Updates, mostly about t-shirts, and another LOAA t-shirt giveaway!!!

Real life has been busy lately!  We’ve been working on our route plan, and have a fairly decent idea of our exact start date now, so that’s exciting!  Look for that to be posted on the website in the coming weeks, so you can get a good idea of which small towns we’ll be staying in along our route across the country, and where you might want to come out and say “hi”!  Because obviously, instead of traveling to some fantastic location to see a great concert or exciting landmark, you probably will want to plan your summer vacation around having lunch with us in, say, Larned, Kansas, right?!?  I knew it…

Endless “THANK YOU”’s to all of you who have supported our personal expenses for the journey by purchasing a t-shirt, or just sending us electronic dollars (who deals in the real ones anymore anyway!)!  We had more shirts printed over the past week or so, I picked them up just this morning, and we have already sold out of Medium and Large again!  I think a much larger order will be called for next time!  We will place our next order today, so those of you who don’t have your shirts yet, no fear, we’ll keep having them printed as long as there is demand for them!  And again, we are so thankful for our local t-shirt printers, Hayes and Taylor, for working with us on our spastic orders!  Check out their website for some cool vintage-inspired designs on super-soft shirts.

We honestly weren’t sure the shirts would sell well at all, and I remember thinking we were taking a big risk ordering the first 50 last August.  Here we are ordering the latest 50 (after some additional small catch-up orders), and wondering if we can even keep pace with the rate that sales are going lately!  And we might have reason to believe that even more people might want one of these shirts soon…yes, that is a teaser, but you’ll just have to wait and see! :)  If you’re planning on trying to make it out to see Brandi and gang on tour this summer, grab your LOAA shirt and make it easier for them to spot you in the crowd!

For those of you that have your shirts already…you may have seen a call for photos of you in your shirts at some cool location, possibly something that represents your geographic location, or includes an adorable animal wearing an LOAA shirt.  If you haven’t already, please send your photos to holly@againtoday.com, and we’ll put together some cool slide show of sorts once they’re all combined!  We’ll also post them on our “LOAA Shirts Out and About” photo album on Facebook – get out there and see who’s already shared their pic, and get inspired!

Here's an example: Jessica from Tucson in her LOAA shirt!

 

That brings us to the last bit of exciting news we have for you – a t-shirt giveaway!  One of our generous donors has purchased a shirt, to be given to someone in one of the 9 remaining “shirtless” states!  See the list below:

·         Delaware

·         Louisiana

·         Maryland

·         North Dakota

·         South Dakota

·         Tennessee

·         Vermont

·         West Virginia

·         Wyoming

If you live in one of those states, use the entry form below, and you might just be the lucky winner of your very own LOAA t-shirt, in whatever size you choose!  You can enter now through Saturday, March 2^nd at midnight, at which point we will randomly select and notify a winner.  Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Looking Out Across America T-Shirt Giveaway!

Hey guys!

Our best friend, Emily, is running a contest for a Looking Out Across America t-shirt over on her blog, www.emilysadventures.com.  Head on over there and enter to win!  The contest will run through Saturday, February 16th at 11pm EST.

Many thanks to Emily for giving up her blog space to us today! 

Good luck everyone :)

"I Could Be the Engine, You Could Be the Wheel"

Erica and I have been getting a lot of attention about Looking Out Across America lately, but we would be mistaken to not introduce you all to our wonderful co-stars of this adventure: our bikes. We will both be riding bikes made by Surly, a bicycle company based in Bloomington, Minnesota. The model we both will be riding is the Surly Long Haul Trucker, designed especially for touring bicyclists. This is the toughest bike around, built to carry all of the gear needed for long trips. The geometry of the frame also allows you to sit more upright than traditional road bikes, which is essential for maintaining a posture comfortable enough to spend long hours in the saddle.

 When we first decided to ride our bikes across the country, Erica and I had heard of the Long Haul Trucker...in a way it sort of became like the Holy Grail of bikes to us. We purchased the 2011 racing blue model for Erica, and just last spring in 2012, we purchased the 2012 model for me. Erica had no problem finding a model of the Long Haul Trucker that was a good fit for her, but I had a little more trouble. I'm only 5' tall, and it proved to be quite difficult to find any bike at all, from any manufacturer, that fit me well and made me feel safe. Fortunately, we stopped in to one of our favorite local bike shops here in Indy, Indy Cycle Specialists, who ordered up the smallest Long Haul Trucker frame available, and the awesome guys at the shop diligently spent a few days building it from scratch. For those of you that are into bikes, here are the specs of our bikes:

Of course, thanks to the kindness of some of our wonderful friends and supporters, our bikes will be loaded down with plenty of gear to aid us in this adventure. We have already outfitted our bikes with a few items, such as bike computers that will help us keep track of our speed, cadence, and distance. And after months of consideration, we ended up naming our bikes, since they will be our noble steeds for this journey. Erica's racing blue bike has been named Kerouac (after Jack Kerouac, author of the appropriately named "On the Road"), and my speedy black bike has been named Padfoot (a nickname for Sirius Black, a character in the Harry Potter series).

Here we are with Padfoot and Kerouac; hopefully they are ready for the big adventure they were made for!