Bike killers

About fifteen miles into the trail this morning, we ran into six cyclists from England. Apparently, they were biking from San Francisco to New York to raise awareness for HIV prevention (the website is www.universitychallenge.org.uk). They carried their own gear, had camped a few times, and had been traveling the past five weeks. Apparently, they hadn't really been bikers before this either, and they had one cool story about "killing" a bike by running it into a car. After trading a few stories, we rode on to Sadalia. It was a good start to the day.

Unfortunately, the trail slowed us down a little bit. Austin got a flat tire a few miles after meeting the other cyclists, and it was a lot harder to fix that with the little pumps we carry around on our bikes. And the sand kept our pace down to about 12 mph. Still, we managed to get to Sadalia about 5:30.

There, Austin got two more flat tires. We were only carrying two spare tubes, and Austin said he hadn't grabbed the rubber cement for the patch kit. I called the closest bike shop, and they told me they were closed for a race. When I explained what we were doing, though, the owner said he would hang around for the next 20 minutes if I thought I could get there. The bike shop was actually on the same road as the race, so I ended up going the wrong way against a bunch of bikers riding their practice lap. But I made it to the bike shop, got a new tube, and headed back to find Austin pumping up the tire. Apparently he had rubber cement and was able to patch the tire.

And he had some helpers. Two kids were asking him if we were in the race today, and then offered to take us over to race. So we followed the kids to the bike race and decided to try to enter. Unfortunately, they weren't taking "beginning" racers when we arrived. But we got some info from one of the teams there about a race in St. Louis on Tuesday, so we may get another chance.

At this point, it was almost 7:00, and night was falling. So Austin and I, inspired by the races, sprinted off to try to beat the setting sun. Unfortunately, we weren't that fast. So we turned on our lights and headed on. Eventually, it got too dark for cars to see us, so we had to call Nick to get him to follow us into Warrensburg (the hometown of my hero, James McAdams). A short time later, we made it to our hosts for tonight. We got to do a little catching up with Chelsea, who has rejoined us for the tour.

~ Tom

Columbia News

We visited Children's Hospital at the Univeristy of Missouri today, and we had two TV stations chronicle our adventure! Here is a link to one:

NBC 8, Columbia: Cycling Against Cancer

The whale hats were a hit as usual, and we got to share some "stories from the road" with a few of the kids. Several of the staff took us on a tour of the hospital facitilies. In the past few years, they have expanded and kids now have more space for treatment and a new out door playground.

Tomorrow we will ride towards Kansas City to pick up Chelsea (film crew) from the Airport. I never thought I would pick someone up from the airport on my bicycle.

~ Austin

Monster time in Columbia

We had a great time in Columbia tonight. My cousin Paul who is a pediatritian at the the University of Missouri organized a huge dinner for us at his church. We had over 50 people attend. We had three honorary heroes present and several doctors and researchers from the University of Missouri. The celebration was almost as big the monster burgers we downed after riding 200 miles the other day (see below).








mmmmm . . . i knew you would all enjoy that :)

~ Austin

Chicago Tribune

We made the paper in Chicago:

Chicago Tribune: Big Ride for the Littlest Cancer Patients

Neat article about our visit to Hope :)

~ Austin

Post 200

We are currently at a cheap hotel in Moberly, MO - where we crashed afer riding the big 200 yesterday. We washed our clothes in the sink last night, and we slept like rocks. whew.

They put an article in the Iowa City paper about us and Brandon:
Iowa City Press-Citizen: Pounding the Pedals

~ Austin

Double Century!

Today Austin and I blew away our old record of 152 miles by riding 200. 201.31 to be precise.

We had been wanting to ride 200 miles for awhile now, so yesterday we decided to try it today. With that goal in mind, we left the Wicks household at 6 this morning, right before sunrise, and we kept on riding until 10:00 tonight, a little after sunset. Fortunately, we reached our mileage goal without too much night riding. Now we're pretty tired.

Tomorrow we should have an easy ride into Columbia. We look forward to it.

~ Tom

Brandon, also known as Spiderman

We met Shannon at Iowa University Children's Hospital this morning. She took us around to meet all of the kids including Brandon (5), our honorary hero in Iowa. Brandon gave each of us a big high-five and then told us about how much he loved Spiderman. In fact, he even told us that he was spiderman!


We took spidey and his family to Outback Steakhouse for lunch, where we met up with lots of friends including Matt, who had been on the road with us in July helping Nick with the documentary (remember? the goofy guy that used to star in all of our tacky pictures :)? We also had some friends from the hospital join us.

We went to bed early tonight because tomorrow . . . we're going for a new record . . .

(for those of you commenting, it does not involve riding on the Interstate)

~ Austin

Iowa City

Today we went to church with the Moline Rohrbachs, where we met a boy named Chance and his brother Gabe. Chance was diagnosed with AML, and his brother Gabe was his bone marrow donor. The pastor had us stand up at the beginning of the service, and we gave both of them t-shirts and made a quick announcement. We had a pretty good reception; the congregation applauded despite seeing us in bike shorts. Afterwards, we showed Chance and Gabe our bikes, made a quick stop at the John Deere visitor center with the Rohrbachs, and crossed the Mississippi into Iowa.

Unfortunately, there was no 'Welcome to Iowa' sign, so we had to stop at the world's largest truck stop, just off of I80, to get our picture with an Iowa sign in the background. The truck stop itself was pretty cool - we got to take a look at the showroom (those trucks are a major upgrade from our bikes) and have some lunch.

With lunch out of the way, we kept on heading west, expecting an easy day, only about 60 miles in flat Iowa. Unfortunately, it turns out Iowa's not so flat. The hills aren't that bad - they were nothing like what we had in New Hampshire and Vermont - but after Nick's stories about seeing clear across the state, we were a little disappointed.

Still, we made it to Iowa City in pretty good time. There we met the Wicks family, our hosts for the night. They made us some dinner, including some Iowa sweet corn. In this case, at least, Nick's stories did not disappoint. It was some good corn - Austin ate four ears. After a little ice cream, we sat back for the evening. (Man, life on the road is rough)

~ Tom