From the Ashes

Sorry we haven’t been more active on here, its just that we’ve been doing absolutely nothing but take time to recover. We write this to you from the deck of the Dwayne and Stephanie Scoville’s massive estate in Woodland Park Colorado, where we’ve gratefully been staying at for the last 7 days and are happy to report that we will be on the road again soon.

Repairs on our bikes were finished this morning and we’ll be driving into Colorado Springs to pick them up as well as make some other minor purchases/repurchases. The Semi-Truck demolished a good portion of our gear so we’ll need a fresh new tube of chamois butt’r, some new tire tubes, patch kits, etc. We regret to inform you however, that a key member of our team, The Bob, will also no longer be with us. The worst of the damage was done to him and sadly, we do not have time to wait for a new one to be shipped.

The result will likely be a new and streamlined bike plan. We’ll carry less gear and divide it between us so we’ll hopefully be making a little better time after we get past the Rocky Mountains. We’ll be taking it slow at first both because this period of rest has likely hit us with a sizable dose of atrophy, as well as our injuries are not quite at 100%. We both feel however that any exercise we do at this point will do more good than harm.

The Phelps have been a god send over the past week. We have had the pleasure of enjoying a number of delicious meals, sleeping in late, and they have even carted our bruised butts around the entire Colorado Springs area. The greatest contribution they have offered us has been the wide range of healing supplements Greg has given us. He works for a company called Mannatech and at least in part the products he has given us have cut our recovery time from what should have been 3 weeks to closer to 1. We are truly grateful for everything they have done for us and will likely spend the duration of our time on our bikes thinking of a creative way to say thank you. We honestly have no idea what we would have done without them.

The plan is to be on the road again on Monday. Based on our current recovery schedule and fitness level we feel this would be an appropriate amount of time, and we hope to be finished with the trip in three weeks or so. Like we said we’ll be taking it easy at first, but at the very latest we expect to be finished and back in Pittsburgh by August 1^st.

We would like some feedback if you wouldn’t mind. We originally planned to go through Las Vegas, and a number of people were planning on meeting us there. If you wouldn’t mind calling Anthony or leaving a message on one of our message boards and letting us know if you’re still planning on making a trip out it would be greatly appreciated. If we get started on Monday the 2^nd and are back to our average daily mileage, we should be in flagstaff within 2 weeks, and Vegas for the weekend of the 20^th. If anybody is interested in meeting us PLEASE let us know ASAP so we can plan our trip accordingly.

We also wanted to send out a special thanks to the recent flood of donations we have received over the past week. Everything from LOCO Poker (Don’t worry Randy – I’ll be in touch) to the gracious people at ON Semi, your generosity has gone farther than you know in helping us complete this journey. We will be forever thankful to all of you for working with Team LOCO and ALS to get this trip off the ground (and our damaged bodies and bikes). Some of you who have tried to contact the Big Dad might have found that his phone has been temporarily disabled due to contractual differences. Please email him at zach.hall@gmail.com and leave a number he can call because Zach would love to talk to all of you. Thanks again and much love to everyone. Team LOCO rides again!