Thank you

We wanted to say thank you to everyone who made this trip as great as it was. Thank you to all our hosts, our donors, family and friends and everyone else who made this trip special. We couldn't have done it without you. 

Asymptotic Approach. Reaching the ocean.

We've been joking about how as we get closer and closer to the finish, the trip gets harder and harder. Hills get steeper, wind gets stronger, weather gets hotter etc. . We're worried that we are just approaching the coast asymptotically and are never going to end. 

We woke up around 6 today planning for a nice short ride of about 40 miles to finish our trip in the early afternoon with time to explore some. We ate a breakfast of cereal and eggs, packed up our bikes and hit the road. .. And then went immediately back. 

On the first downhill. Exactly .23 miles away from the house I hear "PING, thwack THWACK THWACK THWACK THWACK." Ahh.

I broke another spoke. 38 miles from the ocean. More than 3200 miles from the Atlantic. I pushed my bike back up the hill to Rick's house. 

We have a spoke wrench but no cassette tool. Unfortunately, the spoke wouldn't fit without removing the cassette. We had a fiber spoke and tried using that. I worked on it for about an hour and got it to the point where we probably could've made it to the ocean. Rick and sue drove us to the bike shop instead. So so nice of them.

Fiber spoke would've gotten us to the ocean (probably) but would've had to be replaced eventually. 

Rick and Sue drove us to a tandem specialty shop (cool!) called Crank 2 and dropped us off on their way to work. We got there 20 minutes before they opened. A mechanic, Steve opened early for us. He had the right tools to get my cassette off and put in my spare spoke no problem. The shop was really cool, I've never seen so many tandem bikes in one place! And they were fancy and some were tandem racing bikes. We joked about how we should just buy a tandem and ride back to Connecticut on it and cancel our flight. Ha. 

He also saw a sizable hole in my tire and put on a new one that had been in the back without tags for a while free of charge. Thank you so much Steve! 

We also got advice for getting to the ocean and things to do once we were in San Francisco. It was fantastic and we're glad we stopped in to Crank 2. 

We stopped to get a sandwich about 3 miles away from there. By now we were several hours late but happy to be almost there. 

Everywhere we were riding on had dedicated bike lanes or paths. Best roads of our ride. At points the bike path was wider than the road! It was awesome. 

We biked over to Alameda where we were planning on catching a ferry over to the financial district of San Francisco. We were on the Bay Trail, which we actually entered at a huge waste treatment plant, which confused us..! The trail was awesome though. We were probably on it for 20 miles or more. 

Although the bay is not the ocean, we were elated to be SO close and to be riding next to the salt water. It was fantastic!!!

After first arriving at the wrong ferry stop, we biked around on the Bag Trail to the correct ferry on the other side of Alameda. We were in such good moods though the detour was no issue in our minds, we were just happy and excited!

We got to the correct ferry, and it was so crowded! Bart, the public transportation subway system in SF, was on strike so the ferry was now the only/fastest way to get across the bay for the tons of people who commute in from the Bay Area to San Francisco. (Our timing was far from perfect with the strike going on! It made it more difficult for us to get around the city too, Darn. But not too bad, because we didn't know the difference!)

Taking the ferry into San Fransisco was a great way to arrive also. We still had about 10 more miles of riding to do after the ferry, but arriving into the hoppin part of SF was really cool. 

On our way off the ferry we asked a woman on a bike how to get to the Golden Gate Bridge, and she said she was headed that way and to follow her! Her name was Ingor and she was super nice and kind of gave us a tour/pointed stuff out along the way. We rode by fisherman's warf and Pier 39 and a bunch of famous places like that which was cool. And we rode through golden gate park, which has a great bike trail, and got our first glimpse of the Golden Gate Bridge through the heavy, San Fransisco fog. Oh, and it is cold in San Fransisco!! Windy, foggy, and cold! Who knew?! We needed our jackets. 

We took the path all the way up to and over the bridge! Even though we didn't have to ride the bridge to get to the ocean, because we were already in San Fransisco, we wanted to ride it because it is such a cool bridge and icon of reaching the coast. We were glad we did. So we rode over, then turned right back around at the other side and came back! It was super windy up there and lots of fun. 

And then from the bridge we rode down to Baker Beach, which is a part of golden gate park, and our ending spot!

Arriving there was amazing. It was kind of a steep beach, if that makes sense, and we started pushing our bikes in the sand toward the waves. We started with our back wheel in the Atlantic Ocean and wanted to end with our front wheels in the Pacific. The sand was DEEP and it was actually pretty difficult to actually get our bikes to the water. The waves were crashing also, and we were trying not to get our bike shoes wet, so we would creep forward to try to touch our wheels to the water, and then kind of run back as the wave came, and had to do this a few times before we finally touched the water. It was wonderful, and there were big hugs and smiles from both Alec and I.

 

There were a few people about 100 feet away who were kind of looking at us, and laughing because they had no idea what was going on, and we must have looked funny running up and back from the waves with our loaded bikes. We waved them over, and they turned out to be super nice and awesome people. They took a bunch of pictures as videos of us putting our wheels in the ocean and just being happy at the finish. 

We also had carried a little pill bottle of ocean water from Compo Beach, where we started in Connecticut, all the way across with us and were planning on pouring it into the Pacific. As it turned out, all of the water had evaporated and the sand had turned into a sort of cement and it was impossible to get the top off! We ended up cutting the side open with an allen wrench and pouring the cement sand into the ocean. It was funny that it turned out like that, but very perfect. 

We were so happy to have meet Katie (?) and Carla (??) (ahh I don't remember if those are their names!!) and Chris (??). They were fantastic and so happy for us even though we had just met!! They gave us hugs, and shared their wine, and we flew their kite with them, and just hung out for a little while on the beach. It was a perfect ending and we felt wonderful closure to our incredible adventure. 

After pushing our bikes back out of the sand, we got back on them (which confused us!! I thought we were done! Haha) to ride to meet my friend Elena for dinner who we were going to be staying with in San Fransisco. On the way over there we were stopped by this interesting woman and a 10 minute conversation with her that went as follows:

-Hello. Do you speak French?

-No, I'm sorry. 

-Oh. Can you tell me the definition of politarian?

-Politarian... No, I'm not sure what that means. 

-Okay, politarian. Can you define it?

-No, I'm sorry, I'm not sure what that is. 

-Oh, maybe my English pronunciation is wrong. Politarian? Politarian. 

-No, I'm trying to think. I don't know. 

-Oh. Do you speak French?

-No, I'm sorry. 

-Do you speak Chinese?

-No, I don't. 

-Hm. Politarian? Do you know what it is?

-No, but what is the word in French?

-Oh, I do not speak French. Maybe my pronunciation is bad.

(What?! Hahah but she kept asking us of we spoke French?? Hahaha)

-I'm really sorry, I don't know. Why do you ask?

-oh. Just wondering. 

And then she walked away. It was probably about an 8 minute conversation and just kind of bizarre! We laughed about that on our way to dinner, and met Elena for Vietnamese food. It was really good, an afterward we went and got some pie and ice cream. Yum. Yum. Yum. Her mom was also nice enough to come pick up our bikes in her car so we wouldn't have to ride the 10 miles to where she lived, which was wonderful. We were tired. 

Elena took us back to her house in Daly City, which is just right outside of the actual city of San Fransisco, and we were so happy to have a bed and a shower and an alarm that was not set for the morning. :)

Daily stats:

Mileage: 52 mi

Average speed: 9.2

Elevation gain: 896 ft

Trip stats:

Total mileage: 3,297 miles

Total elevation gain: 138,000 feet

Total Days: 46 days

^with no riding on day 26 and day 29. 

Bike problems:

Alec

Bike: Lemond Reno

- 6 flats

- 3 tires

- 1 new cassette

- 1 new chain

- 3 new chain rings

- 1 chain break

- 1 bent brake hood

- 2 broken spokes

- 1 wheel out of true

- 1 broken pannier mount

- 1 broken handlebar bag mount

Total of 21 problems. 

Allie

Bike: Trek 520

- 1 flat

- 1 new chain

- 1/4 new handlebar tape

Total of 2.25 problems. 

Haiku:

Start. Bike bike bike bike,

Bike bike bike bike bike bike bike,

Bike bike bike bike. Stop.

And let the adventures continue...