Life on the Road

Hey everyone, I'm going to be writing my second post in a row! Time sort of got away from Annamaria and I, and it was better for both of our schedules to switch up our days.

One of the things that I am most looking forward to during Bike&Build is, well, the biking. Spending every day in a new place seeing new sights and meeting new people will be one great way to pass 10 weeks. You may ask "Where will they sleep? What will they eat?". Fear not, I have the answers!

A typical day in the life of a Bike&Build-er starts at 6am. We'll crawl out of our sleeping bags, pack up and eat breakfast; this is followed by a 7:30 morning meeting at which a leader of our trip will outline the day's route and distribute directions, and we all do a last minute tune up of our bikes. After the meeting, we're off! We'll take our time with the morning ride, stopping for photo ops and interesting places along the way in small groups of 3-4 riders. By 11:30 it's lunchtime, the support van that will be following us around during the summer with extra gear and all of our luggage will set up at a lunch spot where the whole group will meet up again and get some food in our bodies. After lunch we finish the day's route, and by 4:30pm the whole group will have arrived at our host for the night! At this point, all 30 (or so) of us will be smelly and sweaty, so *hopefully* there will be showers awaiting us at our destination, and we finish our daily chores (grocery shopping, cleaning, etc). We eat dinner with our amazing hosts in our new place and then give a presentation to the community about what Bike&Build is, and generally raise awareness of the affordable housing cause in the U.S. (Annamaria and I will be well practiced in that by then!).

There are days, however, when we don't bike from one town to the next. We have Build Days and Days Off - let me explain these days that need no explanation. During Build Days we get up and, instead of setting up to continue our ride across the country, we go to a construction site with an affordable housing organization and build a house (raise the roof!). I'm sure you can imagine what a Day Off entails - we hang out, relax, explore, and have fun in a host community.

As for our hosts, they will usually be community centers, churches, YMCAs and the like who are gracious enough to allow a group of 30-odd bikers sleep on their floors for a night or two. They are pre-arranged by our group leaders, and can even be nice enough to provide us with dinner and/or breakfast during our stay! Sometimes we will need to cook for ourselves, and in this case we shop and cook as a group; our lunches on the road will be picnic style usually including a sandwich, fruit, juice, etc. By the time we're done with our day we will certainly be ready for some sleep, and excited to get up the next morning to do it all over again!

On a different note, I hope some of y'all were able to tune in to hear Annamaria and I on the radio last Friday! We were really excited about the opportunity to spread the word about our cause (and hopefully snagged some new readers). We are also trying to think of some fun and interesting ways to fundraise, so I have another plea for help. If you have ever needed to fundraise for anything (seriously, anything) tell us how you did it! Bake sales, info booths, making a spectacle of yourself, another crazy idea that you've never seen done by anyone else. Tell us your stories!