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Welcome to the new illini4000.org
Over the last two months the Illini 4000 has been hard at work, redesigning and rebuilding the organization's website making it easier to navigate and better reflect how people communicate in today's media rich culture. We have added many new features, including more comprehensive rider profiles, blogs, photographs, and much more.But we're not done yet! Check back in over the next few weeks as we continue to add new content and new features.Questions, comments, and concerns about our new website should be directed to our Director of Information, Erik Volkman, at information@illini4000.org.
Pardon our upgrade
The Illini 4000 website is currently undergoing maintenance, please bear with us while we get everything working properly.
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Your 2010 Bike America Team!
The Board of Directors of the Illini 4000 is pleased to announce the names of riders who will be cycling across the country in the summer of 2010!These 28 students have accepted the challenge and committed themselves to an outstanding experience this summer fighting against cancer and bringing hope to those whose lives have been affected by cancer.So without further ado, we are pleased to introduce the fourth Illini 4000 Bike America team!
- Shea Campbell: Banbridge, Ireland
- Conor Canaday: Channahon, IL
- Gregory Colten: Wilmette, IL
- Michell Eloy, Decatur, IL
- Gabrielle Fairbairn: Minooka, IL
- Priscilla Fu: Singapore
- Bridget Hapner: Chicago, IL
- Maxwell Hudetz: Chicago, IL
- Jaimie Kelleher: Western Springs, IL
- Jean Kim: Naperville, IL
- Megan Larsen: Streamwood, IL
- Shaozhe Li: Beijing, China
- Kyle Lindsay: Highland Park, IL
- Qianzhu Luo: Wuhan, China
- Lauren Mazurski: Chicago, IL
- Eamon O'Hara: Homewood, IL
- Stephen Odon: Arlington Heights, IL
- Disha Patel: Schaumburg, IL
- Jillian Podgorski: Cary, IL
- Nate Prescott: Oak Park, IL
- Jeff Reardon: Heidelberg, Germany
- Mary Russell: Naperville, IL
- Ana Rynecki: Heidelberg, Germany
- Szymon Sambor: Chicago, IL
- Tracey Schafer: Champaign, IL
- Paul Shi: Yuyao, China
- Kevin Swanson: Oak Park, IL
- Erik Volkman: Lake Villa, IL
- Jordan Whicker: Urbana, IL
- Piyum Zonooz: Carol Stream, IL
Application Deadline and Interviews
The deadline for rider applications will be October 15th at midnight. The interview process is underway so we encourage you to send in your application as soon as possible so we can schedule you in. When filling out your application, please be sure that your available times for a half hour interview are accurate. You can find the application and behavior policy here.If you have already applied, expect to be contacted in the next couple of weeks to set up a half hour interview. We usually conduct these in the afternoon/evening at the Espresso Royale on the corner of Goodwin and Oregon. These are very informal (no suits please) and are really just a chance for the board to get to know you better. Come armed with any remaining questions you may have.
General Meeting Monday Night
The first general meeting of the year will be held this coming Monday the 28th at 7pm in room 131 of the English Building. We will be covering the basics of what you can expect this year, answer questions, and most importantly have committee sign-ups. This is the chance for non-riders to really get involved so we encourage everyone to attend. It is also very important that potential riders become involved in a committee. We expect everyone to contribute in their own way leading up to the ride and we really need your help running the organization.
We want YOU!
...to join the Illini 4000 and ride your bike across the country!As one ride comes to end, we are looking to start another ride and assemble a Bike America Team for the Summer of 2010. We are looking for dedicated college students who want to make an impact in the communities we ride through.For those of you at the University of Illinois, we have information sessions Wednesday, August 26th and Monday, August 31st. These sessions will be held in the English Building, room 131 at 7 p.m. each night. Come out to find out more about the Illini 4000!For those of you who are sure that riding a bike across the country is your thing, our application can be found here. We ask that you review our rider policy doc here before filling out an application.
Apply Now
Applications for the 2010 Bike America team are now available. If you think you have what it takes (or think you could train to what it takes) to ride your bike across the country, then consider filling out an application at illini4000.org/forms/application . Hope to hear from your soon!
The Last Post, or The Reason We Ride
It's hard to believe that it's over, it still doesn't feel real. I had that single moment of realization on the beach in Oregon, but now that feeling is gone, lost in the rolling gray surf, and once again its hard to imagine that we actually did ride our bikes across the country with nothing but our bikes, a stuffed backpack, and a single team van. It's crazy looking back at all the blogs that I have written over the past 2 months. I read what I wrote about riding into DC in the pouring rain or getting lost on the way into Everett, PA, and its hard to believe that we were only a week into the trip at that time, it feels like those days were just last week. I look back on this trip and see a lot of amazing things. It's amusing to think back to the start of the trip and realize how much I have learned, not only as a cyclist, but also about people and life. I have met so many great people on this journey, and not only on our bike team, which was certainly not short of characters, but also just talking to people while stopped at stoplights and at rest stops, at national monuments and gas stations, and realizing that cancer affects so many people. Whether it was the older man I talked to on the way into Washington, whose father and brother had died from cancer, or the woman from Mt. Rushmore with the 8-year-old child who had been diagnosed with cancer within his first month of life, and was still fighting it, each person inspired me in their own way.
I will never forget way I spent the last summer before I became an official adult. I cannot forget; tornados in Wyoming, tiny bookstores, how sick we all got of bagels, the great prairie fire of Murdo, the cheers of Beaver High School, endless PBJs, ridiculous tan lines, the Kanji game, standing around every morning waiting to leave, looking at the stars at 4AM in Yellowstone, letters to Matilda, I4K T-Rex, going down mountains at 50+ mph, Pannekoeken, hose showers, listening to cancer survivors tell their stories, and great friends. I will never again take for granted; a good place to sleep, being able to eat whatever and whenever I want, warm showers on cold days, and not growing up on a farm. For better or for worse, we lived together for 65 days and annoyed each other, laughed together, yelled at animals, sometimes yelled at each other, and by the end of the trip, I was ready to be home, but also didn't want it to end, which I think is a true sign of how this trip brings people together. I came into this trip very much on my own, meaning that I didn't know much of anything about biking, didn't know anyone who biked, and didn't know a single person who would be joining me on this trip, but now I feel like I have my very own western family, like I have known all of these riders for years. I'm gonna miss you guys.
Thank you to everyone who supported me, I hope my thank you notes have reached all who donated, and please know that I was totally overwhelmed by the amount of support I got from all my friends and family. In the end, I ended up raising over $5,000, and we raised $64,000 as a team, which I think is pretty amazing for 20 poor college kids who aren't working for a summer.
If you are a younger kid following along, you should definitely try to do this, its an amazing experience, it will allow you to push yourself to limits you didn't know you could reach, you will make 20 new friends, and you will never get a chance to see the entire country like this again. To everyone else, let this be a reminder that you too can make an impact. While I was on this trip, one of my aunts was diagnosed with cancer, one of my mom's co-workers had a son die from cancer, a good friend from high school lost a mother to cancer, and a friend from college contacted me to tell me that his mother was also battling cancer and recently had a lung removed. This trip was started 3 years ago as a project from the minds of two U of I students, and now we are raising incredible amounts of money and carrying on the tradition. All you need to do is have an idea and you can change people's lives. As we have been reminded, if this trip convinces one person to test themselves for cancer, if we can raise enough money to allow researchers to make a breakthrough, if we can save even one life, then this trip is more than worth it. That is what makes this journey worth it. That is the reason we ride.
Thank you all so much. Please direct questions and comments to jkrantzler@gmail.com. Final pics are up at http://www.flickr.com/photos/8300819@N03/
Day 65 & 66 - Chicago Is So Two Years Ago
Hillsboro, OR to Portland, OR
Our final ride day!! We were led into the city by Barbara, an alumni and member of the Portland Illinois Alumni group. She took us first to the Nike campus, just outside the city, where two riders, Dan and Christa got the last two flats of the trip, but once they quickly changed their tubes, we entered the facility and began the tour. The Nike campus was really beautiful and we got to see parking spots reserved for Tiger Woods, Gary Peyton, and others, along with a beautiful running track, the Lance Armstrong Center, a really cool reflecting pond, and amazing soccer fields which really made me want to play again. After that, we headed to the famous Washington Park and visited the renowned Rose Garden, which overlooked Portland, and then finally headed into the city. We got to Overlook Park, where our supporters were waiting to welcome us in, and everyone was really excited to see my mom, and it was very exciting in general. The alumni put on a great picnic for us, and we ate tons of food, took lots of pictures, did some of the more memorable cheers and games which we have been doing on this trip. Afterwards, we headed to our stayover and headed into the city for the night. Portland is known for its microbrews, so we went to Deschutes, where I had a really good lamb burger for dinner, then we went to Rogue Brewery, had some of the famous doughnuts from Voodoo Doughnuts (the banana fritter was amazing), and then visited the Thirsty Lion before heading home for the night.
The next day, we had a hospital visit where we got to tour the Portland Cancer Center and then headed into the city for lunch with my family. We went to Powells, the huge bookstore in Portland, and managed to restrain myself to buying only three books while I was there, The Road by Cormac McCarthy, Watership Down by Richard Adams, and A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean. We also visited a local thrift shop where I got yet another unnecessary t-shirt for my huge collection, and then had some delicious Chinese food for dinner from Hunan. And that was it, I broke my bike down and left Portland Tuesday!
Somehow, no one bothered to check our flight out of Portland, so we got to the airport at 6:45AM and found out that it had been canceled. That was pretty frustrating, but we didn't really have a rush, and we would have to take a flight that left 5 hours later and had a stopover in Atlanta. However, I got some great reading done, I finished The Road, and bought one last book(Better by Atul Gawande) from the Powells in the airport, and finished that too. The people at Delta were very helpful in organizing a new flight for us free of charge and Christa, Matt Harlan, and I eventually made it home around 9PM, and I was able to sleep in my own bed for as long as I wanted, which felt great!!
States traveled through:19(NY,NJ,PA, DE, MD, DC, VA, WV, OH, IN, IL, WI, MN, SD, WY, MT, ID, WA, OR)
Distance today: 27 mi
Total Distance traveled: 4072 mi
Day 64 - Hitting 4000
Seaside, OR to Hillsboro, OR
Today's ride was only 65 miles, but we had a pretty hard ride to actually do it. We climbed a 1000 foot hill at the beginning of the day, and then had a lot of hills the rest of the day and the shoulder of the road was not very good, so the ride wasn't always safe. We were finally seeing Portland signs, and we could feel the end of the trip getting closer with individual pedal strokes. I hit 4000 miles just before the first rest stop of the day, but it was during a downhill, so I had to snap some quick pictures to capture the moment, thankfully, the road was pretty empty at that point. We took a wrong turn at some point, but somehow found our way to the stay-over. We were staying at the Sonrise Church in Hillsboro, which was an amazing church, everything was huge and brand new, I guess they had bought the building as an old Motorola warehouse, but had totally remodeled it, and made it really impressive. They also bought us some pizzas, and Sae-bin's parents bought us dinner at Appleby's which was really appreciated. We were also able to shower and do some laundry, which was much appreciated, and Sean Laude, our co-director arrived from Chicago today, so he will drive in tomorrow, so that we can all ride in to Portland as a team.
States traveled through:19(NY,NJ,PA, DE, MD, DC, VA, WV, OH, IN, IL, WI, MN, SD, WY, MT, ID, WA, OR)
Distance today: 65 mi
Total Distance traveled: 4045 mi
Day 63 - Coast to Coast!!
Castle Rock, WA to Seaside, OR
With time running out on our trip, we rode into our 19th and final state of the trip, Oregon. The ride was our final really long day and the weather was not very good, it was overcast and it looked like it was gonna rain all day. We had to ride a ferry across the Columbia River in order to get into Oregon, so that was pretty cool since for the first time, we traveled for a few miles on something that wasn't a bike. The ride took us through beautiful Astoria, OR where we got lunch at a McDonalds, and then climbed the steepest hill of the trip. Conor and I were able to make it up this hill, which had to be approaching a 100% grade(45 degree angle), but the rest of our group had to walk it or they were going to fall over trying to climb it. It was a short hill, just really steep, so it was actually kind of fun to climb it, as long as you didn't fall over. The hill was so steep that the sidewalk was actually stairs!!
Finally, we got our first glimpse of the coast from the top of a hill about 5 miles away, which really got us pumped up, and we were really excited to ride into the coast. When we made it to the beach, we jumped off our bikes, and sprinted into the ocean. Once we had jumped some waves and done a little body surfing, we got out of the water, which wasn't as cold as I had expected, but it was still cold. We had some time to consider what we had done as we waited for the back groups to arrive, and for the first time, I really had a sense of realization of what we had done. We started this trip 60 days ago and could see the Atlantic from New York, and now we were all the way across the country. We actually rode almost 4000 miles, from coast to coast, just by taking it one day at a time, and it took seeing the opposite side of the ocean to really put it in perspective. At night, we got a ton of pizzas donated, and also visited the pool right next door, where we could rope swing, use the slide, a hot tub, and they had a rock climbing wall suspended over the water, so that was pretty awesome too. Tomorrow is our last real ride day, so everyone is excited for that, and I am scheduled to hit 4000 miles tomorrow, which is also awesome.
States traveled through:19(NY,NJ,PA, DE, MD, DC, VA, WV, OH, IN, IL, WI, MN, SD, WY, MT, ID, WA, OR)
Distance today: 84 mi
Total Distance traveled: 3980 mi
We did it!
I just wanted to make one last entry to thank everyone for their loyal support to the Illini 4000. This trip truly would not be possible without the support of our stayovers, friends, families, and people we’ve met along the ride. I can’t even describe how many times I have been impressed by the generosity of my friends and family, as well as all of the people I have met along the way. Also, a special thanks to all the riders because I wouldn’t have been able to make it without your jokes and support. Feel free to email me with any questions, and pictures should be up soon!KristenKtull012@yahoo.com
WE DID IT!
Thank you to everyone who helped us out along the way - Thank you to Portland and the Illini Club for throwing the best finale imaginable. This was an unforgettable summer for all of us and we could not have done it without you! More words to come, but for now... 4000 miles down and just as many memories!
Finished
The last few days have been so surreal. Hitting the coast in Seaside was so amazing. As we biked through the downtown towards the beach, we were just hollering and being so rowdy. Then when we hit the beach, James and I just took off sprinting for the water and ran and dove right in... probably one of the best feelings I've had minus the freezing cold Oregon water. We stood around for awhile, got tons of pictures with our bikes and group pictures and then stuck around to watch the other groups come in and try to be equally as wild. I eventually got a run in down the beach, which was beautiful... That night Zernyu, David and I spent too much time getting pizza for the team and after we ate at the rec center we were staying at and I got a shower, I went for a long romantic walk on the beach... with Adam.
The ride into Hillsboro was nice, but the road was pretty rough and there were a lot of hills, which I've had enough of. That night Saebin's parents took all of us out to eat to Applebees where we all gorged ourselves and I ran into Shawn Pollard, a former teammate of mine at SU that I haven't seen in 5 years- weird and random.
Yesterday we had a huge breakfast provided for us by the church before our short ride into Portland, which was led by an Iliinois Alumni from Portland. The ride was easy and great. We went through the nike campus in Beaverton and got to check out all the facilities, which was amazing to me... They had a rubber track with a wooded infield- really cool. Plus a huge statue of Prefontaine- lots of cool things to see if you're a sports fan...
After leaving the campus we rode to a really nice rose garden in Portland and chilled for awhile before biking to another park where the Portland U of I Alumni had put on a huge picnic for us. As we pulled up there were probably 50-60 people waiting and cheering for us- the best reception we have gotten anywhere by far... The food was soooo good. I ate myself retarded, of course.
Last night we did a pretty good pub crawl to celebrate the end of the trip, hitting a number of the local breweries. Portland is famous for its beer I guess.
Today we toured another cancer research facility and clinic in town. Afterwards, I kept the tradition of not resting on rest days alive and Zernyu, Clinton and I all got drove out and biked back 35 miles on the Columbia River Gorge Highway... Probably one of the coolest rides of the trip. It took us probably 2.5 hours to do the first 12 miles because there were so many awesome places to stop and check out. Probably 5 or so huge waterfalls and a couple of great scenic overlooks.
Soooo... the trips over, which is nuts to me. I fly out of Portland tomorrow night and then I'll have to return to normal life, which I guess I'm ready for, although I think I'll probably keep showering with a hose. Anyways, thanks to everyone for your support and for reading this (if there are any of you left). The trip has been such an experience- by the far the best of my life. The people we have meant, the things we have seen, the jokes and memories, and the impact we have had on people have all been amazing- and something I will never forget.
Lets go Buffalo
The Bittersweet End
After some exciting and hot rides through Washington and Oregon, we reached the coast yesterday in Seaside, Oregon. As we rode in through the streets of Seaside, we all began cheering and making as much noise as possible. When we reached the beach we through our shoes off and took off running, with our bikes, to reach the water as fast as possible. Over the past months, each ride seemed insignificant, but when we reached the water of the Pacific Ocean it finally seemed real to me, just how far and amazing our journey has been.
Tonight, I find myself 20 miles outside of Portland. This trip has been amazing in every aspect, from the people we have met, the places we have seen, and the stories we have heard. Reaching Portland will be bittersweet, because on one hand it is amazing that we will finally be reaching our destination, which is quite an accomplishment, and I am excited to get home to see everyone. On the other hand, everyday in the I4K is a new adventure, and I will certainly miss that, as well as all of the people/friends I have made along the way. Although the journey is almost over, I will always carry with me the experiences and memories we have made along the way.
The Longest & Shortest Summer
Today, we rode into Hillsboro, OR which is a suburb of Portland. Tomorrow we will ride between 20 and 30 miles to complete our summer journey. It's bittersweet of course because I'm so proud of every person on this team and will miss them like crazy once we all go our separate ways but I am also curious to see how the real world is doing and what's beyond this crazy liefstyle that we've been leading for the past 64 days.
The stayover is awesome, yet again. We are so lucky. There's air conditioning, a shower, cots, internet, and the Ohs are buying dinner for everyone! They are so awesome, it's so nice of them to do all this for us (a second time).
I'm not sure what I'll be doing in Portland the next couple days but I can tell you right now that I'm going to Powell's, a HUGE used bookstore, eat some Voodoo Donuts, and relax. Some people's families are coming in, so that should be really great. It'll be really nice to see everyone together. Plus, we'll have nowhere to be for two days (except the airport)!
From Sea to Shining Sea
We finally made it to the ocean!!!! Although it's further west than Portland, we just had to swim in the ocean and offically go coast to coast. The ride was good, but almost all I can remember from this day is how great I felt when we were riding down Broadway in Seaside, Oregon. As the last group in, it was so awesome to have the rest of the team and a few strangers cheering for us on the sidewalk as we neared the ocean. People even hugged us as they found out what we were doing and how far we had actually made it. That was extremely nice. It was such a great feeling. Kristen, Christa and I pulled a Baywatch and ran a long way down the beach, taking off our jerseys and running our hearts into the Pacific Ocean. It was so wonderful. There is nothing like that, ever.
After swimming around for a while, we went down to the stayover. It was a community center adn hold on, it gets better, it had a pool, showers, a jacuzzi, rope swing, slide, and I can't remember but we had SO much fun. It was one of the nicest stay overs ever, everyone enjoyed themselves, deservedly so.
I can't believe we made it from sea to shining sea. How crazy!!