Miles Today: 28.80
Average Speed:
Total Miles: 3,787.09
Hi, guys. It’s been a while.
There’s a part of me that feels like sheepishly wandering back over here, tail between my legs, and apologizing for not making that final day’s entry until a full month later. But then the rest of me says, “Dude, you’ve been LIVING in that month. Stop apologizing all the time.”
So, no apologies. I’ll tell you in next blog entry what post-trip Abbi is up to, but for now, let me catch you up on the last day of the whole trip.
As you may recall (I forgive you if you don’t recall), I had trouble sleeping in the Riverfront Park, both because the thought of ending the trip the next day was pretty mind-boggling, and because the drunk Marines next door were boisterously giving renditions of Styx and Queen until a few hours too late for me to find it amusing.
Nevertheless, I woke up after falling asleep at some point, and it was light out. Lo and behold, it was also quite silent. Apparently, all of the Memorial Day Weekend Party Warriors And Princesses were late partiers, and late sleepers. Let them sleep, I thought, for a quiet campsite is a happy campsite.
And so we enjoyed the morning. I believe there was frozen cream cheese (thanks be to the effectiveness of dry ice!) and jam involved in breakfast, and I seem to remember toasting things over the camp stove. Coffee was served up cowboy style, which means the grits were included in the cup. As I chewed my coffee, I thought about how lucky I was to be camping with amazing people, to have a bicycle to ride away on, and to see the river birds. I also continued to think about how lucky I was that the Marines were asleep next door.
We took a last look at our setup, and I felt a little wistful. I could already sense the longing that comes with leaving a familiar thing, and this would likely be the last time I pitched that tent for a while, and the last time I packed up panniers for a while.
But clean up we must, and clean up we did. I think you can see the apprehension on my face. Evan looks overjoyed to be almost done. 🙂
John and Linda made sure to snap pictures of our departure, but I must’ve been in front of Evan.
We stopped pretty quickly after we started, because I spied two Snowy Egrets in the creek on the bike trail. Yes, we did have a bike trail again! What luck!
I guess that Snowy Egrets (which are also known as White Egrets, White Herons, and some other names) aren’t super common around here, so it was pretty exciting to see them. One had flapped away by the time I snapped the picture, which is why you don’t see it.
We la-dee-dah-ed on the bike trail for a good long time, enjoying our good fortune at having such a nice place to ride, and then the trail abruptly turned to the right, and our map directions became momentarily confusing. “Bear right, and turn left, all while standing atop your saddle and whistling Yankee Doodle. Optional: Use Snowy Egret feather for tri-cornered hat plumage.”
Umm, okay?
Once we had caught the Egret, plucked a feather apiece, and done a circus act (read: turned the wrong way, then gone back the proper way), we were spat onto the Colonial Parkway.
What’s that you say? That road looks funny?
That’s because it is a piece of crap. Wikipedia describes the Colonial Parkway, the road that would take us from near Colonial Jamestown through Colonial Williamsburg and to Colonial Yorktown for our Colonial Finish of our Colonial Trip, as made from (Colonial) “rounded “river gravel” set in a (Colonial) concrete-mix, providing an unusual (Colonial) earth tone color.”
In short, it’s a bumpy piece of Colonial Crap. Within the first fifteen minutes of riding on it, my knee had started to whine, and I had started to whine, and I’m pretty sure Evan was about to stab me with the Snowy Egret plume from his tri-cornered hat.
Luckily, there were myriad distractions, like these goslings.
Sorry, ladies, not Ryan.
Then there were these goats and llamas.
Then we saw Colonial Williamsburg, which seemed to me a giant tourist trap. We stopped for a cup of coffee and a cookie to calm my nerves and rest my knee, because we still had about 13 miles to go. After balking at the touristy Colonial Strip Mall, we got back on route and left that place, passing through the real Colonial Williamsburg. Here is a photograph of a building we saw as we quickly escaped the tourists.
Unfortunately, the surface of the road did not change one bit as we approached Yorktown and the ocean. I was pretty disappointed in myself for being such a big baby on the official Last Day of the Tour, but I think the lack of sleep combined with the rough surface of the road was a recipe for disaster.
My spirits were raised when I saw this sign, though.
Naturally, my only choice at that point was to prolong the trip by proposing a mandatory rest break. Or seven.
The day was pretty stinkin’ hot, so the rest breaks were, in a way, truly mandatory. We were sweaty and tired, and I was pretty emotionally fragile. Evan was a champ, as usual, and tried his best to comfort a total lunatic, and eventually we made our way closer to Colonial Yorktown.
Don’t get excited just yet, even though this appears to be a photo of the ocean. It’s not. It may be briny, but it’s in fact a big bay. The reason for the picture is the onions that were growing on the side of the road. Yorktown Onions are special because they only grow in York County, and you can’t pick them because they’re endangered. So there.
They’re pretty, and they’re purple, and HEY! We are in Yorktown!
At that point I could feel the trip doing something in my mind. My immediate thought was that the trip was unraveling, but I knew that wasn’t it. It was a strange feeling of recounting the days I had ridden, the faces I had seen, and the changes I undoubtedly experienced–physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.
All this while trying to decipher the directions for Yorktown. If you thought the feathered cap and saddle-riding was crazy, let me tell you something. Yorktown had us riding through mobs of Memorial Day Weekend Warriors and Princesses, and they had slept in like champions and were now clogging the streets with their big pickup trucks and muscly arms and beautiful blonde wives. Yorktown contains a number of one-way streets, pedestrian-only streets, and streets that really aren’t wide enough for two cars to exist side by side. Somehow, though, we managed to wind our way across town, away from the ocean, and to the Victory Monument.
There on the sidewalk were John and Linda, waiting ever so patiently for us to roll up. They snapped a picture right as we got there, which I think turned out very well.
They had brought champagne for us to break over something, but once we realized that we were at a historic monument, and on bicycles instead of ships, everyone agreed that champagne would be best consumed later.
Then they pulled out more goodies! We got sashes with the Avenues logo on them (Rocki, Deb, Mike, everyone at Avenues, we SO represented at the finish line!), and a big banner! What a way to finish.
This is the Victory Monument. Darn straight we are victorious.
Obligatory picture of me…
We snapped many pictures, and did some little victory dances, and embarrassed ourselves thoroughly in front of a busload of tourists who were just there to see the monument. Then we went to a restaurant called The Carrot Tree, where we had an amazing lunch and escaped the hot sun for a while. Finally, we moseyed to the parking lot where John and Linda had parked, to figure out our next move.
And now the part of the story you probably knew was coming, the part in which a stranger helps us out.
In short, our hotel was NOT where we thought it was going to be (read: ten miles away. We are not riding ten miles unless someone is chasing us with an Egret plume.), and we found ourselves with two fully-loaded bikes, four people, and a Volvo which had John and Linda’s things in it. Hmmmmm…..
Against the wishes of everyone but myself, I began asking folks in pickup trucks if they had an extra half hour to spare in exchange for karma points to last them the rest of the month. It only took two tries before I found two nice guys who were at the Naval base in Yorktown, and had some time to kill, and an empty (save for a longboard) truck bed!
Seeing as it’s been a month, I’m super bummed because I cannot remember their names. However, I remember their faces, and I remember the wave of relief that washed over me when they, after listening to my plea incredulously and saying, “you did what? On a bicycle??“, finally said, “yeah, sure. We’re just waiting on some friends to call us back about the beach. Let me make space for you in the back seat.”
John and Linda followed close behind us, and within a half hour, we were safely to our hotel. Big ups, thanks, mad props, and accolades up the wazoo to these two young men.
The story ends pretty quietly in my mind after this. We found our hotel, checked in, had a nice dinner of chicken and salad (the hotel was one of those extended-stay places with kitchenettes, so we were able to cook and not eat out), swam in the pool a bit (Evan and I impressed all the hotel customers with our glaring white thighs and upper arms), and celebrated with some champagne.
The next morning would see the departure of John and Linda (back to Philadelphia), and the arrival of Evan’s cousin-in-law John, who was taking us to Raleigh for a few days to visit and fly home in a cheaper fashion. We got to bed at a reasonable hour, and I guess I don’t have anything else to say about the day.
There is still a lot of disbelief in my mind when I look at a map and realize that I crossed the entire country by bicycle, with the exception of a truck ride up a big hill when I wasn’t feeling well, a ride through the rough neighborhood of East Saint Louis, and help from a fellow bicyclist when we got into a bind in Elizabethtown.
I have trouble wrapping my brain around the number of people I met, whose presence in their towns was a blessing. We’re talking hundreds of towns here. I have trouble comprehending the enormity of this journey, the amazing support that resulted in over $8,000.00 in donations to Avenues.
When I started, I thought I could raise maybe $500.00, and that would be awesome. When I hit $1,000.00 I was awe-struck at the generosity of people. Now, I’m just completely shocked, and amazed, and… you guys. This is such a great thing.
There aren’t enough hours in the day for me to gush about how much you all mean to me, how much this trip has meant to me, and how big of an impression it has left in my little brain.
So I guess I’ll close this entry accordingly.
Thanks. Wow. Holy crap. Kudos. Bravo. WE DID IT.
abbiacrossamerica 