Simple Hobby Homesteading

As many of you know, back in April Kevin (my husband) and I signed up for an amazing trip. It was the kind of trip that you had to train for, raise money for, and go through logistical nightmares to make sure it all came out “just right.” Even with intense training (I can be quoted screaming, “Indiana REALLY does have huge hills!”), amazing donations, and the most well thought out and planned logistics things did not go smoothly. First off, Indiana has speed bumps (well at least southern Indiana)… nothing to compare with the MOUNTAINS, yes I said mountains, we climbed in California. Wait a minute… let me back up one second…

Before you think I am some crazy mountain climber dangling from cliff edges and carrying an oxygen mask to reach a summit let me let you in on our trip… We rode in the 8 day, 525 mile bicycle California Coast Classic to raise money and awareness for the Arthritis Foundation. Over 27,000 feet of climbing in all, sleeping in tents on the very hard ground, eight hours on the bike most every day, and leaving our children with relatives for almost two whole weeks!

Ok, now that we are all straight, back to the speed bumps of Indiana. They are short little hills even though some do have quite a steep incline. They are short, sweet, and to the point. At one point in California while climbing the Twin Sisters I was climbing straight up for over 2 hours. Now that’s a hill (mountain)! Not short, not sweet, and certainly not to a quick point!

Logistics, oh my the logistics! How does one get 2 bicycles, camping gear, comfy clothes and cycling clothes and equipment out to California when airlines are charging an arm and a leg for even one checked bag and the reality that they throw luggage (and boxes with bikes in them) on those conveyor belts up into the belly of the plane looms over you as you stare at your expensive bike with thin little spokes, carbon frame, touchy gears, and a chain ring that just begs to be cracked ? One gets creative!

Leading up to Day one of our epic travels (Day one would be the “travel to California” day) we decided to have our bikes disassembled, boxed, and FedExed out to California. People do this all the time, right? This is how bikes get to the bike shops! We were able to get a great discount from Breck’s Bicycle Shop for packing up both bikes ($50 instead of $150) as a donation for the Arthritis Foundation. We took the bikes to be boxed up two weeks before the ride started. They disassembled, boxed them up and I lugged the two boxes to FedEx the next day. We paid $372 to ship both bikes to The Sheraton at Fisherman’s Wharf, Kevin Conway, c/o Arthritis Foundation California Coast Classic. Bikes, done, woohoo! Not having them for training two weeks before the ride was tough. We knew we would be logging many miles and hours on those saddles (seats) and disliked the idea of not being on them to get ourselves used to it every second we could. But, it was $980 to ship them via air (just a 3 day shipping) and our budget did not allow for that.

Camping equipment… tent, sleeping bags, tent stakes, mallet, you know all that stuff one needs to be sure you don’t end up blown into the ocean in the middle of the night or covered in a marine layer of fog upon awaking. Well, all that stuff is hard to fit into an already VERY full hiking pack (we were limiting ourselves to one checked bag each to save cost and for ease of lugging stuff around on the ride). Light bulb moment… buy new sleeping bags and tent from Amazon and have them delivered to the hotel in San Francisco to be packed on the luggage truck without us lugging them around the airports! As far as getting them home? We’d worry about that later. Order made the Tuesday before we left for trip so it would all arrive the day before we got there. I even called the hotel to be sure this was ok (it was) and so they would be expecting it and hold it aside for us when we arrived (they said they would). Pillows are crazy bulky but I was able to stuff mine in with only ripping a few seams towards the top of my bag (it would hold up… right?). Kevin decided to use his sweatshirt for a pillow and said he’d be fine (the man has osteoarthritis in his neck… I’m not sure what definition of “fine” he was clinging to but I figured he’d be “fine” and I’d give him mine if his “fine” didn’t hold up).

Bikes… check. Sleeping accommodations… check. We packaged each set of a day’s cycling gear in a separate gallon Ziploc bag (so we could put the dirty cycling clothes back into that bag while they waited a few days to be washed), threw in some comfy “lounging around camp” clothes which would double as pajamas, plenty of ibuprofen, Excedrin, muscle relaxing creams, Benadryl (liquid and tablet), aspirin, iron supplements, epipen, pepto bismol, and tums. We looked at each other and our “medicine bag” and just laughed. Wow, we were getting old and had some conditions that required a few extra things to be considered.

Soap… what about soap? Lately my life has revolved around soap (making and selling it for fundraising for this ride). I just thought I would get that out in the open so you don’t think I’m a crazy soap person.

Liquid shower gel was a mess waiting to happen and a bar of soap would be a mess after every shower. What to do, what to do? Ooh ooh, I make soap, I can figure this out! I cut a couple of my bars in half or fourths (the ones that would be good at relaxing muscles and/or repelling mosquitoes etc.) and put them in a Ziploc bag. We could each grab a little bar for each day’s shower and just leave it in the shower truck when done or throw it away because we had another little bar for the next day. This idea literally took three days of intense problem solving… what can I say, some things just need the perfect solution and that can’t be hurried. I was quite happy with my solution though I don’t think Kevin lavished as much praise as the idea was worth.

Laundry detergent… we would be able to do laundry at two different points during the 8 day ride which helped one not to pack as many clothes. I poured some powdered detergent in a Ziploc bag, looked at it, thought I would have my bag confiscated for drug or anthrax smuggling and be subsequently arrested, thrown in a California prison, never be able to make soap again, and never ride my bike. So, I labeled it “TIDE LAUNDRY DETERGENT NOT DRUGS.” That seems logical right. After so much effort with the soap dilemma this was the best I could do… a girl only has so many brain cells at optimal firing capacity in a given day and I was not interesting in building new synapses.

The kids… what to do with the kids. While I felt a little guilty about Kevin and me heading out to California without the boys I was relieved to learn our youngest son (10 years old) had no desire to go to California. He said he had seen all he wanted to see of California after living there for four years.  Our fifteen year old would have loved to come but has hit a streak of uber compassion and sweetness lately and said it would be great for dad and me to get off on this trip by ourselves. I’ll take it. Off to Wisconsin they went to spend time with great grandparents, cousins, uncles, great aunts and great uncles and all sorts of other extended family that I have no clue how exactly they are related. Besides, it was the 100^th anniversary of Cheese Days in Monroe… it would be EPIC! They had their laptops, Grandma and Grandpa had WiFi and satellite TV (we have neither here at the homestead), the boys were actually quite excited.

Yes, I know Grandma and Grandpa have a washing machine, yes, I know they know how to go to the grocery store, and yes, I know they’ve raised up three kids of their own but that didn’t stop me from sending a month’s worth of clothes, buying a month’s worth of groceries, and reminding my boys of all the daily things they should be doing (teeth brushing, showering, eating well, helping grandma and grandpa, going to bed the moment grandma mentions she is tired, and being all around the best kids EVER). I think my Grandma may have been concerned that I would never be coming back to get my kids!

Plane tickets… it was time to figure out how we would get there and get back. Kevin had a school (for work) starting in Oklahoma City three days after the ride finished. This would be tricky. We decided to drive the boys to Wisconsin. Stay overnight one night there, leave the next morning to drive to Rockford, Illinois where we would catch a bus that would take us directly to our Virgin America check-in desk. We would fly Virgin America to San Francisco and arrive there Thursday night. Stay overnight at a hotel by the airport that night, go to the Sheraton at the Fisherman’s Wharf Friday. Stay overnight there Friday night with all the other riders and start the ride Saturday morning! Ride the next 8 days and finish in Los Angeles the following Saturday and be met by my aunt and uncle who live there. Stay with them for Saturday and Sunday and then on Monday I fly back to Chicago, take bus to Rockford, pick up van and drive up to Wisconsin to get boys and then drive the eight hours home the next day. Kevin would fly out of Los Angeles Monday morning to Oklahoma City and attend his class for a couple weeks and then fly home. He checked with his boss at work who gave the green light for leaving from L.A. for the class. Tickets bought, PERFECT!

Not so fast. Three days before we were set to leave Kevin finds out his boss was wrong, he can’t leave from any destination for school other than his home destination. We buy a ticket for him to fly from Los Angeles to home on Sunday so he can pack and leave to drive to Oklahoma City Monday morning for a class that starts Tuesday. I try to change my flight to leave on Sunday as well to save my aunt from having to make two trips to LAX and find out it will cost $650 to change flight. I buy a separate one way flight on Spirit America from L.A. to Chicago… much cheaper (Why has no one ever warned me about Spirit America?)! Disaster averted but why oh why were we having to deal with all this when I was trying to get the farm ready for my absence?

OK, so these were some of the things we had to settle before the ride even started. As many of you know, the work leading up to the trip can be more tiring than the trip itself! To save you from reading an insanely long post I will wrap up my pre-trip ramblings here and continue with DAY ONE tomorrow. Nothing  goes as planned, things get interesting, we see Jamaica, and I almost have a melt down… stay tuned!