Cycle for Science — the brainchild of Rachel Woods-Robinson and Elizabeth Case — is a 4,000 mile bike ride from San Francisco to New York. Along the way, Case and Woods-Robinson will make stops at classrooms and summer programs to teach science, talk with teachers and encourage girls to continue studying science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). This is the second in a series of guest blog posts by Rachel and Elizabeth. Follow their journey on Energy.gov and their website,cycleforscience.org.

At the beginning of June, we left you in Rapid City, South Dakota. Now we’re just past the Eastern Continental Divide and 180 miles from Washington, D.C., racing down the Great Allegheny Passage to arrive in the nation’s capital by July 4.

The last four weeks have been fraught with weather, filled with spectacular scenery and graced with incredible people.

We taught our sixth class at a YWCA in Waterloo, Iowa. The kids had been holed up all day due to — you guessed it — lots and lots of rain. We were at least able to take them outside to show the motors spinning, and — as the cloud cover eased up — we were able to get a few of our Sol Cycles moving slowly in the parking lot. At the end of the lesson, it was really exciting to watch all these ideas for new creations pour out of kids who hadn’t heard of 3D printing an hour earlier — even “a flying pig!”

We raced through the rain for the rest of Iowa and Illinois to reach the Indiana border.

We taught our next class at the La Porte Public Library, which — like the Sacramento library where we made our first prototypes — is pushing digital literacy and skills with 3D printers. The library was holding the final day of their middle school tech camp when we visited. For once, the sky actually cleared and the sun came out! Kids were racing the Sol Cycle bikes on the sidewalk and brainstorming improvements to make them more balanced, faster, lighter and sturdier.

One of our favorite parts of our lessons is admitting that the Sol Cycle is a work in progress, that there are so many potential improvements to make and seeing what additions and tweaks the kids come up with. One boy had an idea for an alternative to training wheels. He explained it to us excitedly while we were outside, and then presented his idea to the group after the lesson. We’re looking forward to seeing all the Sol Cycle 2.0s that come out of La Porte!

After barely missing a tornado and several severe thunderstorm warnings, we made it to Pennsylvania, where we taught our eighth class at Windwood Camp just outside Pittsburgh, amidst another storm. It was by a landslide (luckily not literally, though the ground was very slippery) our biggest and most challenging lesson yet: 200 kids, ages 4-14, and no sunshine for the solar panels. But, despite the challenges, it went pretty well.

Now we only have a few more weeks left on our trip, and we can’t believe how close we are to the Atlantic. We’ll write you once more after we arrive in New York.