STATS AND STUFF

It’s just wonderful to be here in Delray after all the effort it’s taken over the last 50 days to get down the US East Coast. I been here several times over the years, but never quite like this. Today was the day to wind down a bit, which included the blog as you may noticed when it failed to appear! Although the main task was to compile stats from the whole adventure, the first day off the bike actually properly began with, guess what? 2nd breakfast, cooked by my bro (I’d had to have a big bowl of cereal earlier in the morning because, well, I had to):

After many hours of chatting, sitting around and then falling asleep on huge comfy sofas, the ideal Sunday in fact, I was up for a leg stretch. Ol – who is Chair of the English Dept at Florida Atlantic University – was free all day, so we went for a silly-hat parade around the local neighbourhood. Overcast skies meant that it was just about cool enough for this:

On our return we bumped into a couple whom Ol has seen walking in the area for years, but said he’d never spoken with much, beyond a ‘good morning’. When we asked what breed their dog was, they said ‘English Setter’, which led to a conversation about how we should have known that, both being English! And they were both French, from Versailles/Paris via Grenoble, and Paris via Brittany, but now had a business remodelling high-end homes in Delray. They were lively and entertaining, with fantastic French accents. Something about doing a ‘bonkers’ bike trip, which we inevitably discussed, gets people talking about their own lives too. We ended up swapping cards and discovered that their daughter lived very near Abbey Rd Studios in London (where I often work). And that they’d be there visiting her very soon. It’s just crazy – I’m thinking of starting a career of JUST talking to random people and then adding up the unexpected connections.

After the ‘exercise’ for the day, we shifted down a gear to ‘grown-ups time’. This started with a ‘Vesper’ cocktail on the porch…

Which led us to steaks, corn, courgettes and peppers all done on the BBQ…

…and fruit tart and ice cream with a movie, to end a day of utter relaxation and indulgence. If you wrote a book about how to end a bike tour, I think today would be the definitive recipe for success.

STATS TIME:

So let’s hit the Stats! It’s time to crunch the numbers collected over the past two months, which, as always, took me longer than I expected. I’m going lay them out slightly differently this time.

• Number of days: 50
• Total Distance covered: 2,482 miles
• Time spent in saddle: 272h 16 (or roughly 11 straight days)
• Hottest day(°c): 47° This was on Day 45, cycling at midday from Jacksonville to St Augustine, and is only 3° short of my personal record of 50°, set in Hong Kong in 2019
• Coolest temp for whole ride: 14° This was on Day 4 at 6am, in the mist in New Brunswick, Canada.
• Total Climbing (feet) : 45,698 (for the distance, relatively low)
• Equivalent number of ‘Everest’ ascents (@29,032ft): 1.57
• Average climb per day: 906
• Total Calories used: 135,160
• Chocolate milk equivalent (@260cals per glass): 647 delicious, ice-cold glasses
• Number of 2nd breakfasts eaten en route: 50 of course – what else could it be?
• Total ‘Cafe’ time: 151h 40 (just over 6 full days of coffee drinking or making repairs, much less than expected, due to night-riding, but including more repair-time than normal!)
• Number of punc£$@^%: 9 (a personal record)
• Nights spent camping: 22 (lower than expected)
• Nights in a motel or b&b: 20 (higher than expected!)
• Nights with hosts: 8 – my very special thanks to Ryan & Lindsay in Rye, Beth in Salem, Richard in New London, Jacob in New York City, Zander in Myrtle Beach, Sally in Wilmington and of course, Oliver and Laurice in Delray Beach!

This was also a great time to catch up with family and friends’ messages and photos. I got a fantastic batch of pics from John Mills in California with the John Wilson Orchestra, a trip which included a massed musicians’ bike ride beside the sea (organised by JM, natch).

Which even appears to have included some kind of 2nd Breakfast:

There was even a photo of John and his fellow musicians working on their suntans during their day off:

ADIRONDACK BREAKTHROUGH: I’m really happy to say that at least one thing has been achieved, or resolved, by my stay with Ol & Laurice here in Delray, and it’s an issue close to the hearts of all of us here at Incidents of Travel. Never mind the storms, the heat, the headwinds, the lack of campgrounds, the overpriced motels, the Carolinas hard-shoulder-debris, and the exposed road-bridges: nothing has been more perplexing than the lack of Adirondack chairs being used as Adirondack chairs, rather than garden ornaments. It’s a mystery that has dogged me ever since I first noticed it on the Pacific coast of Canada in 2017, NO ONE SITS IN ADIRONDACK CHAIRS! Oh, I saw tourists using them at hotels, outside Visitor Welcome Centres, or in parks, that sort of thing, but never on the deck or lawn of a real person’s home with a real person just sitting in them. Until now. Ladies and Gentleman, I give you my brother Oliver and his lovely wife Laurice, on the deck of their Delray Beach home, SITTING IN THEIR OWN ADIRONDACK CHAIRS.

UPDATE: I just received this lovely message from Karen Koromah at Humanity & Inclusion:

‘I just read your blog – a massive congratulations and well done for finishing! So lovely that you were able to celebrate with your brother too. I hope that you’re having another day of much-deserved rest. I’ll miss the updates on the blog but we’re all so inspired and so proud of you!

Karen Koromah, Fundraising Officer H&I’