About
Hello all!
Finally this site is up so we can share more of our trip! These journals are our attempt to make sense of everything we saw on our bike trip from St. Louis to Seattle over 2 months this past summer 2009. It was quite a memorable trip, to say the least.
We identified three themes we wanted to explore before leaving St. Louis: individual, community, and land. The individual journal represents our experience, with one photo of us every morning. The community journal seeks to understand what people value about their place. For every person we had a memorable interaction with along the way, we asked them to give us three words or phrases to describe their life in their community or town. As you can tell, some answered our question in that manner, others just opened up about their lives to us. The land journal seeks to document the landscape and human’s impact on it through the cross-section of the country.
The “plastic lens” journal is a collection of photos taken with a Holga medium format camera, Tri-x film and Ilford HP5 B/W film. (All other photos are a combination of Annemarie’s digital camera and John’s Olympus E410.)
We have made these journals into hand-made books (using a typewriter bought at a yard sale across the street from Ronny and Charlie’s house in El Dorado Springs, MO), and if you are interested in having a set, contact one of us.
Also if you are further interested in bike touring feel free to contact one of us! It is a truly incredible way to see the world.
63 days
21.5 jars of peanut butter
8 states
5 broken spokes, all on johns bike
4 flat tires
2 times we used our helmets to protect against hail
1 gear on johns bike at anytime