by PATRICK BABCOCK
Lifestyles Reporter

Instead of spending summer sunbathing and relaxing, one Appalachian State University student is spending her vacation riding her bike across the country and building homes for the less fortunate.

This summer, junior interdisciplinary studies major Kelly E. McRell will cycle from May 15 to July 18 with an organization called Bike & Build.

The organization works to raise awareness and money for affordable housing.

She will bike from Nag’s Head to San Diego.

McRell

“Ten days out of the two months we’ll be actually building houses,” she said. “We’re building one in the Chapel Hill, Raleigh area, we’re building one in Colorado… all across the USA. On those days, we actually trade in our bikes for hammers.”

Bike & Build, according to their Web site, has raised $1,643,145 for affordable housing over the course of six years.

All trips are student led and McRell is the only Appalachian student to ride on any route.

Every day, McRell will give a presentation to the community she is in at the time about affordable housing.

“Every other day, though, we ride our bikes,” she said. “We’ll average about 65 to 70 miles a day. I think there are three or four days on [my route] that we go 100 [miles], and then there are some when we go like 30 [miles].”

Every day will begin with an early morning.

“An average day will be waking up around 6 o’clock, we’ll pack up, we’ll eat breakfast,” she said.

Then, they ride.

“Then we’ll stop around 11 [a.m.] for lunch. We’ll eat peanut butter and jelly and fruit and then we’ll keep going,” she said. “…we have until 4 o’clock to get to wherever our location is for the day. So we have a good eight, nine hours that we get to cycle every day.”

The schedule of the day will differ from place to place depending on where the riders will sleep, she said.

Some evenings will be spent in tents and others in churches.

McRell will, however, get chances to rest, she said.

“[Every] five days we’ll have off-days, and so those are the ones where whichever city we’re in we can go exploring,” she said. “We can go to the museum, we can go eat a famous restaurant that’s around there, we can lay down –that’s kind of a crucial one.”

Her training schedule matches the rigorousness of her route.

“I try and get on [my bike] every day, which I’ve done really well with. Last week I did a 50-mile ride. Whenever I get my road bike, I’m going to try and go out on the [Blue Ridge Parkway] a lot more,” she said. “It’s kind of cool, Lance Armstrong trains in the Appalachian Mountains.”

Weather has put a damper in her training agenda, however.

“…Due to weather it’s kind of hard, so a lot of the training I’ve done so far has been indoors and stationary,” she said. “I have a trainer, so I just hook it up and start riding. I’ve been doing a lot of ab workouts, because to get up a large mountain you have to have a pretty strong core.”

The ride is a way for her to help people and expand her horizons, McRell said.

“I’m not a cyclist by any means,” she said. “I was looking for a way to step out of my comfort zone and service is something that I do a lot. Cycling is something I don’t think I’ve done since I was 10 and with tricycles. I was really looking for a way to go cross country that was cheap for a college student, but also a way that I could see and actually be engaged with what I passthrough.”

Each rider must pledge to raise $4,000 dollars.

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