1998 - Bike-Aid 3,600 Miles Across The U.S.A.
1999 - The Great Divide Mountain Bike Expedition
July 30, 1998 - Milwaukee - Rest Day
DISTANCE TRAVELED: 0 MilesTIME: 0 Hours
AVERAGE SPEED: 0 Miles/Hour
TRAVEL CONDITIONS: Warm and sunny all day.
ROAD CONDITIONS: N/A
TERRAIN/DIFFICULTY LEVEL: N/A
DAILY JOURNAL COMMENTS:
I woke up at 8:30 from people coming into the room that I was sleeping in since it was the living room. After having a great night's sleep on a soft couch, I got up and changed to get ready to clean up an empty lot that was full of trash. We arrived at the lot and it was covered with trash including paper, bottles, lots of potato chip bags, and tons of broken glass. After cleaning up for about an hour, the lot looked much better. We went back to David's house where we made waffles and we could either put yogurt and fruit on top or fresh maple syrup that he got from his parents in Vermont. It wasn't even in a can to be sold. Instead it was in a glass jar used for bottling. Both ways were great and filled us up for a little while. I went back inside after eating and while sitting on the couch, fell asleep without realizing it. About 30 minutes later I woke up and found that we had to go to a local community center. The place was called L.A.N.D. community center where black children go for the day as a sort of camp. The benefit is that they become members instead of a camper and have to pay only a very small amount of money. The children are able to play games all day and do things with lots of other people their age. In the area that we were in there were many drug problems along with gangs. You could basically say that we were "in the hood." The area used to be an expensive area in the 50's. It was basically all Asian population and only about 2,000 blacks but by the 70's, there were 200,000 blacks in the same area. Unfortunately many were poor so the community began to develop problems. They find that even if they only put in basketball courts, there is a lot of late night partying on them along with drugs. One of the ones that was put up even had some gun shooting a few years back right after it was put in. Because of this, it was closed and no longer exists. The organization that we went to has children from 5-14 years old and to get in they even have to go through a metal detector. One 7 year old was playing on the basketball courts and was about to go inside right by where we were sitting and the "counselor" noticed something in his pocket and then pulled out a lighter. It may not sound like much but this 7 year old uses it to light cigarettes. They all seem so nice but they must have a very difficult life. The center for them I think does a very good job at helping them. An advantage to it is that it is designed to be a place that the children want to go to. It is not a place that parents will sign up their children for but instead the children come and get an application themselves and then as members they have a member number and sign in when they come and go unlike a camp. We did service for 4 hours and then at 4:30 we started to make dinner for everyone who was there. We set out drinks, plates and other condiments. Then Matt and I cooked about 100 hot dogs along with some hamburgers. We lost 8 into the fire because the griddle had huge openings for them to fall into. After feeding a little under 100 people, we cleaned up and got ready to go back to David's house. I ended up having about 5 glasses of cranberry raspberry juice, 3 hot dogs, and one hamburger. We went back to David's house and watched as Brad shaved off Heather's hair. It looked a lot different but didn't look too bad. I think that I will just have to get used to it just like I did for Brad (shaved), Jade (shaved), David (shaved), Tom (mohawk), Dan (shaved), Abigail (bleached mohawk), Jen (half shaved), and Tami (pink dyed). A few more are planning on it in the near future. After this event, I went onto my computer and then we watched a South Park movie followed by Wag The Dog. In Wag The Dog, not only were the sex scandals incredibly similar to the present day ones but also, just about two weeks ago, just like in the movie, a war broke out in Albania! There are many other similarities that I noticed as well. After finishing the movie, I went back downstairs and got onto the Internet for a while before going to bed around 1:00.
TRIP ROUTE:
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