By BEN KLEINE

Staff writer

Jarod Lawver, Chad Lawver, and Chaz Rice are biking from the coast of Oregon to Virginia Beach.

They began June 13; they plan on the trip ending in 76 days, by Aug. 28.

They stopped in Marion Sunday night in the middle of their cross-country biking trip. They slept in Central Park using hammocks, leaving 6:30 a.m. Monday. They said they have only had to pay to camp once: $5 in Jackson Hole, Wyo.

The Lawver brothers and Rice flew into Portland, Ore., then biked 100 miles to the coast before starting their bike trip. They have traveled through the entire state of Oregon, and parts of Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado.

Sunday they biked from Great Bend to Marion, about 95 miles.

“The 105 temperatures were different,” Jarod Lawver said. “We’ve just dropped out of the Rockies.”

They said they have biked as many as 144 miles a day when they were in the northwest and were hounded by mosquitoes at night.

The group has camped in the Tetons, spent a week in Yellowstone National Park, and has traversed much of the Rockies.

They went over Hoosier pass, at 11,539 feet, backpacked in the Tetons, and climbed Wild Iris, a cliff in Wyoming.

In the rockies, the Lawver brothers and Rice biked up to Paint Brush Divide but came to a section where they switched back down the mountain where it was covered by 10 feet of snow. They fell and slid approximately 200 feet down the slope.

The group met five women in Montana, who were biking to Maine. The Lawver brothers and Rice spent three weeks riding with the women.

Jarod Lawver said that the group’s most interesting stories happened while in Yellowstone.

“It seemed like there was something every day,” Rice added.

In one instance, they saw three people hanging off a cliff. They hiked around the backside of the cliff and found out that the climbers were stranded. From the top of the cliff, they tied a rope to a tree and lowered down the rope to the climbers. While Jarod Lawver held the rope steady, Chad Lawver and Rice helped pull each person to the top of the cliff.

Jarod Lawver said if his group had not come across the climbers when they did, park ranger smay not have found them before they fell.

“It was a sweet feeling,” Jarod Lawver said.

The trip was the dream of Jarod Lawver. After graduating from college in California, he decided to take the trip with fellow Ohioans Chad Lawver, a junior in college, and Rice, a senior, who roomed together at school.

They are living simply; Jarod Lawver surmised that they will spend about $1,200 apiece on the trip. They are blogging about their adventures at 76daysinthesaddle.blogspot.com.