Dear fans
The moment you have all been waiting for, these blog posts are finally coming to an end. Family who have felt obliged to read them in their entirety, thank you for your perseverance, friends, if you’ve carried on until this point, you only have yourselves to blame. With overdrafts in full swing and both of our younger siblings starting or securing employment before their elder counterparts, we have come to the realisation that we need to start real life.
The grand entrance into downtown Seattle, what should have been the climax of the trip, turned out to be predictably a little underwhelming. Having been promised a trip out on a speedboat if we arrived by eleven, the ceremonial ‘Tour de France’ final stage turned into more of a sprint finish. The largest issue with the race against time was that no one had told us that Seattle is the second ‘hilliest’ city in the US, we were later told that one does not simply bike across the city. It is a labyrinth of bike lanes and 20% gradient hills. With Alb stubbornly refusing to to change a slow flat for the morning it also meant that we became very well acquainted with the gas stations in the Seattle suburbs, attempting to keep his tyres semi-inflated for the last stretch. Being titans of Instagram, we had been planning our arrival photo for some time. Having discussed it with various locals, we settled on the iconic Space Needle, hoping to have a view of the coast in the background. Unfortunately there were a few unforeseen complications. Firstly the Space Needle isn’t on the coast. Secondly, it turns out the best place to take a picture with a really tall tower is not directly beneath it. Finally, it is located in the heart of the Seattle Centre, and so it transpired that the large gaggle of people waiting, presumably we thought, to congratulate us at the finish line, weren’t particularly pleased to see two sweaty Brits on bikes pushing past them. Once we’d managed to convince a crowd member to leave their tour for a moment to take a number of fairly average photos of us, we vowed that we would not be getting back on the bikes for the remainder of the trip and promptly found the nearest bus.
The trip has taken us through 15 states, blue states, red states (including the county with the highest proportion of Trump supporters in the country), international cities, settlements of less than 100, two fully German towns, mountains, national parks, swamps and deserts – staying in all sorts accommodation along the route; an attic, a monastery, a geodesic dome, lake houses, biker bunk houses, hostels and of course a lot of camping. (For those expecting profound insights into American culture, you’re better off tuning into Louis Theroux’s documentary on the US, currently on 4oD). What we have learnt is to appreciate the stunning diversity of the country. Brits are quick to ridicule the 64% (State Dept:2016) of American’s who don’t have passports, yet it is hard to articulate how beautiful some of the regions are and in terms of popular tourist activities there isn’t much the US is lacking. In California alone you could be lying on a beach in the morning and skiing in the afternoon. Alb has enjoyed American culture so much, he is still hesitant as to whether he’ll be coming home at all. In a society where chocolate milk naturally accompanies cereal, ranch dressing is used as a dipping sauce and staple attire includes American football tops, the only thing standing between Alb and the citizenship test is the language barrier.
Seemingly more engrained within the Y chromosome is the inclination to ‘just wing it.’ If there is one thing that we have taken away from this trip, it is that as a policy it often falls short. Just to give you an idea of the inadequacy of our preparation: we went the wrong way across the country, we had the wrong maps, we brought the wrong pump, financially we under saved, physically we undertrained, we lacked anything waterproof and opting for a water purifier instead a roll matt, Bod in particular was seriously ill-equipped to deal with weeks of camping. Simply put, we would not have made it to Seattle without the generosity of a large number of people and a lot of luck. There are too many instances of each to cite all of them, so we are instead going to focus on a couple. If you read the last blog, you may recall that we found ourselves in a rather precarious position in Davenport with two malfunctioning bikes, no means of fixing them and an erratic bus service. Enter Kelly and Brooke Howell. Upon meeting them briefly at a petrol station, they helped us take apart our bikes, squeeze them into their hatchback, a difficult task for one bike let alone two, drive the two of us, who at that point where dripping in both sweat and oil, 100 miles to the nearest bike shop, insist on taking us out to dinner, take us to our campsite whilst the bikes were being fixed and then offer to have us to stay on the coast when we arrived. Amazingly, when parting ways, they kindly thanked us for sharing the experience with them! Thank you once again for your kindness! From a luck perspective, the most persistent example is our ability to turn up fashionably late to areas experiencing extreme weather. Upon arrival into the town of Libby, the entrance sign read ‘Thank you fire fighters,’ it later transpiring that we’d obliviously missed a forest fire by about a day. Having also had two close run-ins with tornados, one hitting 10 minutes after arriving into lunch and one forming 10 miles away and then fortunately moving in the opposite direction as we rode our bikes through the plains, miles from shelter; our trip could very easily have been cut short!
A final thank you to all those who have contributed to our trip: those of you who have read the blog; donated; sent messages of support; provided kit and of course to all those who have hosted us along the way. It truly makes an enormous difference and it made the whole thing a lot more pleasant. If you would like to donate, please see the link below:
What we’d have done differently:
Go the other direction
Spend more time off the bike
Do some hill climbing training prior to the trip
Take thicker tyres
Learn to change a puncture properly
Pack a floor pump
Do it on an E bike
Things we underestimated
Number of animals that can kill you (current count is 8)
America’s temperamental climate
The culture of generosity
How hilly Seattle was (never finish a bike tour there)
What 70 miles a day feels like on your arse
How quickly we’d run out of conversation
Our refusal to do miles in the wrong direction
The value of sudocrem
Things we’d overestimated
Bringing a water purifier was a bit excessive
The total number of miles
Bod’s mechanical skills
Alb’s hamstring
Our ability to grow beards that don’t frighten children
Amount of suncream needed
Sorry mum, things we didn’t tell you:
800 miles spent on a highway
Various stretches on an interstate
1 truck near miss
1 motorcycle very near miss
Caught on the edge of a tornado twice
Hitchhiked to the nearest bike shop twice
2 run ins with bears
2 big crashes (one each)
Best moments
Glacier national park (the descent)
Leaving the Appalachians
The Rodeo
Riding a Harley
Leaving Eastern Montana
Entering Western Montana
Warm Showers hosting
Worstmoments
Glacier national park (the ascent – see previous blog)
The Rodeo hangover
Alb’s rain soaked Birthday (see chapter 1)
Eastern Montana
Highway 2
Crashing a Harley
Bikestats
265 hours on the bike
100,000 feet climbed
320 granola bars
13mph average speed
Lost count of chocolate milk