My carrot on a stick

I arrived in Westfield, NY two days ago and was handed a curious envelop addressed to me! Who could have sent me a big envelop? Why to this address??? The return address was from a pastor in Wolf Point, MT, who we were thinking of staying with but didn't actually end up doing so. In fact, this pastor didn't really know me at all.

When preparing for the trip, my pastor in D.C. emailed a pastor friend of his in Williston, ND, who called me up and offered Eric and I a place to stay when we came through. It turned out that we already had a place to stay in Williston, so I asked him if he knew anyone in eastern Montana who we might be able to stay with. One of the two names he gave me was the pastor in Wolf Point who I called, but who for what ever reason didn't return my call, so we just biked through there.

Why would he send me a big envelop? How did he get the address of where we were staying in New York?

I opened the envelop to find another envelop! The second was from my friend Johanna in Germany. An accompanying letter from the pastor explained that the envelop came for me with instructions to forward to New York in case we had already passed through. This guy who I never met, who knew little to nothing about me, was kind enough to send the envelop on to me in New York.

The package from Johanna was filled with a variety of thoughtful and encouraging things including flowers from her garden, some cool postcards, and a wrapper from a Doener with an accompanying drawing comparing a donkey and a carrot on a stick to me on a bike with a Doener on a stick, which was very amusing. I decided to tape the Doener wrapper on to my bike handlebar. There may be no Doener inside, but the day after I got the wrapper, we biked 125 miles!

In addition to the unexpected surprise from Johanna, we had a really good time hanging out with Anna's brother Jon and his fiancee Lisa in Westfield, NY. They are really friendly and were fun to talk with. I think they may also have talked me into trying out eharmony.com (Nathan also deserves some credit for that).

From Cleveland our route has been really scenic, taking us along Lake Erie up to Buffalo, NY, and then over the border into Ontario, passed Niagra Falls, and down along the Erie Canal towpath in the direction of Albany. Right now, we're staying over with Eric's sister, Lauren, at RIT in Rochester, NY. From here, we will continue along the Erie Canal to Albany where we will then travel southeast towards Connecticut.

Home, Sweet Home!

Hello Cleveland! Yeah! We finally made it to my glorious home state of Ohio and my parents home in Mayfield Village on the east side of Cleveland. We have less than two weeks left and now that we're in Ohio among familiar sites, it feels like we're almost done. We've already come over 3,400 miles and have less than 800 to go! We're in the right time zone now too! Tomorrow we'll keep biking east, commensing our final lap of the trip.

Coming home has been really great. The night before we reached Mayfield Village, we camped on Lake Erie and I got to go swimming in the evening. The next day, as we biked through
town, we stopped at Tommy's in Coventry for the best milkshakes, fallaffels and lamb
meatpies in the world (mmmm... mint chocolate chip milkshake!). After we arrived at my parents house, we drove back into town and had dinner at The Great Lakes Brewing Company which brews some of the best beer made in the U.S. My buddies from high school, Bill and Barry, showed up later to hangout. After church today, I hungout more with Bill, Barry, and my parents and ate a ton of food, including three different kinds of pies.

Party time ends tomorrow though as we get back on the road. Rachael, Eric's wife, drove up from D.C. and will ride with us a full day tomorrow. It will be nice to have someone else to talk with besides Eric ("Hey Eric, did you see that corn field over there?" "Yup."
"...").

Rhode Island, here we come!

Fields of Corn and Dreams

We're some where near Wyoming, Iowa, right now and are staying with a really friendly lady, Sue, and her family. We met her at the little grocery store in town and after hearing about our crazy trip, she invited us to dinner and to camp in her yard. I just ate yummy pork chops, green beans with bacon, mashed potatoes, potato salad, fresh tomatoes and watermelon!!!

I ate all that after having eaten one of the most amazing brunches of all time. Our oatmeal spilled in Eric's bike bag so we couldn't have muesli this morning as we usually do. Instead, we stopped after 23 miles in Dyersville, IA, at the Dyersville Family Restaurant run by a friendly Albanian family. Eric and I both ate two meals. I had an omelet with sausage, ham, onions and cheese, with hashbrowns, and toast for my first meal. My second breakfast consisted of three fluffy pancakes topped with apples and whipped cream - yummy, yummy!

After our feeding, we checked out the basilica in Dyersville. The gothic church looked pretty impressive from the outside, but the inside was even more incredible. Having only seen the inside, I would have believed that it was a cathedral in Bavaria.

Outside of Dyersville, we stopped at the baseball field in the middle of a corn field where the film "A Field of Dreams" was filmed. I don't really care much for the movie, however it was still pretty cool to visit. I even got to hit a couple balls on the field. Had I been half my age and still interested in baseball, it would have been unbelievably awesome.

Aside from the random, unexpected highlights here and there, Iowa is pretty much as you might imagine it - corn, really nice people, corn, rolling hills, more corn...

Knulp on bike

I'm still in the Twin Cities enjoying the last full day of my listless, relaxing vacation from vacation. I just finished reading a great novella entitled "Knulp" written by Hermann Hesse. It's a great story about an amiable vagabond who travels from place to place relying on the generosity of friends and strangers and who brings a bit of cheer and joy to all he meets.

I fancy that on our trip, Eric and I are in a way like the beautifully unproductive Knulp, roaming from place to place, philosophizing superficially, occasionally breaking out into song, meeting and conversing with random people, and from time to time being taken off the street by generous people who seem to glean as much pleasure from hearing about our adventures as we do from getting a warm shower.

But alas, unlike Knulp, our rambling, wayfaring, bike-riding lifestyle will one day come to an end and we will inevitably return to "the real world". Having gone a little more than halfway, Eric and I were discussing the other day about what things we will take away from the trip. In that regard, I hope that, like Knulp, we'll have taken away some meaning and wisdom from among all of our tramping.

Recent food stories

Mrs. Khoury was pretty much right on the mark with her comment to one of my postings that Eric and I are eating our way across American in addition to biking across. I'm even amazed at the amount of food we eat everyday. If you consider that you can burn up to 100 calories per mile, I guess our gluttony seems reasonable... Here's a list of what I ate last night for dinner:

At Joseph's Family Restaurant in Stillwater, MN:
1 Omelet with cheese, fried onions and sausage
Hashbrowns
4 slices of toast
2 glasses of iced tea

At the German Bar, 1 mile down the street:
2 glasses of Paulaner Oktoberfest beer
1/2 a basket of french fries

In a parking lot:
1/2 an apple pie

The story of the apple pie is pretty funny. For days, Eric and I have been fantasizing about eating an entire apple pie. Just two days ago, after getting to camp early, I unhooked my bike trailer and when out solo biking to two different nearby towns in search of an apple pie. In the second town, Cambridge, MN, I found a family bakery, but it was closed! I peered in the window and saw a sign that read "Fresh Homemade Pies" and I could just barely see rows of pies sitting behind the glass. After seriously contemplating throwing a brick through the window of the bakeshop to get at those pies, I tore off in search of a grocery store and a factory-produced pie that I could legally obtain. Surprisingly, I could only find an organic store, which did not carry pies. Instead, I searched after my main drug of choice - icecream. All this store had though was soyscream and ricecream - it made me want to scream! I had to settle for chocolate rice (fake!) icecream and strapped it too my bike and rode back to camp as fast as I could before it started melting.

Two days later (last night) in Stillwater, MN, we went to Joseph's Family Restaurant for dinner. Upon entering, we were nearly blinded by the beautiful site of three rows of homemade pies in a display case before us. After finishing our meal, we gleefully ordered a full apple pie to eat immediately. The waitress came back and said that the manager wouldn't allow us to eat an entire pie in the restaurant and that she could box it up for us to take home. Eric, in utter confusion and sorrow blurted out, "we don't have a home." But we couldn't turn down the opportunity to eat an entire homemade apple pie, so we took it to go. After stopping along the way to eat more food, we got back to St. Paul Lutheran Church, where we were staying over night, grabbed two forks, sat down on the curb in the parking lot and dug in.

As barbaric of a sight as it must have been for any passerby to behold - two grown men huddled over a box in a parking lot shovelling food into their faces - to us, it was one of the most glorious events of the bike trip!

Land O' Lakes!

They aren't lyin' when they call Minnesota the land of 10,000 lakes. There also seems to be at least 10,000 Lutheran churches in the state as well. Most small towns have at least two and most of them have two, if not three, services every Sunday. It's pretty much the Lutheran promised land out here.

So, we've verified that as in Montana and North Dakota, people are incredibly nice and hospitable here in Minnesota. The first day we entered the state, we stayed with Marge and Dick in Moorhead, MN. Marge is one of the sisters of my pastor's wife from the church I grew up going to in Cleveland. We were greeted with fruit and cookies when we walked in the door, and Marge soon after announced: "We're having prime rib, mashed potatoes, and corn on the cob for dinner. I hope that's alright with you both!" Boy, it sure was! They were really friendly, down-to-earth people, and we really enjoyed talking with them.

Right now, I'm in St. Paul, MN, taking a bit of a vacation from my biking vacation while Eric flies to Florida to be the best man in his friend Brian's wedding. I've got four day's of slothdom ahead of me, which I must admit I've been looking forward to. I went to a used bookstore today and bought "The Sorrows of Young Werther" by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, which is the first book that he wrote and that turned him into a veritable rock star over night. I also plan on baking a loaf of Challah bread for the Lindsey and Shelly, Rachael's sister's two friends with whom I'm staying with, as a "thank you" for letting me crash at their place for four days.