Mail Drops

Support me by Sending me things! I love food, or letters, or whatever you want to send!

Mail must be sent through the US Postal Service, and please make sure you send it with enough time to arrive by the pick-up date. If you mail misses us, then the post office will forward it to the mail drop two weeks ahead.

Mail should get addressed to:
Bike & Build
Attn: Jessica Leon
General Delivery
ADDRESS
TOWN, STATE ZIP

The address, town, state, and zip are as follows:

Thursday, June 19, 2008
55 Mansion Street
Poughkeepsie, NY 12601

Thursday, June 26, 2008
700 Grant Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15219

Thursday, July 3, 2008
206 E 4th St
Bloomington, IN 47408

Thursday, July 10, 2008
500 W Chestnut Expy
Springfield, MO 65801

Thursday, July 17, 2008
900 Garth Brooks Blvd.
Yukon, OK 73099

Thursday, July 24, 2008
415 N Pennsylvania Avenue
Roswell, NM 88201

Thursday, July 31, 2008
223 N. Williamson Avenue
Winslow, AZ 86047

Thursday, August 7, 2008
201 Las Vegas Blvd S
Las Vegas, NV 89125

Thursday, August 14, 2008
836 Anacapa Street
Santa Barbara, CA 93102-9998

Build Day

Let me start out by explaining a little bit about what this trip is all about: This route is dedicated to the memory of Chris Webber, an awesome guy who was one of the directors of bike and build. We stopped at his home in Andover, MA and met his family at a BBQ that they put on for us yesterday. It was great meeting them all and hearing about what a great guy Chris was. The family has been incredibly generous to our trip by providing us food and helping to drive us to their home.A guy named Tony from Merrimack Valley Habitat For Humanity also came to speak with us about how Habitat for Humanity is run and some history about the site we were going to work at.

Today we worked with Habitat for Humanity in Lawrence, MA. We worked on three different houses because we are such a big group. I mainly worked on this two family home with a handicapped residence on the bottom floor and a regular home on the top floor. After moving very heavy sheets of wood up the stairs for support, I mainly helped put in scaffolding. The scaffolding was put in against the house and secured via bolts and nails (much different from the scaffolding I was used to). I also worked on the roof of the house. The two floors had been constructed but the beams for the roof had to be put in so I moved more heavy wood (this time in the form of planks) and climbed up on top of the house to place the beams in the right place.

Everyone took lots and lots of pictures that are posted here!

The Beginnnig

So far, Bike and Build has been amazing. Through going on some long rides with Devon, Jo, Jess, and Talia I had discovered that 1. I <3 Biking 2. My IT band is tight and 3. I'm totally excited to bike across the country

Orientation was a great start to our trip. The church we stayed in was incredibly generous to us and offered their giant Bingo room for a few days, and bought us several delicious catered meals! Trips like these remind me that there are generous, caring people here and around the world.

After an amazingly generous breakfast from the church, we dipped our bikes in the ocean this morning and went off for our first ride. It was only 20 miles to Andover, and our first build day is tomorrow! The trip leaders did a great job of picking a route that ramps up slowly in mileage.

Training: Providence and Cape Cod

Training for bike and build has been a little bit slow. I mainly go on 20 -30 mile rides but recently I've been gong on longer ones to get used to the mileage. To get my sweat equity, which is required of everyone, I worked at a Habitat for Humanity site in Providence RI. I took the commuter rail with Talia to Providence, biked to the site, then met Jo and Devon later on in the day.
We stayed in a Hotel that night and biked back from Providence to Boston!