Via Byway, My Way.

At the library, 5 minutes left on my time….quick story, my ride is all over. Went to the Doc on Monday and although I didn’t have walking pneumonia like I thought I did, my relentless cough and how crappy I felt resulted in my disqualification from the race to the Mexican border. No, I wasn’t pulling a Landis doping thing!

It was a no-brainer. After my lousy suicide ride last week on Tuesday, and after some bicyclist was killed a few days later on the road to Mexico, I figure that this is good enough for me! I’m just glad I wasn’t riding when Mel Gibson was trying to drive the Malibu Highway 1, since that is not the type of 15 minutes of fame I was looking for (but I must say those lost Bigfoot pictures would have yielded me more than 15!)

So big deal I didn’t make it to Mexico, I was also influenced by other bicyclists that have done that last 100 mile portion and they say it is nothing special. Especially since you can’t ride through the Camp Pendleton Marine base anymore, not after 9/11. So apparently you are diverted onto I-5, and that’s not exactly my idea of a relaxing bike ride. But I did just hear back from Kyle, the guy from Washington, and he made it to the border last Friday. I’ll get the story straight from him to hear how the last 100 miles went for him.

At any rate, the saying goes that it’s about the journey, and not the destination, right? Okay, I can buy that and I can live with my decision. I’m feeling better now and will be returning back to Portland very soon. Good ol’ mom and dad weren’t too happy about my state of health, so they have driven down from Portland to bring me home. I suppose it’s also a good excuse to visit with all the relatives down here, and I have many! So yeah, that’s it for me. I’m feeling good and I am very happy that I did this ride, it did go by very fast and my memories of my days on the road have merged into many, many episodes. The Pacific coast is simply incredible, and I thank the bicycle Gods and Goddesses that my brakes, tires, and 19-year old bicycle held up to the 1,752 miles I put on it. So this portion of my adventure is come to a close, but not my blog.

Please check back here on Friday when I will have uploaded photos from my last 2 weeks on the road, a photo journal from San Francisco down to my (unbeknownst to me) final stop in Redondo Beach. If I were to do another bicycling trip, I think I’d have to pick Ireland for my next go around….

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 2nd, 2006 at 2:32 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.