Eating Well in Vermont!

We're taking a break in Middlebury, VT right now and enjoying a buffet of freshly picked blueberries, a baguette, and a wheel of local cheese. We enjoyed a basket of onion rings for lunch yesterday and having been LOVING the Vermont chocolate milk. Well, mostly we just love being able to eat whatever we want, when we want :) we finished things of with maple glazed chicken wings and fish and chips for dinner last night.

We had our eye on a you-pick blueberry farm this morning and we were about to pass it by because it was closed when the owner raced ahead of us in her car, flash the open sign at us, and said "you looked like you-pickers, so I tried to hurry!" Neither of us had ever you-picked before and it was so much fun! And now we have 3 lbs of fresh blueberries to snack on for a while ("Fruit: Nature's original fruit snack")

Anyway, 20 more miles today and we'll be in Ticonderoga, NY (pencils, anyone?) where we'll meet up with my Aunt Karen and Uncle Tom!

These first 175 miles have been brought to you by Joanne, John, Jacinta, Kathy, Ashley, and Anthony Lestone and my mom and step dad, Mark and Linda Selby! Thanks so much, you guys!

We're Really Doing It!

134 miles done! We're halfway through the Adirondacks and feeling good. Our highest mountain pass this side of the Mississippi: check! 2 lakes swam in: check! A load of laundry running right now: check!

We've been living off of Maine Lobster, New Hampshire chocolate milk, and beef jerky. Needless to say, we're eating well. Watching the Olympics right now and running out of cell battery, so this will be all for now. 70 mile day tomorrow from North Haverhill, NH to Rochestor, VT. 4 days, 3 states :) Oh, and the humidity has not exactly been agreeable for us, lol.

27% Donated / Flying to Portland!

 

Our trip is 27% sponsored!

 

$815 has already been donated to rebuild a well in Nicaragua! That's enough support from our friends and family to get us from Portland, Maine (where we're flying to TODAY!) to Flint, Michigan. That's our first two weeks, but there are still lots of miles available for sponsorship. $3000 will pay for the complete repairs of our sponsored well, and we'd love to have you be a part of that project.

Plus, your belief in and support of our trip means the world to us :)

You can donate online through our Crowdrise links or by mailing a check written out to Living Water International to:

David & Leanne Smith

C/O Deziree Iams

2296 A 36th St

Los Alamos, NM 87544

I'm trying not to jinx us, but everything appears to be packed and ready! They even started putting our bike together yesterday, so it should be good-to-go when we show up on Friday. Our flight today leaves at noon and lands in Portland at midnight. Here's to a safe flight, a good night's rest, and a seamless beginning to our trip across the country!

Bad Hair Day

One of the last things David and I wanted to do before our trip was get our hair cut. Made sense, because the longer we waited, the less likely we'd be to have to mess with it during the trip. For me, that meant making an appointment and getting some friends to help me find a short, simple cut that would require no maintenance, keep me cool, and improve our aerodynamics!

Since David cuts his own hair, he doesn't need to bother with appointments. Unfortunately, on Monday night when David was getting ready for a last pre-trip trim, his razor didn't seem to be working. He removed the attachment comb (used to choose how long you want your hair cut), messed around with it, and immediately tested it out by running the now-worker yet completely-unprotected razor straight over his head. We're hoping the resulting "racing stripe" will help us bike faster.

David trimmed the rest of his hair down as far as I was willing to let him (even with helmets, I don't want to start our trip with him completely bald!). His plan is to wear a hat for his last two days of work. Other than that, we are now completely packed and anxious to leave!

What to Wear on a Bike

Packing for a cross country bike trip can be tricky. There are so many factors to consider, including usefulness, wife-happiness, and most importantly, weight! Deziree had the idea to take pictures of the few outfits I plan on bringing, and how mixing and matching will allow what little weight we can afford to bring lots of possibilities.

Biking Day

Pearl Izumi shorts and shoes, cycling tank top, Giro Cycling Gloves, Smartwool Cycling Socks, and ExOfficio Bugsaway Bandana. This will be my go-to outfit most days. I plan on bringing 2 cycling tops, 2 cycling shorts, and 3 pairs of socks. I will wash one outift at night and let it dry while wearing the other one the next day.

Inclement Weather

Tricky weather days will require a few extra pieces. My Marmot Rain Jacket will do for both warmth and dryness. I also have a pair of FHS blue spandex from my days of track that I'll use in rain, wind, whatever. When we got rained on in Colorado, I found that I'm pretty sheltered behind David, and my bent-over position also keeps my legs mostly out of the rain.

Around Camp

I have a few handy options for what to wear when we're off the saddle. We hope to be into camp early afternoon each day to avoid the hotter hours, so that leaves quite a bit of time to hand out in non-spandex-based clothing. Here are a few ideas:

Smartwool Zip-Up for the cooler nights

My favorite wash-in-sink-and-wear dress!
Plus a killer scarf my friend, Kristin gave me :)

Lounging in a tank top and REI "Knickers"
Oh, and our favorite folding chairs!

Hiking Pants and
my Under Armour Shortsleeve V-Neck

And it all goes...

In my panier! Everything I plan on needing to wear (hopefully!) fits into this yellow bag that attaches to a rack on the rear of our bike. David also has one, with all the clothes he hopes to need.

See Deziree's take on the shoot here at her awesome photography blog! And, if you're interested in any of the items listed here, check out the links. The commission we earn from anything you buy through these links goes directly to support our cause of rebuilding a well in Nicaragua!

Packing!

We're in the home stretch!  We are officially done with our training, and today we shipped the bike out via Fedex.  Packing a tandem is much more difficult than packing a single bike.  Bike shops have extra bike boxes, but they're all for single bikes, so my initial thought was to tape two boxes together and reinforce it with lumber.  That changed when we got two boxes from bike shops and turned our living room into a shop.

The longer box we had was 57" long and our bike was significantly longer.  The typical bike is prepared for shipping by removing the front wheel, pedals, and seat post.  The rear derailleur is loosened, rotated, and taped to the frame, the handlebars are turned, and voila! it fits into a bike box.  

Instead of doing the same thing for a single bike, I decided to shorten the bike as much as possible.  I started by doing everything listed above for a single bike and ended up with about 75" of bike.  I then removed the rear wheel and uninstalled the rear derailleur and taped it to the frame, all the while leaving helpful instructions for the bike mechanics to put back together, like "Sorry, lost the bolts.  Hopefully you have the right replacement bolts to put together".

After getting everything uninstalled the bike ended up at 60".  Three extra dumb inches.  After wrestling with the bike, hoping for a miracle, I decided to cut a hole in the end of the box to fit the rear fork out.  I put a block of wood in there and secured it with 2 pounds of duct tape, bubble wrap, scraps of cardboard, and more duct tape.  It fit, and the bike box was only 65" long, which was under the magic 70" limit that doubles the shipping cost.

I finagled the seat posts, handlebars, fenders, rear rack, and other miscellaneous components in there and it weighed in at 58.5 pounds, which was under the other magic limit of 60 pounds.  I added another pound of packing tape and duct tape, and we have a bike on its way to Portland.

Seriously Gifted

My work family gave me this gift basket for our trip. Nothing says "We love you and good luck" like beef jerky, energy bars, and hand sanitizer! The card was also really cute:

Adios!

That's Spanish for:

Sure, go ahead and leave your friends, the only people who really care about you!

Even though we haven't yet left for our trip, it's been really awesome to see how our friends and family are already gathering around us, to encourage and support us in so many ways.

And for anyone wanting to send us a package along the way, just call/text David or I and we'll let you know a good address. Apparently, it's not too hard to have packages delivered to Post Offices along the way as long as we're able to swing by to pick up our things within a week or two.

And a note about the ads...

Also, we're experimenting with ads as a way to earn some extra money for our cause. Hopefully, they're not too annoying and they might actually add an extra dollar or two towards our well in Nicaragua!