ABQ

Thanks to Tricycle Creative in Alburquerque, Ven was able to pick up some design work to help fund the remainder of the tour, an illustration gig for the Women & Creativity Festival. We stayed with Melissa & Keith in Tuscon for a night and rode with them into Las Cruces where Sam’s uncle, Joshua Rose, had an art show. Mr. Rose is retiring from a position in the Art Department at New Mexico State University and so the show was a Retrospective look at his work over the years. There was some truly beautiful work and Ven spent the entire day drawing after being inspired so. If a chance to see his work happens upon, it is recommended that you attend, absolutely.

We decided to ride up to Albuquerque with Lee & Sharret afterwards to take a week or two to recalculate the remainder of the tour. Plan day to day routes off of insterstates to assure safe camping, work to raise more money for the unexpected, minimize our loads to get rid of backpacks, and perform some much needed bike maintenance and preparation, mainly some more cushy seats.

Also, during this time, we will be working to finalize partnerships with the charities we would like to help out, namely Bikes To Rwanda who has written us looking for ways to partner up, but we have not had the time to even respond. Our final destination at this point has been moved to St Petersburg since an old friend Robb Hohmann has expressed interest in organizing a group ride to a designated finish line there. We will be working with him to finalize those details. Robb also stated that he may be interested in joining us in Austin, TX and riding the rest of the way with us. Not to get ahead of ourselves, but that would be simply amazing and an excellent beginning to the grander idea of Team Awesome itself. That Ven & Sam are not Team Awesome, but that all who ride bikes are Team Awesome and to join us would be absolutely remarkable.

Riding bikes = Awesome!

We also hear that there is a benefit show in the works back home in Portland. Sarah McCown is working with the venue East End and Joe Bowden of Bladen County Records to try and put together a makeshift rock show to help fund the remainder of our tour and get us to Florida. So there will hopefully be good news from that soon as well.

Merchandise. Ven and Sam are going to try and squeeze a bit of our budget into making some Awesome tees and other merch. We’ll see what happens, but it would definitely be awesome and your chance to join up and communicate that Riding Bikes = Awesome!

OK, that’s all for now. Rest assured, we will be continuing to update while we’re working in ABQ, and instead of trying to fit as much of the crazy randomness that happens everyday into a post, we may actually have the time to talk about how and why this tour has been so incredibly awesome for us and those we’ve run into along with some of the negatives of it as well.

Regardless, you had better stay tuned, because we’re up to whole ton of awesomeness.

10 comments | January 28th, 2008

You Must Move Forward to Progress.

From Yuma to Casa Grande was an interesting part of the trip. We met a ton of very interesting people from all over. Outside Yuma we rode up and over Gran Pass and at the bottom we ran into two fine Canadians, Shirley and Jerry Heasch from Edmonton, Alberta. They were very supportive and bought us our first brew since LA. We got word from a man at the bar there that there was a Canal just ahead where we could most likely set up camp without getting harassed. Turned out to be a pretty nice spot and we set up in front of a huge dirt mound to block the wind and morning cold. Lots of discharged shotgun shells and destroyed buckets. The next day we ran into a man Dan Evers at a rest stop who was travelling with his brother. Dan is the director of a non-profit in San Diego called The Children’s Rainforest. They were great and also extremely supportive of our journey.

We stopped off in Dateland for some morning coffee and some ‘famous Date shakes’ where we met a wonderful man Larry Champion Gallagher and is wife Joy. Avid adventure seekers, they had been running search and rescue missions in the NorthWest for years before retiring. Joy apparently had the most saught after rescue dog in United States and would get flown all around. Larry had many amazing stories to share of many adventures that he or his cohorts have been on. He talked of how great it was that we youths were doing such an adventure on our own. He mentioned something called the Jupiter Effect that details the effects that young people can make to the greater society by going on such adventures and pilgrimages. A very interesting conversation.

The next day, we rode 60 miles to make it into Gila Bend, where we ran into our greatest random supporter thus far. We stopped in a truck stop to ask where a bar was so we could catch the tail end of the Giants/Packers game. The lady directed us down the road to the only bar in town, Neto’s Passtime. Upon entering the bar, we found a huge conglomeration of foods laid out for the game. They had been expecting a lot of customers but not as many had shown up so we were told to scarf down as much as we could by the owner and his son, Wally and Nathan Reising, respectively. Wally invited us to camp out in a building in the back for the night and hang out and eat as much as we wanted. They were so hospitable that we just had to accept their invitation to chill out for another day. We hung out all day like old friends. Wally cooked us up some amazing breakfast burritos and Nathan supplied us an almost unsafe amount of coffee. The next morning we headed out with a ton of extra food Wally prepared for us. It was a hard move to leave. We were already missing the fantastic friendships we had built with the Reisings. Wally is fixing up Neto’s Passtime to sell as he does high-end construction and restoration back in his hometown of Pomona, CA. We both made promises to find a way to somehow pay Wally and Nathan back with an equal amount of kindness.

As for the riding.  We’ve been doing a fair amount of climbing every so often here in the Southwest Desert region, and there’s been a lot of flat or steady climbs for us to relax in between.  Climbing for 30 miles at a time on a fixed gear with 40lbs of gear on the back educates you firmly on technique.  It becomes mostly a mental fixation of maintaining a solid and efficient pedaling cadence and not worrying about where the top of the hill is or how soon it’s coming.  It may sound like a terrible thing to endure, but we find it very relaxing and fun.  Also, it makes the miles go by faster.  When you’re focusing on sustainability and cadence so much, there’s not much time to worry about things like, “Where’s the next town?” or “I wonder how many miles we have left today.”

In other words, you must move forward to progress.  The simplicity of it all is enlightening and ultimately inspiring.

2 comments | January 28th, 2008

Road to Yuma Video

Watch in Lower Quality

2 comments | January 17th, 2008

Through Calipatria

No time to talk but here’s a Video and some stills. Also updated the Episodes section and when we have more time. Hopefully in a few days, we’ll be able to relax and do some editing to the videos shot thus far. The AwesomeTV section will house all of these though so check back. Otherwise, we’re still doing awesome. Meeting great people and riding through amazingly beautiful terrain. Learning a lot about pretty much everything. Much love to our many supporters, our hearts and pedals move for you.

AwesomeTV #2 - Calipatria Camp

3 comments | January 15th, 2008

The Road to Yuma

Holidays are over and we’ve been back on the road for about a week now and we’re heading through Palm Springs right now on our way to Yuma, AZ. A lot has happened in such a short time and we’ve been trying to keep track of it all in our journals and documenting as much as we can with our cameras. WiFi hotspots are very few & far between. But! Here we are in Palm Springs so yea, of course they have WiFi.

People in California have been very receiving of our journey. Some gangsters in East Los Angeles were driving by and yelled out , “Yo, where you goin??”, and “What’s your mission?”. To which we replied, “Just riding bikes, man. Just ridin’ bikes.” Everywhere we go, it is clear that people are ready to go on their own adventures and maybe most of those will be on their bikes. It is nice for them to hear that we’re not athletes and we’re just making ourselves stronger every day.

We had our first run-in with Johnny Law off the I-10 where we had set up camp behind some desert brush. Sam got himself handcuffed. Sam only. Ven was very well taken care of by another officer. Unclear as to why that was. So we had to move camp. The sun was down so we just went down into town and set up camp #2 behind a Denny’s. Urban camping ain’t so bad. Good coffee already made for us in the morning for example.

Today we finally got off the I-10 after a flat and scolding from another friendly officer of the law. There, of amazing coincidence, we ran into Craig Walker, a local rider, in Banning, CA. He shared his story with us about how he had ridden from southern California to Plymouth Rock in celebration of beating cancer back in 2004. Mr. Walker, you are an inspiration to us all. Check out his website for more info.

Thanks to Mr. Walker we found the 111 and have been on that for most of the day. It’s a beautiful desert ride and utterly breathtaking. We took a break right before Palm Springs in a spot apparently used as a gun range and had ourselves some tuna sandwiches. Here are some images for now. After editing of some of the videos we’ll throw those up as well. Back at ya soon. Keep riding for yourself, your environment, and for fun!

Click the image below for some Awesome TV.

61 comments | January 13th, 2008

San Francisco Pt. 1 and the exit of the sag

We have entered a short hiatus to ditch the sag wagon and visit our families for the holidays. We had to get rid of the vehicle as we realized it was only slowing us down. It took up too much of our time and energy, and we were not able to spend enough time riding every day and its usefulness did not weigh in equally.

After the new year, we’ll be flying back to the last mile we made it to and then continuing on to Florida. We got some amazing gifts from our girl Sarah in Portland and now we’ll be listening to tunes finally as well as filming from our handlebars and helmets! So yea, more rowdiness than you can imagine coming up pretty soon. Until then, a little recap of San Francisco Pt.1.

San Francisco was amazing. Our camera was acting up and we unfortunately didn’t get many pictures but we’ll be going back through there once we get back on our bikes so we’ll make it up to you times ten at least. Thanks to Benji and Ethan at Refried Cycles we were able to crash in the back of their shop, do a little maintenance, and generally have a awesome time relaxing. Refried has some awesome frames.  An orange Waterford and a sick purple Bare Knuckle stood out, along with tons of bikes, parts, and accessories.  Awesome shop though for sure.  The streets of San Fran are incredibly fun to ride. The hills in the City made all the other climbs we had made prior look like we could’ve ridden them on training wheels. Ethan’s response to our hill climbing conversation was “What? You guys have been going up hills?” Apparently, there’s always a way around the hills unless of course your destination is actually on one. Good to know. Not that we’re complaining of course, you know we love our climbs. The descents in San Francisco are completely nuts. A 45 degree slope is not hard to find. Point being, San Fran can be a helluva place to train or just a great city to bomb around in.

Chris at Docket Rocket showed us aroung the messenger scene a bit and gave us an overview of getting around town the fastest on bikes. We may catch some tags for a bit when we come back through. Dustin at Freewheel showed us around their shop as well. Excellent selection of custom parts. A set of wood-grain Deep V’s was spotted. Apparently, they set up MASH with all their goods as well. Kids come all the way from Japan just to go here and customize their rides. We were pretty close to trading the car for a slew of bike parts.

For drinks later we went to Bender’s, who has it down with cyclists.

The bartender says, “You guys riding fixed in SF?”

“Yes, and loving it!”

“Well then you get the SF Fixed special of a shot a whiskey and a beer for five bucks.”

“Awesome.”

“What?? Parking your bikes outside?? They might get wet! Bring ‘em inside!”

Yea, San Francisco knows how to treat the cycle crowd, to be sure.

Love ya.

5 comments | December 23rd, 2007

Riding out to Danava

Here’s a quick video of us riding through some farmland to the portland band Danava.
Click the image to pull it up. More vids coming shortly so stay tuned yea?

And some photos from our romp from Eugene to the Coast.

2 comments | December 17th, 2007

Salem to Eugene

Drinking beer out of a punch bowl.
Talking Revolution.
Showing off Danava.
Living room bicycle maintenance.

Coffee House Cafe.

Morning eggs and potatoes.

Official shoutouts to Asia and Cassandra.

Salem knows how to sport the love for the tour and its rowdy participants.

Thanks again, we’ll see you on the way back hopefully.

3 comments | December 15th, 2007

From Salem

A quick slew of images begins here

We decided to pause our efforts in Salem to nail down our camping, organizing, and planning. We have had to spend so much time camping and planning routes and fixing technical issues that we haven’t been able to spend enough time riding. We brought too much stuff along in a fit of uber preparation and sent a lot of it back to Portland via John Howell, Sarah’s father, to which we are extremely grateful. Now the support vehicle is in excellent shape and packed to perfection. Tomorrow we will pass through Eugene and find camp outside the city and then bike into town and talk with the locals about their city’s cycling culture. Neither of us have ever been to Eugene and are very excited to roll around town.

As for the biking, we the awesome have so far averaged 16.2 mph. We are not stoked to be chilling in Salem really as all we can think about is getting back on our bikes and riding down to Eugene but we had to take the time to get everything in order so that we can keep this B updated

gettin it up.

5 comments | December 13th, 2007

On the road at last

We’ve made it to Salem despite 25mph dog chases, flat tires, and bad maps leading to no shoulder and hoofing it for 7 miles on a busy railway in the dark. Still working on getting the time to process all the photos, videos, and audio we’ve recorded thus far. Lazy support team for sure. Rest assured, life is fucking great and there will be a ton of media coming soon. Tomorrow?

6 comments | December 12th, 2007

of love & charity

One of our plans for charity is to collect bike parts along the way from kind shops and individuals and build up bikes that will then be raffled off.  100% of the proceeds will go to charity.  If  anyone local has anything they’d like to donate, please shoot an email to us@teamawsm.com or bring it to the going & gone away party at rontoms on Saturday.

We are still researching charities that are most applicable to what we are doing on the tour, and so if anyone has any suggestions for either bike related non-profits (local or national) and/or a charity based on a physical impairment that refrains people from cycling then please let us know as well.

We would be very interested to hear from you in either case.

Add comment | December 7th, 2007

Going & Gone Away Party

Our going and gone away party will be at Rontoms on Saturday December 8th.

We will be showing up at 9pm and will be hanging around until we get kicked out and then we hit the road in the morning.

Between the hours of 9:00 and 11:00 anyone who arrives on bike will receive a voucher issuing the holder a dollar off all beers.

Rontoms is centrally located and has awesome staff, music, drinks, and food.

We’ll see ya there!

2 comments | December 7th, 2007

If you’ve got time to spliff, you’ve got time to .gif

1 comment | November 27th, 2007

Logos

new logos finished by OK.B today
what do you think?

concept: from atop our steeds we communicate ‘awesome’

2 comments | November 26th, 2007

Friends of Us

Viso Beverages

Super Relax

Bicycle Repair Collective

OK.B Design & Direction

2 comments | November 19th, 2007