Epilogue 1
Several people have asked if I will continue the blog. I certainly intend on posting regularly, although not on a daily basis. You might have noticed from reading the posts that I was often extremely tired, maybe so tired that the posting made little or now sense. I often remembered an incident that I meant to include in the post, but fatigue often won out, making me totally forget about an impressionable event of the day. Guess those events were so significant that I instantly forgot about them.
One point that I would like to emphasize is that although this trip seems incredible to some, that it was something we had always dreamed of doing. Many people thought that we were crazy. Guess that they know us well. For people used to bicycle touring, it definitely wasn’t an extreme event. Maybe if we had crossed the country in 30 days, we might be able to consider it extreme.
Our rate of travel wasn’t extraordinary at all, although sometimes the adverse conditions made it seem like an unattainable accomplishment. We did what we had to. When the hills came, we took them in stride, although I will never, ever enjoy hill climbing. The headwinds got annoying, especially since we wrongly figured that we would have some great headwinds that would increase our daily mileage to the 80’s and 90’s. That never happened either. We simply expected the wind in our faces and just dealt with it.
It’s hard to believe that just last week, we headed out for the final portion of our trip. The thought of bicycling for hours every single day is a remote one at this point. Despite our total lack of training, we managed quite well, considering our advanced ages and the toll that this constant exercise should have taken on our bodies. We both feel in very good shape and wonder about the necessity of serious training before such an endeavor. It proves to us that that mind over matter makes sense. That is not to say that our first days are easy, or that we would even recommend that anybody do such a thing without training beforehand. But, equally important is the fact that we would never recommend not doing something like this due to a lack of training. Training always starts somewhere, so just consider the first day of touring, the first day of training. There is something to be said for that Nike motto. If we all waited for the ideal conditions to do anything, it’s unlikely that anything would ever be accomplished.