Oh sweet tailwind, how we love you.

Today was a great day. This morning when I woke up their was donuts for breakfast! a local bakery donated a whole bunch of donuts it was wonderful. I then bumbed around in the usual morning sort of manor until I was packed up. I really didnt feel like biking. When I got on the road with Justin and John we started riding at a pretty casual pace and then we looked down and we were going around 35km/hr THANK YOU TAIL WINDDDD. It was so awesome. We ended up cruising most of the day (not including the time it took to change 3 of my flat tires... I blew another tread) We ended up averaging 32km/hr my highest yet average and that was without even pushing it. 1 more 155km day done.



A couple of weeks ago we made up a game to keep things entertaining. Every time that we see a county, town or state sign we race for it. It doesnt matter if you tell people you are racing or not you just take off to get to the sign first. Today we happened to pass alot of these. I would guess that we raced 10-15 times. It was so fun but so exhausting. John is a ridiculously good sprinter so its a little rough on my pride but its worth it for the competition (and i get to beat Justin every now and then so that I dont lose all my pride.) When we got to camp we went swimming at the local pool and that was also really fun.



Overall, awesome day.



the end

A sweet thing at the edge of the field that we could see from the road. This is about as good as the scenery got all day.

Flatlands...

Today everyone panicked and got up rediculously early and was rediculously loud at a terrible time in the morning. On a side note did you know mornings werent created until after the fall of man? Anyways it wasnt like... any hotter then it has been in the past days but it was kinda hot. The days are kinda long and boring. We really really want the mountains back, counting down the days until the Applachins. Here is a picture of us entertaining ourselves in the long boring days.

Thats right, we stand on the yellow line.

The exciting part of today was that we left Colorado into Nevada, we biked in Nevada for about a half an hour and then a couple of us took at couple kilometer detour to go and tag Kansas. We tagged Kansas and then ran back into Nevada before we could get tagged back. Thats right 3 states in 1 day, on a bike. WOOT. Another exciting thing that happened today was that it was so hot and they had just recoated the road, that one time when we stoped on the pavement we started sinking into it and ended up with the pavement on our tires. We decided not to stop on the pavement again. One other exciting thing that happened was we crossed into the central timezone. Yep that about sums up the excitement for the day.

Out of the mountains and into the flatlands

On Sunday after church we went downtown Denver, going downtown was pretty cool. Its a nice looking city and its clean and the buildings are cool but it wasn't as cool as i was hoping for. Maybe my expectations were just too high. While we were down there there was lots of homeless people, asking for money or talking among themselves. At one point we walked by a security guard talking to one of these men listing off the rules about asking for money. "You have to be 20 feet from any street corner, 20 feet from any bank, 20 feet from... etc. How is this fair? The man has nothing but he is only aloud to ask for money in certain places? This was another reminder that we do have injustices and poverty here in North America and it really made me think of what kind of stuff i have been doing on this trip. Am i making a point to put myself out there?to expose myself to poverty? or am i living in a hole and hiding from it? It kind of seams that Ive been hiding from it even while i am raising money for these people. I thought about this for a while when we were walking around downtown. All the while avoiding eye contact with the people asking for money. On the way back to camp on the train I was thinking of these things. When I got off and started walking back I saw another man on the side of the road asking for money and I walked right by again. As I walked down the street I thought how selfish this was and then I stoped and was feeling like God was pulling on my sleeve telling me I needed to talk to him. I'm not very smart and didnt really want to listen so I put myself through bad things that could happen and gave myself a bunch of reasons why I shouldnt including things I needed to do at camp (nothing). Finally I stoped and saw a couple other people walk up to him and I was like "If they walk right by then ill go ask him if he wants to go for lunch somewhere" and sure enough they walked by. Now a bunch of people on the tour came out of the store right beside where I was sitting and I almost went and walked back with them giving myself another reason to bail but then I decided that was lame so I finally went and asked the man if he wanted to go for lunch. He said yes and we went to Subway. It was really cool to sit down and have a conversation with him. If you could. Pray for Richard.

Monday morning I left at around 8:00 the day was long, relatively flat, and hot. First day out of the mountains and we are bored already its gonna be a long next couple weeks.

This morning I slept in really "late" (7:20) and just caught the tail end of breakfast. Then I was really lazy and took a really long time to get ready so I decided to ride with the sweep team. We went into town and sat at a coffee shop for about 2 and a half hours. It was awesome because we got a second breakfast and it was really good and it was really cheap! $4.19 with tax. We then went next door to a gun shop. It was really fun and they let us play with the guns. We then went to a bike shop looking for some new treads for our bikes but they only had crapy ones being a tiny little hick town... oh well try again in the next town. (this means i just have to hope my tire doesnt blowout before then) We didnt end up leaving town until 12:00 we figured that this was enough time to give people a head start. We got on the road and in a half hour we got hit with a huge headwind. It sucked. We had a headwind for the rest of the ride and made it into camp by around 7. We ended up catching up to a couple of riders just before we got to camp. We then wolfed down supper and took off for the local swimming pool. It was a great day.

The Gun shop! From left to right, Manley, Marc (aka strech), Brian, John

Downtown Denver

If you're intrested in Praying for a couple things in particular pray for safety for the riders in the tour as we have lost 2 riders to broken bones in the last 3 riding days. Also if you could pray for a tailwind that would be wonderful and would keep people in way better spirits. You dont realize how frustrating wind can be until you try to bike against it. And pray that we as cyclists realize that this tour isnt about us and isnt about how well we can bike but that its about poverty and pray that we keep the focus on that.

the end,

Mount Evans!

Week four is complete! In a way im really excited that we are already in Denver but in a way im sad. We are leaving the mountains.... We are all (all of us that like climbing) convinced that the rest of the ride is going to be kinda boring.... hmmm we will have to find things to make it exciting.. (not that we dont already)

Anywaysssss this week has been pretty good. Lots and lots of mountains and even trees in some places! Everyday this week with the exception of friday was about 85 to 90 miles (in canadian thats about... 135-150km) Friday was 35 miles (55km) Friday was greatly appreciated and a much needed break. We goofed off all day, stoping for breakfast and taking lots of pictures and then went swimming when we got to camp. Then I had a phone interview about the tour and poverty with a radio station. It went really well. It was nice to have a bit of a break from cycling and not have another 6 hour day in the saddle.

Yesterday comes was one of my favourite days of the tour if not the favourite. The tour route had us doing about 140km with one, 3,000ft climb and get up to our highest elevation of the tour of over 11,000ft. The day had net elevation of -3,000ft (meaning we go down 3,000 more ft then we go up :D) not by any means an easy day but very do able. To make things a little more challenging Tyler found out that there is a mountain off route that would be..."fun" to climb. This mountain, called Mount Evans boasts the highest road in North America and the highest paved road in the world! As soon as i heard about this i pretended to contemplate it when really i knew i had to at least attempt it. How often do you get the chance to do something so epic? We had a couple of talks between us crazy people and figured out in total we would do an extra 80km and over 7,000 extra feet of climbing. Then we raced to sleep so we would have energy in the morning.

At 7:30, 9 of us left for our adventure, other cyclists from our group were starting there ride at this time as well, we made it to the top of the first climb that everyone had to do in less then 2 hours and then went crazy fast down the other side. I used alex and johns draft to hit 86.7km/hr my new top speed. Just around the 60km mark of the ride we turned off the planed sea to sea route and started our climb. We climbed from 7,500ft up to 10,000ft and then we all met up with Reubens parents and got refueled with food and water and started the next climb. To fully understand the next climb you need some facts.

MOUNT EVANS

- 14,270ft

- Highest paved road in the world

- Highest road in North America

- At 14,000ft there is 1/2 the amount of oxygen as there is at sea level

At around 3:00 we all summited the mountain! At the top it was beautiful but it was also sooooooo cold. It was 5 degrees celcious at the top of the mountain. We quickly took some summit pictures, refueled again and then put on as much clothes as we had and began the descent. It was crazy because as soon as we got back into the tree line we could start feeling our fingers again. What took us 2 hours to climb took us 20 minutes to descend. At this point we were only at 140km day this meant we had another 80km to go. Lucky for us most of it was downhill. The rest of the ride was fairly univentful other then the fact that we ended up catching up to the sweep team 30km from camp. What amazed me was how I could still walk by the end of the ride. The human body is crazy, keep feeding it and it keeps on going. To give you an idea of how much food it takes to be able to ride this much I wrote down most of what I ate.

Breakfast

-2pancakes (dinner plate sized with syrop)

-3 peices of bacon

-1 toasted bagel with cream cheese

Lunch

-1 bagel with cream cheese

-1 pb @ j sandwich

-1 turkey and cheese sandwhich

-1 honey and pb sandwhich

Snacks

-3 sweet and salty peanut butter granola bars

-4 nature valley trail mix granola bars

-2 nutter butter cookies

-6 mini chocolate bars

-3 clementines

-3 cheese strings

-1, 180gram package of real fruit, compliments of carepackage from the parents.

-2 bowls of icecream

Dinner

-1/2pound hamburger with a side of fries.

We made it into camp by around 8:00 and we totaled around 8 hours on the bike. With a total of over 10,000ft of climbing.

= awesome day.

the end,

The altitude does funny things to you. lol. This picture is to remind me not to do it again.

This picture is to counteract the picture above, to convince me to do stuff like this again.This is Eritia Smit she is crazy. She was the only girl to do the climb. She's hardcore.I made it!We all made it!
We really were on that road all the way down there? (notice that we are way above the tree line.)

Let the climbing begin/feel the burn

On Saturday morning me and a bunch of other guys decided to get up at 4:30 and get on the road before 6 because the day was debatably the hardest day of the tour. Thats right the moon is in the background and its still dark... I dont suggest it, it was freezing cold and deffinitely not worth it. Funny tho. The day was murder, with the detours of getting lost and going to a church on the way it ended up being 175km with about 6,000ft of climbing most of which was at the end of the day, this combined with a very hot day made for a brutal day. With about 10km left i did what they call "bonked" in biking terms, essentialy i didnt eat enough during the day and my body ran out of energy. I was dizzy and had no energy left. I struggled the next 10km to camp and then i sat on a picnic table for an hour before i did anything. I was drained. Lucky for me i got the next day off to recoup.
We are a little bit rediculous and ya... goodtimes. (left to right, John, Johny, Doug, me, Jon, Marc, Alex, Lawrance, Ryan)
We saw this cliff from the side of the road and decided it would be fun to climb, so... we climbed it.

A couple days ago we finaly found some new scenery it was incredible. We were exceptionaly happy that we werent just looking at sage bush all day and instead we actualy had some cool stuff to look at and look forward to in the ride. Unfortunately the day after this we were back to the same old sage bush. This falls is considered the Niagra of the west. It was cool because it wasnt all built up around it. It was just like a natural kind of falls. But... nothing compares to Niagra falls.
There were some kids rolling down the hill and naturaly we had to join in the fun. I ran into Helena and when i got to the bottom i couldnt stand up i was so dizzy.
A local farmer gave us a tour of his dairy, this is the automated milking circle, it spins and there is a guy that hooks up the milker at the start and by the end the cow is done and it steps out of the circle. This farm had 1,700 cows that they milk 3 times a day. The farm has a total of 4,000 cows. They said this is a small operation for the area and that there are farms in the area that have over 10,000 cattle.

This canyon was awesome. We stoped here for about an hour and naturaly threw just about anything we could get our hands on off the cliff. We even debated chucking off a bike but then no one volenteered. (sorry about the sideways video im a noob video taker)

Racing

Every morning before i start a ride i top up the air pressure in my tires. They tend to deflate about 15psi every day so its pretty important to avoid flats. This morning i went to inflate my tires and i broke the valve stem off my tire. This caused it to lose all of its air so i had to change the tube. This wasnt that big of a deal so i put a new tube in, as soon as i started filling this tube it got a flat. It popped at the valve, manufacturing defect... So onto tube number 3. I put it in and pumped it up and it was fine.

Now john and i decided we wanted to go fast. Alex and Kyle decided that this sounded fun so we took off going around 30k an hour. We made it a whole 1km before the dreadful sound hit. PSSSSSSSSSSS and my tire goes again... This time it went to the dreaded thorn called the goathead... So we changed this tire and got back on the road. At about halfway Kyle and Alex decided they didnt want to keep on racing so they droped out but we met up with Lawrance and he decided he wanted in. We were hauling agaisnt the headwind. If i wasnt so stuborn i would have droped out but i hate losing. lol.

We ended up getting to camp by around 1:00 with an average speed of 32.5 my fastest day of the tour. It was so fun.

I'm not very smart. Debatably the hardest day of the tour is tomorrow. 156km with a ton of climbing. The last aproximately 40km is uphill. Deathhhhhhhhh lol.

Am i stupid?

Today it was my sweep teaks day on duty again. We served breakfast, cleaned up breakfast and then loaded the gear truck, we were done that by around 8:00. We then decided to go into town to a coffee shop and camp out there for a while. We sat in the coffee shop for about an hour and then we decided we should start the day. We cycled for the rest of the morning and a bit of the afternoon and covered about 60km. We were now in a small town and we stopped at a grocery store/pizza place/variety store. We talked to the people at this store for a bit and found out that the other riders had passed shortly before us so we decided to take a break. After conversing among ourselves we figured we should eat lunch here.

It was around this time we were talking about getting pizza. Theo, Nick and I were like… hmmm pizza would be good. We then saw a bunch of pictures on the wall with the title “pizza challenge” naturally we had to ask what this was. We were informed that it was a challenge to eat a 15 inch pizza and drink 1 litre of pop in under an hour. We discussed this for a while and decided that it was a dumb idea. We still had over 80km to go and there was no way we could ride on that. We approached the lady at the counter and asked if we could try and accomplish the task as a team considering our circumstances. They rejected saying that they didn’t want to have other people come in and see that we did and try to compromise the rules even more. We thought this was fair so we didn’t argue.

At this point we found out that if we completed the pizza challenge that the pizza and pop was free! This was the tipping point. Nick and I were all over that (Dutch blood + free = !!!!!!) Theo was still a little sceptical (to understand his scepticism you need to understand that he is a very small guy and all the guys on the wall were fat.) We ordered the pizza’s. The lady’s making the pizzas were shaking their heads and telling us that it was a terrible idea. We aren't smart.

To really get the full story you really need to look at the pictures below. The pictures tell the story better then i do. Ill narrate a little bit when necessary.

Notice the smiles and chipper faces
Note we are still smilling but at this time the pizza still tastes good

It tastes gross right now and it is taking everything in me to stop myself from putting it all back on the platter.
I finished it!!! YAY A FREE PIZZA AND POP that ended up tasting disgusting and totaly not being worth it by the end. (i look alot better in this picture then i feel)

Nick finished his in just under the hour mark and Theo was very smart and decided to quit with 4 pieces left. Nick and I took a walk outside and attempted to induce vomiting after we finished. Nick was successful, he managed to get about 4 pieces worth out of his Eosophagus (because the stomache was deffinately full after the first 8 pieces.) I was very unsuccesful and only managed to get about a bite out. About 20 minutes later we hit the road. It was a very uncomfortable ride. After riding about 10km i couldnt take it anymore and told Annete, Theo, Nick and Ryan that i needed to stop for a second. They all coasted to a stop and then watched me pull over to the side and drop off a couple peices of pizza. Who knew vomiting could feel so good?

From here on it was a very univentful (and uncomfortable) ride. Lots and lots of NOTHING!!! We did pass into Utah but Utah is also a whole lot of NOTHINGGGGGG wahhoo i do not like the dessert. To be positive at least there is mountains in this area of the desert!

Anyways its almost 11:00 and I need to go to bed. I only got to camp by 7:30 so i kinda wanna stay up and party but.... i have another 100+km day tomorrow so that would be foolish.

I'd like to thank Annete for being the official photographer of the pizza challenge and for encouraging us along the way. And i would also like to thank her for the mints that she had. (figure that one our yourself)

The end,

Desert

I am officialy bored of the desert. You can only see sage bush so much and then you get bored. It's taking alot to get me going in the mornings this week. I dont really feel like biking especialy at 8 in the morning through the desert. Normaly by around 10 or 11 i feel good and start enjoying it and normaly we pick up the pace alot around then. Bring on the mountains of Utah and Colorado.
Everything is so dry here the sprinkler systems are running all the time. Justin and i couldn't ignore this one, it looked sweet. For once we actualy had clouds!

The Oregon Trail

Today was a really short day i beleive it was the second shortest day of the tour. We took it easy and didnt leave camp until around 8:30. We then just cruised into the town of Ontario with an awesome tailwind. Now we are all just kinda chilling around town.

The internet on the tour is really hit and miss, sometimes it works sometimes it doesnt. Right now im sitting in a library near our camp posting this. Sorry if im not very regular in the whole posting deal.

On Wednesday Jon, Alex and I decided to mix it up a bit and bike with some older guys, we biked with Adrian, Dale and Ed. This was later dubbed “intentional, intergeneration intermingling.” It was a really fun day. When we were about 20km from the town we were ending up in we decided to stop for a bite to eat. Jon, Alex and I ended up getting steak. The steak was incredible. It was just a little bitr hard to get biking again when we finished it.

On Thursday we were scheduled to leave Baker city, and have a short easy day, 70km almost all of which was downhill. But we are foolish and followed Reuben. Right before the tour started Reuben had a race in the area, the race was up and over a mountain. He said it was really fun and would probably only be about a 15km detour. So Thursday morning 17 of us gathered and we left to take this little detour with a nice fun climb. We all took off going a good pace and everyone was pretty chipper. When we started to climb the mountain and everyone was going a good speed and within a decent amount of time we all made it to the top of the mountain (about a 2,000ft 6% grade climb.) We then proceeded down the other side of the mountain. This was incredible with lots of switchbacks and tons of speed. It was a ride of a lifetime. We got to the bottom, regrouped and headed the direction we thought we were supposed 2 go. We went about 20km and then we hit a fork in the road. The problem was this fork went from a single lane of paved road into two different directions, both gravel… At this point we biked back to the bass of the mountain and here we talked to a farmer we told us that we could continue a different direction and go another 100miles or we could go back over the mountain. So back over the mountain we went. At this point some of us weren’t exceptionally happy with our leader. Lol.

We made it back into Baker city by around 2:00 with 100 “bonus” kilometres under our belts with about 25km of climbing. We then down for pizza and then final we made our trek in the right direction.

All said and done we ended up riding 177km, (over 110 miles) 25km uphill (approximately) Average speed (29.5km/hr), Approximately 6,000 ft of climbing. It’s a good thing tomorrow is only a 56km day. Feeling the burn.
Good times.

Top of a nice 3% grade 3,000 ft climb. It was actualy really enjoyable. (Theo and Lawrance) (tuesday)
Sitting in the restaurant where we got steak. :) (wednesday)
Everyone nice and chipper just cruising along towards the "15km" detour (thursday)
At the top and stoked for the downhill! (thursday)

At the top.... again. almost as excited for the downhill. Definitely glad to be done climbing. (thursday)

the very top picture is me climbing the mountain for the second time. In the very middle if you look close you can see the road near the begining of the climb. (thursday)

the end

Sweep team

Today was a really long day. We didnt get into camp untill 5:30. I was pretty exhausted. My group was on what we call "the sweep team" this team changes everyday and has a number of responsibilities. We have to help with supper and breakfast as well as we have to be the last cyclists into camp "sweeping" up cyclists on the way making sure that we dont pass anyone that has problems on the road. This insures everyone gets into camp. It was long and hard but it was pretty fun.

here are some more pictures,

enjoy.

Everyday we pass incredible scenery pictures cant even describe it. I was looking at my pictures and going. Wow these pictures dont do justice. But they are still nice so i suppose ill still share them.

To the right is Marti and Alex riding through the wheat fields. We rode through them all day.

Halfway through today we made it into Oregon!

Days

Hey everyone,

Im having a really hard time remembering what day is what so this is just a bit of a mix of the last 3 days. Kinda just a bit of random pictures and comments with them. The tour has been great so far meeting lot of cool people and having an awesome time. But with that comes some burning legs lol.

This day was a bit frustrating but the people i was with were great at laughing it off. We were ridding in a group of 7 of us and we managed 6 flats and 2 blown tires. This particular picture was taken right after we were in a paceline. I was leading the line and then everyone heard a "psssssssssss" (my tire blowing) so we all day "slowing" and pull off to the side. Jenna, at the back of the pack got a flat at the exact same time and then hit a bump or something on the road and she ended up rolling off her bike. Marc was right behind her and ran over her back tire. Jenna ended up getting a bit of road rash but was ok. We spent about 20 minutes re-adjusting tires and doing temperary patch jobs on tires and then we were all back on the road. Most of us were pretty impressed Jenna kept riding. That was her 3rd flat of the day and she went down pretty hard.

Couldnt resist

This is the gun that was used. (see following picture) the nice guy let us all hold it and we are a bunch of canadians that dont know what its like. lol.

At one point in our ride we were stoping to look for a place to go swimming, (we look for places to go swimming like... all day) We walked off the road beside a canal and right after an overflow spot was this deer. It had 3 broken legs and the first like... 5 inches of one of its legs wasnt attached anymore. Alex called around to find someone to kill it and no one would do it so eventualy we went to a local farmer and got him to come out and shoot it.

This picture was after we found the deer and were waiting for locals to come and shoot it. John and i decided it was a good idea to climb this rock. Then we decided it would be fun to throw things from it. Good times.

We also did some cliff jumping this week and that was deffinitely the best day. Me, John, Alex and Theo stoped on the side of a canyon road and walked down to some cliffs and jumped. It was incredible. Probably about a 50ft drop. Some people on the tour got some good pictures of it but i havnt located them yet. Ill post them later.

so im doing good, my legs burn a bit especialy after taking breaks and then getting going again. i eat like crazy and im still always hungry. its pretty exhausting, cycling in the crazy hot sun. yesterday i slept for 3 hours in the afternoon and then 10 hours lastnight and im still tired. its hard to find any downtime. there is always fun stuff to do. like rock faces to jump off and freezing cold water to swim in.

thanks so much for your prayers and support.

Days 1,2,3 The tour begins!

Day #2.
- 4,000 ft climb.
- 65km uphill.
- 127km total.
- owch.

Day #2
- ya thats right it is cautioning the trucks of the murderous mountain we climbed.

The Sea To Sea gear truck climbing the mountain behind us.

At the top of stevens pass! Dopjes to make everyone happy!!!

Day #1 The beach in seattle.

Day #1 dipping the tires in the ocean water in seattle.

and day 3..... well im 2 lazy to go get my memory card and i didnt take alot of pictures today.

- 3,000ft uphill

- 93km total

- max speed, 80km/hr!

It was a sweet day. Me and about 6 other guys motered and did it really fast. Surprisingly it didnt hurt that much and we were done in less than 4 hours.

the end,

Bradley