Sleep is something that is hard to come by on this trip, but we all got to enjoy that luxury Two days ago. Although most of us continued to naturally wake up at 8 in the morning, there were a select few who made the most of our day off in Missoula, Montana by sleeping in until noon. For those of us who decided to seize the day, Montana provided us with many opportunities for fun activities. A group of us went to hike the local mountain named “M” Mountain, because of the large concrete “M” that sits at the top of the mountain for the University of Montana. The top of the mountain gave us a great view of the city and the surrounding hills. Montana is a very pretty state that reminds me a lot of my home state: Colorado.

When we all woke up yesterday morning, everyone took the time to give their fathers a call given that it was Father’s day! It was good to talk to my dad and the family to update them on everything that has been going on with us. Throughout the day, everyone got their errands finished at the local bike shops and we cleaned the vans for the first time. After we all got our errands done, we had a sponsored dinner at a local Chinese restaurant.

The dinner was sponsored by Jeremy Jones, his sister and her family. Jeremy was the Project Manager for the Trans America route last year and was a great guy to get to know. The food was all great and we were stuffed by the end of the meal, because it was a buffet style meal. Jeremy is going to be doing a ride along with us later on in the summer and we are all looking forward to seeing him again!

Everyone did really well riding and there was a tail wind so we kept a really good pace! We got into the town Philipsburg Montana. We had a sponsored dinner through the rotary club of the town and it was really good... really good. We had these things call pasties, which if you were to look up the word in the dictionary, it would say that a pasty is something completely different than what we ate last night. It was this meal that was made for miners when Philipsburg was a silver mining town, and it is basically a bunch of beef and vegetables wrapped into a pastry roll that the workers would take into the mine for lunch.

What was great about the day, was that outside the school that we were staying at there was the most epic play place/swing-set or whatever you would call it. Lets just say that we played tag for 2 hours outside on the play set! It might have been the most fun that I have had in a really long time! All of us turned back into little children again, when all of the ground was lava, and the lava monster hunted us all. We had a great time! I think that JOH is like a time for all of us to become children again, it has been pretty fun, I havent done that in a really long time! The trip is going great so far and we have had a ton of eye opening and great experiences so far! Check out my photos tab to see the photos from the trip!

“Chances lost are hopes torn up pages”

Take every chance you can in life, because every chance gives you the opportunity to change you life or the lives of your loved ones for the better.

Until next time,

Enjoy the ride!

I have now been in Seattle for over 48 hours and I have yet to see a Starbucks, not that I necessarily need coffee, but being that I am a block and a half away from their headquarters, I figured that the place would be crawling with them. Everywhere I turn in boulder I see them, so why not in their home town? But anyways, this is my frist time to Seattle and so far it is not what I expected, normally when someone explains Seattle, the only thing that you hear is how much it rains. But so far on the trip we have had a beautiful day and a day that was a little overcast, but no actual rain. Although I figure it must rain sometime because everything here is so green... In Colorado most things are different shades of brown and maybe a yellow is thrown in there every once in awhile, but here everything is a bright vivid green which is impressive. Not that I dont like brown, its just different....

We are in Seattle for 4 days of training and then we leave for our next stop. The first day, everyone checked in and by three in the afternoon, we were off to the University of Washingtons Pi Kapp chapter house for an informational meeting and dinner. The campus was beautiful, full of trees and students, because Washington is still in school.... muahaha The only thing that I did not like about the campus was that it seemed to have a lot of driving traffic around, and one thing that I like about Colorado is how pedestrian friendly our campus is, and Washington seemed to be a little bit different in that regard.

We parked and started walking to the fraternity house, and the greek row is full of behemoths of houses, some of them must hold up to 100 people! The Pi Kapp house was a little smaller, but it was still a very good sized house. Going into the fraternity house, we sat down and did some introductions then ate dinner. One thing that this dinner made me realize is how small the world really is, and ill tell you why.... In 7th grade, we had locker buddies who were our friends that we shared a locker with. That year, my buddy was Curtis Santianez. We were good pals and had a lot of fun, but then he moved, and I never heard from him again. This was before Facebook everyone, dont freak out on me.... But guess who sits next to me to eat dinner!? Thats right! It was Curtis! 7 years of never seing someone and then ending up in the same fraternity on separate campuses, it was a pretty awesome and a little bit of a surreal experience to see him. and another great chapter of PI Kappa Phi.

Moving onto today, we had somewhere along the lines of 7 hours of rule reading and lecturing which I will not go into immense detail on, but we did have a stellar lunch that was provided by a fellow Pi Kapp that lives in the area. The other cool thing about this meeting was that it was at the Flagship store for REI, and ill tell you what, this place was cool! Leading up to the entrance you follow a path through a forest area, past a waterfall, and the inside of the building is gigantic! This place had any outdoors anything you could ever need! REI is also the only place that you will consistently see customers in the store who wear helmets on a daily basis.

After REI, we had our first friendship visit with a non profit called The Arc. There was a catered dinner and a lot of different people to talk to and have a good time with, it was a really great first experience on the trip, and everyone was very nice and extremely grateful. This visit was also a really good time to get to know the rest of the guys that I will be riding with this summer. Although we have been spending a lot of time together, it has beed in confined areas with just us, and it was a good time to see everyone getting out and being active.

And that brings me to right now, it is 11:40 PM and I have to wake up at 5:30 AM for some activities so I am going to say goodbye for now. Sorry there were no pictures in this post, I will put somethings up in the photo gallery soon, so check in for updates, but until next time...

Enjoy the ride!

Everyone has an enemy, Batman had the Joker, Superman had Lex Luthor, and Rob Hamilton(me) has been in an epic arms race since birth with the Sun. The great protector sunscreen is no match for the suns greatest weapon, UV rays... Hopefully this summer ill be able to find something that can fend off these skin reddening bullets, but until then im just gonna have to deal...