our new friends!

We were feeling a little uneasy about some of the encounters we had had with the Mitchell locals, as we were rather exposed in the middle of the city park. Much to our delight, around 7:00 that night three young men in matching white jerseys and black bike shorts rolled into our camp! There were two brothers, Chad and Jared Lawver, and their friend Chaz. All three are from Ohio and attend the same college there. Chad will be a junior, Chaz a senior, and Jared just graduated this spring. They are also traveling across the country, and expect to end up in Virginia around the same time that we arrive in Maine. We discovered that we actually have the same route as them until we hit Yellowstone! So they may appear in our blog for at least the next few days.
Our new friends are exceptionally easy-going and friendly, and they have quite an appetite for baked goods and top ramen. Interestingly, they are all riding trek road bikes with carbon forks and stays, and yet are carrying about 50 lbs of gear EACH on their rear panniers. For example, they have a hatchet, solar-radio, camp chairs, mini camera tripods, backpacking packs, climbing shoes, and fishing poles on top of the essentials (writing this from Baker City, they just stopped at the post office this morning to mail home some of their weight - Jared has already broken two spokes in the past two days...).
So we had a fire in the Mitchell city park with our new friends and decided to continue riding with them, and we've been riding together thus far! They've even broken the wind for us all day for the past two days (and given how much stuff is tied to their bikes, that's a lot like drafting a talkative semi-truck that loves to yell at cows).
So those are our new friends, check out their picture on our blog a few photos down! More tales to come.
-Amie