The Overland Group, Cross Country Bicyclists

July 17th

I realize there is lots of our trip missing at this point but I felt this section needed to be posted now. I promise you, I will fill in from the last June posting and catch you up as soon as possible. I was so impressed with this group, I thought you might enjoy the story.

We left Walsenburg, Colorado a little later than planned this morning. We had originally planned to ride a scenic mountain railroad through La Veta pass this morning but found out a little late that the tour we wanted was not available. As a result we packed up and decided to continue our journey homeward. This delayed our departure until about 10:00 AM when the weather was quickly heating up.

By the time we were well on our way through the Oklahoma flatland the temperature had risen to115 degrees! Don’t ever let anyone tell you that dry heat is a lot easier than the humid heat in states like Florida and Texas.

Heat is heat and dry heat will take the wind out of your sails, make you dry, cause burning and make you just plain miserable! The interesting thing about the dry heat is that you do sweat, but don’t realize it until you go inside an air conditioned building. The dry heat outside, absorbs the sweat almost instantly. Heat stroke can hit you fast because you don’t realize you are sweating. Keeping hydrated is critical and if you have water, whether it’s cold or hot, you drink it!

We stopped today at a Days Inn, in Guymon, OK. When we checked into the hotel we noticed some young people in the hallway, repairing tires for bicycles. I asked them if they were part of the group crossing the United States by bicycle and they said yes they were. The leaders of the group were two young college graduates who indicated they had been doing this for the past four summers.

Anna Henkel is a graduate of Washington University and Peter Harrison is a graduate of Amherst College. Since Amherst College is in Massachusetts, my home state, I mentioned that I was from Worcester, MA. I inquired further and found out that Peter was from Concord, NH which is where my Uncle and his family lived and since I am also familiar with Concord, thus another connection. Anna is from Missouri and I hope she will forgive me for not remembering what city/town she is from.

Here’s the interesting part! The name of the organization is “The Overland Group”. These two individuals have ten high school students from around the country that they are guiding through the tour. The two of them are completely responsible for the safety of the group, repairs, schedules and miles traveled on this journey. They are given a format to follow, a route, destinations and miles to travel per day. The rest is up to them. They depart at daybreak and ride approximately 80 miles per day. Today they had ridden 97 miles! EGAD!!! I was exhausted just hearing how far they peddled!

John asked how many stops they made and the answer was, NONE! Are you kidding me? They do stop briefly for a quick lunch, but the stop is very brief because they must get in the necessary miles! (Oh to be young and fit again!)

I asked if they had hotels scheduled throughout their route and Anna informed me that most of their stops for the night were at churches and community centers. This evening, they would enjoy the luxury of a nice comfy bed!

John and I were incredibly impressed, because these two young people had those ten students completely under control. When Peter told them, shut off the TV, and lights out, I didn’t hear a single peep from one of those rooms. You could hear a pin drop! Of course, the fact that they had just ridden 97 miles in the intense heat had nothing to do with that!

They do not have a service truck following them, they carry parts with them and Peter and Anna do all the repairs themselves. I asked Peter how many repairs they had so far and he thought they had about 17 flat tires, plus repairs on brake and gear cables, but fortunately, this time they had not had any broken chains.

I asked where they started and where they are heading and they told me they started in Savannah, Georgia and will end up in Santa Monica, California. They are anxious to leave tomorrow because they will cross the border into New Mexico. I asked if they took pictures at the border crossings and Anna informed me that yes, they did take pictures of the group at every state welcome sign.

We thought this was a huge responsibility especially with all the bike repairs, but Peter informed me that he had one student who seemed to catch on fast and was helping with repairs. He said, he’s sure the others will be catching up soon.

They began this journey 3 weeks ago from Savannah, Georgia and here they were already in the Oklahoma panhandle. Peter and Anna informed me that they would arrive at the south rim of the Grand Canyon in 2 weeks. Amazing!

What an amazing opportunity for these young high school kids and what a great contribution by Anna and Peter. No question, these ten kids will remember them for giving them one of the greatest experiences of their lives!

July 18^th

At about 5:00 AM, I began to hear doors opening and closing at the hotel with an undertone of conversation. I realized that it was probably the “Overland Group” preparing to depart the hotel for their next phase of their trip. Being captivated by their adventure, I got up and left the room with my camera.

The hotel offers a light breakfast with a reasonable selection of dry cereals, oatmeal, biscuits & gravy, miscellaneous breads, muffins, coffee and juices. It was a little after 5:00 AM and the group had assembled in the breakfast room to eat and prepare to leave. They were reminded by their guides, to drink plenty of water and get themselves well hydrated.

Shortly after breakfast they removed their already packed bicycles from their rooms and began to assemble outside in preparation for the departure. Each bicycle had two compact bags for only the most necessary accessories mounted on either side of the rear tire. They also had drinkpacks mounted on their backs to keep the hydration constantly satisfied.

Mounted to every rear tire axle was a long flexible pole extension that had a bright orange iridescent triangular shaped flag. This provides oncoming traffic and other vehicles traveling on the roads the ability to easily spot their caravan and allow them the freedom to travel safely.

Before they even got started, one of the students had a flat tire. This required a quick repair by Peter, then someone had brake problems which Anna immediately adjusted. Next, a misaligned tire which was quickly remedied. They were told to check their brakes and adjustments to cables were applied before they were all ready to leave. It took no more that 20 to 30 minutes for every person and every bike to be ready. As the dawn began to offer enough light, Anna called for everyone to move out and they filed in behind her in an order that was changed daily to precipitate thinking and co-ordinating.

The lineup format for today was, that the first letter of the name of the youngest sibling in each family represented should be in alphabetical order in reverse. In other words, from z to a. Every day they have a different format, either by age, birthday, siblings or whatever they come up with, just to keep things interesting. This way, the same person isn‘t always in the front or the back and position is changed every day.

These are high school kids ranging in age from 15 to 17 years old, guided by two young leaders, who are doing something that less than a miniscule handful of the population of this country can even imagine! This trek is something that they will remember well into their senior years, reminiscing to their children and grandchildren about their incredible feat and amazing achievement of bicycling, completely across the United States of America! Fantastic!

From June 26th Forward

June 26^th

We arose early, left our hotel in Cortez, Colorado and headed up to Mesa Verde. We took the 12:30 tour for the Cliff Palace which is the largest of the Mesa dwellings. The tour required moving through narrow passageways, some of the original narrow descending stone steps and additional metal steps constructed by the parks services to facilitate reaching the area once occupied by the Puebloans.

The tour was amazing and very interesting to see the methods used by these ancient cliff dwellers to keep warm during the cold winters, access a water source, farm the Mesa above to grow crops to feed the inhabitants and facilitate an area that protected them from attack or invasion from unfriendly outside sources. These people were quite small averaging 5’ to 5’2” in height. This was obvious since the rooms were tiny with small doorways and low ceilings. The construction of these dwellings must have been a difficult and amazing feat.

The round Kivas all constructed near the base of the dwellings were designed for both worship and heat where the inhabitants could go to get protection and warmth from the winter cold.

After our visit to Cliff Palace, we had to exit on ladders and narrow stairways constructed by the Puebloans. It was a long and arduous climb to the exit above, but certainly worth the price of the tour.

As we headed to the parking lot, we saw a sign on an unusual looking motorcycle with a sidecar that was obviously a unique sight. It was a customized1985 BMW, “K” bike with car tires instead of motorcycle tires. It had a specially modified Earl’s fork to accommodate the large tires and the body frame was extended. Not your usual showroom offer! On the rear saddlebag was a large logo for Bob’s BMW Motorcycles. Bob is world famous! Every BMW biker is familiar with Bob’s BMW Motorcycles.

Tinkering on this unusual piece of equipment was a short, bald headed white bearded, sturdy old gentleman wearing shorts and a tee shirt. John walked up to him and said, “hi, are you Bob?” “Yes I am”, replied the man. From that point on, the topic of discussion became his modified BMW "K" bike and BMW motorcycles in general. Before we left, I snapped a photo of John shaking hands with Bob! That’s just for all you BMW owners!

We have only one negative thing to say about Mesa Verde. When we arrived back at the bike, John found a lovely surprise. There, stuffed in the windshield was a nice $75 parking ticket! Personally, I think it was a cheap shot. There were no, “No Parking” signs posted, nor were there any diagonal lines across the space indicating this was not allowed. The area was too small for a car, but just right for a motorcycle and it was the only spot in the shade with temperatures exceeding 110 degrees. I snapped a picture of the bike so I could have it for evidence when needed.

Along the route, we stopped at areas just to take in the amazing view. At one point we noticed an elderly gentleman peddling a bicycle. I chatted with him momentarily and found out his name was Hans and he was from Germany. Hans was en route from New York to SanFrancisco when we met him riding up and down mountains in Colorado! This man was in amazing shape and from my estimation, his age range was somewhere in his mid to late 60’s. A photo of Hans will be displayed on the “people we met” page of this blog.

June 27th

Before we left Cortez we were getting ready to leave and noticed another couple riding a motorcycle was staying at the same hotel. Naturally, we took the time to chat with them and they had ridden from Oregon and were planning to visit Mesa Verde that day. We started chatting and they were also heading out for breakfast. We decided to have breakfast together since one conversation led to another and none of us were going anywhere. Jim and Lynn gave us some tips on where to go since we were heading in the same direction that they had come from. We exchanged information before we left and went on our way. I just want to tell them that as we were riding, my camera bag was sucked right out of my hand and lost somewhere near the Colorado River and I had put the information they gave me in that camera bag. So Lynn and Jim, if you still have my email, please drop us a note so we can get in touch again!

When we left, we rode toward Torrey, Utah to visit Capitol Reef. What an experience! It is just incredibly amazing and overwhelming, driving through the never ending sea of rock formations, the variagated changes in rock colors, the narrow passes through the rock blasted roadways, the passes on high rock mountain roads which overlook breathtaking formations and heart thumping unprotected cliff roads thousands of feet above that you approach with extreme caution as the wind swirls erratically through the mountain passes. One road in particular had my heart racing furiously as John navigated a ridge road which ran approximately a mile across the tops of the mountains with only enough room for the road with little or no shoulder, no guardrails and a single pass in each direction. I wanted to take pictures but literally froze on the bike in fear of moving too much one way or another that might cause us to veer off the narrow strip of roadway. Whoa! Talk about a heart stopping experience….and guess what? We’re still here! Someone upstairs was watching us!