One state down...

So Fitchburg to Amherst was a hard day of cycling. Amherst to Pittsfield, as it turns out, was at least as hard. Here's the elevation chart from that day's cue sheet:
Those would be the Berkshires. Including one 1/4mi stretch of road that was a 17% grade that flattened out to an 11% grade for another half mile. For context, roads in the west are never more than a 6% grade because between building all the roads in the east and building all the roads in the west it was decided that anything over 6% was too steep. For more context for you Ithaca folks, Buffalo Street is apparently around a 10% grade.

But we killed those hills and made it into Pittsfield in one piece. In Pittsfield we stayed at the YMCA, and it was indeed fun, because they let us use their pool and sauna. I went to bed early that night despite the final championship game being on. This was a good decision. The next day was a little over 80 miles and I woke up tired and sore from the previous two days of mountains.

Pittsfield to Poughkeepsie day was way more fun, even though it was long. For one thing, here was the cue sheet for that day:
Dani, one of the riders, saw this and practically burst into tears of joy. Those first 15 miles were still pretty rough, though. But, Pittsfield to Poughkeepsie day was also awesome because less than ten miles in this happened:

New York generally provided way more photo opportunities than Massachusetts:

New York also provided a roadside farmstand where we stopped and ate an entire quart of strawberries. Amazing.

And then we got to Poughkeepsie where we had a day off to build and beds to sleep in. One state down....a bunch more to go.

Ride Day #3: 51.8 miles, 4500 ft of climbing, overall elevation loss of 50 ft

Ride Day #3 for me started out as an awful day and ended as the best day yet.

Night before in Fitchburg I stayed up too late to watch the Celtics game and (unrelatedly) started having some...intestinal difficulties. So next morning I woke up feeling not so hot and set off on another drizzly day: bit more than 50 miles through some pretty intense hills. To give you a sense of it, here's the elevation chart from our cue sheet (the handout we get every morning that has directions and other pertinent information) for that day:

Around mile 15 I seriously crapped out and reluctantly called the van to come pick me up. I didn't want to give up for the day but as soon as the van came I climbed in and passed out in the backseat. After a nap and some food and a solid two and a half hour break, though, I was feeling much better. It took a lot of arm-twisting, but as the last riders were rolling out from lunch break I convinced Kyle, one of the trip leaders, to let me get back in the saddle.

Best decision I ever made.

I started out with a few other people but after less than a mile I pulled a little ahead and rode the rest of the day by myself. It was an incredible afternoon, and I rolled into town in a fantastic mood, even though physically I felt far less spectacular. I also learned two very important lessons. The first: granny gear is there for a reason.

Let me back up a little. In fact, let me back up all the way to the beginning. Most bikes these days have multiple gears, just like cars, so that you (or the engine) can have an easier time at low speeds or going up hills, but then get more bang for your buck at higher speeds with a higher gear. My bike has 27 speeds: 3 gears in the front and 9 in the back.

I thought I was a pro at cycling up hills because I lived in Providence for five years (and rode a crappy mountain bike that weighed about seven times as much as my new road bike). The best strategy for Providence-style hills, i.e. very steep but only a couple blocks long, is to get up as much momentum as possible going into the hill and then not give up an iota of it until the last possible second. This means that you start the hill in a very high gear, and downshift as little as possible. This strategy works great for short hills, but it works not at all for long hills. This is where granny gear comes in.

Granny gear is our fond term for the absolute lowest gear your bike can be in, which is pretty low when your bike has 27 gear combinations. Until the other day I had never used the granny gear on my new bike--I had never even gotten close. But chugging up those hills all by myself on the way to Amherst I realized that sometimes you can't power up a hill, because sometimes that hill lasts a full half mile. Sometimes you have no choice but to put it in granny gear and just crank away at 6 miles per hour till you get to the top.

This sounds obvious, but it's not because if you have a choice, it's much easier to get up a hill if you can go faster. If you're in a higher gear you can get more distance for each pedal revolution, the tradeoff being that it's harder to pedal. If a hill is short enough it's worth working harder to get up that hill a little sooner, but these hills went on and on and on. So I learned the very important lesson that there's no shame in using granny gear, and that going 6mph gives you more time to enjoy the scenery anyway.


The second lesson I learned?
I can do anything.

Ride Day #2

Forty-some-odd miles to Fitchburg, MA: first half in pouring rain, second half mostly uphill. Felt pretty good though, and ready to get back on the bike tomorrow. For the next week we have a bunch of days around 50 miles each, but after that our average daily mileage will be more in the 70-80 range, so this was still a pretty light day.

Last night we had dinner at the Webbers' house again, which was wonderful. They really are fantastic people (and fantastic cooks!), and it meant a lot to them to have us all there.

I can't think of any more interesting updates right now...I guess I'm not cut out for the blogging life. More later for sure.

Santa Barbara or Bust!

We are officially on our way across the country!

On Wednesday afternoon we met in Revere, MA (just north of Boston) for a day and a half of orientation: a bike maintenance clinic, a health and safety lecture, some getting-to-know-you games, safety drills, and a shakedown ride. I was definitely getting cabin fever, itching to get on the road, but it was fun to spend some quality time with the folks I'll be spending my summer with. They all seem like absolutely awesome people, and I can't wait to get to know them all better.

Friday morning we headed over to Revere Beach and dipped our rear tires in the Atlantic...

...and after that we were off! It was a very light first day, just 22.44 miles to Andover, MA, but it was great to get on the road. It's finally started to sink in, the idea of what we've begun.

Since it was such a short ride we got into town pretty early, which meant we had time to explore a little and go swimming!

A little backstory on why our first stop was so close: Boston to Santa Barbara is a new route this year, and it was designed by two Bike and Build alums who are also two of our four trip leaders, Kyle and Jose. They designed this route as a memorial to Chris Webber, a B&B alum and later program director who was hit by a car (not on his bike) and killed a little more than a year ago. Chris grew up in Andover, and his parents still live here, which is why we made this our first stop. We're staying at a school but Joan and Bill Webber have been incredible hosts to us, inviting a huge group of rowdy and hungry kids into their home and feeding us four separate meals of fantastic home-cooked food.

Today we woke up early once again and headed just down the road to Lawrence, MA, where we worked on three different houses with Merrimack Valley Habitat for Humanity. Pretty amazing story here too. This Habitat chapter had been working on rehabilitating three adjacent houses, and after a year they were almost done. One of the families had even begun to move furniture into one of them, and none of the units were more than two weeks away from completion when a nightclub under renovation next door caught fire in the middle of the night and burned down almost the entire block. The Habitat houses were completely lost, and they had to start over from scratch.

But they did start over, and even though it's only been 5 or 6 months they've made amazing progress. Then throw 32 young energetic people into the mix and you can get a lot done in an 8-hour Saturday. One group of B&Bers were digging holes and filling them with cement for fenceposts, another group was building and raising a wall:
One of the other trip leaders, Skip, and I were putting up scaffolding with the help of a few other people, and then a few of us were putting up rafters:

(That's me in the last picture.) Anyway, it's been a fantastic start to the trip and I can't wait to get back on the bike tomorrow. Next stop: Fitchburg, MA.