Done!!!

We made it. We finished up on Saturday afternoon, 7/19, at Yorktown, VA. I've been chillin in Baltimore since then and have been a little too relaxed to finish the updates. It was amazing and surreal to be swimming in the water. Realizing that we didn't have to put on our bike shorts again was pretty amazing too.

I was a little worried that Yorktown wouldn't be the ocean since it was located a little bit inside the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay but the water was salty and it sure looked ocean-like.

The hard part about finishing early was trying to surprise my mom. Her birthday was on the 22nd of July so I was going to be home before then but I wanted to surprise her. I called her the night before we finished and told her that we were in Charlottesville, VA and that we'd finish on Monday or Tuesday. Then I enlisted the help of my Aunt Betty. She was able to get my mom thinking that the two of them were going out to dinner on Sunday night around 7pm. My dad picked my up and we showed up at 6:45 and completely surprised her. It was awesome. She had no idea.

The last couple of days were pretty nice. We stopped in Charlottesville, VA and ate at Little John's Deli. I had been talking about the Five Easy Pieces, my favorite sandwich, since somewhere in Western Oregon. The consensus was that the sandwich warranted the hype. For those of you unfamiliar with the Five Easy, it is a sandwich on pumpernickel with ham, turkey, munster, bacon, cole slaw and herb mayo that's grilled and then served with chips and a pickle. Charlottesville is also the home of the University of Virginia, my alma matter. It was great to be home. I almost crossed paths with Dean but we missed each other by a day or so.

West Virginia was tough because there were almost no flat stretches of road in the entire state. It was all either up or down. But the hills that were there weren't too bad. The longest was a 2.5 mile section of 9% grade but even that wasn't too bad. There were a lot of big trucks to contend with including 120,000 lb coal trucks and a bunch of dump trucks. Most of the drivers were nice though.

We did have one stretch of double miles because we missed a turn and had to back track. It turned out that a street sign was missing so we ended up going about 5 miles in the wrong direction. We figured it out because the road kept getting smaller and smaller until it ended at a river.

I'd like to thank everyone for reading and for following our trip. Good luck to you!

Thanks,

Chris