Neil's Waves to Wine Cycle Trip

Sunday, September 30, 2007

The End

Final verdict: That was a ton of fun. Oh, and I grossly overtrained.

Finished

I pulled over to get a drink for the final push to the end. As I came to a stop, I looked up and saw the "FINISH" banner just ahead. Whee!

Fan

The biggest fan I've ever seen. To keep frost off the grapes?

[Correction: I've seen helicopter blades which are bigger.]

Winery

This must be where they take perfectly good grapes and let them go bad.

Narrow bridge

When this bridge was built, it was probably a two lane bridge. But modern American cars have grown so wide that it is now classed as a single lane bridge.

Yesterday the police were out in force handing out tickets to cyclists who got in the way of cars. Today the police were blocking traffic on busy intersections so that we could cycle by. Must be Sunday.

Vineyards

I guess this is why they call the area "wine country".

Just say no to atoms

What does this sign mean? That this village doesn't have nuclear weapons? Or nuclear power plants? Or MRI scanners? Or smoke detectors?

Contact

Halfway up a hill in the middle of nowhere my iPhone discovers a connection and starts vibrating. I check it. It's a message from the widow of prince Mugooboo who needs my bank account number. Yay for connectivity!

Frequencies

Concrete weights attached to a long telephone cable. Damps out swinging in the wind?

Reflection

Perfect.

Unicycle

Now I'm speechless. She's been keeping up with us the whole trip.

[Update: Her name is Gracie Sorbello and she has her own blog.]

Breakfast

The start of day two!

Thank you to everyone who has donated so far. I'm matching all your donations and Google is matching the total. So your contributions to the MS Society are multiplied by four. Just click on the "Team Google" link to the right, then click on my name.

Saturday, September 29, 2007

Goodnight

Google gave its employees an emergency earthquake kit. Amongst the supplies was a tent. Hmm...

Tent city

Some people booked rooms at a local hotel. The rest of us setup tents.

Medic

First stop is the medical tent. There was a tree that had dropped a large number of spherical acorn-like seeds. Cycling over those was like cycling over ball bearings. My bike slid out sideways, Newton determined that I would keep traveling straight, and the theory of gravity brought me down to the pavement. Fortunately the iPhone was undamaged. As was my bike. But I skinned my elbow. No big deal.

Halfway

With two hours to spare I've arrived at the halfway point. This is where we overnight. The full scale of this ride didn't sink in until I saw the bicycle parking lot. Wow.

Vultures

I'm not sure if they are visible in the photo, but there are vultures circling. The number of riders seems to be thinning out too.

Driving on Oysters

Passing through a fishing village. They use oyster shells as a gravel substitute.

Painting

I'm not the only one who thinks the scenery is spectacular. The catch is that cell coverage is getting pretty spotty here. So these photos are sometimes being delayed a bit until I get a signal.