Ohio Birthday

(birthday calisthenics)

I was the first person to congratulate Tom on his birthday today. He was sleeping on the floor blocking the hallway, and I tripped over him heading to the bathroom at 6:13 this morning. "Sorry dude . . . Happy Birthday." Let's just say that Tom was a little angry over my "trip" to the bathroom.

Luckily, Tom's fortunes changed by mid-day. His dad and sister drove through Cleveland to join us for lunch, laughs, and a hearty chorus of "Happy Birthday." Then his luck got even better . . .

(birthday cake)

Chelsea Hanson, who we stayed with last night made a homemade carrot cake, and her cousins also had a chocolate moose cake, a white cake, and a cookie cake. Whew. No one ever said this ride would be easy, but today sure was . . . a piece of cake. Ha ha ha . . ppy Birthday Tom!

~ Austin

Cleveland

Today we left Erie, PA, expecting to ride about 120 miles to Cleveland, OH. We figured it would be a long day, but we also figured that Ohio, being more or less in the midwest, would be pretty flat.

It turns out there are some decent hills in Ohio. On the other hand, it turns out that it was only 96 miles to Cleveland, so I guess it evens out. We arrived to stay with the Hanson family, whose daughter, Ashley, was on the Vanderbilt Rally Team with us. The Hansons made us a big dinner, chicken, pasta, and salad, and then Ashley brought some dessert to supplement the brownies they'd made, chocolate cake and a potent caramel apple gold rush from a local restaraunt.

We got here pretty early, so we've had a lot of time to kick back. Tomorrow we'll visit a local Rotary and hopefully raise some money. Stay tuned.

~ Tom

Teeny Mistake

We made the "TV news" four times last week. Here are three blips that they put online. The first one is from R News in Rochester . . . Rn't we cool? ha ha. The second one is also cool except for one mistake . . . apparently the people at the TV station thought that Tom and I were teenagers. Oh well. What R you gonna do? We figured that they assumed we were teenagers because of the way we acted. Check it out:

Rochester: R News
Buffalo: NBC
Buffalo: ABC

~ Austin

Chucky Cheese Please

Amelia (6) in Baltimore loves Chucky Cheese's. Of couse, Tom and I also love Chucky Cheese's . . . so when we saw one on the road, we couldn't miss the chance. Amelia, this one's for you:



~ Austin

Rally Across America . . . in Canada

Found something special in Buffalo today - a bicycle museum called Pedaling History! Carl, the owner let us go in and take the tour. We saw the original hobby horse, a floating bicycle, a Schwinn Black Phantom, a bike with a radio, and a bike with a sub machine gun made for WWII!

In the back of the museum, they were having a clinic for kids - "riding without training wheels." Kids everywhere, wheels rolling, and feet flying. I walked over to thank Carl for the museum visit, and almost got taken out by a rouge rider. Seeing her barreling my way, I jumped to the left . . . she went right . . . into a curb. Another kid slammed into a safetly barrel a few minutes later. Tom comments, "You can't learn to ride a bike without learning to fall."

After this, we did something funny. Rally Across America went to Canada. We checked out Niagra Falls and took a few pictures. Wow, that's a bunch of water.

Next stop was a party with the Pawelski family back in Buffalo. They had a daughter named Natalie who passed away 3 years ago from Neuroblastoma, and they contacted us after hearing about Rally Across America from the Hansons, who we met in Cape Cod.

The Pawelski's kids, Emily (9) and Eric (5), had been collecting pennies for the past few weeks, and they were excited to add to ever growing bag of change . . . which, by the way, doubled in size this evening . . .

When we got home to the Harvey's, Pete walked us out into the garage . . . 5 huge coffee cans full of pennies. It's impressive . . . and tomorrow, we're going to load 'em up, and hit the road searching for more.

~ Austin