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.