Day 9: An introduction to E. Clampus Vitus (Potato Patch Campground to Chester)

I slept okay in the rain, but woke up early to the fresh damp good weather like that brings. Everything was soaked, including the bottom of the tent and the tennis shoes I'd left under the rain fly. Rachel stayed knocked out, so I boiled some water and ate oatmeal on a log by the river.

The sun wasn't quite warm enough to make it comfortable, but it was enough to slowly evaporate the water out of my shoes and socks. I sang When I Go Down to the River and Pray over and over again because what a pretty tune to a complement a pretty view. Anyways, only the ants could hear me. They tried to carry off my right wool sock. 

Since she hadn't slept almost at all the night before, Rach slept in real late; we knew we had a pretty easy ride anyways, less than 30 miles to Chester where we planned a lush night in the local motel.

Another gorgeous ride in the mountains, god it's pretty up here. Through Lassen National Forest, and there are golden cows and big tree trunks and stately cabins when there's anything..

Chester's a small town but worth visiting for one reason: the Buttlake Dinky.

The dinky, claimed to be insignificant and much like many other dinkies, was our first introduction to the huge trolling E. Clampus Vitus is playing on western America. They're a fraternal organization whose name is Dog Latin and doesn't translate to anything. Their motto is I believe it because it is absurd. Where do I sign up.

(Note since I'm writing this later: we tried so hard to find any representatives of the society, but nothing. Nowhere. They are mythic.)

Like I said, we had a lush night at the Antler's Motel, a cute little thing in the middle of town. The hamburger's down the street were food, if not savory ("that's what ya get for a $6 burger", admitted the waiter), the laundromat was so fresh (Rachel got a quick little history lesson from a lady also doing laundry and learned about the eerie burning of village which was flooded to make Lake Almador), and the night was well spent tuning up the bikes we'd just hauled through the rain. 

Day 8: Rainy days and weird dudes (Chico to the Potato Patch Campground)

We actually woke up early to start our climb into the Sierras. For me, the climb started slow -- Rachel and Spencer biked ahead and stopped every mile or so to wait for me to catch up. I studied the geometry of the power lines. I thought we’d be able to see more mountains looming in front of us, but highway 32 really is just a gradual, relentless upward climb with lush, green canyons dropping off on either side, the town of Paradise at the edge of the next ridge over.

We stopped for lunch at 2000 feet at the one-stop shop of Forest Ranch, bought some snickers, tried to convince Haggen Daz to sponsor us.

Spencer turned around after 20 miles and not too long after, we were rewarded with the first downhill of the day.

This was the first moment on the trip I really understood why I was out here. The pine forests ran by and the wind was cold and sweet. We saw the first fellow bike tourist, a lone guy all bundled up who hollered “What are you crazy people doing out here?”

The storm caught up with us shortly after, and we took too long to put on our rain clothes. Once you’re wet, you’re wet, and we were still headed uphill at this point, no service, no signs for the campground we’d decided ahead of time to stay at.

5,000 feet up, we found a little oasis of cell service around this big bend in the road.. and realized we’d passed our campground four miles ago. The next camp spot was 8.2 miles away and the mountain kept coming. My legs were exhausted, muscles barely responsive, body only moving because movement promised warmth and food.

But every time we’re this tired, the journey keeps us going. We topped the mountain and I saw a sign -- which has become my favorite -- warning trucks of a downhill grade for the next six miles. Still raining, the drops hit hard and cold going 30 miles an hour downhill but I’ve rarely felt so satisfied. A gap in the trees next to a turn off opened a curtain to the whole valley below us, fog rolling in and the mountains fading to blue-grey outlines in the distance. Four miles to-go: our destination, Potato Patch campground.

If you haven’t been out in the upper Sierras, you’ve got plans for the weekend. Especially now, before it gets too warm.

After we set up the tent, started the water boiling for dinner, changed into dry clothes, covered our bikes, a big red pickup truck pulled into the parking spot for our campsite. There were maybe 6 or 7 campsites occupied; 10-15 open. It was weird, unsettling. For twenty minutes, old-time music played loudly over the natural din, and Rachel and I sat together and wondered whether we should pack up and leave.

Finally this middle-aged guy comes out of the front and walked over. He stammered something along the lines of him “not being weird” and just sleeping in his truck that night while it rained so he could fish in the morning. And while we aim to give the people we met the benefit of the doubt, this was uncomfortable. With so many open parking spots, with dark falling, and us camped out for at least an hour before he arrived, I was frustrated by the interruption of solitude and kind of creeped out.

Eventually we decided he was strange but harmless. We slept with mace and all three of our knives, tucked into the pockets of the tent, just in case. 

Day 7: Wildflower, rainbow lightning (Chico)

We woke up and turned the alarm off and woke up and snoozed and woke up and rolled over and woke up and slept. Finally pancakes sounded too good to deny any longer, so we mixed up a couple’a batches of rice-milk-coconut-oil hot stacks with flavors like banana chocolate and matcha-green-tea-walnut. Chico just stole the first place farmer’s market straight out from under Davis (hey Davis Enterprise, what’s up with that?!), so yeah this town is crunchy.

Our host then taught us some Muay Thai as self defense -- like breaking punches with your elbows and shrimping, which can help you escape if someone’s got you held on the ground. 

After some writing and some sorting, we headed off to our second class at Wildflower Open Classroom, a charter school trying to give kids independence and freedom within their school day. 

The kids didn't know what to make of us at first - and actually it was more difficult to get the kids to work in groups than in the Sacramento classrooms. 

I worked closely with Owen, a shy kid at first. I’ve never had dimensional analysis open kids up, but he got out his happy calculator (a scientific calculator he could make a happy face on) and we sat together as he figured out how many miles per hour the Sol Cycle could ride. At the end of class, a kindergartener came up and asked Owen what he was doing. Owen took it into the sun and handed it to the kid and let him play with it while explaining the solar panel and motor, and the kindergartener’s jaw dropped and his eyes got all wide. When we went back inside, Owen pulled out this beautiful drawing of a character named Rosalina and told us he wanted us to take it with us on our trip; those are the moments that make teaching so worth whatever stress planning brings. 

That evening, our Warm Showers host Spencer showed us to the Chico’s farmer’s market, a hoot with lots of hollering when the sky turned to candy and lightning cracked. We made a run for it and ate damp pineapple, pork and veggie tamales under a construction awning. The sweet and spicy sauces were A+ bingo go time. Tomorrow: the mountains awaited.

Day 6: Take me to the candy shop (Yuba City to Chico)

I woke up before Rachel and slipped inside. Ashley poked up from the couch and Josh emerged from his nightrobe; I felt a little like St. Nick popping down a chimney to kids waiting under the Christmas tree. We held a pre-breakfast science lesson with the Sol Cycles. Ashley named the purple one Sunny, appropriately, and she had the bicycle moving in the weak 8 am light. She and her brothers are being homeschooled, so her assignment for the morning was to write an essay on it. Awesome! (Ashley, if you’re reading, we’d love to see it!)

After breakfast burritos, we rode out with Rick, their grandfather. He took us up Larkin road and talked a little about “world’s smallest mountain range,” the Sutter Buttes.

In Live Oak, we found Penny Candy. Sugar sugar sugar sugar baby.

Eventually we made it sixty miles to Sierra Nevada, the first in our brewery tour of America. Rachel conducted a solubility experiment, for science of course, comparing nitro and CO2 stouts (see right).

Big burgers, two tasters laster, we wandered over to the store to see if they had bike jerseys (they didn’t) and ran into their Earth Day celebration. They were showing “The Little Things,” a documentary about some environmentally-conscious? snowboarders. I can’t say I’d recommend it. There were a couple of stories that spoke to innovative ways to alter lifestyles and positively impact the earth, but mostly it felt like the director shopped around to a bunch of his/her friends and asked if they knew anyone doing something along Earth Day lines. Like there were a lot of "tiny house" examples. Eh, it was a free movie and there was free popcorn.

We hung out at the Naked Coffee Lounge for a while, propped our legs up on the tables and bit into the internet.

Our couchsurfing host, Raymahh, returned from Muay Thai class around 10:30; she had the whole set up going: mattresses and couches for us in the living room, which we took advantage of fast.

This is why we do this

Somewhere along highway 32

This is why we do this.

You can’t make it any further up the mountain ‘cause you’ve already climbed 4,500 feet on legs deader than logs; you’ve realized you missed your campground turn off (it’s probably not even open for the season); the rain’s already soaked you socks though helmet; your fingers are wrinkled and stinging; and the only way to go is to keep going up.

Well then the mountain opens its heart to you a little and it’s six miles down hill to the next campground and you’re honored with a view like this.

Don’t think we could have told you before but - this is why we do this.

Preparation

Hey friends!

Rachel and I are going to try to post as much as possible on here. I’ll be writing more of the daily doses, but we’re both going to be chiming in, posting photos, etc. We’ve got a few lined up before we go into the Sierra Nevadas, since we’re not sure when we’ll have service again. Hope you enjoy!

We’ve been slowly collecting our gear since January but during the last three weeks, Rachel and I must’ve made 25 trips to REI (not to mention local bike shops, grocery stores, and pharmacies). I listed and weighed all the stuff I’m bringing with me (note the items that have already been crossed out and thus sent back with my mother (thanks mom!)).

Check it out here

Rachel’s carrying other essentials, like first aid.

Check out our Sol Cycle tool box! Fits snug on the back rack of my bike.

Here’s how I’ve got things stacked:

4 panniers, all Arkel Orca’s. I got those instead of the traditional Ortliebs because they have pockets on the front. Plus with patches gorilla glued on the front, they look primo.

I can’t keep anything straight, so I sorted my bags and wrote what I put in them on the neon visibility tape I ran down the outside of the panniers. Roughly, the front packs have food + hammock (food for the body, food for the soul) on one side and bike and camera gear on the other. I’ve got Surly Nice front and back racks, a ton of surface area on the top, so I strapped my Voltaic solar panel to the top with a couple’a bungee cords. The front panniers sit nicely loaded lower down on the bottom rungs.

On the back, I have clothes + electronics in a third bag, and the miscellaneous camping gear in the fourth. The book I brought? Desert Solitaire, by Edward Abbey. Here’s a quote that’s a bit of a mantra for me for the trip. In context, he’s out in his trailer in the Utah desert, miles from any other human.

“.. but instead of loneliness I feel loveliness. Loveliness and a quiet exultation.”

As I finish books, I’m shipping them back home and either finding a new one where I am, or having my mom ship me one from a box of good reads I prepared before I left. I didn’t bring a Kindle because Iike the brush of the paper turning the page, and because I associate the knowledge gained with the places I’ll be when I read them, and I want to be able to go straight back to that.

Yeahhhh I’ve got a ton of stuff. There’s always a trade-off between weight and comfort, and since we’ll be on the road for three months, I’m learning to love the little things: a couple extra pounds is worth it.

Other things I did to prepare: road my bike most days in the two weeks before leaving; road it once fully loaded; got it properly fitted at Bicycle Outfitters in Los Altos; did some squats, lunges and deadlifts at the gym; spent time with friends and family; started packing for grad school.

Leaving home is always hard for me. I’m a homebody, and I crave the warmth and sense of belonging that’s hard to find outside the house I grew up in. I just found out that, with Cornell starting in late August, once we finish this adventure, I’ll only have a few weeks at home before I have to pick up and drive back across the country to New York.

That’s tough.

Here’s to finding another home on the road.

-Elizabeth

Day 5: These orchards, those regrets (Sacramento to Yuba City)

We took the morning slow with the first pancakes of the trip (sourdough, with caramelized peaches). My mom drove up to drop off the Go Pro (we’re going to stick it on some sol cycles, on our handlebars, and film the Idaho class with it) and lacrosse ball (to roll out the hips and the backs and the feet). I went with her to buy coffee at the shop, which was the most classic and we sat on the floor among the rugs and clothes and beds and lived easy.

We left later than we should’ve and left the last place I’d be familiar with. We took the Sacramento river bike trail but note -- wait til the park to get on it because wood decks are awful on the wrists.

We took the Garden Highway pretty much the whole way up, except we cut over to it diagonally through Natomas. Road was mostly good, but pretty rough at times. I listened to some podcasts for the first time (a Ted Radio Hour on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs) and stopped on the bank of the American River for lunch my mama brought - a banh mi sandwich and an orange. I love the kind of sticky your hands get peeling and eating one whole, tacky but clean. Sandwich and fruit laid out on the grass, I watched some men put boats out to water and hummed.

Our first real highway, Highway 99, wasn’t so bad. I mean, big trucks and fast cars, but the road was really good, unwalled, shoulder to shoulder with farmland.

Meanwhile in Racheland:

Liz is doing most of the writing here, but you can’t get rid of me that easily! I’m going to squeeze in some scribbles here and there. Here are some random thoughts from today --

I’ve got to admit, I was excited. Google told us today would be flat, so that meant I could finally whip out my chromonica/duct tape contraption to play while riding!! (I got a holder that only fits blues harps, so duct tape came and saved the day.

We fumbled over a gravel road, were passed by only a mail truck, and passed many o’ dead snake. Finally we turned on a paved portion of the Garden Highway, and -- at last! -- I triumphantly plopped on the chromonica and started jammin’ out to The Shape I’m In by The Band. I puffed out two notes, and then POW POW POW POW the metal slapped me right ‘cross the face, repeatedly, almost knocking my teeth out. Yeah, physics happened. My bad. No chromonica on the road.

Then, while waiting for Liz about halfway through the ride, I had a run-in with Farmer Greg and his pitbull Baby Girl. Baby Girl tried to bite my leg in half as I sat down to devour a sandwich, and Greg came outside to observe the commotion. Turns out Greg is a, not one, but TWO-time lumberjack world champion (yes, this is a thing, LOOK!) Day 5 and I'd already brushed noses with my first celeb! And to make matters more exciting, Baby Girl's favorite activity was getting sprayed face-first with a fire hose and doing a "full 360" to jump around and catch the water in her mouth. I got to watch, but after about ten minutes of entertainment I had to get back on the road.

Back to Liz:

Rachel and I caught up with each other ten miles from Yuba City, stopped at Walgreens for gatorade, rode on to our first Warm Showers host. The family -- two grandparents, their daughter, and her three kids -- set us up on a soft lawn in the backyard. The two grandparents rode their bikes across the country after their retirement, took almost half a year to do it. They told us stories of crashing in fire stations and being chased by dogs and awed by beauty. I wish we had that time, but I’m also so excited for Alaska, graduate school, and everything that comes after we make it to New York. Trying hard to stay present, pay more attention to the people who open their homes and hearts to us, but I spend a lot of time caught up in my head and in Yuba, I was still real worried, fretting, angry about trying to make it across the country, just didn’t know how to unravel it.

Day 4: Huffin and puffin (Davis to Sacramento)

That 7 am wake up call. I ran to Ace to pick up some more screwdrivers (turned out Home Depot’s minis were too mini for our bicycles), and also some nuts, washers, bolts, and super glue. Rachel ran to 7-11 for coffee and we shoveled oatmeal down our throats for breakfast.

Even with a viscious headwind over the causeway we made it to Cal Middle School averaging 13.4 miles per hour. I lagged a little but Rachel tore through those four miles, a little neon light at the end of the windy tunnel.

The first class was … haphazard. We definitely could have prepared better for it, but it’s hard to know how to teach a class when you just walk into it, and you’ve got no background with the kids and no real idea of what they’ve been learning. Rachel chipping in -- it didn't help that NBC was filming our FIRST EVER LESSON. I got so nervous I started eating my own words for lunch, which don't taste as good as the brisket sandwiches we had gobbled down the day before. It felt more natural once we brought the class outside to start playing with the Sol Cycles, but the first ten minutes with the giant cameras plastered in our faces were really hard for me.

But there were a few kids that seemed to really take to the lessons. They asked these incredibly insightful questions, they tried, failed and succeeded in tinkering with the bicycle. And we’re realizing that this trip is going to be about those students. We won’t be able to reach every kid we shake hands with. But we’re hoping we can somehow, in whatever little way, inspire a few.

Monday was the last night of home for me. Picked up some more Sol Cycles at the Urban Hive, printed for cheap by Rocket Department. Spent a couple of hours being enlightened by Pheonix, this thoughtful and relentless lady who founded LEEF Education. She’s one of those people I’m incredibly lucky to have met; her ideas will sit with me and shape me for years to come. Ash, one of the co-founders of Code for Sacramento walked in; he’s back from Iran. And we stayed with Caleb, Tyler and Ben, who I met through Fer, in the cramped and homey one-bedroom apartment they share with some pigeons and some beetles. Caleb made some hearty Jambalaya with sausage and rice and veggies and spice and we curled up on rugs and in old sleeping bags and drifted off to sleep to the sound of the city.

Back to Racheland for a bit:

While Liz picked up Sol Cycles and hung out with Caleb + co, I went to finally get that new bike rack from Bicycle Business (they do bike camping trips every week! You should check it out if you live in the Sacramento area, or wait till we get back and I'll go with you). While I was in the shop I suddenly heard the mechanic holler from the other room "You guys on NPR?” Turns out a middle school science teacher spotted the Cycle for Science sticker on my bike and recognized us from our radio interview the week before! I chatted with her for a while about science education, and the awesome "Dinner with a Scientist" program that she runs for her students.

Next stop -- my lovely cousin Lily's house! Sort of my last night of home too. She whipped me up a delish smoothie (dates, almond butter, chocolate, flax seeds I think? I lost count of the ingredients). Even though she was in the midst of finals week for nursing school, she let me gobble up some of her time (I quizzed her with questions about cardiac arrest) and she even drove me to REI (the last REI till Boise!) to pick up bigger panniers for my new "nice rack." Thanks Lilz! Then I popped over to Caleb's to help Liz eat the Jambalaya.

Cycle for Science begins!

Hey all! 

Cycle for Science is off, zoom! 

At the time of this posting, we have ridden just about 200 miles and tonight we’re posting up in Yuba City. We’re going to update here about every 2-3 days, but we’re a little behind. Bear with us because it’s been an incredible journey so far, and we haven’t even really gone anywhere yet. Our bodies already seem to have adjusted to 50-60 mile days (at least, when it’s flat). But we hit the Sierras this weekend, California’s bony backbone, a ten thousand-foot climb.

See I even broke Google trying to figure out the best route:

We’ve got a couple of posts written, and we’re going to play catch up tomorrow and Thursday in Chico. The stories: they’re coming.

In the meantime, a few quick tidbits to tide you over:

- On Sunday, we …. well, it’s a secret now, but it involves a red Chevy convertible. We say no more.

- On Monday, we taught our first class! Cal Middle School and Ms. Mafe Aguilar let us take over fifth period. Thirty 7th graders and five Sol Cycles zipped around the front of the school. Photos and details on that coming soon.

- Then a middle school science teacher recognized Rachel and her Cycle for Science stickers in a bike shop. “You guys on NPR?” hollered a bike mechanic from the other room.

- Yesterday, Rachel made friends with a pitbull in an orchard today, who was jealously eyeing the bacon bits in her sandwich. Farmer Greg called off Baby Girl and invited her inside to refill water (I was maybe five miles back toodling along after a leisurely lunch at a dock on the Sacramento River, where each station was marked by a rag doll).

Farmer Greg was a two time lumberjack world champion (more on this in Rachel’s upcoming post), and here he is in his infinite glory, with the infamous Baby Girl and his housemate Steven.

- And this morning, we squeezed in a teaching lesson with the grandkids of our amazing hosts (Rick and Sharon from Warm Showers, check out their cross country blog!)

They loved it, and christened the purple one “Sunny”. Some of their feedback afterwards:

“Can we power the internet with the sun”
“I want a roller coaster outside powered by the sun!”

That’s all for now, stay posted for our day-by-day updates. Happy Earth Day!

Day 3: A chevy follows two bicyclists across the central valley (Napa to Davis)

Want surreal I’ve got Dada surrealism: NBC followed us around in a red chevy convertible.

It’s strange be on the other side of the microphone, though it gives a perspective all journalists should have. A reminder that you forget what you’re saying when you speak (unless you’ve practiced your lines) and that everything is a little staged.

With the B-roll and the bike fixes, we didn’t get out of Napa until noon, but we made good time down to 12 and onto Hwy 80 and all the way to Davis, really. The central valley is flat. The only mishap – I took a wrong turn and was trying to look up directions to cut back onto the main road and ran straight into a parked car. Well… bounced off the side of a parked car like a rubber ball and fell right into Rachel. For a moment, we were worried Rachel’s derailleur had been knocked out of alignment, but a couple’a good minutes shifting and we were back on the road … Lesson learned. Best part is that it was caught from about four different angles by NBC gopros!

NBC’s piece will air sometime this coming week!*

Coming into Davis was the homecoming I needed to really leave on this trip. We were welcomed in by this tremendous sherbert sunset, exactly like the ones I remember when I first arrived in town last April. A full, hot plate of Pad Sui at Thai Canteen with Fer and Allison, and then Rachel and I realized we needed to piece together all the Sol Cycles. All the holes needed threading, and we still hadn’t optimized the back wheel set to prevent the training wheels from popping up as it moved.

Eight hours later, we had six working Sol Cycles (minus one training wheel) and three hours until we needed to wake up and race to Sacramento to teach our first class.

Cycle for Science, folks. At least we slept well.

*edit: NBC's piece aired on May 7

Day 2: Bike breaks down, car breaks down (Pt Reyes to Napa)

Quails are probably named as such because, man, they coo a racket in the morning. They were up collecting worms and running the kingdom long before the alarm (California, by The Kooks, set for an ambitious 7 am). We inched ourselves out of our warm sleeping bags and started packing. I’d hoped to leave camp by 8:30 – my dad had arranged to meet us at 9 to bike to Napa – but what with hardboiling eggs and the fog, not to mention the friends and the coffee and Rachel’s front rack falling off, we didn’t get out ‘til 9:30.

I was definitely feeling frustrated. Rachel and I have traveled before, and we’re close friends, but she hadn’t slept much in the days before we left, which made the leaving/organizing haphazard. So I was feeling a lot like a mom being taken for granted, neither of which are healthy for three-months of constant companionship. We’re in this for the long haul though, so we talked on the trail once we broke camp (Incidentally, the trail was beautiful when it wasn’t pitch black and uphill and at the end of a 3400 foot-elevation-gain day).

Because for the duration of these three months, we’re married, in it for the long haul, the good, the bad, the ugly, the stinky.

And there’s guaranteed to be lot of the first and the last (we oughta bottle the smell of our socks; like these are chemical weapons), so it’s just figuring out how to minimize the middle stuff and as with any partnership, it’ll take some work and getting used to.

Eventually, we made our way down to my pops in the Bear Valley Visitor Parking lot. Rach loaded her bike into the Prius – my mama was going to take her to Napa to get her rack mended or replaced, since it failed two separate times on Friday.

At the visitors center, the babies are confused. I think in the world they’re carefully learning, we fail to fit any object categories … we look like human buffalos.

For a hot minute, the bikes worked and the Prius failed, but a quick call to AAA scared the transmission into action and Rachel and my mom were on their way.

My dad and I took to the Pt. Reyes-Petaluma road, and it’s a gorgeous ride that’s chivalrous to mind and body. The hills roll with grass that’s somehow still green, the reservoir is somehow still full, the hawks circle by the dozens, their great big wings stretched out like a morning yawn.

But man man man my legs were on fire and just tired from the mountain before, and the hills were high and tall and each crest, that flat bit right as the parabola turns over, like the softest red carpet welcome.

Meanwhile in Racheland:

Jan, Liz's mom, was so sweet and offered to drive me to hunt for a new front rack. I figured it was worth it -- I had felt incredibly unstable on my bike yesterday with my cheap Racktime rack (what time is it? NOT Racktime, but rather it's time to invest in a hurdy gurdy front rack.) Or, as I joked about seven too many times, it was time to go get myself a "nice rack." I was also feeling really overwhelmed and unprepared from yesterday, and so it was nice to have some time to pick up some of the things I'd forgotten.

So we zipped car-speed to Petaluma to prowl the bike shops. First stop: Bruce Gordon's Cycles, a fancy custom bike shop known for their, well, nice racks. What followed was a fat slap in the face. We met Bruce in the parking lot of his shop. He told us it would take several days to get a rack ready, and painted, and that we had "no chance" of finding one anywhere else on this short notice. That's about when he poked his head into the car, took a look at my bike, and LAUGHED. CHORTLED even. "China, huh?" he said, and then something along the lines of "cheap shit." He then began the long list of things wrong with my bike and why it was too crappy to take me across the country. I told him I'm a scientist and fresh outta college and I don't make enough money for a custom carbon frame bike, and that this was going to have to do (sidenote: my Jamis Aurora is the best bike I've ever owned, I bought it new after my old one was stolen in Berkeley and it's probably the most expensive thing I've ever bought). The last thing he said, which he repeated several times, was cemented in my memory. "I feel sorry for you," shaking his head. Gee, thanks Bruce! I can't wait to send him a postcard from New York in three months.

We tried a few more shop, but nada. So I called ahead, and arranged to pick one up when we got to Sacramento. Problem solved!

And back to Lizland:

We made it to Petaluma by 3 and ravaged meaty sandwiches from the deli. Then we clown-car piled three bikes, 17 bags and 4 adults into the family Prius and booked it to Napa, where we were staying with our first couchsurfing host. She took us in, greasy hands and stained jerseys and all, and then drove us to meet my parents for dinner.

Josh and Jenn joined us for an Italian feast accompanied by an 80’s-covers rock-and-roll band, complete with a digital drumset. Helped make that goodbye good.

Day 1: The Sea to the Sky (San Francisco to Point Reyes)

A thousand feet above sea level, maybe, and our thighs are burning, so we pull off the asphalt because we can’t heave our 90-pound* bikes any further up the mountain without fast and heavy calories.

Day one and we’re climbing Mount Tam and it’s just straight on the up and up for four, five ten twenty miles (who knows how long it actually was). Rachel and I vow never to follow beauty over mountains again.*

At the top, a pint-sized public bus pulls up to the ridge and out climb a dad wearing a Bruins cap and a girl who went to Wesleyan. There’s a bus that drops you off at the top? They wish us luck; we give them stickers.

*no accurate weight available
*we’re going to do it again with the Sierras; 11,000 feet of climbing in 3-4 days

Finally, we throw ourselves down the backside of the mountain toward the Pacific (our second meeting that day; our first ended with shoes, socks, cleats, gear sets, drenched in salt water, a Californian baptism before we turn east), the whole word rattling under our wheels, vibrating, buzzing with dissipated potential energy. 

At the bottom, Amanda welcomes us with  sour cream and onion sun chips and Paul scoops some dairy-free pesto onto a hunka bread while drinking a beer out of an egg carton. We’re just tasting the beginning of being hungry all the time.

After Stinson beach, the road runs along the water for a couple of miles and the seals are laid out like tootsie rolls on the sand bars. The rolling hills feel like wicked mountains.

Then Olema, great, tiny little town, we’re close to camp, and we’re just about out of steam. Paul and Rachel pick up a map and

then the gut-punch that Sky Camp looms 1,000+ feet above us, nestled in the fog. The sun hangs low over the hilltops and the air started to nip. At least, Rachel’s friends had pulled up around the corner ran and they offered to stack our bags in their car and carry them up the mountain.

So for the first mile it feels like our bikes are the finest carbon fiber, weig nothing, and we power up the hill. But I’m down to my lowest gear by the end of it, muscles wasted, inching upwards at 3.5 miles per darkening hour.

At the parking lot, we realize we don’t have permits and two other cars have tickets, so Rachel’s friends leave a note on the dash and we tack a warning to the post to try to catch Thomas and Max. The days’ not over yet – there’s a 1.2 mile hike to camp, and it’s too dark by then to ride on the gravelly. The only option is to lean on the handlebars and shove them up the hill, tires and shoe soles slipping on the rocks. The path is definitely angled somewhere between 60 and 125 degrees, just walkin’ upside down.

Halfway there, Josh, Thomas and Wires caught up with us walking. They make the final stretch bearable, and when we reach camp, it’s dark, foggy and the most welcome sight we’e seen in 12 hours. We hear it was beautiful at sunset.

Hot dogs are grilled hot on charcoal, chicken sausage loaded on, zucchini crisped and buns toasted. We feasted, we made Dionysus proud.

Josh’s Google Fire Thrower, or whatever it was called, lit up the fog to the level of a dim bar bathroom, only it smelled like salt and pines instead of sweat and beer.  You could see the little water droplets dip and spin in the air, a billion elegant ballerinas.

I went to bed full, tired, a little fed up, a little cold, and a little confused that this big thing we’d talked into the ground had actually begun.

We did it!!!

Thank you so much. With the help of over 100 supporters, we successfully raised enough money to make the Sol Cycle a reality!

The Indiegogo campaign raised over $7500, which will allow us to leave/ship at least two Sol cycles to each classroom we stop at, with wiggle room for more if we can bring the costs down. Now the hard part... making the Sol Cycle roll... and biking it to classrooms across the nation.

BLAST OFF!

Breaking news from the murky corner of a Sacramento coffee shop: we just launched our Indiegogo campaign for Cycle for Science!!! After three mostly sleepless nights of spastic typing and video editing, we’ve finalized our goals and the campaign is live.

As a recap – in exactly two months, Elizabeth and I are bicycling from San Francisco to New York City. As we zoomzoom across the US, we’ll be stopping in middle school classrooms to teach science lessons and to interview science educators. We’re designing the “Sol Cycle” – a 3d printable, solar powered bicycle demo – to teach about renewable energy and physics, and to make our project possible we need some help covering the costs to print this and to document teacher’s stories.

Check out our full campaign here!

We also did our third teacher interview today! Sneak peak: this amazingly driven woman saw a need, and single-handedly started robotics and programming electives at her middle school! Stay posted for upcoming blog posts about her and the inspiring teachers we’ve spoken to so far.

Just a few quick groans for the morning...

NYT’s the Upshot published an article earlier this week:

“How Elementary School Teachers’ Bias Can Discourage Girls from Math and Science”

Okay so at first, I read through this, and I was like: of course. Of course we have unconscious biases and those of elementary school teachers tend to line up with society’s.

But this study is actually kind of weird: it shows that: 

“Beginning in 2002, the researchers studied three groups of Israeli students from sixth grade through the end of high school. The students were given two exams, one graded by outsiders who did not know their identities and another by teachers who knew their names.

In math, the girls outscored the boys in the exam graded anonymously, but the boys outscored the girls when graded by teachers who knew their names.”

So, huh? How do biases affect scores on math and science tests? There isn’t much interpretation involved in those answers. Also grouping 6th grade with elementary school is a stretch. I’ve requested media access to the article; hopefully I can find out. 

The Teachers Who Make Us

This is what the internet was made for. Brandon Stanton started profiling and photographing New Yorkers some five years ago, founding Humans of New York (HONY). Millions now follow his work, because he manages to tease out the most compelling, earnest, honest, wrenching stories from the strangers he meets. A couple weeks ago, he ran into a kid named Vidal, and asked him about someone who made an impact on his life.

Stanton “Who’s influenced you the most in your life?”
Vidal “My principal, Ms. Lopez.”
Stanton “How has she influenced you?”
Vidal “When we get in trouble, she doesn’t suspend us. She calls us to her office and explains to us how society was built down around us. And she tells us that each time somebody fails out of school, a new jail cell gets built. And one time she made every student stand up, one at a time, and she told each one of us that we matter.”

http://www.humansofnewyork.com/post/108621363306/whos-influenced-you-the-most-in-your-life-my

Brandon encouraged his followers to donate to a fund that would allow the school to take their kids to Harvard. To date, the public has a raised over a million dollars, enough to set up that field trip for perpetuity, as well as provide scholarships for deserving kids like Vidal. And just this week a picture went up of Vidal and Ms. Lopez were invited to the White House.

This woman is a national hero:

“This is a neighborhood that doesn’t necessarily expect much from our children, so at Mott Hall Bridges Academy we set our expectations very high. We don’t call the children ‘students,’ we call them ‘scholars.’ Our color is purple. Our scholars wear purple and so do our staff. Because purple is the color of royalty. I want my scholars to know that even if they live in a housing project, they are part of a royal lineage going back to great African kings and queens. They belong to a group of individuals who invented astronomy and math. And they belong to a group of individuals who have endured so much history and still overcome. When you tell people you’re from Brownsville, their face cringes up. But there are children here that need to know that they areexpected to succeed.”

Had any teachers or educators that made an impact on your life you’d like to celebrate? Let us know at wecyleforscience@gmail.com. We’d love to hear your story. 

"Be a Scientist"

Time for me to do my first batch of scribbling in this bloggity blog! Actually I think this is the first time I’ve ever written in a blog. And yesterday, another first – I taught in a middle school classroom for the first time.

Gulllp.

I’m volunteering in the pilot of “Be A Scientist,” an outreach program with theCommunity Resources for Science (CRS). A little plug for CRS – they are an amazing Berkeley-based organization that aims to connect scientists, educators and students and provide an array of resources to help excel science education. Er, I’ll let them say it:

“Our goal is simple: help teachers give students more opportunities to “do science” – to ask questions, test ideas, get their hands on real science activities. We need to inspire the next generation of thinkers, makers, problem solvers, and leaders!”

One of their most widespread programs, BASIS (Bay Area Scientists in Schools), brings scientists, mostly graduate students and post-docs from UC Berkeley, into elementary and middle schools to teach interactive, hands-on lessons. BASIS has had some remarkable success – last year (2013-2014), 500+ BASIS volunteers visited 416 Bay Area classrooms, presented over 100 different hands-on lessons, and reaching over 10,000 students. Teachers love it – each BASIS lesson was crafted to fulfill a specific state teaching standard, and they bring new perspectives to students about what science means.

Graciously, BASIS allows grad-school-procrastinators like myself go too. I’ve been visiting elementary school classrooms this year to teach interactive lessons on renewable energy. Last time we went to a third grade class. It was challenging to introduce the idea of renewable energy to the class, let alone the concept of “renewable” – we asked for examples of renewable things, and the students kept saying “shoes! Cuz you can go buy more!” We used a solar powered buggy demo, I guess a twice removed (since there are two more wheels?) cousin of our little infant Sol Cycle.

“Be a Scientist” is a bit different than BASIS. Rather than giving just one lesson over one class period, the same volunteers come into the same 7th grade class six times during the semester. Here’s the low down: every single student is designing, carrying out, analyzing, and presenting their own testable scientific experiment over the course of a month and a half. The idea is to introduce the scientific method to the students, coach them throughout the creative process, and relate it back to what we do in our own research projects. It was founded by Mary C. Wildermuth, a UC Berkeley Professor of Plant & Microbial Biology (stay posted peeps, we’re trying to line up a teacher profile with her!)

I walked into Mr. C’s classroom and immediately my eyes zipped around between dioramas of planets, bright posters all over the walls, and … to the gecko geckoing around in his gecko in the back corner! It was clear this teacher had worked really hard to create a comfortable, vibrant space for his students to learn at their fullest.

There were five other volunteers in my class. We started off giving quick overviews of our own research. I pulled the whole “I shoot giant six-foot lasers at stuff to make other stuff, KAPOWWW” line, and attempted to explain transparent conducting materials and their relevance in everyday devices: iPhones, LED disco dance displays, flat screen TVs, and – the ultimate, la crem de la crem – solar energy conversion. Other volunteers were from many different research areas, and talked about particle physics, nuclear physics, robotics, chemistry, biology, etc.

The students had so many o’ question. So many that the “quick” intro ended up taking up half the class period, leaving less time to break out into groups. Some highlights: “What is a grad student?” “How much money does Berkeley have? Does it get it from Football? Why do some schools have more money than other schools?” “Is chemistry, like, the stuff in your brain?” “Wait, whaaat is your name?” “Do you do what my mom does?” and one memorable one directed to me: “Do lasers make you blind, like, forever forever?”

For the rest of the class, I led four students in a discussion to brainstorm separate research projects for each of them. It was trickier than I’d thought. We need to come up with four experiments that are stimulating, challenging, and suited to the student’s interest, and the constraints are heavy – materials must be very cheap and the experiment must be feasible to complete in two class periods. The ol’ mentos and coke gag is off limits. And experimenting on animals is discouraged. So of course, my two most students immediately decided they wanted to work with mice (putting them in solitary confinement and in the dark!?) and with hamsters. Multiple. I tried to gauge what each of their general science interests were – neuroscience, computer science, electricity, and “um nothing” – and redirect these interests into testable questions not involving mice. We didn’t get too far, and the questions are very much under construction (just like the UCLA campus always is!) but here’s what they might be doing:

1. How does the power output vary between batteries made out of different kinds of fruits and vegetables? Why? Bonus project: how can we hook up these batteries to charge an iPhone? (this student initially wanted to charge an iPhone with mulitple hamsters on a treadmill – the teacher said we could do that if his parents provided the hamsters. I wished him luck)
2. How do humans react to being in darkness for varying periods of time? (We’re still having some trouble defining the dependant variables … this student wants to do this on mice, and is trying to pull the “Hey mom can you buy me seven mice” card. Again, sent some luck)
3. How does the electronic resistance vary in different materials? How does it change when you heat them up? (I might be able to bring some semiconductor materials from my lab… thinking silicon, some metals, maybe something I’ve synthesized… might change the thickness, might measure transparency to try to squeeze in a lesson on transparent conductors?)
4. What percentage of students can differentiate the taste of similar-textured foods when their sense of smell is eliminated? Nose-plugs are quite as hard to come by as hamsters, and are provided by the CRS. We’ll run the typical “potatoes vs. apples”, and come up with some others. We might use the same foods as the battery experiment.

I had a tough enough time talking with four students, and keeping all of their interest while narrowing each of their interests. At one point we had to take a break, and so we took the gecko out of its cage so I could explain the suction mechanism on its feet. After just a half hour of brainstorming, I was exhausted. Yet Mr. C used to do this same project every year for twenty years with NO help, in the same time frame. That means seven times as many kids as I was helping, and making sure each one of the 30 students has a project that is both exciting and practical. And then teaching six other classes of the same thing. That’s a whoppin’ 180 different science experiments.

Anyways, this was the first of six visits I am so excited to see how these projects evolve and I’m lucky to have the support of CRS throughout the process. I’m trying to drag Elizabeth along with me for a few classes (my avid readers: that’s where you come in! Start spam emailing Elizabeth to convince her to come with me! Okay fine, she has a super busy schedule because she just got into a bunch of PhD programs and has to, ya know, get flown all over the country so they can convince her to come work on piezoelectric devices…)

Sasha and Elise from the CRS are also oh so kindly helping us plan our Cycle for Science lessons – so stay tuned for many more CRS-related updates from ovah here!

Belabor the Day pt 3

We left Napa earlyish, after some truly awkward family photos (two children, two spouses, two grandparents, one nephew, both of us). 

The ride back down to the Bay Area was the least pleasant of all days, tempered only by the fried chicken we'd been sent off with (it did not last well, but for a while, it was tasty). In downtown Napa, you could still see the destruction wreaked by the earthquake that had shocked the town - and the whole Bay - just weeks earlier. Caution tape still encircled piles of debris, and "Unsafe to Enter" signs plastered building with missing facades. For the most part, though, it all survived intact.

We took 229 down to 29, through American Canyon. We really just road on the shoulder of the highway, trying to avoid broken glass and careless trash. It was hot, bright, and urban. We got lost in Vallejo and stopped at a mall for lunch. Haven't eaten Aunt Annie's since, but that pretzel dog, grease and all, kept me going over the bridge and down through Richmond.

Actually the bridge and the climb that came after showed off some gorgeous views of the Bay Area. We stopped briefly at the Dead Fish to fill up on water and use the loo. My aunt and uncle have taken me there before... I highly recommend the savory seafood stew. It's a deep red and the biggest portion comes in a bowl bigger than my abdomen.

We essentially just made our way along side streets beside 80 for most of the trip, until we reached the bike path in Albany that cut right to Rachel's apartment in Berkeley. We got in around 6. I think we finished the day with piping hot Udupi (southern Indian food), like always. 

Labor Day pt 1

Josh let’s us crash at his place and we wake up late. We stayed out too late at a Blind Willies concert the night before in a nostalgic basement: very nice wood paneling and decorative window slats. Rachel used to play trombone for them.

We eat a mediocre breakfast down the street from his San Francisco high rise and realize we’ve probably brought too much, like we always do.

Life’s easy over the Golden Gate. I tape my camera to my helmet with sticky black electrical tape. My OG Go-Pro is a pound of lopsided media. Tourists take pictures of me. The helmet is unstable. Did you know it takes more than 17 minutes to cross the bridge? The video I try to capture is so jerky I’m nauseated watching it on the preview screen.

Our goal: make it to Lagunitas by nightfall. We don’t. But along the way, we meet Alexi, lead singer of the Blind Willies, at Arizmendi in San Rafael. He’s driving to the Russian River. It’s not really on our way. In fact it’s over a large and steep hill and we get lost in a suburb. Google has a way of making everything look flat and mono-directional. We’re really sweaty and really late. When we finally make it, the pastries crumble and melt in our mouths, worth every second of detour.

Once you’ve climbed and descended four or five or seven hills in 90 degree heat, it’s all the same and time disintegrates around you and the aching in your thighs standardizes. So I can’t really tell you about the road between San Rafael and Petaluma except that the hills were a real pretty yellow, all dried out like the rest of the state in the midst of exceptional drought.

We’re exhausted by the time we get to Petaluma, but I don’t think we’ve every been so happy to bumble over cobblestone.

The brewery, we’re told, is three miles outside of town. (Maybe less, maybe my exhaustion drags it out). We emailed them earlier to see if we could camp at the brewery but they politely declined. We’ll be staying with our first Warm Showers (like Couchsurfing, for cyclists, yep the name is a little uncomfortable, but we are really excited about the promise of showers. First, beer.)

We get beer and sliders. We should be hungrier. The bar closes like twenty minutes after we arrive so we only have time for one beer and they won’t let Rachel order a stout float. We watch a couple dance tenderly, drunkenly under the strung-up (strung-out?) white lights. The tables empty out. Getting back on our bikes isn’t as bad as you’d think.

Our Warm Showers host, Steve and Bridget, welcome us in after we’ve called them three times because I wrote the house number down wrong. They’re remodeling. They apologize. They let us sleep in the master bedroom on a camp bed. (“You can camp outside, but you’ll have to share it with the chickens.”)

The shower they let us use is, in fact, very hot. We turn the water black. Steve and Bridget invite us to watch the rest of The Zero Theorem, a candy-colored dystopian film directed by Terry Gilliam about searching for the meaning of life (or rather, trying to prove there isn’t any). Christoph Waltz plays an anxious, uncomfortable programmer. He moves like an adolescent or a robot. The math is really bad. I hope that was on purpose.

We fall asleep immediately afterwards. Our dreams are weird.

To be continued…