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...
The retelling of Day 21 will rely more heavily on memory than my previous and remaining Trans Am reports. I've been leaning quite heavily on the Strava data from each days riding, namely time, distance and topography to provide a basic outline for each 'days play' but alas no data...
Lethargy and body soreness were my companions on the morning of Day 20. It was the sting in the tail from my increased effort over the last 3 days over which time I had averaged 295 kilometres per day vs the 233 kilometres over the previous 17 days. It...
Sharing a hotel room definitely fast tracks the old up, up and away routine. It's a combination of, "I don't want to inconvenience the other guy" and an ever so subtle "I don't want to let the other guy get a head start on me". We were...