy the right kind of chain for your bike. When I replaced my chain in Prineville with a new one, the two highest (as in smallest rear cogs) started skipping. I had thought that I just needed to replace the casette and had to wait until Boise to do so. It turns out that the chain that I put on sucked for my set-up. Next time I’m sticking to a name brand like Shimano or Sachs. – Mark

Max’s stuff in black, Mark’s in brown.

Now what?

in Princeton with Ted and Bindiya

So we rented a U Haul and high tailed it to Princeton. We both have some time to visit friends on the East Coast before going back to the west. My brother misses Robin and Ushki. I miss San Francisco and friends. And yet, I’m only going back for maybe a week before I leave to Japan, China, East Malaysia, and finally Australia. I’m going to be doing more of this travelling craziness for the next few months! What am I thinking? Unfortunately I didn’t make my Green Tortoise reservation in time and I will not be riding the hippie bus for 16 days from Boston to San Francisco. Most likely I’ll be taking Amtrak, but now I can visit North Carolina.

All three of us piled into this U-haul, after doing a whole lot of phone calls finding out that most of the rental car places wouldn’t work for us due to a minimum age requirement (Max is 24) or the fact that they don’t do one-way rentals. When we finally found a rental place that would work, we discovered that it was about $100 more than a U-haul rental. The New Jersey Turnpike was a new experience for me. I thought the rest areas that have restaurants and gas were kinda funny, and I could’ve added about 3 items to my fast food firsts list.

We got to Princeton and spent a night with Ted, a high school friend. Ted makes awesome tacos al pastor. Princeton is the ice cream social capital of the world.

crazy ducks

Movie of the Infinite Hallway in MIT

Movie of the Infinite Hallway in MIT part 2

in Boston on the Freedom Trail

Chris likes fruity drinks more than I do.

The next few days were just us hanging around Boston, Max with Nancy and me with Chris. At one point George catched a plane from Providence back to Reed. I went to hang out with Ben in Providence for a couple of days before taking Amtrak back home. Read Cryptonomicon on the train.

Movie of that chair piece in the Arthur Ganson MIT exhibit (might have to boost up your monitor brightness)

Redbones bbq place – they have a bicycle valet.

virtual aquarium at Boston Science Museum

Movie of the lightning show at the Boston Science Museum

Dunkin Donuts with fellow Reedies: Tom, Stephanie, Claire, Mark, Chris, Ben

at Claire’s after donuts

Right now it is time to sleep and read. STILL haven’t finished Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I just bought the Joy of Yiddish. Oy! Soon this meshuggener is coming home.

Amtrak sunset

Movie of Mark’s train ride home

If there is one thing that people should learn from our trip, I believe that it is to take life a little slower, think about your actions, enjoy the world around you, and ensure that it lasts for others. Coming in at a close second, though, is some bicycle knowledge: 26 x 1.25 tires are NOT the same as 26 x 1-1/4 tires.

Max’s stuff in black, Mark’s in brown.

The Rally

August 20th from 10AM to 2PM we were supposed to bike around the D.C. Mall (monument and museum central of the U.S.). After that there was a party in Mt. Ranier until the wee hours of the night. Unfortunately, Allen’s house is much much farther than I had anticipated and I arrived at 1pm. ouch. There’s nothing quite like 10 miles growing to 25 when you’re starving and sleep deprived. I thought everybody would be circling the Mall until 2pm so I just stopped in the shade and started eating Milk Duds. Met a Thai guy raised in Laos who has been bumming around in the U.S. for the past 20 years or so. Now there is a side of America I wish we had seen more of. You can learn a lot from a simple world traveller. Their values don’t include luxury cars and stability. Maybe I’m attaching too much romanticism but it’s like a modern day monk.

George did not have a bike for the rally, so while Max biked to the rally, George and I and my bike took a subway to the approximate location of the rally and looked for a bike rental place. It turned out more difficult than we had anticipated and we decided to break for lunch. By the time we finished getting our food and heading back to the rally location on the way to the bike rental, we saw that the rally turned into an impromptu podium/speaker/everyone-lounge-around-and-watch deal. So we didn’t get George a bike, and I ended up not riding one single loop of the rally route!

the rally

The rally was not very large. Maybe at most two hundred people with just a handful of trans am riders. The party was cool – live bands, local bike shop tents, food, like RAGBRAI without so much alcohol. Martin Krieg, the organizer, introduced us to the masses, but most everybody already knew us as the Chen Brothers. We were big stars among this small niche of crazy people! Meeting all the crazy people behind the log entries and email and attaching faces to words was like putting the final pieces of a puzzle together. I mainly talked to Monty and Bill, two hilarious guys who biked from Seattle. I had breakfast with them the following morning while they were wearing matching “I [heart] Intercourse (pennsylvania)” T-shirts. Our trip would have been completely different if it wasn’t just Bo and I.

Did anyone lose a blinking taillight? I’ve got it.

That night I slept outside the local rec center. Bo and George had already gone back to Allen’s earlier in the evening. It was the last time our Portland bought tent would be used for a while. The inside stank of pungent B. O. and the walls were lined with blood smears from squished mosquitos. This was it. The bike trip is finally over.

George and I spent the time watching Macross Plus and Once Upon a Time in China 6. 🙂

Max’s stuff in black, Mark’s in brown.

The Final Stretch

It was very warm.

ATA trail

Movie of the C & O Canal Towpath

From Pittsburgh we took the YRT, the Allegheny Highlands Trail, and the C & O Towpath all the way in to the greater D.C. area. Blammo, back in rural country. Specifically Amish like country. The paths were limestone but fine to ride on with 1.35″ slicks. The YRT and the Allegheny were so nice that they became rather boring. The Allegheny ends with an impressive viaduct (bridge) that put the high bridge outside Valentine, Nebraska to shame. It was also really cool to see the wind turbine farm in the distance. The C & O was full of puddles, fallen branches, and turtles out for a stroll, so it was much more exciting.

At one point on the towpath, I ran over an approx 5″ diameter light greyish object. It was near dusk so everything looked greyish. I was looking at my cycle-computer or something and then when I looked in front of my bike I noticed this object in the road too late to avoid it. I think it was either a turtle or a bull frog or at least something animal-like. But I also think it was dead since when I ran it over, I heard a little thunk/crunch noise and then got splattered with white gooey kinda like mud stuff that had little maggots writhing about. I wiped it all off as best I could, but my bike stank for 3 days of something not quite right which made me ill everytime I inhaled too much, which happens often when one is doing physical exercise.

nice signs

Everytime we had to leave the trail, about 50 miles or so, it got extremely hilly. Scalding rims downhill and walkers uphill. We asked a local for directions twice and, like EVERY time before, found that locals are the prime source for misinformation. If we stuck to looking at the sun’s position and rattling bones, we would have been better off. Camped illegally twice.

Heck yeah it was hilly! Worse road conditions and grades during those couple of days when we had to ride roads than any other time our whole trip. Beware Pennsylvania. Wait until 2002 or 2003 when the whole trail from Pittsburgh to DC will be complete. It makes for funny memories though…

Coming into Great Falls, a suburb outside D.C., we got a roast chicken and rolls at a Safeway and just ate in the parking lot. There were no bike racks and about a million SUVs. People just sitting and waiting in the car, listening to music and leaving the air conditioner on. They looked pretty aghast to see two dark bikers ripping flesh and sucking marrow in the parking lot. We used the rolls to wipe the grease from our faces and hands. We were disturbing their sheltered world of conformity.

Personally, I don’t think we were disturbing their world beliefs at all. I think they were conveniently pidgeon-holing us in the ‘bum’ category.

On the way to Allen, a Cornell classmate’s, apartment in the outreaches of Silver Spring my brother’s chain snapped. I’ll take that as an omen that our trip should end now. Despite the rain and unforgiving traffic we made it to Allen’s on the 18th of August. We made it. Time for some serious anime (japanese animation) watching.

The odd thing is that we, or at least I, Mark, didn’t feel super elated or anything. The whole sense of accomplishment did not culminate with our finishing in DC. I think we got over the fact that we would make it by the time we reached Chicago. The end of the trip was just follow-thru. Anime was great!

We had dinner with our Great Uncle Eight, an ex-NASA and DOE heat transfer engineer. He drives like a maniac and it was quite unnerving when he and his wife would ask us to read street signs for them while we travelled at mach 2. If you slowed down maybe it would be AAAAAAHHHHH less stressful. Oh nevermind. Anyway we got the special Asian treatment at a really good Chinese seafood restaurant. My brother got a great fortune, “Your existence is a benefit to mankind.” As opposed to “You should die now you oxygen stealer.”

That night we watched hours of anime back at Allen’s. Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, Cowboy Bebop, the Hakkenden, and Record of Lodoss Wars. aaaaaah, like heroin straight into the bloodstream.

in DC

BBQ with Allen and his relatives – Allen is the guy behind Max.

On the 19th, George, a friend from Reed whose parents live in Philly, came down by bus to meet us and hung out with us while we sightsaw DC. We ended up checking out the circular sculpture building and the National Air and Space Museum right next door. George had never been to DC before, so we had fun doing the obligatory photos of him and monuments and of us and monuments to document the fact that we friggin biked to DC. That night we were treated to a bbq that Allen’s relatives were having and even later, we went to watch The Cell. Allen is an awesome host, his apartment is very immaculate and he has a cool cat. Oh and the anime.