BolderBoulder Race Today and Bike Ride Tomorrow

Mary Kay and Matt ran the BolderBoulder 2010K this morning.  Matt ran with Mary Kay they finished together.  Mary Kay was 35 our of 168 in her age group.  There were nearly 50,000 runners.  Phoebe, Sylvie and I went to Boulder with them and had a nice breakfast at Denny's.  We got to the Colorado U. football stadium in plenty of time for the finish.  Kyle and Sarrah came up, also.  It was hot weather for the run, probably in the mid 80's when they finished.  They did get a free beer at the end of the race.  I drank Mary Kay's.  When we got back to Matt's I took my hat off and looked in the mirror - a real bad case of hat hair.  That made me think about what was going to happen after nearly 30 days of riding - I have visions of Helmet Head!!         

Tomorrow starts the ride.  I am really proud of Mary Kay for running the race one day in this altitude, and then being ready to start the bike ride in the morning.  We have made a few changes to our route schedule.  As we started looking at the TransAmerica Bike Route maps, we will be going through some very desolate areas.  If we are not careful we could end up with a very, very long ride just to get to a place to get a drink of water, let alone a place to pitch our tent for the night.  I think we have it figured out now for about the first four days.  Some days we won't have any access to the Internet.  If we have cell access I am going to at least Twitter our status and have it posted to the blog.  If no one hears from us for a couple of days, you better contact Verizon and ask them to trace our cell phone.   Matt and the girls are going to meet us at our first campsite and probably stay with us overnight.  Kyle and Sarrah and maybe Julie will come for supper, too.  After that we will be on our own.

On the right hand side of the blog there is a new link - "michael noel magee scholarship" and a link to the Marshall County Community Foundation.  We have the scholarship set up and ready for anyone to look over.  There is also more information on the added pages about Noel and the reason we have established the scholarship.  We will be giving a scholarship to an individual in what would have been Noel's graduating class at Plymouth High School.  Part of the criteria for selection will be an essay stating how the individual and his/her family have encountered and dealt with adversity in their life.  We are very excited about the potential for this scholarship and encourage you to look at the information. Tax deductible donations can be made directly through the community foundation website.  We would like to thank everyone at MCCF for their help in setting this up.   Above all, one of the major things we hope to instill in people through our ride is a desire and a willingness to do something for someone else.  If it is the Michael Noel Magee Scholarship, that would be great, but please, do something for others!!

Well, hopefully the next time your hear from us (tomorrow night) we will have completed our first day of riding and it will have been a success.  Please think of us and keep us in your prayers.

Jack and Mary Kay

Blessing our Bikes - In Denver - Loading Up - Practice Ride

The night before we left for Denver family and friends met at Opie's Deli in Plymouth.  We had a great evening.  Father Kummer and Deacon Terry (or known as "Tink" at the right time) blessed our bikes for the trip.  We really appreciated that.  Too bad Mary Kay didn't have her clips on.  Poor Ruby had two black eyes and a stitch from her wayward step off the pier a couple nights before.  We will miss everyone.  Krysta already sent us a short video of Beck pitching a baseball to her.  That brought a tear to our eyes the first day out.  What will it be like after 15 days?

We had a great trip to Denver (driving).  We are looking forward to the trip back.  On the way out we stayed in Omaha, NE and had a great meal at the Baby Blue Sushi.  It was a great restaurant - we would highly recommend it.  The next day our eating was a little different.  We ended up having lunch in Ogallala, NE at the Pizza Hut.  When we stopped the waitress wanted us to know that they weren't going to put any more food on the lunch buffet, since it closed in 25 minutes.  Just a little different atmosphere.  We did meet a neat older gentleman.  He seemed to be looking for someone to talk to.  During our conversation he told us quite a bit about the history of Ogallala.  This was one of the main destinations for cattle drives from Texas.  As he said it was quite a town with quite a reputation.  Lots of saloons, dance halls, and red light districts.  As he said many of the trail drivers got paid in cash and left for Texas broke.  He knew some families who had ancestors come up as drivers and ended up starting ranches in the area.   We told him what our plans were and he told us about riding his bike with a friend when he was a kid.  They would each tell their parents that they were staying overnight with the other boy.  Then they would ride their bikes 15 miles to another town to go to a movie.  Sometimes they would spend the night with the other boy's grandparents, and other times they would ride back in the late at night.  I guess there probably weren't too many cars on the road back then - there aren't too many even today.  What started as a pretty normal lunch turned into a nice conversation. 

Today we started packing and doing a couple of practice rides with the trailer on the back of my bike.  With all of Mary Kay's cosmetics, hair products, body lotion, sun screen etc., I think we have one pannier just full of that.  I am starting to wonder just how many pair of underwear I really need to take.  I put the tent, sleeping bags, air mattress/pump, a hatchet, boys scout cooking set, and a few other things in the trailer.  It is full.  I told Mary Kay I am not going to weigh everything until we get back to Plymouth.  I don't think I want to know how much it weighs today.  My practice ride of four blocks went well.  I was hardly out of breath.

I looked at our map and the first few days rides a little more thoroughly last night.  Kansas is going to be interesting.  Finding campgrounds may be difficult, but now I am wondering just how many convenient stores and restaurants we will find.  Many of the towns we will be riding through have populations of 90 to 300.  I think a big town might be three to four thousand.  We will be on route 96 for most of the time.  I plan to list the upcoming routes a few days in advance, so that anyone wanting to keep track can see where we are headed.  The first day will be using some bike trails down to Larkspur, CO.  That should be about 50+ miles and give us a pretty good first day.  The second day we will head to Fountain, CO. not quite to Pueblo where we will pickup the TransAmerica Bicycle Trail.  We should get there on the third day, but I am not sure where we will stop that night.  Mileage wise we should be in Boone, CO. (pop. 323), but camping there is in the City Park with no restrooms. We could go on to Fowler, another 15 miles with a pop. of 1206.  It looks like they have a campground or maybe we will live it up at Bushy's Blue Sky Motel.  We will see.

Tomorrow I want to talk a little about the scholarship in honor of Noel.  Remember, - Do something for others today!!

Is it time to pack yet?

We leave for Denver about 30 hours from now driving with our bikes on the back.  It will be great to see our granddaughters and family over the Memorial Day weekend.  I put the bikes on the rack today to test everything out.  I think a little more experimenting with the distribution is necessary, then we will be ready with that part.  I am a little worried about packing though.  We haven't really started yet.  We have a pretty good idea of what we are taking, but we haven't put any of it in the panniers yet. We keep thinking of little things we might need.  Tomorrow night will be interesting I am sure.  We plan to meet friends and family at Opie's for a going away party.  Father Kummer is coming to bless our bikes.  Keep us in your thoughts and prayers. 

We have had several people ask us about what we are taking to protect ourselves.  To tell you the truth neither one of us has even thought about that.  We have thought of taking something to use in case we can't out run a few dogs.  We thought about getting some Mace.  At supper tonight we had an image of me riding in front and spraying Mace at a dog - then the wind blowing it back in Mary Kay's face.  Honest, if you hear about that happening to a couple of older bike riders sometime over the next month - I didn't do it on purpose.

We will miss family and I am sure need to talk to them several times a week.  Hopefully, we will be able to do a few Skype calls, too.

Tomorrow we pick up our custom shirts - hopefully we will have few new pictures posted in the next few days.

June 1 is our big day to start the ride home.  All along I have been thinking this was about a 1300 mile ride.  Well, a few nights ago I added all the map mileages up and it totaled over 1500 miles. Well June should be a great month for a ride.  Keep in touch and do something for others, today!

We Are Back and Getting Ready plus - Confessions of a coward!

Mary Kay started this post quite awhile ago, but she was never able to finish it.  So I have decided to go ahead and post what she wrote with a few of my own comments and catch everyone up with where we are and our plan.  If you remember one of the last things we talked about was putting the clipless pedals on and some minor mishaps that we had on our first trip.  I worked on them a little, but each evening Mary Kay seemed to be more and more worried about them. 
Here is her post -
The clip in petals are coming off of my bike.  Jack has mastered them, but I have not.  I really did give it a try, but every time I clicked in I broke out in a cold sweat.  I kept repeating to myself, click out then stop and that was all I could think about.  I could have passed the Eiffel Tower and not even noticed because I was only thinking about clicking out.  I thought about all the things I would miss seeing on our trip.  Jack's comments - When Mary Kay told me she was having dreams (nightmares) about riding with the clips, I knew it was time to suggest that she not worry about them and take them off.   They are off and now we are focused on our trip.

We got our new seats and they seem to be just what we have been looking for, but we don't really know.  For the last couple of weeks we have been having extremely high winds or rain, nearly everyday. That plus time commitments have really limited our riding.  I guess we are ready to ride in the rain or into wind on our ride home, but when the comforts of home are so close it is a little hard to get out and ride.  I guess if we aren't in shape when we start we will be after about ten days.  Really we feel pretty good about the ride and are getting extremely excited.  Yes, Ted it is going to be fun!!

We have been talking about some what ifs - we have always thought that rain may be a problem.  Hopefully, we won't see much of it, but we are preparing to ride through light rains if needed.  We realize that if we don't, we may never get home.  A two or three days of rain and no riding would really hurt our plans to be home by the end of June. 

We are using a bike route that we got through Adventure Cycling for most of the trip.  We will be following the Trans AmericaTrail - catching it in Pueblo, Colorado and taking it probably south of St. Louis, Mo.  Then we will head up near St. Louis and angle through Illinois, probably on Route 66.  It looks like the route takes us through some pretty small towns.  I am getting a little concerned that we may not find many places to camp with a shower or even a motel close on the nights we want one.  A few of the items on the maps say that there are city parks that will allow us to camp, but there are no restroom facilities in the park.  It usually does say that there is a restaurant across the street that will allow you to use their restroom (when they are open).  I am not sure how this will work with my nightly flomax routine.  This will probably give us all some interesting posts in the future.

We leave Plymouth to head to Denver on Thursday, June 27th.  I am at the point in my life where I need to make lists of my To Do's.  Right now my list has over 20 items on it.  This post is one of them, so I am almost ready to mark it off.  Anyway there are lots of things to do, between now and then. Hopefully, one more item will be to get our scholarship for Noel set up through the Marshall County Community Foundation so that people can make donations to that cause if they choose.  If we get it finalized I will talk more about it in a future post.

One of the things we want to do on the trip is to meet people and perhaps interview at least one person on the road each day.  I have been trying to think of things we might want to ask people to really find out something about their life in a short interview.  If anyone has some ideas of thought provoking or interesting questions that we could use, let us know.  I asked my colleague, Carol Myers, that question this week and she suggested a question about "hope", What do they hope for?  What hope do they have for the future? Sounds like a couple of good ones.  Any others out there?

Remember find something to do for others today!
PEACE - Jack and Mary Kay