Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Monday, June 26, 2006

Illinois Farmer

Bury this old Illinois farmer with respect.
He slept the Illinois nights of his life after days of work in Illinois
cornfields.
Now he goes on a long sleep.
The wind he listened to in the cornsilk and the tassels, the wind
that combed his red beard zero mornings when the snow lay
white on the yellow ears in the bushel basket at the corncrib,
The same wind will now blow over the place here where his hands must dream of Illinois corn.
- Carl Sandburg

The day before yesterday I sat down at the dinner table after an awesome 80 mile ride into Gilman, IL (pop. 1100) with a man who lives 300 yard from where he was born. He must be in his seventies and has worked as a farmer of corn, wheat and soy all his life. He ran the youth program at his church until he couldn’t keep up with them and says “ruf” rather than “roof” and maintains distinction between “setting oneself down” and “sitting”. Yesterday, I ate dinner with a 78 year old man who still works his 2500 acres of corn, wheat and soy with his son outside of Pontiac, IL. He fought in Korea, is missing half a finger, has beautiful, old leathery hands, and has been to Haiti six times with his church on service projects. Today, 32 of us stopped by his farm on the way out of town, where he showed us his tractors, had us nibble on fresh grains of wheat, and introduced us to his son, who has the most beautiful self-remodeled house of barn wood and polished copper. His son works 12-14 hour days for 5 months of the year, and rents the 2 bedroom, single-story house with yard and garage, which is adjacent across the street from his house and 70 miles south of Chicago for $300 dollars a month. Jose described Jean Lyons, the father, as the best man he’s ever met.

Yesterday, Robin’s Dad and Uncle accompanied us for the 42 mile jaunt from Gilman to Pontiac (we didn’t even stop for lunch). It’s funny how relative distances have become. The very first day we did 30 or so miles, which took us all day, and we all cringed at the 60 mile day which followed. Today was almost considered a day off. We found ourselves on a series of small roads laid down in a perfect grid, which divided endless fields of corn, wheat and soy into square miles. Endless fields + all the time in the world = The only possible solution to this equation… The Naked Mile. Robin opted out on account of her dad and uncle. This upset Robin greatly, as she frequently talks about how more frequent occurrences of complete nudity would benefit society (this is perhaps a more reasonable theory than my claim that co-ed bathrooms would reduce violence against women). All told there were about 20 of us who stripped naked and proceeded to bike two miles wearing nothing but our shoes, our camelbacks and our helmets. I was definitely the first person naked.

awandering out on the hills of iowa

So, new plan…
Seeing that is June 27th, a mere 24 days since my last entry, I have decided to record some of the more recent happenings of Bike & Build, as they are fresh in my mind, and fill in the gaps eventually.

Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Peru, IL to Clinton, IA 90miles

We woke up at 5:30 this morning in preparation for a long day.

I had a bike date with Christine “Coach” Culver today – part of the Kent crew (Christine, Sam and I rode together on an awesome ride into Kent, Connecticut what seems like eons ago). I was feeling pretty awesome for the first 50 miles before lunch – the sky was big and blue and dotted with puffy clouds; there were these hills that appeared out of nowhere taking us all by surprise, but they were nice rolling hills that added some spice to the Illinois flatness.

After lunch the wind picked up… oh man the wind. Wind is a very demoralizing thing on a bike. Its worse even then huge hills I would say. When climbing hills you can see the hill. You realize its huge and that it’s going to kick your butt, and you’re ready for it. You crank it into granny gear, put your head down and go. And once you’re at the top you can inform the hill that it has been owned, and then cruise down the other side at 40 miles per hour.

Wind on the other hand… You can’t see it. Sometimes I don’t even notice it. I look down at my speedometer and realize that I’m killing myself just to go 13 mph on a slight downgrade. You can’t conquer the wind. You can’t inform the wind loudly and profanely that it has been conquered. And fighting the wind for 30 minutes does not necessarily mean that you have increased your potential energy. Wind is rough. The wind today was not as bad as it was before the storm a couple days ago, but it did suffice to put me in a bad mood until we reached the mighty Missippi. There we paused to admire the view and our progress, before we caulked our bikes and attempted to ford the river. It’s amazing how much of the sky you can see when the landscape is generally flat. Looking out from the bridge half the sky was covered in friendly blue with happy white clouds and half by the angry looking storm that more or less left us alone (except for the wind).

I rode into Clinton, Iowa belting Dar Williams’ “Iowa”.

Thursday, June 15, 2006

Starting with a Storm

June 3rd
Providence, RI to Pomfret, CT 40 miles (when all was said and done)

At 6 o’clock this morning Jose “You can’t stop the Soultrain” Soltren woke us up with his already too familiar, “Good morning Bike & Build. It’s 6 am. Today, we will be riding…” There was rain falling hard and resonating throughout the beautiful church, which housed us for our two nights in Providence.

Around 10 o’clock we mounted our iron steeds (actually our aluminum and carbon fiber steeds) and set off into the pouring rain heading towards the Main Green of Brown University for our send-off. In a moment of uncharacteristic absentmindedness, I left my brand-new fancy-pants neon-green raincoat at the showering facility, which didn’t reopen until noon. Biking does not mix well with wet and cold; I was shivering fiercely in a matter of minutes.

Luckily, the rain let up when we arrived at the Main Green, and the send-off was absolutely fantastic. There were a lot of people there: family, friends, significant others, the awesome French-guy who is the assistant director of Habitat for Humanity in Providence and even a news camera. People were really excited about what we are undertaking, and this helped to lift general morale in spite of the lousy weather.

After dipping our back wheels in the Narragansett Bay (you know, that whole ocean to ocean thing) we were off. Just outside of Providence a very small but tenacious shard of glass attacked my innertube. Apparently, road debris tends to be more ferocious when it’s wet outside (I’m assuming because things are more likely to stick to your tires).

After fixing my flat I found myself at the back of the pack. A number less experienced riders were having difficulty on the hills, and were insisting on walking up them. One of the girls, Miho, needed only a little encouragement, some minor gear-shifting instruction and the tiniest bit of goading on my part before she was conquering hills like a champion.

Lunch consisted of leftist peanut butter out of 35 lb. bucket, which was made and donated by a natural foods co-op at Brown, and jelly. This is a staple of Bike & Build. That and massages / back cracking.

New England is beautiful. The misty overcast weather was very fitting to the old farm houses and oak-studded forests. I loved the lush green moss-and-fern-covered landscape of Connecticut, with its endless stonewalls and speckling of ponds and lakes.

New England is, however, also cold. And rainy. After a day of riding in wet, cold conditions (it started raining again in the afternoon) and then not being able to find the church where were to stay for the night, two riders started suffering from hypothermia. I had noticed a couple minutes previously that Sam obviously wasn’t doing well, but he insisted that he just needed to keep biking. I should have taken more definitive action. Finn, who is making a documentary of our trip, realizing that Jay was in bad shape, stripped him of his wet clothes and gave him dry ones. I then informed Finn that we needed to help Sam as well. Sam got picked up by the van and was taken to the hospital later. It turned it out that he was minorly hypothermic and majorly hypoglycemic (and according to the doctor taking opiates… the old poppy seed bagel trick).

Oh yeah, and my friend Chip/Jeff got hit by a car. The driver of the car did not yield to oncoming Chips while turning right on red. Chip was fine, though shaken.

Later at the Church, the mother of a P2S alum came up to me and asked me if I needed a hug. I did, and she completely made my day.

Thursday, June 01, 2006

Warming Up

After packing all night Wednesday (I only had one 4500 cubic inch bag that I could bring and yet I was still up all night doing it), with a brief layover in Cambridge, I arrived in Providence, RI today with a bag full of still-damp clothes. Tomorrow we continue with our orientation, testing our bicycles on a short ride and learning more about affordable housing. On Saturday, June 3, we will dip our wheels into the Narragansett Bay and start on the 35 mile first leg of our journey to Pomfret, CT (apparently Rhode Island is a small state).

I have already met a number of cool people, which is not terribly surprising – a group of young adults who want to bike across the country for a good cause is bound to contain some like minded people. This guy Sam, for example, is doing a Spanish major and a physics minor, and is contemplating joining the Peace Corps. His sister decided against the Peace Corps because she felt there existed an attitude of “hey, you third world non-westerners, we’ve pretty much got it all figured out already so uh… do it our way,” which is the source of my hesitation as well.
Another guy is currently doing a Masters in linguistics. He’s studying intonation patters in bilingual speakers of English and Spanish (Chicano?). He’s finding that rather than switching intonation when switching from one language to the other, the speaker maintains the intonation of the language which he started in. So if the speaker started a sentence in English and substituted a Spanish noun s/he would still use the English intonation.

Today I heard the following sentence from a Boston bike cop, “So, where youse going?”

Providence is a lovely town to which I’d like to return. The houses in the area where I am are particularly attractive, which I attribute largely to the texture and quality of the building materials (which is probably also a sign of wealthy owners and old houses).

I am incredibly stoked. Thank you so much to everybody who helped to get me here. Bring on saddle sores, bring on the (sun)burn!