andy reagan only the interesting stuff

To Portsmith, Ohio

We crossed the border today into Ohio, with a shorter and nice 60 mile ride into Portsmith.  I'm at the public library now, and using their computer so I can't do pictures but I'll add them in soon, they close in an hour so I could run and go get my laptop but I don't really feel like haha.

The bin has extra space!!

My day started at 6:15 this morning, packing my bin up so tight that I have extra room!

Bikes in the AM, ready to be ridden!

What breakfast usually looks like in a church kitchen

The typical breakfast setup: bagels, cereal, and bananas in the church's kitchen.

It was only a one mile ride before we crossed the river into Ohio, here's a picture of my next to the sign on the bridge and of the group.

Welcome to Ohio!

The group! And Mark in the middle of the road haha

At 10 miles, Mark, Emma, Jen, and I stopped for a quick stretch break, and before long we were at the back of group, which is closer together on these less mountainous days which is nice.  We got onto some really nice country roads, and before long had to stop to take a picture with some of the haybails!

We love haybails!!

We saw a pretty cool suspension bridge along the way, but those didn't really come out but here is one anyway haha.

It's not worth the minute it would take to upload haha.

There was one really steep, but not very long hill and at the top there were some very friendly and cute dogs.  One was a puppy

The black puppy was sooo cute, a little shy too

I tried hard to drink lots of water, and successfully finished my camelbak (100oz of water) and a bottle of gatorade (20oz) for almost a gallon before lunch!

Everyone was there today for the most part because we weren't that spread out

Speaking of water bottles, I bought two new ones last night because one of mine had mold in it (I happened to look at the bottom of it at dinner the other night, it's opaque, and it was really gross) and the other one has some grease in the threads of the cap and I've been using it....but I thought I'd play it safe.  I was telling people that I was going to keep it with the "what's good for the bike is good for me" philosophy...but nah.

Here's the bike sans saddle bag (broken) and with the new clear water bottles

The last 5 miles of today's ride were the worst part, on a pretty busy highway, but I went fast through it and Jen kept right up with me, I was impressed.  After surviving that, most of the group stopped for ice cream, and I got a chocolate shake...yum.

After we got here I got to take a shower rigth away (love that) and then we found out that Sharif had clippers and all the guys went to town haha.  Dave buzzed his head down with a one, Joe cut his bread into a handlebar, Noah trimmed his beard into just the dirt stache, and both Joe and Noah showed their new inner cyclist by shaving their legs!

Instead of just buzzing my hair straight off (I had the option of a #1 or #2), I decided to go for the mohawk!!

The MOHAWK and my beard after only one week, the beard-off is going well

After all of this took place, it was still only 2:30 and so we decided to go check out the town and grab a snack to hold us over till dinner at 6PM.  Turns out that Kentucky is only a mile away across the river, but the really sweet suspension bridge didn't have a sidewalk...bummer.

The group walking downtown...watch out Portsmith!!

The suspension bridge was sweet, but no sidewalk...

We went to a few different shops, and ended up getting some snacks at a cool Irish Pub.  I went in on some super nachos which was a good decision for sure! The chili tasted homemade, and it'll hold me over till dinner for sure.

On our way back, a few of us stopped at the public library to check it out and turns out they have internet, score! So I cranked out this post on their computer, too lazy to go get my own to do pix.

That's all for now, I'm excited for the dinner they're going to have for us.  I'm not tired at all from the riding today...and got my blog out already so idk what I'm going to do tonight, maybe read haha?

West Virginia: Huntington

** I've moved the first three days into their own posts, but left the starter paragraph

The past few days have been awesome, although I haven't had internet access so I haven't been able to keep up the blog every day, so now I shall attempt to cover four days!! I'm going to try to remember as much as I can, and go in chronological order.  A quick summary would be that we have climbed and descended the Appalachian mountains which has been both challenging and rewarding, I got to see Jean and we ate more, excellent food! I'm still waiting on some pictures that are on other people's cameras too haha, namely at the WV border, the top of Black Mtn...and idk some others lol.

Huntington, WV

Today was the shortest of this whole segment, at 50 miles, and no mountains!  We decided to check out the capital building in Charleston before heading out, but didn't find the downtown.  The capital building is awesome. I definitely ate too much pasta the night before and was feeling a bit sluggish on the ride.  Pix of the capitol:

The memorial

Capitol building from the side

Inside of the memorial was beautiful and sad

Pretty awesome building...

We got free, fresh (watched them bake and glaze) Krispy Kreme donuts, ate three and those slowed me down as well haha.  The riding today seemed to take forever, probably because of the headwind and I was glad to be done with the day.  But it started to turn around when we got to the town, went to a really cool bike shop, and got to take a *free* cooking lesson in Jamie Oliver's food revolution kitchen!! We stopped there at 1:30, and they had two spots open at 2! We told them about Bike and Build (we were still pretty sweaty) and normally they ask for $10 to cover the food (all top-quality) and the lesson but then the other people came in for the lesson and they were like "OMG we saw you guys on TV!!" and we felt famous and they told us we didn't need to pay when we were leaving! We learned how to make four different dressings (not hard!), a different potato salad (delicious) and learned how to make a cucumber salad and actually all got to make one! It was all so good, although our vegan-edition was a little too tart for my taste haha.

It looked modest outside

It was super nice inside, all stainless and awesome

Jesse and Scott with their salads

And then we ate dinner donated by Jimmy Johns (free food galore...) which was good, and we went out to check out the town and I called and talked to Lauren on our 9th month!! After people got ice cream and books haha and I had talked to Lauren we went over to a park which was really nice.

Really nice fountain at the entrance, relieving after walking through some less than wealthy neighborhoods to get there

I played with some kids there haha

And we found they had a nice rose garden, I love this pic

Love this pic too, so pretty haha

Annnd we walked back to the church and I've spend an hour trying to organize photos and differentiate all that I've done for the past for days! Haha I hope you enjoyed reading, tomorrow we head to Ohio!  There are too many smaller little anecdotes than I can remember or put down now, hopefully I won't go another three days without internet haha