Coast to Coast for a Cause 2022

Hey, it’s the one and only, Julia! So today was finally the day…I fell off my bike. Don’t worry it was literally when I was starting and very anti-climatic with only a small scrape on my knee. Now we have all had at least one fall, so all these falls can no longer be blamed on me.  We had another fantastic day biking with Leo and Pat! Like any other day, we said we would leave at 7am…we ended up leaving closer to 9. Today, though, we were absolutely FLYING! In the first hour we did 18miles. Originally, we thought we would finish in Lewistown, MT and have a rest day after a 45mile ride. However, Pat and Leo are very persuasive, and convinced us to stick with them and do an additional 32 miles to Grass Range, MT. I mean we did get into Lewistown before noon and the rest of the day would be almost all downhill, so it wasn’t that hard to convince us.  We ended up having lunch in Lewistown at the Montana Tavern that has a creek running underneath the bar. We thought it would be thi...

Brian here again with our trip from Great Falls to Stanford today!  Great Falls was definitely one of the biggest towns we had come across since Seattle (60,000 people vs. the 100 person towns we usually pass through) and while it was nice having a Walmart with all of Distins favorite snacks just a few miles away we had to keep moving onward. Turns out instead of the 70 or so miles we thought we would be doing today it was just a nice “easy” 57 miles. There’s heavy sarcasm in that statement because I was struggling today for sure. I gotta start eating more food in the morning and packing more snacks because my energy level was low and I was lagging pretty far behind the group for most of the day. Even worse, instead of the nice flat roads we were expecting, we got plunged into some remnants of the Rocky Mountains and were trekking through valleys and climbing hills most of the day. One thing that was interesting today was a military convoy that passed us by. After a few Military Hu...

Hey y’all, Dustin here - this morning was the first time we tried to get up REALLY early (5am) in an attempt to beat the heat and the wind. We did this with moderate success, no one was up by 5 but we did leave shortly after 7 which was the goal! Today was another day of plains (but like not the flat kind that we would want) and we also have two new riding buddies!  Leo and Pat are two college students from the east coast who are also biking across the country, and after hearing about each other for weeks we finally got to meet last night. So we decided to ride together but Julia, Brian, and I set off just a bit earlier than them because we knew they would be speedy. You know - these grandpas knees of my definitely can’t keep up with these young whippersnappers (if you missed it, I literally have patella tendinitis in both knees so I’m not even joking). The leaving a bit ahead proved to be a great choice because they caught us within the first 5 miles. After catching up we road the...

Hey hey it’s Julia! So we thought when we left the Rockies in the past that it would be smooth sailing through the plains. Well we were wrong. I have never experienced such intense winds before EVER. While we were having breakfast, my oatmeal literally blew away.  Our day started out pretty great. We decided to make our own path today since we didn’t want to backtrack up the hill we went down yesterday to get to the Adventure Cycling path. We changed the route a few times as we found dirt roads….we are not testing Brian’s tires anymore than we have to.  The first 20miles today… *chefs kiss* beautiful! We were cruising. There was a tail wind. We were jamming out to music on my speaker. We stopped and got glizzies (hot dogs) for lunch. Life was great. Then we turned south (literally and figuratively).  We got hit with the worst cross winds, where we were struggling to bike straight. Thank god we were on a road with basically no cars because I spent a majority of the time ge...

It is I, Brian, King of the Flat Tires, here with today’s trip! Before you ask, yes…I had another flat today…but we will get to that.  Today we woke up super early (6:00, which in our defense feels early for us) threw all of our gear together, and went downstairs to eat a nice continental breakfast that we tried not to fall asleep during before heading out to our day of biking. With our wonderful support car we have had the luxury of driving to where we should have stayed last night which was most of the way up the mountain in a campground surrounding Glacier National Park. It was an hour drive or so and we all took a solid nap on the way. Julia has this magical ability to fall asleep anywhere and she was out within five minutes of us on the road, and while Dustin and I don’t have that ability, we got a good rest in too. When we got to the campsite we were even more glad to have stayed in a hotel last night. The place was practically begging for bears to come sniffing around and I ...

Hey y’all - Dustin here. This morning I woke to a sound that has become all too familiar - the sky aggressively sobbing… and then I looked at the weather radar and saw a lot of moderate to severe rain covering exactly where we were supposed to go… So I thought to myself - technically we are ahead of schedule, and it’s the only rainy day for the next week (supposedly - by now I definitely have trust issues), soooooo why don’t we just not bike today?  I texted Julia and Brian to say we should forgo todays ride, and I think they may have been the happiest I’ve ever seen. I mean happier than Julia seeing a baby, and happier than Brian not getting a flat for more than 24 hours. Anyway - so todays post will be a little short because we literally did nothing all day. We packed up our stuff and headed to a hotel (thanks Julia’s parents) to have some breakfast, and set out to dry our tents that if I didn’t know any better may have just been pulled right out of a  lake they were so wet…...

Hey everyone! It’s Julia! So after a night of deer poking around my tent, we thought we were going to be so good and actually leave early today. Well we were so close to leaving at 7am, but just our luck Brian’s bike had a flat. This bike is really giving us a run for our money!  In true Father’s Day fashion, my dad actually helped us out in changing Brian’s tire. Not sure if that’s how he thought his day would start out, but we are so grateful for my dad! Shout out to all the papa bears on this Father’s Day!  Finally we were able to start our 55mile day, but not for long because guess whose bike’s brakes started acting up. Yeah it was Brian’s brakes, but after some adjusting we were back on our way. We had some good hills to start our day that I absolutely DIED on, but it’s ok because I survived to enough to write this post.  Let me tell you, Dustin really got me today. I gotta admit it was pretty funny how oblivious I am to some things. So, we were riding along and ther...

Brian here with our second rest day of the trip! Today we were in the town of Eureka which is only about a mile from the Canadian border and is has some incredible views of the Rocky Mountains around us.  Yesterday was definitely a tough day for the three of us (me especially) and we decided the best method to recover was to shut off our alarms and sleep in as much as we could. We finally started rolling out of bed and taking showers / getting breakfast ready around 10:00 before starting to try and plan out what we wanted to do for the day. Most of that consisted of sitting on our butts but we played some cards (Dustin is still destroying us at any and all card games), tried to learn how to cartwheel, and played some basketball (we were all terrible). Early in the afternoon, I was on a phone call when Julia pops her head around the corner and says “wanna go to Canada?” and obviously I had to say yes to that! Unfortunately though when we arrived at the border (a 5 minute drive) we f...