We are finished! 454 miles in seven days.
That’s the Atlantic Ocean into which he’s dipping his bike. He was a little scared after the long ride that he might drop it into the water.
In my opinion, today was the most difficult day of the ride. Besides being just a little tired after six days of riding, while a shorter day of 62 miles, the last 32 were straight into a 13 mph headwind. I’ll take mountains over a headwind any day. And it rained just a little at the beginning. Everything was wet. But we are done!
Throughout the week we have roughly followed the Nuese River. The first stop today was along the river. All three rest stops today included real food - pancake and sausage breakfast at the first, hotdogs and both the second and third. All were run by churches or charities. Our times at the stops tended to be a bit longer today on account of the weather and wind.
At the end of the ride was a huge celebration at the water front with a full meal, desserts, live music, beverages of all kinds, and countless volunteers from the town at every corner and turn. The town has a population of 3,100. So we increased the population that day by over 30%.
As I was coming to the end of the ride, I pulled my camera out. This is the first glimpse of the ocean (actually the bay) as we came over the hill. At the bottom of the hill are the town people and volunteers to cheer us, welcome us, and....mostly make sure we turn right to finish.
Most vacations one wishes would never end, but....we are glad not to be riding our bikes tomorrow! I don’t think I’ll sit on a bike seat for a month. But we absolutely had a great time the entire week and laughed at how tired we were at the end of each day. Now we’ll just have to plan the next one in a few years.
Tomorrow is a 6-7 hour bus ride back to the starting point to get our car and start the journey home. All the photos will be at a linked gallery once I get to a computer to link it all together.
