Brawley, Calif.
Finish
Aguila, Ariz.
Miles
140 miles*
By Bruce Wood
www.biggreen alert.com
AGUILA, Ariz. -- A bicycle ride across the country is about testing your limits. Five hours of headwinds and precious little progress in 100-degree desert heat will do that.
It’s about seeing things you’ve never seen, like signs along the side of a lonely two-lane saying, Bombing Range and Live Ammo with a little-needed addendum, Do Not Enter.
A marathon bike ride is about eating all day in order to have the energy to keep going, and it’s about relying on the kindness of others to somehow make it to the safety of civilization by nightfall.
Most of all, however, a bike ride across the country is about meeting people, and so it was for Dartmouth football coach Buddy Teevens and former teammate David Shula on Day 2 of their trip.
There was the border patrol officer who loaded the pair up with water, gave them a primer on how the station’s dog helps sniff out smugglers and “offered to do anything he could do to help us,” according to Teevens.
There was the young guy with the van who helped them avoid the hassles of a stint on Interstate 10 by carting them down the highway for a bit.
There was a woman by the name of Deborah Woodward at Big Mama’s Cafe in Aguila, Ariz., who once worked at the Hanover Inn. Yes, that Hanover Inn, and whose family owns a place near the Woodstock Inn. Yes, that Woodstock Inn.
“People continue to be wonderful,” Teevens said last night in a phone call from Big Mama’s, (Sign out front: Where Bikers Are Welcome). “We pulled into Aguila. There's a street fair going on called Tijuana Tuesdy and we're thinking it doesn't look like there's much here. They said, 'There's a hotel down the road. Let me call down.’
“So they call this woman. She says, ‘I'll probably be in bed when you get here. But I'll leave your room open with the key inside. Just pay when you leave.’ ”
Push Teevens and Shula just a bit -- or push them not at all -- and they will admit the start of the trip has probably been more of a challenge than they anticipated. But it’s also been everything they had hoped it would be.
“It was tough the last two days, but just meeting people like we have been meeting has been the fun thing,” said Teevens. “They’ve been unbelievable. They don't know us from Adam and it's, ‘Come on in. Sit down. We'll get what you want.’ Everyone has been so accomodating.”
But not everyone. Mother Nature has been a good deal less cooperative.
“We sat in the ice bath for about 15 minutes and I felt great, better than yesterday,” Shula said. “But the wind was terrible. We were in pure misery for 5-6 hours straight.”
So much misery, in fact, that Teevens couldn’t help himself on occasion.
“I turned around a couple of times to run with the wind just to feel what it is like,” he said. “That and the heat in the desert really gasses you. I kept waiting for a camel to come over the hill.”
Long hours battling tough conditions can put a strain on a friendship, particularly if one rider is a more experienced cyclist than the other. Not so with the former Dartmouth teammates.
“It's been great,” Shula said. “Buddy goes a lot faster than I do. He'll ride out of sight and I'll pull up and he's either writing in his journal or he's just had a peanut butter sandwich. The man eats more peanut butter sandwiches than anybody can possibly digest over the course of a day. (Teevens had eight yesterday.) That's fuel.”
While he's a little behind schedule Teevens is confident he can make up for lost time once he’s through the mountain southwest. He isn’t making any predictions for today’s leg of the ride, however.
“I'd like to think 150 miles or so but it's hard to say,” he admitted. “We are going up a lot higher where it should be cooler and that will help. But we’ll be going up to 6,000 or 7,000 feet so we’ll have to see how that goes. But we are looking forward to it.”
Day 3 map link provided by Tom Hoyt.
* Does not include van transport on the I-10 dodge.
Former Dartmouth head football coach Joe Yukica was presented the local chapter of the National Football Foundation's Distinguished American Award at the annual scholar-athlete dinner. The official title of the local chapter: The Joe Yukica/New Hampshire Chapter. Yukica was head coach at Boston College, the University of New Hampshire and Dartmouth during his 34-year coaching career.
Former Yukica assistant Don Brown has received a contract extension after leading Massachusetts to the national championship game last December. Story
Around "signing day," the blog carried a note about an Oklahoma high school football/track star considering Dartmouth among several other choices. Turns out he is going to Tulsa to run track. Find the story about Jon Moore here. It's unclear from the story exactly what happened.
The Daily Dartmouth writes about Dartmouth's admissions and acceptances here. The story cites the "highest percentage of Latino and Asian students in Dartmouth’s history, and the highest proportion of black students in roughly 20 years." It goes on to day:
This year’s high yield has eliminated the College’s need to use its wait list and will likely reduce the number of accepted transfer students in an effort to compensate for the unusually large prospective freshman class.Finally, do come check the blog a little after noon today. You'll be glad you did.
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