Mike’s birthday

Today is Mike’s birthday! We are celebrating from the basement of the First Baptist Church in Sebree, Kentucky. This is our first night of the trip where we’ve used “cyclist-only lodging.” About a week ago when I was planning out our next several stops, I felt really bad that the night we had no options apart from a church basement coincided with Mike’s birthday. He wasn’t fussed about it but I felt terrible. However, it’s actually great! Amazing! I want to only stay in churches now!

I called the church last week to ask about the cyclist lodging and the woman I spoke to just asked that I call the day of to let them know when we’d be arriving so there would be someone available to let us in. My mom then decided that she wanted to send brownies for Mike’s birthday so she called the church too to see if she could send it to them and asked that they give the brownies to us. She spoke with a lovely woman named Mitzi who was happy to help, and they had a nice conversation about the church and their cyclist ministry.

When my mom went to mail the brownies she learned that it would cost more than $100 to guarantee delivery by his birthday. These brownies were obviously not worth $100, so she called the church back and told Mitzi to forget about the package. At this point Mitzi offered genuinely and generously to bake something herself for Mike’s birthday. So when we arrived today there were (vegan) cupcakes waiting for us in the fridge. Mike and I were just blown away by how generous and thoughtful that was. This will undoubtedly be a cherished memory from our cross-country trip.

When we arrived at the church, Mitzi had already gone home but she had told me that the pastor would be around but if for some reason he wasn’t, I should just call the phone numbers on a list posted to the front door from top to bottom and someone would be available to let us in. The first numbers on the list were for “Bob and Violet, yellow house across the street with pink shutters”. The first number went to voicemail but Bob answered on the second number. He said he wasn’t home but his wife Violet was and she’d be happy to show me the cyclist lodging. He said I should call again and if she didn’t answer I should just go knock on the door of the yellow house with pink shutters and she’ll be there.

Since the pastor was next on the list (red brick house with the white fence) and he was supposedly around I decided to call him instead of finding Violet. He came out right away and showed us around back to where the entrance to the cyclist hostel is. This place is great! There’s several couches, a pool table, an air hockey table, a foosball table, lots of tables and chairs, a full kitchen, a shower, and a washer and dryer. They even have bicycle maintenance tools and spare parts. We chatted with Pastor Dylan a bit and he says he loves having cyclists come through and that he really misses them when it’s winter and no one is cycling. Before this trip I had no idea things like this existed, and I’m just so happy it does.

Yesterday at the grocery store in Marion, Kelly and Jordan ran into three other bicycle tourists heading east on the TransAmerica. They chatted for a bit and exchanged contact info. When we arrived at the church, Pastor Dylan told us there were three cyclists who stopped for lunch on their way through town and it was the same people! So Mike and I chatted with them (and shared some of the birthday cupcakes). They are staying with a Warm Showers host in a different town tonight, but we hope to run in to them again somewhere down the road.

We did laundry at the church and then went out for dinner. The first place we tried was a Mexican restaurant / Mexican grocery store. It was closed. The next place we tried was a pizza place. It was also closed. The third place was a Mexican restaurant / Mexican grocery store and it was open. Huzzah!

Highlights

• Mitzi’s birthday cupcakes for Mike and the cyclist hostel at the First Baptist Church in Sebree
• the goddess of wind gave us a tail wind for Mike’s birthday
• it rained very hard this afternoon after we all made it to the church, so we avoided the storm completely
• the only dog that chased me did it in a perfunctory way

Lowlights

• one driver was upset about the AUDACITY a cyclist (me) to EXIST and blew a bunch of black smoke at me when passing. What a silly thing for someone who is presumably an adult to do. At the time I had a good laugh about it. He was trying to anger me by showing off how shitty his car is? I thought “weird flex, but okay”. When I described what happened to Mike he told me that the practice is called “rolling coal.” I looked it up on Wikipedia and apparently it costs money to modify a vehicle to make that possible. Like it’s a feature? That people pay for?? Purposefully?! And then I read that (in addition to demonstrating displeasure at cyclists) people roll coal at electric vehicles and to protest “rampant environmentalism” and demonstrate “American freedom”. Cool cool cool.

Julie’s food

• Breakfast: scramble
• First Snack: no cow bar
• Lunch: peanut butter sandwich
• Second Snack: cupcake, Clif bar
• Dinner: rice and bean burrito, cupcake

Stats

• Total distance: 43.37 miles
• Elevation gain: 2,411 feet
• Weather: overcast, windy, with occasional rain, high of 73 degrees Fahrenheit