Well looks like its the home straight now then guys.. I suppose we can even have a little ( I do mean little ) bit of a celebration.

Over the passed 14 days we’ve pedaled nearly 1800 miles, climbed over 56,000ft, burn’t over 66,000 calories and now its time to head to Miami..

Its been pretty emotional in some respects and very quite in others, over the last two days I’ve not really had a chance to think about much apart from getting to were I wanted to be, theres been that head wind again and its been tough going but we still made good progress.

You see when its cold, windy, snowing or raining you have to break the day down from your big goal in to small chunks, so basically over the last couple of days I’ve been looking for 130 to 140 miles a day but when your cold after half hour and cant feel anything I break it down to 10 miles, fresh bottle of drink say hi to Jonny and then tell him to meet me again in another 10 miles, on a good day I’ll meet him every 20 to 30 miles or he’ll ride back.

With breaking it down every 10 miles I get some sort of reward I suppose its not like I have think 120 miles to go, 119, 118, 117 and so on although in reality that is whats happening i know every 10 miles if want I can get off the bike sit on a comfy sofa (well sort of) for 5 mins then go again.

I kind of did the the same when I was ill, I had a goal that was broken down in to weeks days and even hours on some days depending on how I felt, I wanted to get to the bathroom but first I needed to get the edge of the bed but before I could do that I needed to move my legs and moving my toes needed to become before that but each step along the way had its reward.

Doing it like this you don’t have time to think about how cold you are, what parts of you hurt, how much you’ve got left to do because your focusing on each, lets call them check points and before you know it your where you want to be.

The problem with this is you spend most the time thinking about each stop and not much else or you completely forget what you’ve been think about or you just might not really want to tell anyone what you were thinking about.

We all did this when we grew up, when we learnt to walk, when we started to eat we just forgot about it as we grow older, none of us just got up and walked, we all pulled ourselves up on furniture and fell on our arses, we pulled ourselves up again and let go of the sofa only to fall flat on our arses again then maybe we walked two steps, straight on our arse again, sofa three steps and now you do it every day and in the middle of the night whilst half asleep. When you started eating you didn’t go straight in at steak and chip you had to get used to eating now you probably eat anything you like…

We’ve had a few dramas to deal with as well, nothing major just Jonny trying to convert the RV in to a convertible by taking the air con unit clean of the top of the van using a hotel canopy.

If you sit in the right place you can see the stars from the lounge without even having to look out the window!!

Basically we tried to turn round in a hotel car park and as we pulled in Jonny didn’t see the canopy and neither did I, all of a sudden there was an all mighty crunch as we both looked back there was nothing laying on the floor so we decided we would try to disappear sharpish however the hotel manager was a pretty quick old fella, not forgetting that trying to make a quick get away in 31ft long RV isn’t really very easy so after being shouted at for a few mins and being asked to pay for the damage we had to call the local bobby for accident report, really nice lady who came and said “fill this form out if you can be bothered, you don’t live here and it’s private property plus I’m not sure what I’m really doing here your free to go”. We asked if there was an RV park or somewhere we could stay and she sent us to the local store with instruction that we could stay there the night.

upon inspection the air con unit is well and truly…. well you know what I mean.

Time to bring on Miami, time to up the game again, I’m getting stronger and feeling better all the time so the next level its is!!

P.S – Thank you to every one thats giving support and thinking of me & Jonny, I just want you to know that when I say we’ve pedaled over 1800 miles and climbed over 56,000ft I mean all of you as well. This is a massive team effort and your all part of that team, you don’t know how good it feels to read your messages, texts and tweets at the end or beginning of each day.

Thank you team Cycleacrossamerica2010

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