Along the way we stopped at many great places to drink many great hot coffee beverages. This is my personal laymen opinion of the ones at which we stopped. Shelly agrees with these as well.

Best Atmosphere: The Pour House in Florence, CO. Menu was simple and not overwhelming. No feeling of an “elitist” coffee drinking environment. Small town old bar converted into low key, eclectic coffee house.

Best Coffee: Hands down… Old Town Coffee in Lander, WY used the pour over drip method and was quite possibly the most delicious cup of coffee I have ever had. Flavor was off the charts. It was a light roast Latin American blend.

Best all around: The Hub in Danville, KS. Extensive menu (almost too much so) but a great one. Great quality fairly-traded organic coffees, great menu items and truly a “hub” atmosphere of community. Folks with suits/ties and grunge street attire all in one place. A sweet spot.

We should be arriving on the other side of this vast nation tomorrow, October, 6, where we will ceremoniously dip (or perhaps plunge) our bikes into the Atlantic ocean.
Feel free to celebrate with us by riding your bicycle into a body of water tomorrow.

Well, we made it across Kansas and are almost across Missouri. The flats and the hills both presented their challenges. We have certainly felt at home climbing these Ozark mountains. As Jonathan has said, “Throw in a few palm trees and I would believe we were back in the DR”.

As promised I bring to you another day to day post. People are always curious what we eat. If you are a one of those people this post is for you.

I’ll start with the supplies of our portable kitchen. Most importantly is our stove, the MSR Whisperlite. This little guy is ingenious and the go-to gear for most backpackers and touring cyclists. He packs up small and has never given us any grief. Thanks to Aunt Joanne for gifting it to us, it has been put to good use.

Next, the cookware. We carry two stainless steel pots (made by MSR). One fits inside the other and then the stove fits inside that so it all packs up nice and neat. The additional piece of cookware we picked up along the way has quickly become one of our favorite pieces of gear. Our dear friends Lauren and Adam gifted us their Fry-Bake which is best described as a frying pan with no handle and a lid or a backpackers dutch oven. Along with a lesson from Adam on how to saute with the Whisperlite (most are lead to believe you can only boil) the Fry-Bake has changed our cooking immensely for the better. Thanks Adam and Lauren for the gift of gourmet camp meals.

Now for the actual food stuffs.

Breakfast. We try to keep it simple but always hot. Quaker quick oats (accept no store brand substitutes, not the same) with sliced almonds, cinnamon, honey or sugar, peanut butter, and a pinch of salt to bring out all the flavor. Of course coffee. We try to buy a pound at a time from local coffee shops but we have found that since we left the mountains local coffee shops are few and far between so we buy the best choice at the grocery store.

Lunch. Lunch for us isn’t really lunch but rather a series of snacks throughout the day. We take a break about every 12 miles and typically eat a little something at each stop. The staple snack is ant tacos – peanut butter and raisins in a folded tortilla. Fruit is a daily deal and is usually a nectarine, an apple, and also bananas (good for soreness). In the beginning we were carrying cheese with us, cutting off slices through the day, but as the temps rose we had to switch to crackers for our salty fix. Triscuts have been our preferred choice. Now that it has cooled off we are buying cheese again (and still buying triscuts, a classic combo.) Some times we will snack on left overs from dinner but it has not been the case very often that we have left overs. We like to end our day with a bag of chips and a cold beverage (and sometimes ice cream).

Dinner. Most often dinner is a mix of veggies (onion, garlic, green pepper, mushrooms, tomatoes, something else green) on top of pasta, rice, or beans with cheese mixed in there. About once a week we make pizza from scratch (Yes, the dough and all). This is the know how we gained from Adam and the amazing capabilities of the mighty Fry-Bake. We probably eat out about once a week which is usually Subway, Pizza, or Burgers.

When it hasn’t been sweltering hot (which was only about a week of the journey) we make tea at night.

We have not done an actually calorie count but we are guessing we consume about 5000 calories a day. Bike Touring, one of the rare occasions in life when you compare the calorie content on two items and always choose the higher one.

So we have been back on the bike for a week now after our intermission for Stephen and Korie’s wedding.

My mom mentioned that people are asking questions about the trip that she can’t answer like where we sleep, what we are carrying and other basic details. So I will try to do a few posts on the nuts and bolts of the ride.

I will start with the rhythm of our average day of riding and later fill all interested readers in on our gear, what we are eating, and other random bits of info.

So our day starts around 5:30 am. After we get into our cycling clothes we get everything out of the tent and I pack up the house while Jonathan gets breakfast started. Between packing up, eating, reading, and stretching; wake-up time to roll-out time is usually 2 hours.

We try to plan for 50-60 miles of riding each day. Some of this depends on how towns and services are situated. For example we might only want to ride 50 miles but if the choices for camping are at 30 miles or 70 miles we will choose 70 miles.

We typically ride through the day stopping every 12-15 miles for a snack break. Sometimes breaks are in a town at a gas station where we sit on the curb and eat or some times they are on a pull out just off the road where we sit ourselves on the ground (far away from the road).

Arrival time for the day depends on a lot of things like when we left, elevation gain or loss, wind, picture taking, random conversations and so on. Usually we end our riding around 3pm hit the grocery store and then our camp site. At the start of our trip we were mostly staying in RV parks. $12-15 gets you a tent site and a shower, not bad. Now that we are away from tourist thoroughfares we have been staying in city parks, no showers but they are free!

Once we get camp set up and possibly ourselves we cook dinner. After dinner and clean up we read for a bit. Currently we are reading The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey. Typically one of us drifts off while the other is reading and then we know it is time for bed. Lights out happens around 9 to get rested for another day of riding.

So there you have it, a typical day in the life of the cycling Ramms.

Ride on. Right on.

Kansas riding has been brutal.

The sunsets and the people we have met have been beautiful but the riding…brutal.

It doesn’t let up. Sure, our slowest speed is much higher than our slowest when climbing mountains. But our slowest speed is not far off from our highest speed each day which means we are pedaling… always… pedaling.

It’s truly somewhat like getting on a treadmill for 5 hours with little variation in how much pressure you’re putting on the pedals. My legs are more sore than they’ve been the whole trip and I think it’s because there’s no downhill reprieve after a slow climb up.

We hit some small hills yesterday and rejoiced that we would get to do some “regular bike riding” meaning ups and downs for a bit. We actually coasted for a little while! It was glorious.

So for me… Kansas has been the biggest surprise of our trip. It has truly been the hardest part even after slow climbs at high elevation in the Rockies… Kansas is kicking our butts and we are truly glad for it.

or The Tee Pee Lady

Rewind about 3 weeks. We were planning for a 60 mile day from a little town of fifty people to Rawlins, WY. It was to be an all up hill day but our legs have gotten strong so we were confident. Not strong enough for Wyoming headwinds. We stopped half way there at a cafe in Lamont, which is so small it doesn’t even list the population.

We had heard of some free camping near by and the folks at the cafe told us to turn back a 1/4 mile and go to the tee pees. Yes, tee pees. As we pull into the drive way of a modest trailer home with 2 towering tee pees in the yard we see a sign that says Bicycle Campground.

We had been directed to a cyclist haven. The lady was not home so we had to learn what was up by snooping around. The tee pees were set a midst picnic tables and chairs and hemmed in by desert flower beds and pea gravel paths. We snooped a bit more and found in a large metal locker a fridge stocked with cold water and ice cream treats. There were also other treats/useful things like extra toiletries, batteries, pillows, and a box of cowboy Bibles (which are just Bibles really with a cowboy on the front).

The place had charm to say the least and we felt the wind was a divine appointment for us to stop and spend time in this special place.

We did eventually get to meet our host. LB is her name. A lovely lady in her 60s who wants to take care of cyclists on that hard stretch of WY road. She called the tee pees majestic and shared her visions of what she hoped to add. From the world’s standards she has very little but LB saw nothing but an opportunity to give generously to travelers. No woes of not having enough just hopes for being able to put more intto this spot. A true servant.

Her note on the donation jar next to the fridge sums her up well…”This jar is for donations if you like. If you are in need of cash please take what you need. All donations are used to help keep the fridge stocked. Sincerely LB”

We met Jesus that day on our bike ride in the form of a lady from Wyoming. He has a habit of showing up in the strangest of places when you least expect it.

LB, we think your tee pees are majestic too.

Ride on. Right on.

1800 miles traveled. Seaside, OR to Colorado Springs, CO

Part 1 of our trip has concluded. We have paused to travel (by plane) for the wedding of Jonathan’s cousin/friend/”brother” Stephen.

Riding will begin again August 23. Kansas here we come.

Hopefully this week in TX will allow for some catch up posts.

Love to our Doulos friends who started school today. We miss you all deeply and pray for you regularly.

Ride on. Right on.

So of the many reason’s we chose to do this cross country trek the over arching reason was to learn by doing something hard and we have been learning in deed.

We get many repeat questions as we meet people along the way. The questions locals ask differ from the questions vacationers ask. The primary local question to us is “Which direction are you headed?” When we reply with “East.” They reply with a some what relieved “Good.”

The reason for their relief? Wind. Previously unknown to us the prevailing winds in the Northwest blow eastward. We never thought much about wind before this trip. Now we think about wind throughout the day.

For us eastward wind gives the lovely benefit of a tailwind. A good tailwind can feel like a big hand giving you a push up a hill. It is a glorious feeling. Turn around and the glorious tailwind becomes an invisible wall of a headwind and the fight to gain ground is on. There is also the crosswind to consider. Neither holding you back or pushing you on, the crosswind distracts from the forward goal and has you tilting your bike this way or that to stay the course.

Our assessment is that wind can effect a day more than any other variable, more than soreness, more than rain, more than heat. It can make a day great or it can make a day difficult.

We spent some time this past spring talking about the Holy Spirit in our Doulos staff devotional time. Wind is a common metaphor for the Spirit. No matter the direction of the wind, our ride gets me thinking on the Holy Spirit.

We believe there is a grand importance in life to doing hard things. To challenge body, mind, and spirit so it is trained up for the hard things we do not choose in life. Tailwind days remind me of God’s grace and his encouragement in choosing hard things. Headwind days (which we have not had many) are humbling and remind me of our need for the mercies of God and that this journey cannot be done on our own. Crosswinds remind me to focus and stay the course.

The Spirit blows over us like the wind to encourage, to humble, and at times to help us maintain that focus. All to the glory of God and his Kingdom we are called to bring on earth as it is in heaven.

This bike adventure is making us stronger and we give thanks knowing it is preparing us for off-bike adventures ahead.

Ride on. Right on.

From Two Bridges, MT to Ennis, MT, posted by Jonathan Ramm on 7/24/2011 (16 items)

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So we have reached the great state of Big Sky Country, Montana.

After our short stint in Idaho and a fairly easy climb over Lolo Pass we made our way down the mountain and toward Missoula, MT. Our dear friends the McAllisters (who came to visit with us in Lowell, ID and who cooked us a great dutch oven Lasagna and Berry Cobbler!) hooked us up with a home stay in Missoula.

Harley’s cousin Jane and her husband Dudley happily took us in for two nights. We were wowed and humbled by their hospitality toward 2 perfect strangers. Jane had just gotten back in town from a 2 week road trip and still didn’t bat an eye at the prospect of house guests. Jane had ridden across the country after college and said she knew how great a bed and home cooked meals were after being on the road and couldn’t consider not having us stay.

Dudley fed us 2 great meals of Antelope steak and Elk burgers. They also introduced to us the wonders of the Aeropress (our new favorite way to make coffee). Dudley – You should know we bought one on the way out of town.

Beyond the GREAT food, the bed, and the laundry use we so enjoyed the conversation and stories we heard from Jane and Dudley. Deep thanks to them both for opening their home.

And to Harley -Just so you know, we did go to Paul’s Pancake Parlor. Delicious! Thanks for the recommendation.

Its a climbing day. We should get to pedaling. Enjoy the photos.

Ride on. Right on.

From Missoula, MT to Hamilton, MT, posted by Jonathan Ramm on 7/24/2011 (17 items)

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