At last the tour starts in earnest.

After two days what conclusions can I draw about Tunisia?

1) Sheraton Hotels are nice where ever you are and the one in Tunis certainly qualifies.

2) Make sure your cab driver knows where you want to go and how to get there. We had to transfer from the Sheraton to the Tunisia Palace, a 4 star hotel on a main street in Tunis. We were told the fare was 5 dinar (about $3.50). Before getting to our hotel we visited the Karthage Palace and the Olympia Palace (closed for about a year). On three separate occasions the driver asked pedestrians for directions. When we finally got to the Tunisia Palace the fare was 20 dinar. I offered 10 dinars and every curse the driver knew was thrown at me. Fortunately, he only spoke Arabic and I didn't understand any of them. Eventually he left with the 10 dinar, but he was not a happy camper.

3) When your in your 60's accepting drinks from strangers in a bar has few downsides. Karen and I were in a bar at the hotel when a business man offered us a drink. Unfortunately, he also only spoke Arabic, but the three of us spent a pleasant hour talking to each other as best we could and hope to meet again. The language barrier can be surmounted with a little effort, but there is little point when you are being cursed.

4) Today we ventured out with 13 other travelers to visit the Roman ruins at Durrga. It may be the best preserved Roman city in the world. The site is rather extensive and Roman roads are not the most level, nor are steps the most even. Handrails do not seem to have been invented by the Romans. Karen was concerned about being able to make it through the site. She need not have worried. She has more mobility than at least have of the members of the group. Karen will do just fine on this trip, but I am not sure about many others on the trip. The tour guide mentioned that Romans didn't live much beyond 50, this was attributed to lead poisoning from the use of lead lined pipes. Based on today's group I am not sure Romans would have been able to survive the rigors of city life once the got into their 60's. The cities of the ancient world were not elder friendly.

5) Our group appears to be gastronomically adventurous. Today's lunch was wild boar. Our guide was very surprised when only one person opted for the 'safer' alternative, chicken. Almost everyone on our trip has been on several Overseas Adventure Travel trips. (Some have been on as many as ten). Our guide might be surprised at the number of things OAT participants eat at least once on these trips. In my case having eaten rat (country, not city rat) wild boar seemed very tame.

Around the world

This is not a bike trip but a trip around the world seemed like a big thing so I am going to add it to my blog. Karen and I are taking 7 seven weeks to circle the globe. We are stopping in Boston, Tunisia, Jordan, India, and Bali. Boston involved a conference at MIT and lots of visits with Boston friends. Tunisia and India are Overseas Adventure Travel tours and we are doing Jordan and Bali (recovery) on our own. The other bonus is that all the plane travel is with frequent flier points.

We are currently in Tunis and have met our tour group. They seem to be a nice group, but time will tell.

But before I start to describe our foreign travels let me say something about our week in Boston. I was there for an MIT alumni leadership conference. I spend three days attending meetings and one leading a discussion group about how to select venues for meetings. I also had meetings at various times with people from the school over the net three days. Two groups that meet via conference call met face to face for the first time because I, the only member west of the Hudson River was in town.

Initially left on her own Karen became antsy, made additional arrangements to see long time friends and did much better as the week progressed. She is also a little concerned about her knees. We stayed in our time share in the Boston Custom House and on our last night entertained six of her closest friends from college. She and two other college friends had driven a barge along a canal in southern France this summer. Being with friends you have know for 40 plus years can do wonders to your spirits.

We also had time to have dinner with my best friend from college, Dave deBronkhart. During my first cross country trip he was fighting for his life after being diagnosed with stage IV meastatic renal cancer. As I rode across the country to my reunion in 2007, he was being given a new treatment that works in only 20% of patients who receive it. It worked for him and we both made the reunion. Dave has written a book about his experiences, Laugh, Sing, and Eat Like a Pig: How an Empowered Patient Beat Stage IV Cancer (and what healthcare can learn from it). Dave has has become an important advocate for patient involvement in their medical care he has his own blog e-Patient Dave and also is a major contributor to another blog e-Patients
Lastly, getting together with Dave is always difficult because he is speaking at medical conferences almost every week. We saw Dave on Sunday after he had packed for a week trip to the West Coast.

We flew to Tunis via London on Friday 9:30 PM departure but had to check out by noon. We decided to see a movie, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest, the third an final movie in the 'Girl' series. Good movie, but read the book and see the other two movies first if you don't want to be hopelessly lost. As that killed the hours between noon and 3, walked into the movie about Facebook. It was entertaining and I am sure that IT types relate to the founder more positively than do the rest of the world. My take, he is not without character flaws, and finds himself in a position he is totally unprepared for, but he is not a bad person. I'm sure that the movie bears some resemblance to reality, Hollywood's ability to tell a truthful story is only slightly better than your typical politician's ability to tell the truth.

The flight to Tunis had it's good and bad aspects. The good was that we were in first class. We had sleeper beds and were fed a fine dinner in the First class Lounge before we took off. The bad was that we landed at Heathrow and had a connecting flight from Gatwick. The overland part was a worry' but we hired a private car and it worked out fine. The first class lounge in Gatwick is not as nice as the one in Boston, but a far cry above waiting outside with everyone else. We could get used to this.

We arrived in Tunis from London. Met our guide who on his own time took us to our Sheraton hotel. We had dinner and went to sleep for the first real time in 30 hrs. Thirty hours without sleep was not a big problem when I was riding long bicyle rides in the 80's but I am older now and I can feel it. Well at least I can tonight.

May 26 – One week after completing the ride

I have been back home for a few days now. I have done two rides and worked out in the gym a few times, but it is nice to not have to do a ride every morning. In fact as the weather in Berkeley has been a little cool over the weekend I have not ridden for the last three days. I had planned to do several rides this weekend, but it was either wet outside, not real rain, or it was cold, not real cold but colder than I would like. On each day I decided not to ride, it was a nice option.

I have also done a little work in order to catch up on things that I didn’t do while I was on the road. This has included seeing a lot of biking and non-biking friends, all of whom had different questions about the ride. However I have not been as busy as Conrad, who has made this sculptor of Darryl for his wife Karen.

When I got on my scale at home I discovered that I had lost about 10 lbs, but more body fat than weight. I also noticed this while riding. A ring I have worn for close to ten years and which was on my finger all the way across America, literally fell off my finger while I was riding last week. That had never happened to me before. Unfortunately, it bounced under my rear tire. I may have lost some weight, but not enough to save the ring from being crushed. It has been difficult to keep my appetite in check this week, so I don’t know if I will be able to maintain my new weight. I will have to work, because I know that last year I was not able to keep the weight off.

Lastly, several people complained about the lace of pictures on my blog this year. As I didn’t take a camera, I didn’t have access to pictures this time. I now have gotten a few from some of other riders.

The first is of me riding on day 3 in Arizona. There are a few things to note in this picture. I used a Camelback this year and it really made a difference in my ability to stay hydrated. I found it much easier to drink from it than from the bottles on the bike. For those who haven’t seen it this is the new titanium bike I bought last year. While diffucult to say, as I have ridden the red Mikkelsen for over 20 years, I must admit that the new Roark was nicer to ride than the steel Mikkelsen I rode last year. I also want to have you see what my club, GPC, thinks is an appropriate length for knicker shorts. Let me just say that I was glad that I never saw temperatures in the 100’s on days I was wearing the club kit.

The second is a picture of me at one of our motels. It is included to show that no matter how hard my days may have sounded, after a shower and a little rest I at least looked non the worse for the days ride.

The third picture is of ‘Team Roark’, two of the ride leaders also rode Roark bicycles. While both were far better riders than me, someone named this picture Papa Bear and the two Baby Bears. It really does show how big my bike is.

The last picture is of some of the older riders at the beach in Savannah. The younger folks said that they were inspired by what we had accomplished. The older riders were inspired by the enthusiasm of youth. The other riders are Perry (center) the oldest rider on the trip at 70 and Martin. Martin who was pleased to have his wife taking this picture on his 63 birthday. He thought it was a great birthday present.

I hope you enjoyed my musings about this trip. It certainly had its ups and downs in just about anyway you might care to use that term. In the end I am very glad that I did the ride this year, and even while riding on some of the worst days I seldom questioned my decision to ride across America for a second time. I will not say that it will never happen again but I have told Karen that I am not going to do the ride next year.

Day 27 Vidalia to Savannah – On to the Atlantic

Today is a relatively easy day of 104 miles, but Mike put the fear of God into us last night by telling us we had to get to our meeting point for the final few miles to the coast by 2 PM. He even calculated times when we should be leaving lunch and the sag stops. Today as usual I started with the early starters. This is as it should be as I am one of the slower riders. However today as today started out cooler than we would have liked and likely to be far warmer at the beach this afternoon, I was underdressed. TO compensate for the cold air I pedaled faster. This seemed to work as my muscles generated more internal heat, but it also increased the relative speed of the wind and this had a pronounced chilling effect. I think on balance it was positive, but I am not absolutely sure. Eventually I passed all the other early starters and was not caught by the fast riders before the first rest stop. It was nice the be first for once, but that moment was short lived as within no time there were 10 riders at the stop and before I left, not the first, everyone was there.

Continuing on to the lunch stop the pace picked up even a bit more as we got a tail wind and the last of the hills on the ride were now behind us. After looking at my watch and tracking my average speed I was surprised to see that at lunch I was barely ahead of Mike’s pace even though I was riding about 5 mph faster than the rate had used to calculate the pace. Only after a few minuets did I realize that I was really over an hour faster than his proposed pace. The last 30 miles were through the suburbs of Savannah. The roads were progressively more crowded and there were more turns. This slowed the pace. The last bit was on the one road to the beach. The road had little or no shoulder and lots of SUVs and pickups with young people headed for the beach. Many were not happy to be slowed to any extent by 25 cyclists. We had the rudest drivers of the entire trip on those final few miles. Fortunately there were no incidents that caused any of us to be injured.

We gathered for a few pictures before heading out as a group for the beach. In those four miles I got a leak in my rear tire. It would have been terrible to miss the celebration because of a flat tire just before the end. Fortunately I found one of the vans, got a pump and put enough air into the tire to get to the beach with everyone else. (I also got back to the van, where my bike was loaded onto a van for transport to tonight’s hotel.)

The celebration on the beach was great. Everyone there was happy to have made it and we reveled in the warm Atlantic waters. We all had accomplished our goal. Granted some had been modified from those we set out with in Costa Mesa 27 days ago. We had been tested and we had passed. Maybe not physically as much as other cross country rides, but the emotional test was extreme and we all had to deal with it. Most did it in very private ways and there was surprisingly little talk among the riders of Darryl, either on the ride or at the beach. I took off my black ribbon and put it in the Atlantic and said a small prayer.

At the beach there was a lot of joy. Many of the Brits decided to take off their jerseys and go for a swim. Never was the term ‘white folks’ more apt. Many of the bathers were interested in our adventure and we were the objects of a number of pictures. Three of us, Perry, Martin and I –all resplendent with light grey or white hair, were corralled by four young female sunbathers and several pictures were taken of the girls and the ‘men who inspired them’. I will get a copy and post it in a few days.

We had our traditional ending banquet. I missed not having Karen in attendance so that she could have heard other perspectives on the trip. As we did last year everyone said something to the group. Some talked about accomplishing a goal, but the term bucket list, so prominent in the first meeting in Costa Mesa, was surprisingly absent. This was more than just another item on a list. Some spoke about over coming problems they hadn’t imagined before the start of the ride. Others spoke about some of the suffering on the back roads of Alabama and Mississippi. Many spoke of the friendships they formed over the last four weeks. Everyone thanked the leaders and the other riders for their support. I had a slightly different take on the ride and I will try to reproduce what I said.

First I want to than Mike and his staff for all the help they gave me during this ride, at times it was more than one would have expected. But having done this ride with Mike before, I guess I should have expected it. I also want to than all the other riders for their support and patience, and especially my roommate for these last four weeks Norman who had to put up with me each night.

I spent time riding with many of you, but mostly I rode by myself at my own pace. This allowed me to see more of the country than the wheel in front of me and to think about what I saw. Well what did I think about? On many of the hillier days I remembered a song my family sung on family car trips. I will not try to sing it for you, but it involved a bear that went over a mountain, to see what he could see and when he got to the top he saw another mountain, so the song repeated again and again and again. There were many places in Oklahoma and Alabama where the song went through my head again and again and again. I also remember a song from bus trips with junior high school athletic teammates. This song enumerated the number of bottles of beer on a wall and that after taking one down and passing it round there was one less. This song reminded me of a few British riders and was a good way for me to keep track of the number of miles I had to do on some of the longer days. (Note to most readers, Russ and Pete Shaw were known to have a ‘dinner’ of 3 or 4 bottles of Bud and some chips.)

I also was struck by the differences between urban and rural America. For those of us who spend most of our lives in urban or suburban settings with days in large glass covered buildings and nights in smaller buildings with green lawns and gardens it can be shocking to see how people in rural Oklahoma and Arkansas live. And yes there are people in those states as we fly over them at 38,000 feet. For the Brits I don’t want you to think that what you saw on this trip is representative of all of America. I hope that you can come back and visit our cities and national parks, but I suggest that you leave your bicycle at home, bicycles just aren’t that helpful in Manhattan.

I was struck by the poverty of the people on our route, not just the number of mobile homes and the number of vehicles in the yard, but the number of For Sale by Owner signs on cars, boats, farm implements and homes. There were far more than when I did this ride last year and the country needs to acknowledge that. We also need to acknowledge that no matter what you think of your economic situation, we can pay $4000 for a month long adventure and ride a $5000 bicycle. Most of the people we meet couldn’t do that.

I was struck by the obesity of so many of people we meet, there were some that it was truly painful to look at. I am not proud of having to admit that, but it is honest. We all have to be thankful that at the advanced ages that many of us have reached we still have our good health.

The other thing I saw was the large number of people who had a very difficult time accepting the fact that we were riding our bicycles across the country. They couldn’t conceive of doing it themselves, or of anyone they knew doing it. In fact many couldn’t conceive of doing anything else than what they were doing. One server in a Subway would not believe that I was riding across America. She accused me of lying. But when she accepted that I might be riding across America, she asked why I came to Aberdeen MS. There she had me; I had no answer for that question. (Note to readers Aberdeen MS was one of the smallest towns we stayed in, and the one that seemed most likely to disappear entirely in the next ten years. Subway was the best choice for dinner on that Sunday evening.) We have to be thankful that we can envision difficult goals like this trip and that we have the ability to work hard enough to achieve it.

This trip tested us in a number of ways that we almost certainly didn’t expect when we set out. There was very little bad weather and the winds were never a formidable foe. In fact on several days they were the best friend a cyclist could have. How many sub 5 hour centuries have you done before this trip? What did test us were the adversities that many of our fellow riders experienced. We are reminded by Jack and Karen just how close to the edge of disaster we are when we ride. A moment’s loss of concentration can lead to disaster. We also learned from Andrew and Greg that health problems can occur in people who seem to be in prime of health. We pray for the recovery of Karen, Jack, Andrew and Greg. But most tragically we learned how short life can be. The death of Darryl shocked each and every one of us. I hope that we realize that it could happen one night to any of us. It is ironic that Karen, Darryl’s wife had a quote on the trip web page of ‘Live for today; you don’t knot how many tomorrows you have.’

In closing let me give you a different quote. As many of you know I spent most of my professional life studying a disease called cystic fibrosis, a genetic disease that slowly destroys your lungs. A friend of mine, Jill who has cystic fibrosis, gave me this quote. ‘Life is not measured by the number of breaths you take, but by the number of times it takes your breath away.’ I hope you all had several of those breath-taking experiences on this trip. I know I did, and I DO NOT mean those at the top of one of Mike’s surprise hills.

Day 26 – Perry GA to Vidalia GA

Today is the next to last day of the ride. We are now almost at the end of our journey. We have crossed the high mountains of the west, the great plains of the mid-west and the hills of the southern states. The landscape is now flat with a few small rolling hills. Today’s ride of 100 miles has less than 2000 feet of climbing. I would be hard pressed to find any route of that distance and that little climbing in the Bay Area. We finally have gotten some heat in the last few days with afternoon temperatures neat 80, but morning temperatures have been no more than 60. Today it was warm at dawn and all day. We also got our first real taste of southern humidity today. My clothes were drenched with sweet within an hour. It did rain for a bit today, a five minuet downpour that I was able to avoid by getting under someone’s carport. But all things considered we have had rain on no more than 1% of the total distance of this trip. I think that is quite remarkable.

Today’s ride went through several small Georgia towns most with no more than 5000 people and a lot with far less. In general, we rode on lightly traveled highways, but for a considerable time we were on parallel county roads. Most of the time this was OK and the rural scenery and the lack of auto traffic made up for the slightly longer route. However one road was SO BAD. The thought of the extra 5 miles we rode from the main highway to get to and from this road, and the bone shattering vibrations of riding on this road for 6 miles will make me wish I had missed this ‘detour’ until the day I die. It was a tradeoff when the route was designed, longer quiet roads vs shorter busier roads. In general America by Bicycle has done a good job in making these choices, but in this case they made a big time mistake. Even Mike admitted that it was a bad choice.

While in general Southern hospitality has been very good and we have had few problems with any drivers during the entire trip, today was an exception. Let me change that a bit. There were two or three non-hospitable people along today’s route. The thousand or so other people we encountered today were all friendly and or hospitable. However, one car full of boys were responsible for two of our riders being hit by water balloons as the entered Vidalia. Just what someone wants after 100 miles. Fortunately no one was hurt.

Tonight I have visions of getting to the Atlantic tomorrow afternoon. I remember all the joy we felt last year. I am not so sure we will feel that way tomorrow. Yes we will be happy, but we will also remember those who started the ride but are not with us at the end. Reports on the four injured riders who left the ride indicate that they should all recover, although Jack who suffered a concussion on day three may have a longer road to travel. Unfortunately, Darryl can never recover. His death will always be a reminder of the fleeting nature of life. We all hope that Karen can recover from both the injuries she suffered in her fall and the even greater injury she suffered with the death of her husband Darryl. I have had a black ribbon on my bicycle since Darryl’s death. I intend to cut it off tomorrow at the beach and release it into the Atlantic. In this way I hope to help Darryl complete his journey.

Day 22 – Aberdeen MS to Tuscaloosa AL

Today’s ride was about as good as any ride can get. The morning temperature in Aberdeen was in the high 40’s. It warmed up during the day to the high 70’s by the time we got to Tuscaloosa. The sky was clear all day. If yesterday was like one of those perfect fall days, when it’s cool but not cold; today was that wonderful spring day that occurs once a year. It is truly unbelievable that we could have ridden this far in the South and not had a hot, humid, miserable day. While the roads in MS were not the best, we only had 19 miles of the 110 in MS. Alabama seems to have far better roads. There was almost no traffic on all of today’s route. Lastly, my GPS recorded 4800 feet of climbing, mostly in relatively short, and often steep, climbs of 100 to 150 feet. The biggest climb was listed as 250 feet but I think that might be a little too big. Needless to say there were a lot of ups and downs and as Norman, my roommate, said, the route profile looked like an EKG for someone with a messed up heart.

Today as I entered Alabama I entered my 50^th state. I have now been in every state in the Union. Actually, I collected my last 3 states on this trip, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Alabama. I think that it is quite an accomplishment, it only took me 58 years to achieve it, but other more experienced travelers may not think it so much of a big deal.

I could have done without Tuscaloosa. Our route tried to avoid busy streets, but it was not too successful. I wish we could have gotten to our Best Western by another less traveled route. The final 10 miles through Tuscaloosa were not pleasant. Yesterday the sandwich maker in Subway wanted to know what all these cyclists were doing. At first she could not imagine, and would not believe, that we had come from CA. But when she finally accepted that we had come from CA and were going to GA, she asked why we were stopping in Aberdeen. Yesterday, I had no answer to that question. Today I do, Aberdeen is a lot easier to navigate on a bike than Tuscaloosa.

At one of the sag stops Chris was fixing yet another flat. If you read Mike’s blog you know that Chris has had a rough time with his bike, flats, broken spokes and problems with his brakes. A few days ago he invested over $1000 for a new set of wheels; they may be worth more than the rest of the bike. While he has not broken a spoke with the new wheels, they have not reduced the number of flats he has gotten. Today at the sag Mike was talking on his cell phone to a friend when he was asked to help Chris change his tire. He told his friend on the cell phone that he had to help someone fix a flat and his friend immediately asked if this was Chris. Mike exploded with laughter. It seems that Chris’s bike problems have become known to a very large number of people.

Day 21 - Senatobia MS to Aberdeen MS, 138 miles from nowhere to nowhere with nothing in between.

Last night a severe weather system went trough Mississippi and Arkansas. Several of the towns we rode through yesterday reported tornados. I don’t know how much damage occurred. It was not as severe as in Oklahoma, but being near to any tornado is too close for me. This morning was dry, cool (60’s) and the winds (20 mph) were from the west. It was a great day for a ride. In fact it never got hot or humid today. At this rate Mississippi might turn out to be the most pleasant state to ride through on this year’s trip.

Senatobia is not a happening place and I mentioned the food problems last night. Aberdeen is even less active. There are four places to eat out in town, a bar and grill which is closed on Mother’s day, an ice cream and sandwich place that was also closed, McDonalds and Subway. Despite my purchase of a milk shake at McDonalds a few days ago, I refuse to eat their solid food. This reduced my Sunday dinner options to Subway where a foot long roast beef sub, coke and chips had to substitute for dinner. I will see how I perform on this fare tomorrow.

The other important chore for today was wash. I washed ALL my cycling clothes and just about all my non-cycling clothes as well. With my cycling clothes now clean and dry, I hope to make it to the Atlantic without having to do any more laundry. I can then ship the dirty clothes back to Berkeley with my bike and have the Berkeley laundress take care of the problem. I am sure that among other things, Karen has missed while I have been on my adventure is the brightly colored cycling clothes that dry in the bathroom.

My biggest problem today was pollen. It was always in the air and being blown by the winds. I never have allergic reactions to pollen, but something in Mississippi must e just the right thing to set me off. Thank god for Sudafed and Visine. They certainly helped me today. The other hazard I faced was falling trees. Twice today trees or large branches fell into the road just in front of me. Once a small tree fell across the oncoming lane of traffic barely 50 yards in front of me; even if I had been 50 yards further down the road it is unlikely I would have been hit. In the other incident, a large branch fell into a ditch on my side of the road, just as I was passing by, neither incident caused me any harm other than to increase my heart rate for a while.

Today’s route went through the back country and rolling hills of MS. It was Sunday so many stores were closed However, we may have passed ten stores and gas stations and I can only recall two that were open. We saw a lot of rural country side, some farmland, some very nice homes on several acres, and some barely livable homes and trailers that housed both black and white families. We also saw a lot of churches and the only traffic on the road occurred when we passed a church just after the service was over. Today there was almost no traffic on the roads; I guess everyone was staying home with mother.

Each church we passed seemed to have a cemetery and many have what appeares to be fresh graves. Each time I saw one I immediately thought of Darrell. It is still hard to appreciate that he is dead. Other riders who have had accidents or became ill, leave the trip and gone home to recover. From the perspective of the people on the ride that is all that happened to Darrell. But we know it is not like that, but in some ways the closure has not been achieved.