[Here is an extraordinary host's log of a year's guests, as published in the US publication "Cycling Utah". Thanks, Louis Melini.]

October of 2009 to November of 2010 was quite the extraordinary year for bicycle travelers staying at my home. Normally Julie and I host 1 or 2 travelers every year or two. In that time period, we had 11 visitors from 7 countries including one from the U.S.

Member LiMoDad wrote to tell us that Warmshowers member Dave Blumenthal died Thursday morning while racing the Tour Divide mountain bike race along the Great Divide route. Dave, of Montpelier VT, had a head on collision with a truck in Colorado. He is survived by his wife and 3 year old daughter. You may want to read one of the many fond obituaries of him all over the web, for example, http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/BT/20100625/NEWS/100629981/0/WW2.

We join Dave's family in their grief.

Member Don Dejong sent us this nice article about host Liz Rogers which was published in the Marfa, Texas, USA, Big Bend Sentinel. It's reprinted here by permission of the author, Lonn Taylor. It sounds like Liz is quite a marvelous host. Thanks for your gift to the community, Liz!

By LONN TAYLOR

Liz Rogers of Alpine may be the most hospitable person in the Big Bend. Over the past four months she has entertained 30 house guests. All of them have been complete strangers, and all of them have arrived at her house on bicycles. Rogers, a lawyer who is a public defender for the federal court system, is part of a network of hosts all over the country who provide overnight housing for transcontinental bicyclists. She told me that when she first started opening her house to them her friends all told her that she was going to be murdered in her sleep or at least wake up to find her house looted. “Oh, sure,” she says she told them, “someone on a bicycle is going to steal my piano?” She says that her overnight visitors have been “almost 100% delightful.”

Rogers, who is six feet tall and has a deep, smoky voice that sounds a little like Talluhlah Bankhead’s, is someone who appears to be delighted by most things that happen to her. She has a finely honed sense of humor and once arrived at a Miss America contest-watching party that my wife was giving seated on the folded-down top of her boyfriend’s 1963 Pontiac Catalina convertible dressed in a bathing suit and wearing a ribbon that said “Miss Montell.” She is from the town of Montell in Uvalde County, which has a population of 20. She has more friends than anyone I have ever known.

A big thank you to everyone who has hosted us so far and impressed us with your hospitality! Here is an update: We followed the Via Augosta trail for most of Monday, although we lost it in Sagunto, we used our maps and another map of the trail from a tourist office to find our way back to it. It was very slow going at times because we kept getting lost, but it was a very calm alternative to the highway. Monday night we stayed in a campground, in the owner´s driveway, as there were no other sites available. He and his family were preoccupied with four small kittens whose mother had just died. They were trying to get the kittens to eat by throwing them into a bowl of milk, which didn´t seem to work so well.

Plus d'info sur :
www.bruno.f2.fr

Le site qui vous permetra de voyager un peu sur notre planète !

Départ prévu en juin 2008 du Pays de Gex (tout proche de Geneve) en direction de l'Asie. Si possible passer plusieurs mois en Chine si possibilité de visa. Sinon, pourquoi pas un détour par l'Inde?
Peut etre aussi un passage par la Nouvelle Zélande après avoir sillonner un peu l'Asie du sud est, puis les USA, le Canada, avant de voler vers Dakar pour longer la cote jusqu'à Gibraltar et enfin rejoindre la France via l'Espagne. Pffff !!! ...Chuis pas rendu hein?!!!

Aller, bien amicalement les amis !!!

Janice and I have been touring since the early 1970s. We typically tour once or twice a year, each tour typically about a week. We normally tour fully loaded on one of our (three) tandems. We just returned from a week-long tour with Norm Melchert, who lives in Richmond, VA. My daughter Gwen and I, on a tandem, and Norm, on a single, road from Seattle to Cape May, NJ, when Gwen graduated college in 1991.

Janice and I have ridden with Norm on shorter tours, including a tour of the Coromandel Peninsula in New Zealand, where Norm spends part of the year.

Because Norm was not interested in loaded touring, last week we rode a sagged tour, starting in Richmond and exploring the part of Virginia between Richmond and Appomattox.

We are Josh and Carla and we're riding our bikes from Boston, MA to San Diego, CA.
Josh (the mechanic) is riding a fixed gear dumpster bike he built up for touring.
Carla (the nature sprite) keeps up with Josh on a *mostly* raw, organic whole food diet.
We left the cold NE states to return to warm weather (we're actually from Florida).

Join us on our trip at our website: http://ma2ca.angelfire.com

So far we rode 88 miles to Wakefield, RI to visit josh's grandparents. We stayed there a couple of days and waited out some hard winds and some rain. A perfect sunny day followed and we headed out.

Biking by environments, seeing slow seasonal, environmental, and cultural shifts, while shifting myself;
self propelled
myths and places not held
to a static machinery of oil and greed
sun rise sun set
on yr marks
gets set

so we are off, us hobos
no spandex
where's the harmony
of a simple life of seeing reality? and no tomorrow.

give to my mother
and forever grateful
thank you thank you
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My Northsea Cycling Tour

From my Birth Town : Bitche (France) to Rotterdam thrue the "RheinWeg" and then the official Northsea Cycling Tour and finally from Rotterdam to Bitche thrue another roads : I will let the wind tell me the direction. All this will be done on a bike whith my little home in a trailer.

This blog will be written in French : my birth langage ; this is easier for me and so you can learn French and so make a Trip to take a warmshower at home when I will be back.