Sunny Sunny Days

This is the third day we've been in Chapel Hill, staying at the Chapel of the Cross Church. Today was our day off and boy is it good. Tommorow we got a 90 miler to Winston-Salem with a lot of hills. Time to work on that climbing technique...

We spent yesterday building with Habitat for Humanity around Chapel Hill and we made some awesome progress (pictures shown below). Even in the face of rather unsultry temperatures, we accomplished a lot and it was even more satisfying because we got to meet the homeowner. And is it turns out, our route (NC2SD) donates a major chunk of our fundraised money to Habitat for Humanity in this area (Orange County, NC). I'm not sure of the exact amount, but I know we helped fund a significant amount of the house we were building and made it possible. Pretty cool stuff.

Something that takes some getting used to is all the food that people throw at us. Since we're all living on very limited individual and Bike and Build funds, we usually scavenge any leftover food everytime we eat at a church/a build site. Right now, we have a cooler packed with tons of yougart, soda, apples, bananas, peanut butter, icecream and pita bread. And the church we're staying at always makes too much food for breakfast/dinner, so we literally have an entire fridge of meatloaf, bagels, cream cheese, fried chicken, hummus, and about 50 other things for us. I'm sure we'll end up taking most, if not all, of this stuff with us when we hit the road again tommorow.

Here's a photo from that century (100 mile ride) we did to Wake Forest the other day. As you can see, we all take ourselves very seriously on this trip:

This was the stop at about mile 65 on our accidental century to Wake Forest. We all commiserated together, and ate a lot of snacks. It was one of those unplanned things (my favorite) that just worked out really well.

After taking a beautiful ride from Wake Forest to Chapel Hill (passing thru Duke University), we were greeted by Alf at the Chapel Hill church.

Chilling with some kids at the bike clinic, and teaching them their bike ABC's (air, brakes, cables). I think some of them even enjoyed riding their bikes more than I did because there were a couple of speed demons who loved to dash around. It was fun:

The day of building - we came to a house that basically didn't have much except a foundation, and added A LOT of framing and walls.

Matt working hard:

My shadow (saw a lot of that yesterday - it was hot!)

The epic moment right before putting up the first wall of the house. It was quite a sight to see.

All this framing was done in one day. I personally thought building was harder than cycling, but it was still really good work we got to do.

Some designs on the walls of East Franklin Street in Chapel Hill:

I've never been here before, but it is, as a friend of mine would say, a pretty crunchy place. It reminds me a lot of Charlottesville in many ways. It also has really nice people at the Ben and Jerry's. I lost my wallet there and then I got a call from them the next day telling me they had it. WORD! I'm real glad I found that. Losing stuff has become pretty a common theme with everyone on this trip so far and its ONLY been a week. I'll be lucky to arrive in San Diego with a pair of socks and my bike in one piece at this point ;)

And finally, the POOL PARTY from today's day off. Sarah lives in Chapel Hill, so her parents invited us all over to their house to hang out, eat and swim. It was a great way to take a load off.

A short photo story:

Oh yeah.

The great thing about this organization is that Bike and Build sort of functions as an extended family. Along this trip so far, we've met probably at least 5 different alumni who have come to just hang out with us or help us in some way, or just come and yabber about how much they love Bike and Build. It's a totally chill thing and these people come out to US because they feel so passionately about Bike and Build. Their enthuasism is contagious. It makes me think long and hard about the overall experience I'm going to have this summer (overwhelmy positive, it appears).

I'm writing this, only a week into this 9 week trip, and can hardly imagine the next couple weeks which involve biking up a MOUNTAIN and thru the desert. Time to go take a nap... yes...