eLIFELIST.com Bike Trip

Here's the video of us on the Winston-Salem WXII news on July 4th. 

July 5th: The Smashing Pumpkins.  

It's taken me a bit to write about the Smashing Pumpkins show because I'm still recovering from it.  After an Earth shattering ride to Asheville, seriously we almost died ending the day on the Kopac's hill "Rose Hill", seeing the Smashing Pumpkins in concert was awesome.  Asheville is such a great city and the venue "The Orange Peel" was perfect.  It was the last show of their 9 show residency stay in Asheville and they played a pretty wide range of songs for about 3 hours.  Standing on our feet for about 4 hours after the day's ride was tough, we were walking like Frankensteins after the show.  Fortunately there wasn't a lot of motion from the crowd, but every time someone bumped into you there was a risk of falling on your face because our legs were no exaggeration "stiff as boards".    

The Pumpkins put on a good show, they played some of the classics off "Siamese Dream" and some new ones off their new album Zeitgeist.  I wished they had played a couple off of their first album "Gish."  The venue only held a little under a 1,000 people which made the show really intimate and very loud.  Billy Corgan was great in all his weird glory and Jimmy Chamberlain (the drummer) was excellent.  Seeing the two of them play together is pretty special, their chemistry is easy and fun to watch, they both need each other as performers.  There were three other "whippersnappers" as Billy called them, playing with them.  I bought a T-shirt for $35 while the tickets were $20 each.    

I enjoyed hearing a few of their new tracks off "Zeitgeist", some I liked, others I didn't.  Now that I own the album I have a feeling it will grow on me.  

Billy Corgan has definitely started to get on autopilot in his song writing and even then his songs are very well composed.  I guess what I mean is that he doesn't really have anything to fight for anymore in his writing and hasn't since "Siamese Dream."  He's rich, successful, and has great sales so his music has lost a bit of the passion and pain of his earlier albums.  I know that tends to happen with all great musicians once they "make it" but I'm glad to see he's at least back in the saddle with the Pumpkins and wants to keep writing and performing, that is a good sign.  

The show was great and I'm glad to check "see the Smashing Pumpkins" in concert off my list.  There are some photos below, I will be posting videos from the show soon. 

July 6th Day 7 –

The first rest day and massages!?!

After six pretty intense days of biking, we were extremely ready for a rest day. Not just any rest day, but a rest day in real luxury. First off, the Kopacs could not be any nicer to us. Two, their log cabin in Asheville is beautiful. Three, they fed us like Kings. And Lastly, Mary is a licensed masseuse. After she gave each of us an hour long Swedish muscle massage, we seriously considered buying ourselves a message table to attach to another trailer to pull. It may be worth it, but the only problem is that Lee and I would have to massage each other so that was the end of that idea…

Seriously, we wanted to thank the Kopacs for all of their hospitality and the help they gave us our first day back on the as we headed towards the Smokies, they were amazing.

Another exciting tidbit from our day off was being interviewed by the Channel 13 News crew. We made the 5:00 and 6:30 news as the ‘two stupid guys biking across the country’. Ok, I added the ‘stupid’part, that could have just been how I heard it. The video of the segment should be up shortly.

The rest day was just what we needed and were able to spend some quality time with the Kopacs, which is all that we asked for…

Tire blow out. 

Everything was going great until about 2 miles out from Hickory when I took a spill and got a tear in my front tire.  We were literally 2 miles from our hotel.  We stopped in Walmart, the only place that was open on the 4th, to look for a tire that would work.  None fit, however we did a MacGyver like patch job on the tire.  We basically cut strips from the tire we bought in Walmart and apoxied it to the inside of the tire and then duck taped another strip of tire to the outside.  We were pretty pleased with the patch job and it held up nicely the next day.  We have since bought a couple spare tires to carry at all times, we weren't expecting a torn tire this early in the trip.  

We want to be sure to give a big shout out to Mr. and Mrs. Duquette of Hickory, they are the parents of our good friend Pete from college.  They weren't able to put us up at their house, but before we could say anything they had booked a room for us at the Fairfield Inn, on them.  Quite generous and we are very grateful to them for supporting us.  Pete is getting married this August, wish we could be there Pete, best of luck to you and Karen.  

Our buddies Ramy and John Barden met us in Hickory and hung out for a bit on the night of the 4th.  It was great to see them.  They were heading to San Deigo the next morning for the wedding of another friend of ours Tim Kinnery.  The four of us had a good meal at Carrabas, mmm pasta.

We didn't get to see any fireworks on the 4th however, but we did see some a few days earlier at the bulls game.  

Next: the montrous ride to Asheville and a dude named Chris.  

Day 5 Video

Day four into Winston-Salem was great.  The ride was tough and we were both really exhausted.  Getting out of Chapel Hill lived up to it's name.  Ramy's mom made us a big breakfast before we took off.  We arrived in Winston about 4:30 and had a lot of family members come over for dinner.  My aunt Beth and uncle Steve came over with my cousin Matt who just graduated from Roanoke College.  Brent's aunt Janet and uncle Marvin also came over.  The food was great, the company was great and it felt nice to take it easy in Winston.  Although we got a call around 5:30PM that we had to be at the local TV station WXII at 6AM the next morning for an interview.  Didn't quite get as much sleep as we'd hoped but the interview in the morning was fun.  Austin Caviness interviewed us on the set with all our gear and kit on.  You can see the clip of us on the news here. 

Day three was action packed!  We left Rocky Mount around 7AM and eventually got off of highway 64 which had tons of cars and was really annoying to ride on.  After 64 we rode on Highway 98 which was great, not many cars, beautiful scenery (cows, cornfields and trees pretty much.)  We encountered some pretty big hills on 98 but it's good for us to get used to.  Vollmer Farm was one of the places we stopped for a break on 98.  They had some great homemade peach icecream and peaches which really hit the spot.  The owner of the farm John Vollmer sat down with us for a while.  He was a really nice guy and said that his farm used to be a tobacco farm but in the late 90's they began to shift to more vegetables and fruits.  He told us a little bit about organic farming, basically said that the regulations and certifications for organic farming are very intense and also the organic seeds have to be shipped from Kentucky, Vermont and or Colorado.  He said that usually one ton of regular fertility products for a certain crop is arounnd $200 whereas the organic fertility products for that same crop is almost $500.  John's farm is 50% organic and he hopes to expand into even more organic products.  He has started an organic delivery service for a lot of his customers close to the farm and the demand continues to grow. 

We continued down 98 in to old Wake Forest where the campus for Wake Forest University was until it moved to Winston-Salem in 1956.  We got our first flat tire as we arrived in Wake Forest.  Not a big deal, had it changed in 15 minutes, it felt good to have the first one behind us.  Then we ate lunch as this great place called "Over the Falls Deli and Pizzaria" where Brent and I ate an entire extra large pizza, which our waitress Angela was shocked about.  It really is ridiculous how much food we're eating.  As we were leaving Wake Forest I had a bit of a problem with the rear derailer on my bike, it was bent slightly so changing gears was a bit of a challenge, but no big deal to get to Chapel Hill.  As we rode in to Chapel Hill our buddy Ramy greeted us  and rode the last mile in on his mom's 24 year old Schwinn.  He was blowing by us with our trailers.  Ramy's mom made a feast for us: steak, pasta, salad, pie, it was great.  Then we headed to the Durham Bulls game which was awesome, their ball park was top notch, the night was perfect and the stadium was packed.  We sat with Brent's cousin Melanie and her son Andrew and daughter Sarah.  Brent was able to check "see a Durham Bulls baseball game" off his list and the Bulls won 3-1.  Overall, it was a great day but the first day we encountered some larger hills, we know it's just going to get more and more intense the further west we go in the state.  Thanks so much to Ramy's and his parents for having two really smelly bikers into their house and feeding them inordinate amounts of food.  Tomorrow is Chapel Hill to Winston Salem.

Day 3 Pictures

Day 1, DONE.  

We left the Outer Banks this morning around 8:30.  We dipped our tires in the Atlantic ocean and hopped on to get out.  Overall the first day went well.  Couple things we learned:

1. Our bags are really heavy:  We were talking about things we could ditch two hours into the ride.  

2. Head winds are the devil:  It is staggering how crucial the wind will be in this trek.  You can pedal at maximum intensity and not increase your pace in the slightest.  When the winds were really bad we averaged between 9-10 MPH.  Brutal.  When they died down or were behind us our average went up to 16-17 MPH.  We had headwinds pretty much all day today.  

3. Clouds are our friends unless they have rain in them.  

4. Eating every two hours is necessary.  

5. This trip is going to be awesome but we have our work cut out for us.  

About 10 miles from Plymouth some pretty hefty rain clouds and a thunderstorm starting moving in from the North.  We high tailed it and beat the storm before it reached us.  It only rained for 30 minutes so it doesn't count as a day towards the bet Brent and I made (1 hour of rain equals a day, I said it would rain 10 days on the trip before Colorado, Brent said 5, the looser has to carry 10 more pounds of gear for a week.)

We're staying in the Port O' Plymouth Inn "A World Center for Wood Products" they have a pool which was great after the first day.  On to Rocky Mount tomorrow, we're going to start leaving as early as possible from hear on out.  

Thanks to everyone that is following us!

Pictures from Day 1

One day to departure video and pics.  We tuned our bikes up in a Walmart parking lot, had our first night of camping.  We skipped paying for a camp ground and went back into the woods where some houses were being built and found a perfect empty lot to camp in.

Today we put all gear out to see what we're dealing with.  It seems like a lot obviously but we've been pretty careful to not take anything we don't absolutely need.  We're going on a 90 mile ride tomorrow to Purcellville from Arlington.  We head to Kitty Hawk this Thursday morning and will be hang gliding Friday, and heading out Saturday morning.