More Pictures

Even a blind man can tell when he's near a feed yard... Here's more of my pictures... Going from the beginning of the trip to the end in order.
Enjoy!
-Alex

will farrell

"You wouldn't know true beauty if it were in the parking lot waiting to give you hepatitis, which it will be in 10 minutes."

"You wouldn't know true beauty if it were in the parking lot waiting to give you hepatitis, which it will be in 10 minutes."

Pictures

Here are some of my pictures. I'll get Pete's when I get back home. These are mine roughly the 6th day of the trip through about day 35ish... somewhere in western Colorado. Yall enjoy!

Oh yeah

Oh yeah, and I forgot to tell everyone that we got the results back and neither one of us have Hepatitis A which is GREAT. Thanks for your concern and prayers.
-Al

2768

Well, I think this will be my last entry. The title is 2768 because according to my computer, that's how far we went. I decided to write this today, July 7th, because today would have been the day we finished up. Pete's parents drove up from Las Vegas on the 3rd and rescued us from the black hole that had become Ely. We drove through Nevada and saw the terrain we would have seen and crossed the passes we would have crossed. It was a lot different driving than biking in several ways. I still was feeling quite crappy and I stared out the window, aloof, detatched and humbled to the circumstances that had ended our trip. We headed to Reno for the evening and then spent the 4th there. I actually spent most of the 4th on my back, nauseous and weak in the hotel room. The 5th marked our entrance into California and the parting of Pete and I. He stayed in the San Francisco area while my aunt came and picked me up and took me back to San Jose. I could tell that he was really glad to see his parents and spend some time with them. He hadn't expected to be able to see them again before Mexico. I've been hanging out here with my aunt and cousin in San Jose and Pete has been spending time with his family in San Francisco, getting ready to head to Mexico on Sunday the 9th. I actually didn't really start feeling too much better till today, and I'm still not 100% yet. I don't think I'll be back to 100% for another few days. I think we made the right decision and I'm so thankful and proud of what we have accomplished. This has been quite a challenging and interesting experience and I know Pete and I are both better people for having done it. We raised over $2000 for Amani already and I may be getting an article spot in a community paper out here that my cousin's boyfriend writes for, so the prospects are still looking great. Thanks again for everyone who was actively and passively supporting our trip and thank you to everyone who donated to the Amani Children's foundation and for the movie as well (which I think will turn out very well also). It's been a heck of a summer, that's for sure.
Love,
Alex

PS-Look for pictures that I'll be posting up here on the blog soon. I've been able to check them out and some of them are GREAT.

Me

I'm also very glad we're both okay. I'm feeling a lot better now but that's not saying a whole heck of a lot because Saturday night/all of Sunday was about the worst 24 hours of my life. I've never felt worse than I did then. I don't even remember a whole lot of it except for random flashes of the inside of toilets/ambulances/doctors/hospitals and me praying/crying for myself to feel better. I guess my getting sick was God's way of answering the question that I posed to you all. And the answer was a resounding "stay with Pete." We'll find out today for sure if Pete and I have hepatitis, but either way, the biking is over for us. Thank you to everyone for your concern and prayers and for following us along our bumpy but amazing and interesting journey.
It was a heck of a run, eh?
-Alex

crash into

i don't really want this to be a sad entry. i am not sad because at this point i am just happy we both are alive. that is a slight exageration but i will explain. i think alex left off with himself not sure whether to go on or not and me sick as a dog. that was the situation. alex almost imploded on his bike that night because his back wheel keeps coming loose. the next morning i felt weak but considerably better. we managed to wash our clothes and check into a cleaner non-casino motel. then i slid into bed and wasn't feeling good enough to get out so alex who was still feeling good or okay at the time went to get groceries. we chilled in the room all day and that night as we were getting to bed i began feeling achy. and then alex's unravelling began. i can't give exact details because i was in and out of sleep but alex puked around 10 times. i meanwhile have become so sorethat i can't move without being in considerable pain. muscle i didn't even know i had were sore. so finally i manage to give alex a nausea suppository. (like hand it to him, not administer it) that did nothing and so after puking 3 0r 4 more times i called an ambulance. they came and got him and i just stayed in bed unable to help. so that was the low point of the trip. me laying in a bed aching and shivering and alex puking. the next day i just layed in bed and alex did the same except at the hospital still puking every once in a while. that night he got brought back from the hospital. my parents are coming to help us get to san francisco and just make sure we get better. today we both feel better. not 100 percent but much better. as i said this morning to alex "We made a heck of a run"
thanks for your concerns, we are now feeling a lot better.
peace,
pete

.....

Hey everyone, it's Alex. I want to let everyone know whats going on and it's sinister implications...

We trucked on through the rest of Utah and into the beginning of the Great Basin which stretches all the way from Utah to the Sierra Nevadas. We hit some big mountains and another big 88 mile stretch of road with nothing. Well, 2 days ago, we rode into Nevada and crossed the state line. There was a little casino/motel/cafe/rv park there at the border, so we stopped for lunch because we needed water and a good meal. After lunch, we planned the rest of the trip out and realized that we could take a short day and stay there for the night. About this time is when Pete started to feel really crappy. He couldn't keep anything down and was vomiting and having diahrhiia (not sure of the spelling there). He'd gotten really dehydrated on the trail and had the same symptoms, so we figured thats what it was. We took it easy and he slept all day and all night and drank as much water and Powerade as he could. He couldn't do anything, so I had to set up the tarp and carry all his stuff over to the campsite, etc. He awoke the next morning and felt a lot better, but didn't think he had it in him to bike another 65 miles to Ely, the next town down the road. Ely also has a doctors office and hospital, so we decided we'd better get a ride there and get him checked out for safety's sake. We ate and he began feeling a whole lot worse. Luckily, one of the owners of the hotel was a really nice guy and also an EMT, so he let us stay in a room for half the day yesterday and get out of the heat and let Pete rest on a bed. I eventually was able to find us a ride into Ely. We got here in the afternoon yesterday and Pete was still feeling awful. We headed over to the clinic and promptly waited like 4 hours for him to be seen, then he eventually came out with a stack of papers in his hand and told me that not only was he dehydrated, but he probably has Hepatitis A. This makes sense because he had like 8 of 10 of the symptoms and we've been really dirty all the time on this trip. So, since it took 5+ hours at the doctors, we are stuck at like 930 riding around town looking for a motel room which we can't find because theres like 3 different events going on in this town. We finally find one and get in at 1130 and just crash--frustrated, angry, tired and sad. We had a talk this morning and Pete can't do it anymore. We have a little less than 600 miles left to go and a week to do it, but he's not physically able to make it. I'm in an incredibly tough situtation because I REALLY want to finish this trip out and I am healthy and have the time to do it, but that would be pretty dangerous because of the remoteness of Nevada and the fact that Pete would be alone, sick, by himself trying to find a way to California.... I'm really depressed and don't really know what to do, but I'm gonna wait around with him until Monday when he gets his results from the bloodwork back, so I'll have time to think.... We're both physically and mentally broken and sad. I hope things work out for the best, but either way, one or both of us will not finish this trip. Any and all advice/encouragement is welcomed. Thanks for the support.
Love,
Alex (and Pete)

To Stop Would Be The Death Of Me

Go on I must....

Please everyone appreciate the sweet VACO quote, because it's literal. If we stop in the middle of the freakin desert out here, we'll die haha.

Okay. Well, it's Alex writing to let everyone know whats up. Last you heard, we were in Delta, Colorado. We have since come about another 300 or 400 miles and are at the sweet library here in Salina, Utah. That day from Delta, we headed to Grand Junction, Colorado which was a surprisingly cool and interesting city. It had an awesome downtown area where we enjoyed a pizza and met a bicycle-taxi driver who sympathized with our pulling weight behind us. Then, we were trying to find a place to stay in an Episcopal church and met a really nice man named Phillip who let us stay at his house there in Grand Junction. He let us shower and sleep on his porch which was surprisingly comfortable. We biked out of GJ the next day and into the abyss of Utah. I guess we can let everyone know about our massive shortcut now that most of it is over... Instead of going south on tiny roads winding around for like 500 miles as our planned route did, we opted for the more dangerous, extremely short(er) Interstate 70 shortcut... It may be illegal, but it is oh so sweet to cut off 200 miles. And the way we saw it, it was either do this shortcut and Pete could finish the trip with me, or not do it and he wouldn't be able to finish. I think we made the right choice, because it hasn't been that bad. There's not too much along I-70 in Utah which equals not a lot of cars. Our only problems have been heat and lack of civilization/potable water and we've had some tire trouble of late, but all that is over with. We just finished a stretch of 110 miles with no services, no towns, nothing. From here, we're heading another 40 miles this afternoon into Holden, Utah and then into Nevada along US-50 (which has the nickname of "the loneliest road in America", so it'll be interesting to see how that goes. Our spirits are high at the moment and we're trying to enjoy our last 10 days of the adventure. We're on schedule to finish up in San Francisco on July 7th. Keep the comments coming and we love yall out there.
Keeping it real, from coast to coast,
Big Al (also speaking for Pete)

PS, Our beards are sweet