A Short Preview

A few weekends ago, Erica and I decided to take a little road trip down to Kentucky to check out part of the TransAmerica trail that we will be riding on this summer. Even though our adventure is only a mere 8 weeks away, I think we both needed to see something tangible about the road we will be on. Perhaps it was nothing more than a slight introduction for us…to go out onto the actual roads we will be riding on, as a way of saying “Hello” to the path, which will be our constant companion for the days and months ahead.

If you’ve ever played a sport, given a speech, played a concert, then you can probably relate to some of the feelings we had about this short trip. In basketball, you can practice a million times on a court…but something about that court feels different on game day. With speaking, you can prepare your words over and over in the space you are speaking at, but it all feels changed in a room full of people. I’m sure musicians feel this shift at venues between sound checks and rehearsals to when they hit the stage…the energy is altered when it is showtime. For us, we’ve imagined, dreamed, anticipated, and prepared for this trip in so many ways and for such a long time, but actually getting to be on the road will be something entirely different.

In all of our preparedness for the trip, we have read many books from folks who have also journeyed across the country by bike and they all say the same thing: “Never ask motorists about the roads.” Why? Because driving up and down hills is entirely different than maneuvering a bicycle up and down those same hills. A couple of years ago, I made note of this after Erica and I went on a quick ride to downtown Indianapolis from our home. Downtown Indy is only about 8 miles from where we live. We made the trip into the city pretty quickly, but when we started to head back, I noticed that the ride back felt like a constant uphill climb…turns out it was exactly that. I had never realized this before in my vehicle.

I’m telling you this short anecdote because as we were driving in Kentucky along our route, I started making mental notes about the hills we were going to be climbing in our loaded down bikes. I started counting miles between the big hills and the nearest gas station/convenience store. I’m starting to practice our ride in my head, trying everything I can to mentally prepare myself, though I know the experience will be quite different as we will be weeks into our trip by the time we reach those dreadfully hilly, yet beautiful Kentucky roads. We will have already scaled our way through the Appalachians, and I’m hoping that the roads we will meet again in Kentucky will merely feel like speed bumps by the time we get there. Here are some photos that might help you all visualize the area:

There is also something else we enjoyed on this short trip, perhaps a bit by accident…the path we will be on this summer goes right through the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, a section of Kentucky where several bourbon and whiskey distilleries are located. We decided to take the short tour of the Heaven Hill Distillery, where we learned a little about the heritage of an industry that remains so important to the economy of the state of Kentucky. We also knocked back a couple of small glasses of Heaven Hill’s finest products, which were quite enjoyable. Also, we managed to fit in a quick stop at the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace, a National Historic Park located in Hodgenville. We love getting to do this kind of stuff,especially if it involves the National Park system…we are a bit geeky in that way!

If there’s one thing I’m especially excited about while we will be on our trip, it will be the opportunity to see those little historical and local treasures that are a part of the various towns and cities along the way. There’s truly nothing like seeing America by bicycle, and at 8 weeks out, I know I can prepare all I want for this adventure, but when it’s showtime I know the journey will provide a new energy, full of surprises. I can’t wait!

A Message from Brandi Carlile and The Twins about LOAA!

Hey guys!  Just in case you are completely off the Facebook grid and missed this today - we're cross-posting the video message from Brandi Carlile and The Twins today about Looking Out Across America!

 



We arrived back home from Brandi's shows at The Beacon Theater this weekend with a renewed excitement for what the Fight the Fear campaign and Looking Out Foundation are going to look like in 2013!  We're so honored and humbled to be part of the ongoing efforts of the Looking Out Foundation, and thrilled to know some of the great people who lend their time and energy to championing the causes that the foundation supports.

Another t-shirt giveaway!

Alright...we have TWO Looking Out Across America T-shirts to give away this time!  Two very generous LOAA supporters have purchased extra shirts to donate to a a couple lucky people in the still shirtless states!

It's easy to enter using the giveaway box below - you can enter by letting us know what state you live in, and get another entry for "Liking" our Facebook page!  The contest is only open to people living in the currently "LOAA shirtless" states - Delaware, Louisiana, South Dakota, West Virginia, Wyoming!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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!

Just over 4 months to go...

Just a few updates, since it's been a while!

Gear Angels

If you “Like” us on Facebook or follow the “Looking OutAcross America” thread on Again Today, you probably saw our photo and post this week about the gear that started showing up on our front porch last Monday and didn’t stop arriving until Tuesday this week.  Some amazingly generous individual/individuals purchased at least 1 of nearly everything on our Amazon Wishlist!  We honestly never expected this to happen, unless it was perpetrated by our parents (who promise it wasn’t them!), and are extremely humbled by the generosity of people who are moved to do something this extraordinary when they hear about our journey and our cause – the Looking Out Foundation.

 

 

 All told, over $650 worth of gear showed up at our door, which is a huge relief for us to not have to go out and purchase on our own before we leave! This gives us that much more peace of mind as we prepare our budget to take the blow of 3 months of unpaid leave and no guarantee of being able to come back to our current jobs after Looking Out Across America.  Not that we’re complaining – we knew the implications of taking this trip, and are prepared to face whatever we have to…but we want these people to know exactly how much their generous donations are appreciated.  There really aren’t enough words to thank them for their kindness, but if those who haven’t come forward yet would like to, we’d be honored to be able to add you to our “Sponsors” page.  If you’d like to remain anonymous, we respect that too; just know if you read this that we are eternally grateful.

Looking Out Foundation Newsletter

I have a sneaking suspicion that our inclusion in the latest Looking Out Foundation newsletter prompted our gear angels to go out and buy some of our stuff – so thank you to the Looking Out Foundation for including a blurb about Looking Out Across America in your newsletter!  If you’ve been out to the Looking OutFoundation’s website lately, you’ll also find that Looking Out Across America is a featured campaign there.  Thanks again LOF – we couldn’t do nearly as much good as we hope to do with this trip without your partnership and support!  Click here to read the latest Looking Out Foundation news, and make sure you head over to the website and sign up to receive updates from them, and go out and “Like” them on Facebook!

Planning

 

 

 We have had our route maps for a couple of months now (thanks mom and dad!), and have had a decent idea of where the route goes, and how long it should roughly take us to complete the trip.  Our daily schedule and exact dates of starting the trip and ending in Seattle (hopefully) have been sort of floating out in space until this week.  While we still aren’t entirely sure of our exact begin and end dates (a lot of this hinges around the date of the Seattle Raise the Roof event, which we’re hoping still happens sometime in September, fingers crossed!), we have started to plan out our days, complete with daily mileage, stopping points, and working in rest days.

This is making the whole thing seem a lot more concrete than it has felt previously.  Actually knowing where in the country we’ll be on a rough date this summer makes a world of difference – we are actually conceptualizing exactly how many days it’ll take us to get to our first big climb of the trip (Day 5 or 6), our first time crossing state lines (Day 14), and our first crossing of the Continental Divide (Day 52 or 53).  Thinking about these things like steep climbs on fully loaded touring bikes also makes all more real the fact that we have just over 4 months left until we need to head out.  Four months to do all the promoting we can do of this thing; four months to get in the best physical shape we can to avoid complete failure in the first couple of weeks; four months to plan, pack, and figure out all of the logistics; four months to make sure we have everything in line for our small herd of animals to be cared for in our absence; four months to get as much done at work as we can.  Yikes!

 Soon we’ll post our tentative daily itinerary, so everyone can have a better idea of where we’ll be and when.  Hopefully some of you live close enough to come out and say hi along the way!

 Sponsors

We put together a short corporate sponsor proposal letter – we have contacted just a couple of potential sponsors so far, and got our first “No” today!  Hah, I assume there will be a lot of those, but hopefully some affirmatives in there too.  If you have any great ideas for sponsors, or think your company might be interested, send us an email and let us know and we can get a copy of the letter to you to pass along!  Or you can provide us company contact info and we can contact them directly.  We appreciate your help!

 

Looking Out Across America: The T-Shirt

 

That title reminded me of Spaceballs...but I digress.  T-shirts are still selling - we may actually have to have more printed soon!  If you still want one, we'll be happy to send it to you, just mosey on over to our Merchandise page :)  And...if you already have one, feel free to tag LOAA in your Facebook photos, or send us a shot of you wearing it - we'd love to include it on our FB page!   And we'd like to include you on our Sponsors page if you wouldn't mind! 

SOOOO…that’s what’s been going on in our world…hope you all are having a great 2013 J