Leg II: Fort Collins to Spirit Lake

Well, we're currently in Spirit Lake, IA recovering a bit from last nights celebration before heading to Tracy, MN tomorrow. We'll write more in our next post about the festivities, but first we should say something about the ride to get here and post some photos of the journey.

So, the route we had planned ran like this:

View Wedding Ride II in a larger map

And this is still essentially the route we stuck to, except that we changed a few of the places that we stayed at. A few by choice and a few due to necessity (e.g. we couldn't cross the Missouri near Niobrara because the road was flooded, so we crossed at Yankton instead). Some of the most notable things that happened on this part of the journey were that we road our first century (107 miles from Fort Collins to Sterling, CO), we had our first good dousing in a thunderstorm between Burwell and O'neill, NE, we broke 1,000 miles on our trip so far as we were riding between Freeman, SD and Rock Rapids, IA and we also crossed into our fifth state (Iowa). Finally, because of our route change due to the flooded Missouri, we got to stop in Rock Rapids and see my cousin Desiree and her one year old daughter Annen. It was a really hot ride, but we made pretty good time and had lots of fun. Anywho, here are some of the pictures from the trek:

Laura took this crazy photo of me leaping amongst the fireflies at our campsite in Broken Bow. Unfortunately the fireflies don't show up very well in the photo. Also unfortunate, our campsite was really close to some train tracks that kept us up during the night, but we got a few hours of sleep and our next location was much better.

From Broken Bow, we biked up to Burwell where we camped right next to the north fork of the Loup River in the city park. It was an excellent spot. This doe and two fawns came down for a drink towards sunset.

Laura poses by an old sod house at the park in Burwell.

Laura takes a break in the shade on this beautiful tree lined gravel road just south of O'neill, NE.

Coming into O'neill there was this great mural on the side of one of the buildings. With all the action taking place in this mural, it's hard to disagree with all the fun the Nebraskans must be having. The giant shamrock is because O'neill is the Irish capital of Nebraska, apparently. We did stay in a really great hotel here and had breakfast at a nice restaurant that both had an Irish influence.

This was taken at the top of one of the biggest hills we've climbed yet. And strangely it was in Nebraska, between Creighton and Bloomfield.

In Bloomfield after having some really good rolls at this local bakery, we biked east into this beautiful sunrise that took on different forms as we continued across Nebraska's rolling hills.

Here it is again.

That same day we crossed the Missouri at Yankton. Typically there wouldn't be any water around these trees.

Back into SD.

We had just a little bit of rain as we headed into Iowa. Here I am taking a break before heading down into the Big Sioux River Valley and crossing into Iowa.

DONUTS!

We've been making a habit of getting breakfast items (juice, muffins, donuts, rolls to go with our yummy jar of almond butter) the night before, because this allows us to munch whilst we're packing up and getting ready to hit the road. The earlier we can leave, the better. We'd prefer to be on the road in the dark than in this crummy heat!! Anyway, last night, upon arriving in Bloomfield, NE, we found a delightful bakery and picked out some rolls for ourselves...but as we were talking the owner said, "Now, wait, these are for tomorrow? Well what time are you leaving? Early? You better trade those in and get fresh ones in the morning. We open at 5!" So that's just what we did. And let me tell you, fresh rolls at 5:30 am are the best thing since...well, you know. 

So, those powered us through long enough to get us back into South Dakota. We're in Freeman, just north of Yankton, and we've got two more days planned to get us to Iowa. But thinking about the next party has also got us thinking about the last one...so we'd better share with you!

Party Prep: Theresa helped us out by making a vat of potato salad!! (And T and her honey, Chris, put us up in their abode for three days, too!! Which was wonderful, as always! Thank You!)

Derek's Aunt Nancie and Uncle Paul join us in the Awesome Matching T-Shirts Club!

Greg and Jamie--pals from Derek's Masters program at CSU...and fellow world travelers! How's China?

The Table Decor was styled with help by Nancie, Theresa, and Chris...we sent a box of our original decorations down from Spearfish that will continue to attend more of the events! Get excited!!!

The fine work of an artist, the Upright Tower of Wedding Favors

One of the tires went flat at the party! Uh oh...WHO was the Captain on the way there, Kevin???

Speaking of being the Captain, Kevin also graced the party with this awesome stunt...(many of you had left already, I'm sorry you didn't see it live because it really was quite something!!!)

Leg I: Spearfish, SD to Fort Collins, CO

Nebraska is STEEP! Who woulda thunk? Well, anyway, we are sitting here in our motel room in Bloomfield after a small hitch in our plans...the highway we were planning to take beyond Niobrara (after camping at the pleasant Niobrara State Park) is flooded! So we changed our route and ended up on an extremely hilly road through Creighton that led us, eventually, here...some of the biggest hills we've seen since leaving SD. Anyway, we had a fun day though it was steep and HOT, and we thought we'd look back on the earlier part of our trip and share it with you!!

Here was our intended route:

View Wedding Ride I in a larger map

Starting off in front of the Meyers house in Spearfish. Derek's  dad, Kent, his brother Jordan, his Aunt Nancie, and our friend John rode with us up the canyon to Cheyenne Crossing...

...where we met a big group of friends and family to have a bon voyage breakfast!

Outside Cheyenne Crossing after some delectable sourdough pancakes!

The Hills are so incredibly green after so much rainfall!

In Hill City, we stayed at an adorable B&B called Mountains and Plains--it is also the Smiling Bear Gift Shop. The owners, Sam and Linda, were incredibly sweet and wonderful, and made us omelettes in the morning to send us off!!

Here are some more pics of the B&B on their website.

Geology Rocks!

From Hill City, we had beautiful weather heading south on the Michelson Trail , until  we were nearing Edgemont. The skies started threatening rain, and we ditched the gravel trail for the shorter, faster road...as we came within a mile or two of Edgemont, the skies opened up. Our original plan was to camp on the southwest side of Edgemont in the Buffalo Gap Grasslands, but instead we opted for a motel (The Rainbow) . What would we expect to see over the hotel office on our way back from a big steak and potato dinner...?

After Edgemont, we had three hot and hilly days through eastern Wyoming, staying one night in Lusk, and then two nights in Torrington (one night camping, and the second, after Laura woke up with a nasty cold, in the Days Inn, our second decision to stray from our plan!)

Finally, we reached Cheyenne, again just before an enormous storm began brewing over the top of us. By that time, though, we were having AMAZING Italian food  at a little place called L'Osteria Mondello! It really was spectacularly good.  The front of the place was a little pizzeria, but then in the back they had a full menu with wait service.  And not only was the food spectacular, but they also gave us free cannolis!  So, if you're ever in Cheyenne, we highly recommend it.

The next morning, bright and early, we had breakfast in this old fashioned diner, which was also our hotel's front office.  Here's Derek looking a bit groggy, probably waiting on his coffee.

 

After about 10 miles of riding, we caught our first glimpse of the Rockies.  Little did we know, that the service road we thought would take us nicely alongside the interstate would soon turn to gravel.  This meant that we had to spend about 10 miles slowly riding or walking the bike along county roads until we were able to pick up Terry Lake Road into Fort Collins (the third change in our route).  The riding after that, though, was simply grand.  We cruised into town again just before the rain hit.  So, all in all it was a rather smooth trip.  We made some adjustments and got to our destination right on time!

Spearfish Wedding and Reception

Just to give you some background, Laura and I planned our wedding around a bike trip; the idea being that instead of people driving to come to our wedding, we would bike to some central locations where we had lots of family and friends. This first post covers the events in Spearfish where we had a proper and very beautiful ceremony in Spearfish, SD followed by a reception for friends and family there. Posts to come will cover our journey and further celebrations in Fort Collins, CO; Spirit Lake, IA; and Redwood Falls, MN.

Adam Ziegler comes down the aisle with his daughter, the flower girl, Taycee.

Laura's brothers, Paul (Left) and Kevin (right) walked her down the aisle.

Derek's Mom, Zindie, reads:

A Map of the World

by Ted Kooser

One of the ancient maps of the world

is heart-shaped, carefully drawn

and once washed with bright colors,

though the colors have faded

as you might expect feelings to fade

from a fragile old heart, the brown map

of a life. But feeling is indelible,

and longing infinite, a starburst compass

pointing in all the directions

two lovers might go, a fresh breeze

swelling their sails, the future uncharted,

still far from the edge

where the sea pours into the stars.

The second reading we chose was recorded by our dear friend Jessie Akos, who couldn't be with us in person that day, as she had just given birth to a beautiful baby boy!

Bicycles

by Nikki Giovanni

Midnight poems are bicycles

taking us on safer journeys

than jets

quicker journeys

than walking

but never as beautiful

a journey

as my back

touching you under the quilt.

Midnight poems

sing a sweet song

saying everything

is all right

Everything

is

here for us

I reach out

to catch the laughter

The dog thinks

I need a kiss

Bicycles move

with the flow

of the earth

like a cloud

so quiet in the October sky

like licking ice cream

from a cone

like knowing you

will always

be there

All day long I wait

for the sunset

The first star

the moon rise

I move

to a midnight

poem

called

You

Propping

Against

the Dangers

Derek's Dad, Kent, shares some words of his own:

The summer Derek was nine he developed an interest in grasshoppers. There were a lot of them around, and he thought he should have a few, so we found him a glass jar, and we cut holes in the lid, and Derek prepared an expedition to the meadow between our house and the creek. Before long he came running back. We anticipated a grasshopper bonanza, but discovered instead, when he got in the door, that his right hand was bleeding—profusely.

He hadn’t discovered some kung-fu grasshopper that considered living in a jar an insult. Rather, the grasshoppers were quicker than he’d anticipated, and after several failures at catching them, he had a good idea. If the grasshoppers wouldn’t go inside the jar, the jar would go outside the grasshoppers. Derek crept up to the next grasshopper he saw, lifted his jar like a net and swung it down, capturing the grasshopper inside.

For a split second.

In the next split second, the jar didn’t exist, since the grasshopper happened to be sitting on a rock.

You can fill out the rest of the story.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be speaking of blood and gore at a wedding. I hope no one’s feeling faint. I should be speaking of love and togetherness, not the groom’s former wounds and failures, and if I have to talk about insects, tradition probably demands butterflies. But there are things that stick in a parent’s mind, and they stick for reasons, and a wedding is a time to wonder about how the past, even in its small ways, is held to the future.

There’s this, for instance: Our lives are fragile: breakable and crystalline, and we—you might say—hold them in our hands, and we move through a pretty wondrous world and collect things—experiences, memories, relationships: grasshoppers. And there are times when, come hell or high water or rocks, you just have to go after a grasshopper. The fullest kind of living may be when you’re sensing the wonderful fragility of what you hold and yet you’re going headlong after your passion.

One of the beauties of a wedding is its sense of fragility. This ceremonial moment right now is fragile—in its particularity, its light, its gathering of these people, all of us here. In another few minutes or hours, it’s going to break, and time will resume, and then there’ll be memories of a wholeness, a thing made and framed and created. And inside that thing, a relationship captured and held, a living relationship that Derek and Laura will carry, together, through the rest of their lives. Time shatters everything. Memory and relationship hold things together. A wedding pulses between these two truths.

This—this moment right now—is your grasshopper, Derek and Laura, inside this fragile jar of a day. Carry it carefully. Find other such moments. Go after them. Point out for each other the rocks.

Derek and Laura make their vows to each other:

To join with you and share all that is to come,
in joy and in sorrow, in plenty and in want, in sickness and in health,
to love and to cherish, as long as we both shall live.

PARTY TIME!!!

After some pictures we (around 30 riders) headed out for a cruise around Spearfish. We had a nice ride and got some great looks!

And since we were already on the bicycle, we decided to just ride right in to our reception in the Spearfish City Park Pavilion.

Kevin strangling his (and our) nephew Noah. Because what would a reception be without some good old fashioned horsing around.

And of course there was cake. We had four different flavors (flavours if you're British). Here I (Derek) am insisting Laura try the lemon cake with raspberry filling while she becomes very assertive with some cake of her own.

And finally, there was dancing. Oakhurst played at our wedding (visit www.porchmusic.com for a taste of their music) which was a real treat and Taycee loved them!

In fact, we all loved them. Everyone got out on the dance floor. It was a great time.

So, now Laura and I have been sitting at a place called the Pizza Palace in Burwell, NE for about 2 hours and our computer is running out of juice. We are too and we need to head to our campground and get some Z's before our ride to O'Neill, NE tomorrow. But we'll try to post again tomorrow on the first leg of our journey to Fort Collins, CO. Ciao!

Starting Off...Sort of!

We're beginning from the middle. Of the Cycling Honeymoon/Celebration Series, that is...we've been so exhausted at the end of the day and so busy with planning our route, grabbing extra gear, and doing laundry...not to mention sleeping and eating A LOT...we've sort of put the blog on hold. Until now!! You lucky ducks.

So today we write to you from Broken Bow, Nebraska. It is in fact our twelfth night on the road, and our plan is to, after today, do some retroactive blogging to catch you up. AND not to worry, someday we'll even get back to finishing our last few blogs from our time in London and Europe.

We started our day in North Platte with some amazing hills, which brought us down into a little town called Arnold, where we had fruit smoothies and homemade donuts at an adorable antiques shop/coffee house/farmers market called the Farmhouse. They warned us to have the camera ready on our next leg for the "canyons" we'd encounter:

This was the best view taken from the stoker's seat!

After a while things flattened out a little bit...but the whole day was really, pretty nice. We started early to try and beat the heat, which we've been doing regularly, but it still gets darn hot. These were the only clouds we saw, and they didn't do much to give us some shelter from the sun but they did make for a nice photo, matching up nicely with the tire tracks through this field:

Tonight we're camping at a city campground..which means our tent is in a small grassy area behind the Ellen B. Marchek Memorial Tennis Center. It's nice and private, but next to the train tracks...we'll hope it's not too busy!! Tomorrow we head for Burwell, and we'll try to write more from there! Ta-ta!