Saturday June 8, 2019: My alarm woke me at 4:30am but I wasn't ready to be awake. It was cold outside the warm embrace of my sleeping bag and I burrowed in further keeping the world at bay for a little while longer. 45 minutes later I...
Friday June 7, 2019: I awoke well slept in a big comfy hotel bed and immediately thought, I bloody well don't want to be well slept in a big comfy hotel bed. I want to be tired and stiff and on my bloody bike. In...
Thursday June 6, 2019: Awrighty then! Ultra Endurance Self Supported Bikepacking Race (slash) Adventure Race (slash) Journey into the Heart of Darkness...
Faaaaaaaarck! I had slept through my alarm. Either that or I had subconsciously turned it off. I had set it for 4:30 am to give myself a fighting chance of catching Mike and Russell and to arrive in Yorktown at a reasonable hour so as not...
This was the 4th out of the 27 Trans Am mornings that I had shared with JJ. From a shed in Wyoming to a church in Kentucky, to an Airbnb and a hotel in Virginia. It was not a large proportion of the race, we...
Over a beer the previous night JJ and I had calculated the distance to the finish in Yorktown. The end of the Grand Adventure was now only 900 kilometres (560 miles) away. Shit eh, we were getting close. Despite the "wake up" call from my wife 2 days earlier and her request for an estimated...
The sanctity of the Buckhorn Presbyterian Church Sunday School resulted in an extremely peaceful and comfortable nights sleep that was rudely interrupted by 2 duelling alarms at 4:45 am. The sofa that was so very kindly offered up by JJ the night before (although it was...
Standard hotel morning start; ignore alarm at least twice, morning ablutions, adorn par dried lycra, pack up bike, demolish buffet breakfast, grab a couple of handfuls of breakfast pastries to store on the bike, check out and hit the road. On this particular morning, the...
I slept well in intervals that corresponded with the gaps in the Sebree overnight train Timetable. I'd completely forgotten about the rail line which was only about a block from where I had pitched my tent, although with the earth shuddering effects of the coming and going...
I was up 5:30 am ready and rearing to make up for yesterdays disaster of an afternoon. Despite the rest, my emotional state was still rather frayed from the frustration of losing half a day's progress and by the anxiety of not knowing whether my...