July 30, 2013

Pedaling to Portland: Day 57

Julie and a group of young adults are biking from Baltimore, MD to Portland, OR to benefit the Ulman Cancer Fund for Young Adults. The team will cover 4,400 miles in 10 weeks. This is Julie's report for

Day 57:

We went to Yellowstone on our rest day in Wyoming. Now, we are in Idaho and there's not much to report. Last state before Oregon!!


July 14, 2013

Pedaling to Portland: Day 40-42

Julie and a group of young adults are biking from Baltimore, MD to Portland, OR to benefit the Ulman Cancer Fund for Young Adults. The team will cover 4,400 miles in 10 weeks. This is Julie's report for

Julie Crosses the Continental Divide: elev. 11.990 ft.
Day 40-42:

Colorado: Day 40 was our first day in the Rocky Mountains. The Rockies and I have a love/hate relationship because I love how beautiful they are but the climbing is a killer. We ended up taking the harder route from Boulder to Idaho Springs but it was worth it when we had about 8 miles of downhill and didn't have to pedal at all at the end of the day. During that downhill stretch, I reached a maximum speed of 45 mph!

Day 41, we got up at 4:30am so that we could set out early. We climbed Loveland Pass and at the top was the Continental Divide. It was the highest point of the entire trip at 11,990 feet! We were hit with some bad weather in the afternoon and after climbing the first mountain I was beat so I was vanned to our overnight host location.

Saturday (day 42), was a fairly easy route that was mostly downhill. We went through Glenwood Canyon on a trail that was awesome! Tomorrow we should be back to climbing so wish me luck!
Glenwood Canyon, CO

July 7, 2013

Pedaling to Portland: Day 33-35

Julie and a group of young adults are biking from Baltimore, MD to Portland, OR to benefit the Ulman Cancer Fund for Young Adults. They will cover 4,400 miles in 10 weeks. This is Julie's report for

Day 33-35:

For the Fourth of July, we were in Arapaho, NE. We had really good BBQ and watched fireworks. The next day was a rest day and we went shooting at a local gun range. We shot pistols, rifles and trap. The trap shooting was really cool because I had never shot at moving clay pigeons before. This morning, we left Arapaho at 6am and rode 103 miles. We finished in Imperial, NE at around 2:40 and I am exhausted.

Note: The team is heading into Colorado now and their route will take them through Yuma, Ft. Morgan, Boulder, Idaho Springs, Vail, Carbondale, Hotchkiss & Fruita.  If you're in the area, be sure to  give them a cheer.

July 3, 2013

Pedaling to Portland: Day 28 - 32

Julie and a bunch of young adults are biking from Baltimore, MD to Portland, OR to benefit the Ulman Cancer fund for Young Adults. They will cover 4,400 miles in 10 weeks. This is Julie's report for

Day 28 - 32:

Over the weekend, days 28 and 29 of the trip, we were in Omaha, Nebraska, which was really fun. I think Omaha has been one of my favorite stops of the trip so far. We had our first home stay, which means that we all stayed in houses of people who live in the area. I was with three other girls from the team. The house that we went to had a mom and dad (Robin and Curtis), three boys (Mike and John are twins and James is younger), and a dog (Murphy). It was so nice being in a home because I really did feel right at home. The boys felt like brothers and the parents felt like parents. This was good for me
The boys and dad
because I had kind of been missing home. The first night in Omaha we went to a restaurant and we all got steaks for dinner, which was awesome! After dinner we went back to the house with Mike and John for cookies that Mike made and ice cream that John had to go get. Our host mom made all her sons give up their beds so that we had somewhere to sleep and they took the air mattresses.  I had the best night's sleep there for the entire trip so far.  In the morning we got up and had french toast made by our host mom. After breakfast, the family went to church and dropped us off in The Old Market [an arts & entertainment district] where we went on slides and went into the shops. That night, there was a cookout-pool party at our host's house that was a lot of fun! Leaving the next morning was hard because it was almost like leaving my real family at the beginning of the summer.


Today, day 32, was a century -- 100 miles or more -- but I didn't ride the entire thing because at mile 25 I blew my tire and needed a new one. The water van had to drive me to the water stop at about mile 40 where the food van with the extra tires met us and gave me my replacement. I changed [my tire] and finished the day in Franklin, NE. Tomorrow is the fourth and we should have a pretty easy day ahead of us!
The girls with their host "mom"