Monday June 10, 2019: My alarm woke me from a damn fine sleep at 4:30 am. I was feeling good, well rested although my quads were really sore. Bizarre, never really suffered from quad soreness from cycling before. Maybe my saddle height has shifted? Who knows. I...
Sunday June 9, 2019: I was awakened by a cold breeze gusting through the open window of the B&B I had holed up in the previous night. Curtains billowing over my bed. What the...
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...