So its Monday the final Monday of our cross country ride. I have been keeping a journal of each day along this trip which I plan to share next week after we complete the riding and when I have some time to organize my ramblings into coherent passages – so stay tuned or blogged.

I can not say this enough, but this trip has been an incredible experience – painful, loving, exciting, dangerous, challenging, exhausting, silly and rocking.

I owe a personal thanks to many individuals, cyclists, musicians and pals who have given us(me) their attention and compassion through these past seven weeks.

With the end I am saddened and uninterested in returning to new york city. I miss the great west, the vast open space to explore. I also miss making loud music and thinking about art. But, I am looking forward to my new future and where our(Julia and I) next adventure takes us!

Ahhh. never the less there is more to come in the next few days.

Thanks as always & and please be safe and take care of one another, these are really difficult times.
Pearson

I’m sitting in Thermopolis, Wyoming, in an old Holiday Inn, that has a gun display in the lobby.  My body is sore this morning, but I’m itching to get on my bike today.  Tonight we’ll stop in Casper, Wyoming, 134 miles down the road. 

All in all though things are going well, thanks for everyone’s ideas about my flat tires, although a few flats are nothing shocking, what is, is the awful condition of the roads.  The shoulders are full of jagged rocks, trailer spikes, endless broken glass and miles of worthless rumble strips. That said I would say that my bikes have held up well to the brutal punishment.

I have been keeping a riding journal, which I intend to share here, although today is not the day. 

I will mention that we’ve ridden through nothing short of amazing country.  Idaho blew my mind, Yellowstone was remarkable and peculiar with the last seven miles to the east entrance being the best cycling so far in the trip, all down hill for 3000+ feet at 40 mph.

Shortly after we crossed through the North Absaroka Wilderness, part of the Shonshone National Forest where the Gunbarrel Forest Fire coated the sky with an enormous smoke canopy for the remaining 60 miles to Emblem, Wyoming.  It was a stunning sight, incredibly beautiful yet destructive and horrifying, a sight I will not soon forget.

Currently I’m thinking about New Orleans, thinking about the future of our country and hoping nothing but the best for every person in this great land. 

Best –

Pearson