Day 82 - San Jose, CA to Santa Cruz, CA

We sure saved a tough ride to end on: 5,454 feet of climbing over just 58.4 miles. My quads were burning almost all day! I was thankful though to end on a hard ride as opposed to the typical 20-30 miles to the coast. I feel like we all got the chance to finish strong and make the last ride count as much as the first.

Over the mountains and through the woods, to Santa Cruz we go.

The tough mountain climbs were sweetened by the majestic redwood forests. One tree in particular had such a unique burn in its trunk I could technically bike THROUGH it.  

CHAAAARGE!!!!!! 

After sprinting into the cold Pacific, we celebrated in the ocean for about 15 minutes: jumping, screaming, splashing, crying, hugging, smiling...

Ready yourselves for the ceremonial front tire wheel dip... 

Oh, glory! 

What do you know about hella gnarly bike lifts? I know that they are sweetest after biking across the country. 

A huge "THANK YOU!" to my Mom...

...and to Teryl for flying out to see me complete my ride and for supporting me along the way.

A special thanks, too, to Erin and Erika for being my best friends. (Fellow Good Squad Members, I've tried multiple times to describe here what you mean to me and how you helped me...but I can't. Just know that I love you and I seriously couldn't have made it without you by my side. I'm thankful that through Bike & Build I met such wonderful people as you two.)

The Catty Corner: Erin won the Bipolar Paper Plate Award, for having the highest highs and the lowest lows. I won the Spirit Finger Award. Can you guess which one? I'll put it right next to Most School Spirit from high school.

Day 81 - Livermore, CA to San Jose, CA

WAHHH! Today we had our next to last ride, from Livermore to San Jose. All day long we rode in and out of a handful of cities. And all day long we stopped at red light after red light. It was kind of funny because we had all forgotten what it felt like to have to stop so often after being in such deserted regions for so long. Unfortunately, the stopping and starting up again also gave a lot of people, including myself, knee pain. We had a nice treat though at mile 60; Molly's boss cooked a huge feast for us including edamame with shiitake mushroom salad, cut-with-a-spoon-tender teriyaki flank steak, and fresh gazpacho.

I'm giving Erin the award for Best Bike & Build Tan Lines. 

In order to celebrate our last night we each had a 'Merica portrait made. I formally introduce to you: Machine Gun MG.

 The Catty Corner:
Q: How many Northern Californians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: Hella.

Day 80 - Davis, CA to Livermore, CA

I did not like today's ride at all. We were on some pretty bad roads as far as traffic and pavement quality were concerned. Then the weather, wind and heat, further complicated matters.  

I knew I was officially in the Bay Area at this point because we kept riding along and going over rivers of all kinds, specifically the Sacramento River and the San Joaquin River. 

Everyone was beat after second lunch and we were expecting an easy 18 mile finish. What awaited us, instead, was the illegitimate love child of Petit Jean and Texas headwinds. I was being blown all over the side of the road as I climbed a mountain. Some people rode as slow as 3 miles per hour. I'm not even sure how it was possible for us to stay upright. Needless to say, I threw my last temper tantrum of the trip in true MG freakout fashion.  

The Catty Corner:
Homeless Guy (who bursted into the laudromat): YEAH! Yeah! YEAHYEAHYEAH!!!!!

Day 79 - Colusa, CA to Davis, CA

I don't have too much to say about this ride. It was honestly almost the exact same as yesterday.

Today, we hit our 4,000 mile mark, chalked by Safety Katie, Mary, and Kaley! I can barely wrap my head around how far that is. And I've biked every mile of it...

We passed dozens of sunflower fields on the ride today. The majority of the sunflowers were dead and drooping. They all looked really sad actually, as if they were hanging their heads. I tried to brighten things up a bit.

Tonight, a Bike & Build alum named Megan, who lives in Davis, threw us a kegger, free of cost to us. We all had a great time drinking and dancing and celebrating the close of our great ride across the States. 

Ladies and gentlemen, meet the happy couple: Jim and Heather. These two are inseperable. They even pass out at parties together. To be fair, we can all fall asleep pretty much anywhere at this point. I fell asleep on the concrete floor during our build in Chico. Easily.

Erin and I played a game where we took turns grabbing objects within arms reach, just to see how many weird things we could find. She found a wax glob and pretended it was a bug eye. I had said something funny to evoke such a wild response, but I can't remember what it was now...

The Catty Corner:
Erin (text to the GroupMe): "Bags at 8:30. Just kidding. No strikes."

Day 78 - Chico, CA to Colusa, CA

Flat, flat, flat! And no headwinds. That's just the way I like it! I did get my sweat on though... The Central Valley is pretty hot, but it's really cool to see all the produce that is grown here.

Southern made the front page of the paper! Well Bike & Build did. But her picture was featured and she was cheesing hard when she first saw it. 

My only goal (apart from blogging each day and finishing the trip with minimal van time) was to eat an entire roadside cantaloupe. As I was riding this morning, I decided that today would be the day. After all, time is running out and we just happen to be going through an area that produces over 230 crops and 8% percent of the nation's agricultural output by value. I started seeing signs for Barb's Produce Stand starting about 5 miles away and my excitement began to rise. We had to ride a mile off route to get there and I was highly disappointed when I arrived to find that they were out of cantaloupe. Still, I didn't want to give up so I found Barb herself and told her what I was doing and asked if she had any in the back. She was so enthused to meet my friends and I, and she raced into the back refrigerator to get me the last cantaloupe; she had hidden it away because it was becoming too ripe on the stand. She even cut it up for me to eat and didn't once mention the price. As I ate in utter euphoria, my friends munched on free nectarines.     

After I ate the cantaloupe, I asked Barb how much I owed her. She said I didn't owe a thing; she only wanted a picture with us. Meeting Barb (and eating her cantaloupe and playing with her cat) was one of my favorite moments of the trip. Her excitement and interest in us was completely genuine. She welcomed us to her stand and went out of her way to make my dream come true. It was amazing!

Aw... Tonight we our last family meeting. Apparently, Sam and Logan thought this deserved a standing ovation. I don't disagree...

The Catty Corner:
California: the Land of Fruits and Nuts

Day 77 - Chico Build Day

For our build day today we worked with Butte County Habitat for Humanity on a 3 bedroom, 1 bathroom home for a woman named Elena and her kids. This house was farther along than any of the houses we've helped build this summer so we were able to do tasks that we haven't done before; I really enjoyed learning some new skills. 

I spent the day installing drywall. When we arrived, the inside of the house was only framed but by the time we left two of the bedrooms were completed, closets and all. It was cool to see the house take shape and come to life in a more recognizable way.

It takes extreme concentration on Molly's part to hold such a serious face. For me, it comes naturally; I learned how to smolder and harness angst in my preteen years.  

Jake manned the drop saw and cut pieces of window trim for others to install.

Suzette primed the underside of the roof overhang.

Tom and Jim installed exterior window trim. 

Erika and Southern worked on the shed out back. Well, Southern worked. 

Eric and Heather installed a plywood ceiling on the front and back porches. 

Mary Kate and Sam installed cement fiber siding.

At about 3 o'clock we walked across the street to the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company for a tour of the brewery. I learned all about how beer is made and even got to sample some of the beers at the end of the tour. During different stages of the brewing process the soon-to-be beer undergoes a series of chemical reactions in various stainless steel kettles. Some of the kettles there were decorated to look like the copper, German kettles that were first used at SNBCo about 30 years ago. 

Hops on hops on hops... Hops are flowers that release alpha acids during the cooking process to turn sweet wort into bitter wort. 

Sierra Nevada Brewing Company produced 1 million barrels of beer last year (1 barrel = 2 kegs worth). 

SNBCo partnered with 12 other craft breweries around the country to make a unique 12 pack with 12 different one-time-only beers to promote and distribute at 7 festivals this summer. The operation was called Beer Camp Across America. We were able to try 4 of the beers after the tour: Double Latte (Ninkasi), Electric Ray (Ballast Point), Yvan the Great (Russian River), and Yonder Bock (Cigar City).

The Catty Corner:
Q: Do you know why beer goes through your system so fast?
A: Because it doesn't have to stop to change color.

Day 76 - Mineral, CA to Chico, CA

I was so looking forward to this day for a long time because I knew that we were going from 5,000 feet in elevation to a lowly 245 feet. But I awoke to the sound of rain and all I wanted to do was stay in bed. In true Bike & Build fashion we ventured on anyway and even though the ride wasn't that bad I was kind of upset because it could have easily been one of my favorites if it hadn't been for the rain. I was cold and wet for almost 7 hours and I even crashed when I rode through an oil slick that took my bike out from under me. 

Rainy days result in raincoats of many colors. Raincoats of many colors call for a rainbow lineup. ROY-G-BIV! (Purple is my signature color.) 

Comrades, down into the valley we go! 

Southern, Erika, Erin and I took a long trip to Flat City today. It all started when Southern got a flat and we pulled over to help her. Erin checked the tire while Southern checked the rim. Erin found a small piece of gold glass in the tire and it took her about 5 minutes to pull it out with some tweezers that she conveniently had in her Camelbak. Meanwhile, I was trying to patch punctured tubes with Southern's patch kit because I was the only one who had a good spare tube. The first patched tube that Southern put into her tire went flat immediately; Erin proceeded to find more glass in the tire. As Southern finally got her tire pumped up I walked past Erika's bike, that was just sitting on the side of the road, and heard the signature hiss of a tire going flat. None of the other patches were sticking to the tubes because everything was soaking wet so we had to use my only tube to fix Erika's flat which was also caused by tiny bits of glass. Erin started checking all of our tires and found shards in her own as well. A man pulled up in the middle of our chaos and just happened to have a spare tube in his car. So we set off an hour later: 20 miles from the host, Erin with a slow leak in her front tire, Southern and Erika just having fixed flats from glass and only one spare tube between the 4 of us. Naturally Southern got another flat and then another when we were 7 and 4 miles from the host. She ended up vanning the rest of the day and Erin, Erika and I rolled into the host frustrated by the hold up. Oh, and yes, Erika tweezed her eyebrows as Erin and Southern were working on their bikes. This picture is proof.     

After dinner, one of the host church's members, Jack Hulley, invited us over to his house. He had an in-home movie theater named "Hulleywood", an obvious play on Hollywood. It was extravagant to say the least. There was freshly made popcorn, every soda you could imagine, car racing games, pinball machines, "Hulleywood" engraved glasses, a theater curtain, 2 armrests per person, etc. We watched a great movie called Wild Target featuring Emily Blunt and Rupert Grint aka "Ron Weasley". 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARINE! I'm sorry that this man's birthday tradition involved a spanking...

The Catty Corner: Ashley Southern has been on Bike & Build for 76 days and couldn't change a flat to save her life.

Day 75 - Susanville, CA to Mineral, CA

Today's original route was 72 miles from Cassel to Mineral but thanks to the reroute yesterday we only had to go 67 miles today. I know it's only 5 shorter... But it means that we netted 25 additional miles by going to Susanville. Everyone was actually really happy to have had the detour in the end because the Southern US route stole our "longest and strongest" title a couple of days ago. With the reroute though, we've taken it back! Regardless, the ride today was a great one, through the mountainous forests of Northern California.

When I descended into Susanville yesterday I realized that we were entering a valley completely surrounded by mountains and that there was no way out but up so I wasn't surprised by the climbing that took place today. The first big climb was about 10 miles out from the host. I was riding lone wolf style this morning so I just snapped a photo of the elevation sign while I was riding by. 

At mile 20 we took a short detour off of highway 36 to go to Westwood, the hometown of Paul Bunyan, the giant lumberjack of American folklore. Babe the Blue Ox was even there! 

TREES! I LOVE TREES! 

No, seriously... Trees are one of my favorite things, especially when paired with beautiful bodies of water. Lucky for me, Northern California is covered with pines. I can't wait until we get to the redwoods near the coast.

The second big climb of the day ended 5 miles from the host and there was a sweet decent into Mineral. Morgan Summit, at 5,650 feet, may or may not be the last big summit of the summer. I guess I'll be finding out tomorrow... 

A hottub awaited us at the host; it was so amazing! My muscles were seriously sore from climbing so much over the past 2 days and it was nice to relax in the jet streams. I chilled for almost 2 hours and even got a 30 minute massage! 

Shout-out to Suzette for always cooking us an amazing meal when we don't have a host dinner. We would be lost without you, Suzette! Our bellies thank you!

The Catty Corner:
Q: What's Babe's favorite college?
A: Oxford!