The Saga of my little red Schwinn

It was Fall of 2003. I was living in Logan on Canyon Rd down in "the island". It's called the island because its a low part of town with hills to the north and south, a canal on one side and the Logan river on the other. Its a really cool area and Kent and I enjoyed the year we spent there in our "beach house". Our beach house was so named because it was a small two story building with HUGE windows in the front and a cool balcony above. It was right up against the hillside below the canal and further uphill the USU campus. The hill behind our apartment was pretty thickly vegetated with lots of old trees and shrubs etc. The hillside was always muddy and we were pretty sure that we'd wake up one day buried in a mudslide (which, incidentally, happened next door to that apartment 6 years later and killed 2 people, crazy!) But I digress- The reason I'm writing all of this is to tell the story of the bike I found while living there. In a big pile of mud and leaves behind our place I happened to see some handle bars and a bit of tire exposed one day. I pulled the thing free from its resting place, cleaned it off a bit and was thrilled to have a functional bike. It was a woman's 1977 red Schwinn road bike and had probably spent the greater part of it's 26 years buried in that hillside. Needless to say, it was in extreme disrepair, with no rear brakes, a stuck gear shifter, rusty and squeaky everything, etc, etc. it was however, rideable and I rode it for the rest of that year before giving it to Angie so she could have transportation to work. She used it a little, but it went largely ignored until 2006 when Angie and I were married and I started riding it to school. I attached a basket and would run all sorts of errands in it. For all of it's problems, it was a great bike and I grew to really love it. For the last 12 months or so I've been shopping around for a new road bike. There are some really nice ones, but everything is sooo expensive! I really don't need a bike that's going to win the tour de France and it seems like there's no simple, inexpensive options for road bikes. So about a month ago, my heart turned towards my little red Schwinn. I decided to check a local bike repair shop and see what it would cost to "pimp my ride". It needed 2 new wheels (one was missing several spokes and the other was no longer spinning true), 2 new brake mechanisms altogether, all new cables and housings, a new chain, 2 new tires and tubes (both of the old whitewall tires were so weathered and frayed that they were ready to fall away any day), new shifters (which was a trick because Schwinn hasn't been making that style of shifter since the 80's), and a new manifold for the chain (I don't even know what that is or the importance of its function, but the old was was bent really bad and was eating up the chain). At the shop they all told me I would be better off to buy a new bike or check the DI for a bike with less problems, but I was really attached to this bike and the estimate they gave me was surpirisingly reasonable. So after 4 weeks in the shop I picked it up this morning and road it home! It rode so smoothly and nicely, everything works so well and it looks so great, I am super excited about it! I spent the morning cleaning it up really nice and even giving it a coat of wax. I just wanted to tell everyone my bike's story, include a picture and say "Look out world, I'm on the road again!!"

The Expedition of Callister and Callister

I had the awesome opportunity to accompany my older brother Josh on a road trip of biblical proportions this last week. He is starting his own business (Great Basin Asphault) and had just bought a tank online. He got a great deal on it and it even came with a trailer, pretty sweet except it's all in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I was going to be starting my summer job this next week and was therefore available to come along if he needed me, so we made the trip!

The first day we pretty much drove straight to Des Moines with a few stops for gas. We passed some legendary smells in Nebraska that were well off of the funkometer. We were both impressed with how many deer and turkey we were seeing all over the place. Probably around 150 turkeys in all. We spent each night in the truck at rest stops crouched into a fetal position. That was really uncomfortable at first, but after a few nights it wasn't so bad.

Day two was spent driving to the farthest point away from home on our trip. We continued through Iowa and Illinois, then we decided it would be cool to continue on to Michigan via Indiana (which was really only another 40 miles or so) and we'd get to see some nice lake Michigan scenery. Lake Michigan was huge. After that we drove back through Chicago on our way to Milwaukee. We were expecting to fly through Chicago before traffic got bad, but little did we know what was in store for us. I was driving (if you can call it that, it was more like parking) when we stopped south of Chicago. The traffic was soooo bad it took us about 2 hours to move 10 miles or so through town, but we saw the city in all of its glory, we were both blown away, it was so big! From there it was a quick hop to Milwaukee and we met up with the guy who was selling josh the tank. He was nice, but he totally wasn't prepared and we spent 7 hours trying to load that huge thing onto the trailer so we could get it out of there. Once it was loaded up we had to buy lights for the trailer so we wouldn't get pulled over. We were lucky to get into a walmart after they closed and we got the lights. While we were installing them we were visited by 3 policemen who had been called about suspicious activity (it was about 2am). They questioned us and told us to leave asap, so we finished up and left.



Day three we were still pretty nervous about the trailer and decided to take I-80 home instead of I-90 like we had talked about. By the time we reached the Iowa Nebraska border we had enough confidence in the trailer to try I-90 after all. We drove north up to Souix Falls, South Dakota and took a quick jaunt to Minnesota. We travelled clear across South Dakota and we were both really impressed with how pretty it was. We spent the night just outside of Rapid City.

Our last day started with a trip to Mt. Rushmore. Neither of us had ever seen it and it was pretty cool, though kind of smaller than I would have thought. The highlight of that detour was actually not Mt. Rushmore, it was Custer State Park. It was all these really pretty rolling, pine-forested hills and rocky crags with all kinds of wildlife. We saw deer, antelope and even 2 bighorn sheep! We were the only car on the whole road for most of our tour and got to get out a time or two and explore. It was really pretty and we both loved it. We entered Wyoming and decided to see Devil's Tower. Its the cool rock tower from the movie Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind and also the nations first national monument. It was a total whiteout blizzard and we were pretty sure we wouldn't be able to see anything, but we got there just as it cleared up a bit. One crazy coincidence is that the odometer on Josh's truck turned over to 66,666 right as we got to Devil's Tower. CRAZY!! we took a picture, of course. The rest of the drive was long and blizzard conditions. It was pretty awful, but we pulled into Kaysville at about midnight.




When all was said and done we had passed through 10 different states and travelled over 3,300 miles! It was an awesome and memorable experience that I'm sure we'll be talking about for the rest of our lives. Thanks again Josh for having me along, that was a blast!