The Last Post

First of all, I have resisted the temptation all through the ride to mention the charity side. Now I have finished can I first of all say thank you, thank you, thank you to all of you who have donated money. Every single one of you has dug deep and given money to a very worthy cause, I know. I'm just going to mention one person in particular and that is Miss Madison Irvine who gave me £2 that the Tooth Fairy had left for her for one of her milk teeth! If that doesn't make your heart skip, then there is no hope for you!

If you haven't donated and have followed me all the way, or part of the way along the journey, please think about doing so. It is a worth cause and it is so easy to donate. All you need to know about the charity and how to donate is on the right hand side of this page. Has the tooth fairy visited you recently?

Since finishing the ride, I have been with Lynne at Leon's house near to the St. John's River in upstate Florida and we have just chilled. She managed two days without hitting a golf ball and we went out on the river alligator spotting. We did manage to spot one or two, but in general, the water was warm and high and kept them off their basking logs. There was not a lot of bird life, but we did have a great day 'just chillin' and cruising around.

We left there Saturday lunchtime and managed a pleasant lunch break at a lakeside bar before travelling downstate to the house at Indialantic on the coast. A friend of our, Stewart, has joined us now and we are doing our best to get him to relax by walking him along the beach and making sure he uses Leon's pool. The weather is still hot but there is a bit of a sea breeze to temper things slightly and you can always go into air conditioned splendour inside if it gets too hot.

Sunday morning, I cleaned the bike, and took it our for a look at the road outside Leon's house. I circled for no more than 10 yards and very, very slowly went to go back into his drive via quite a steep kerb. So slow, in fact, that I didn't get up the kerb, twisted the bike and fell to the side. I just managed to unclip my feet from the pedals and managed to avoid any injury but landed on the right hand side of the handle bars, bending them and buckling the front wheel. It actually got worse when I looked at the handle bars more closely as I saw that rather than being just bent, they were actually broken, snapped, bust, kaput - just plain useless! 1700 miles with no problems then 10 yards and a redundant bike. Never mind, no injuries and I am sure that they will repair. It just means that I will have to pack the bike ready for travel earlier than I thought and will not get the chance to ride with Leon, Stewart or any of the clubs here this week.

Anyway, ride musings. This ride was a different experience to last year's; it wasn't as far, the climbing was more difficult and the length of the days was not as long. I certainly had forgotten just how hot it is over here, the picture published in Whiteville with a temperature of 112 degrees is a stark reminder of how hot it can get and how that affects everything about the day. It has also been an interesting experience riding along with clothes absolutely soaking wet through when there hasn't been a drop of rain for hours and that was something that took some getting used to. Going into air conditioned splendour with such clothes on soon became very uncomfortable and left me having to choose between the devil of the outside heat or the deep blue sea of the inside chill.

Again, the organisation of the AbB staff was magnificent. I can't praise them highly enough. 6 broken spokes on a self -supported ride would have spelt near disaster for me and my chronic mechanical skills, but Mike the Bike said that he actually looked forward to seeing whether I had any work for him at the end of each day! (I think he was fibbing a bit)

I love coming across and riding in the States. There is such a diversity of scenery, places, attitudes in the people and so many things you can 'compare and contrast'. Cycling helps me look at what I am travelling through. What happens and what we talk about makes me question whether what I/we do is right or whether the locals have got it right. Some of the things they do seem bizarre, but when you think about them, are they really so? The people I ride with come from all different backgrounds. They can be unemployed, retired or the CEO of a multinational company but they are as one when on the road - we are all cyclists and all very, very equal (even though some are better cyclists than others) and all other labels are lost in what we share.

One thing I do struggle to get my head round is the (seeming) obsession with (personal) performance over almost everything else. The feedback questionnaire asked 'How many local centuries do you ride a year?' which I find to be an almost irrelevant question. It's this obsession with performance. Ask some riders what they had seen on a day's ride and they would say, honestly, 'half an inch of tyre rubber and a strip of tarmac'. Ask them whether they had seen a particularly noticeable sign or object at the side of the road and they would not have a clue. Cycling is the reason for going cycling, but for me cycling is the reason for expanding one's knowledge, seeing and learning about the countryside and country you are riding through. Very few people took the time to talk to people working the fields or people by the roadside who can add to the experience and expand it so both sides get some benefit. Those same people could tell you what their volO2 is and how that compares to a younger person, what speed they went up a particular part of the ride, how orange juice loads the cholesterol count in our body or what their cadence was over the last 20 miles. Ask them what is that growing alongside the road and they don't have a clue.

But that is what makes the ride so enjoyable. It's coming to terms with people's differences and questioning one's own thoughts that makes the experience worthwhile.

If we were all the same, wouldn't life be boring?

I'm going to close this latest chapter of cycling whimsy and leave you with the pictures of the start and finish of the ride.

The group that started in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, then those that finished in Jacksonville Florida so many miles and days later. Thanks for reading and PLEASE 'give me da money' if you haven't already!