En Route to Boston

A little update for y'all. After a week of the tiniest amount of sleep in my life, 13 hours at home, and 7 hours of airplanes & airports - I'm in Boston...and I realized I never really gave any explanation or simple "hey I'm doing this" about Coastal Drift/ Bike & Build round 2.

So, here goes:

For the next two weeks I'll be joining somewhere around 30 (haven't actually checked numbers) other young adults riding from Bar Harbor, Maine to New York City. I'm joining them a tad late in the game, as I spent this past week in Bay St Louis with 80ish high school students, 10 middle schoolers, 9 amazing college workers, and a number of chaperones all working to serve a community that is still recovering from the devastation of Katrina. But that's a whole different story, that I should definitely elaborate on later.

For those of you just now tuning in: bike & build is a non-profit that facilitates 8 cross country, and 2 regional, bicycle trips to benefit the affordable housing cause.  Riders have to raise money to participate, train on the bike, and work a number of hours with an affordable housing organization, and study certain topics and issues surrounding the affordable housing cause before the trip starts.  Last year, I was a leader on Central US (from VA to OR), and this year I'm just along for the ride (but I'm pumped because one of my riders from last year is leading us on drift this year). 

Other FAQs: 

How did you get your bike there? 

I shipped it.

Did you quit your job at HFam?

Nope.  After a year of part time work supplemented by part time coffee serving, I'll start as a full time staff member working with both high school and middle school students as soon as I get back (meaning I have an event planned not even 24 hours after my flight comes in from NY). 

How long will you be gone?

2.5 weeks. I fly home on June 30. 

So you just bike? 

Nope.  It's got that "&build" in the name for a reason.  The coolest part is that we get to stop in some cities and work with Affordable Housing organizations on building affordable housing. My first day on the trip will actually be a build day in Salem MA.

Will you keep us updated in any way?

I'm going to try my best, but this year I'm not making that a priority during the trip.  I'd love to talk to anyone about my experiences, and I might Post some photos, but with drift being such a short trip, I don't want to waste any time that I have typing when I could be sharing time with some humans that I've yet to meet. I might suck at responding to texts.  And I will definitely suck at answering emails.  But when July 2 hits, I'm back to being 100% reachable as I've been in the past (excluding last week because retreats are hard/awesomely distracting). 

But for now, I'm en route to Boston/probably just landed considering I needed internet to post this. The kid next to me has never been on a plane before. And I sat next to a pilot and a super chatty guy who is doing some big things for veterans returning from war through his work in the music industry. (I'll post some kind of information later where you can check out his project). 

I did the math wrong/ ran out of days on the credit I had with this airline and had to fly up a day too early, so tomorrow I'll explore Boston a bit before heading out to Salem to meet up the team. I have no clue what I'm doing but I'm pretty sure I've learned how to waste time in a new city after that one thing with the Woods this year - I just hope this adventure is a tiny bit less eventful (or not. It's whatever). 

Updates to come...eventually. Unless I get bored and decide to fill he in on Bay St Louis.