IN WEST VIRGINIA!

Bike & Build is in full swing! Everyone in B&B is really fun and crazy and we’re already making a good team for the summer. Our leaders are also amazing! Insanely, this is the first time I have seen Internet and we’re all already in West Virginia!! I’ll try to recap a few things that have happened but it will be literally impossible and I have realized that this blog will never be able to do the real experience justice. Although I suppose the easiest thing would be to just type most of what my hand written journal says….. oh and this computer won’t let me upload pictures so that’s not happening YET!

May 21st-

Last night we had a Bike & Build presentation at the church we were staying at. They made us some amazing food and we got to talk to a ton of people in the community. We showed them the cool videos on youtube about B&B, everyone introduced themselves, and we answered questions. We talked to a lot of alumni during orientation and were told how everyone that we had just met would become our best friends and that your tan lines remain for years after the trip. Orientation was also a lot going over rules and icebreaker games etc. We also had a “shakedown” ride around the military base in Virginia Beach which was fun. Anyhoo, the morning of May 21st, we all got up to watch the sunrise at 5:52 am over the Atlantic Ocean on the beach. It was intense. Later we had the tire dipping ceremony and Courtney’s fiance, Ricky, and his friend Nate came to see us off and take some classic pictures. This was the start of a 4,000 mile journey!! The ride out of West Virginia was fun, it was about 80 degrees and the road was flat and only 40 miles so it was a good way for us to practice communicating with each other while on bikes: “car back” “hole” “gravel” “slowing” and all the hand signals that go with that. We wound up in Suffolk, VA in a religious school that had mini toilets in some places for 2 year olds. We showered at the YMCA and had dinner crew make us some awesome food and the secret ingredient in the pasta sauce was apples.

 

May 22nd-

 

Today we went about 43 miles to Waverly Virginia. I played around with my gears a lot today and realized how important they will be for me to make it up the Blue Ridge Mountains that were coming in a few days. Lunch during the ride is insanely exciting. Just stopping to get of the bike and consume as much food as you want is amazing. When we got to Waverly, we found an ice cream shop and I had a cookie dough cone. We did not have showers today so we all got into our bathing suits and used a hose. Courtney and I decided to dry off on a swing set. Highlights in this church was a door above a staircase that apparently is for Jesus because it was unreachable and it opened to a death drop. We also found a huge tub secretly in the back of the main seating area.

 

May 23rd-

 

Today was a 65 mile ride to Blackstone Virginia. The ride was a whole bunch of rolling hills. We found CACTI on the side of the road (whhhattt???) and a cool pond thing. Lunch was satisfyingly at the top of a huge hill and it involved a mulberry bush which I totally ravished. It was an overall hard day due to the hills but when we got to our location, we had BEDS. A POOL. And ON SITE SHOWERS. I guess it was an old college owned by a church. So this was a mansion for us! In the pool I discovered that Courtney hates pool games. So I just told her secret. But I hate chowder, so it’s all ok. After a provided dinn dinn, everyone went out to the bar and Courtney and I attempted to sleep. Failing, we decided to go try to go to the pharmacy but we met a Bike & Build CUS alumni outside so we took him to the bar where everyone went. He told us horror stories of his 45 mph crash over a guardrail! eeeeee. Courtney and I got ice water with LEMON at the bar and enjoyed the fact that we were grateful for lemon and beds. We were baffled at how others could actually drink alcohol and expect to function the next day. However, at like midnight a few of our riders found an old woman who had broken her hip on her porch and totally saved her life by waiting with her while an ambulance came. We are apparently all powerful.

 

May 24th-

 

Today was the 60 mile ride to Dillwyn Virginia. This morning we had a deceptive breakfast. Our host provided us with cereal and such and we enjoyed it for the 20 minutes they left us with it. After everyone had “finished” breakfast, they came out with eggs, biscuits, hash browns, sausage, etc! We were all pleasantly surprised and found room for another plate of food. The morning was a good indication for the rest of the day. One of our leaders had the trailer hitch thing drop on her leg so she wouldn’t be riding for a  few days! Ahh! Sadness! Oh and Courtney and I got lost leaving due to the fact that google maps doesn’t alllllllllways know what its talking about. The whole day was insane though. It was really hot and there were more rolling hills than we could believe. These were some massive hills with like three tiers etc. A highlight was eating a fruit popsicle at a random stop. Yes, the scenery was very nice and all, but these hills were climbs of death. BUT, we didn’t walk. At one point Courtney and I had a”runners high” thing going on because we had a like a 5 minute laughing fit about a stick and the fact that my bike computer said that I burned 10,000 calories! We stopped randomly and got eats for when we got to the town- Courtney got a brownie and I got Doritos because I love them and because Mark, on our trip, is the SON of the inventor of the cooler ranch flavor! Obviously that is very impressive. Anyhoo…. more on Doritos later. When we got to Dillwyn, we had a tiny room in the church and no showers. Luckily, some of our girls were able to ask a few surrounding houses if we could use their showers! So we actually did get a shower which was nice and we got to meet a Dillwyn native and her obese doggies. Grilled cheeeeeese was for dinner and it was awesome! We had an affordable housing meeting where I presented my house thing with Aaron but it was so late and we were all soooo tired that it was just a blur of death! Also, I started getting the B&B cold so yeah…. Oh and tonight I slept under a folding table with the daddy-long-legs.

 

OK….. library closing, I will hopefully update more soonish!!!

Bike & Build!

Hi! My name is Kira Hansen.

From May 19th to July 29th, 2009, I will be cycling across the United States with 33 other young adults to participate in affordable housing projects and raise awareness of affordable housing issues throughout the nation. It is a

3,862 mile journey

from Virginia Beach, Virginia to Cannon Beach, Oregon:

My route, Central U.S.