Day 48--THE END

Burlington to Boston, Mass.

SMILE>>>>>>>>>>YOU MADE IT!!!!!

After all the smiles and drinks, and good-byes of last night, there are even more parting hugs, hand-shakes, pictures taken, and, of course, promises to stay in touch during the day and at the farewell banquet. And, in fact, the web continues to transmit messages and pictures to and from the crew that not only made it door to door but among everyone that rode with us anytime: all the way, at the start and retired, or joined us near the end.

The bonding that occurs from these shared personal experiences is nice and is probably why I do these kind of things. Even the vacation trip to Alaska with my wife was on a small cruise ship in August, still has us sharing emails with a few of the people we met pver the course of that week. The same is true of the friends I've made over the years doing the Anchor House charity ride. I'll probably continue this blog with stuff about the Anchor House ride, and perhaps the Alaskan vacation over the next few weeks, if ever. Just not this minute.

Back to the ride.........
There was a large folded map of the US that was placed in the lobby of every hotel we stayed at. It had a blue trail of the route we were taking, and every evening, a black mark was placed over the blue for the distance we covered that day. It just seemed forever to get to the first rest day, and then I don't seem to recall focusing on the map until we got to Ohio. It's not that I didn't look at it. Actually, I'm sure that I was occasionally found staring at it. It's just that I didn't want to focus on the distance until it became more emotionally manageable.

I guess I was surprised to find how many people do this cross the US trip more than once. For some of our riders, this was their 3rd or 4th time. If people ask any questions of me, then they ask at least two: why did you do it, and would you do it again??

The why I did it question has as many answers as there are days. There always seems to be another reason depending on just I might be thing about when they ask. There are all the glib answers, and the usual answers, and the thoughtful answers; but, I just don't have one perfect answer. If I had to pick one, I guess it was simply for the experience of it all: the people I met on the ride and throughout the country, the wind, the rain, the sun........just whatever happened, and the enjoy it for what it was. It didn't stop me from complaining at times, it just was the power of living it, whatever IT was. Would I do it again? Possibly. But, first, I have a number of other things in mind, not the least of which is doing things that my wife can share it.

These things were running through my head as we all shared our congratulations to each other, and the corresponding good-byes, as we road to the Ocean. We had all kinds of chatter going on during the ride, and the occasional craziness. (We won't talk about the "mooning" provided us as we gathered at the staging stop just before the Ocean. I won't name the person, but those who where there know.) The route through the towns to the Ocean was not a straight shot but we had Al. Al does national level orienteering races at a high level. We just give him a cue-sheet with the directions, turn him loose at the front, and though our cue-sheets away, and make sure we stay close.

I will now go back to post and share some of the pictures that go with this last week, as well as a few that I may just post from prior days that I'll add here. I'm not sure whether I'll add them to a given day or just add a post of just pictures. We'll see. See ya...............

P.S....I did have a few slips with the gears going to the ocean, but not enough to cause me to fall back, just enough to make me slip with a few expletive-deleteds!! When back home with the mechanic who sold me my bike with the SRAM components, he noticed that my cables were a bit more beat up then we gave credence to on the ride. After changing out the cables, and replacing the chain (that had gotten beaten up from all the slipping), I had a great Anchor House ride with all the hills on that ride, have ridden a few centuries to date, and hundreds of other random miles and everything is fine todate. This is not a condemnation of the work that Rick provided during the ride, but just a PS to all my comments in regards to the gears over the course of the last week of the blog. SRAM is relatively new company and like many new things, if you don't work with it, there is a learning curve. I trust my experience will only help those future SRAM riders on the XC ride. See ya...........