The Begining of my trip...

Hello everyone. I took a plane from providence Rhode island to Sacramento California on January 7th with Dave Scandurra from Allston Ma. I got picked up by Kipchoge and his really awesome friend who gave us a ride to where he lives which is in North San Juan California which is an hour and a half drive. It was really foggy outside and the roads were scary at times. That night I stayed in Kipchoge's pad which is really small. I originally slept outside on the porch but it was about 30 degrees or so outside and my sleeping bag is only good for 40 degrees and higher. So I was freezing. I could barely fall asleep and when I finally did I woke up about an hour ago shivering so I went into the shack and snuggled up with my road mates. It has been an amazing time so far in Northern California. We rode are bicycles up this huge beautiful mountain that after I finished putting my bike back together since I had to disassemble it and put it and my xtracycle in a box for the plane. The mountain we rode on was pretty much all unpaved on the way down. I had about 80lbs-100lbs of gear on my bike while going down a really steep unpaved mountain. It was an amazing feeling that I have never felt before. It was pretty fantastic bumping and sliding and dropping things out of my xtracycle down the mountain. Then at the end of the mountain we crossed a bridge which lead us to a 7 mile mountain. There were some hills along this trip which made me want to fall over and die. Some hills were just too much for me so I walked a couple of times. Walking is a last resort but when I felt like my heart was going to jump out of my chest and run as fast as it can away from me, I walked. So at the end of the ride ,which was about a 12 or 15 mile ride total, was the really cool hip town called Nevada City. There was an environmental film festival going on all weekend so got to go see a bunch of independent environmental movies. The band I am traveling with called the Ginger Ninjas played a really low key show at an art gallery in town. We actually ended up staying and sleeping in the art gallery for the past two days. We had tons of fun and went to a couple of parties. I have met so many people so far and have gotten a lot of numbers. Everyone around here is so nice and friendly and very welcoming. So after we spent a great weekend in Nevada City we started to head home. We took another route back to North San Juan which was paved. It was a highway which was very narrow and it was very steep and had a lot of blind turns. I was going really really fast down the hill but I still wasn't fast enough because I was the last person in line. I have been biking with 6 other people. We are all a team and watch eachothers back, which is great.