First (OFFICIAL ON-THE-ROAD) Blog!

Here I sit in the library of the Pike School in Andover, MA, after our first official ride day!

Let me recap our first few days really quickly...

Tuesday morning I flew to Boston and spent the night there with my friend, Katie.

Wednesday I had to navigate the T to get to our host church in Andover.  It was about a half hour away from the place I stayed that. 

I hiked with all my stuff on my back on a nice sunny day and, by the time I got there, I was pretty soaked in sweat.  We got there and checked in and slowly I met some other people.  

Everyone helped each other put their bikes together and then we started with name games.  

Basically, over the next two days we did a lot of standard orientation stuff.  Name games, bike safety, EATING (free Chipotle burritos...nice), etc.  Yesterday we did about a 16 mile ride around Boston.  It was cool, but a little cloudy.  We had a pretty sick view of the Boston skyline.  

I can't remember every little thing we did in orientation.  Having ridden only one day it already feels so far behind us!  

We woke up this morning at 6am.  We got all our stuffed packed and loaded in the trailer.  How it works is there are four different chore teams.  One has to load the trailer and coolers, one has to take care of dinner and presentations, one has to do breakfast, and one has to clean up all the host location in the morning.  My team is dinner duty this week.

After packing the church provided us breakfast.  We did an ASS 101 presentation.  And that's exactly what it sounds like.  How to keep yourself clean.... down there.  

We headed over to Revere beach at 9 for the tire dipping ceremony.  In this ceremony everyone puts their back tires in the Atlantic (and then their front tire in the Pacific).  For the past day we had been preparing for the forecast... rain.  And it sure did rain.  But it was still fun.  We then took off for Andover. It's only about a 23 mile ride, but we did it in 30.  Yes, that is more than 23, but it was (half) intentional.  A small group of us biked to the "State Park," which was really just a lake.  And then we missed a turn and went far into town.  Me and two others stopped at a thrift store where we bought three awesome hubcaps to put on the trailer.  We still have to paint that trailer, too, because the weather has not been agreeing with us.  

Then we arrived to this school.  I think it's a high school.  Kind of feels like we're in The Breakfast Club just running amuck.  

I'm going to try to upload a few pics tomorrow.  Here are two from a fellow rider, Alex.  

Here's us awkwardly getting to know one another while standing outside the church:

And here's us taking off for our ride around Boston:

Like I said, look for some of my pics tomorrow.

Blogging will be unpredictable.  It completely depends on the type of place we're in.  Only a few people have computers on the trip, so it'd be hard for everyone to use them.  It's pretty nice when there's a whole library full of computers, though.  

Alright, that's all for today.  Nothing overly exciting yet.  Well, that's a lie.  Starting this trip IS pretty exciting, but I'm sure I'll have quite the plethora of stories as time goes by.  

I'm off to roam around the school and maybe go get coffee somewhere.

Until then, the tire still spins (I'm trying out different out-lines...tell me the ones you like).

Brad