Not much to say about today. Took the bus to the airport, went through security, boarded, flew, landed in Toronto, changed planes, landed in Vancouver, Andy picked us up in the van, and we drove home to Toledo, arriving at midnight PDT. This means we were up for 27 straight hours, with maybe an hour nap on the plane.
Sum up for the trip:
Sally and I talked about this experience, and compared it to our adventure on the PCT. Perhaps this is not a fair comparison. We both agree that the PCT was the most influential experience of our lives. Not a day passes that we don’t think of something that happened on the trip, have a flash back to a place or time or person. To put our bike trip up against the PCT is like comparing a cat to a mountain lion. The cat is nice, but a mountain lion will definitely change your life. Perhaps one of the things missing on this trip was the community of people. On the PCT we met people the first day that we stayed in touch with and hiked with the entire time we were on the trail. We shared the same discomforts, pains, fears, triumphs and joys. The environment and the physical challenge of the PCT was more taxing, forcing us further together.
On this bike tour, we met wonderful people. We stayed with them, got to know them and had a wonderful time. But then, we moved on and they continued with their lives apart from us. They enriched our lives and our trip. We hope to meet with them again, but we did not get that "Band of Brothers" bonding that occurs through shared hardship.
Another interesting aspect of this trip I am wrestling with is remembering the route. When I finished the PCT, I could close my eyes and play the entire length of the trail we walked in my head, turn for turn and switchback for switchback. In fact, I can still do that now, a year and a half later. If I try to do that same thing with this bike trip, I cannot. I get the city sequence mixed up. Even looking at the pictures geotagged directly to the map I have a hard time recalling the time, place, sequence and circumstances of that portion of the trip. Is it that on the bike the miles went by too fast for my brain to record? Or is it the fact that I navigated by GPS, spending too much time negotiating the route on the screen instead of my surroundings? Or perhaps, the terrain was so flat and similar for much of the lower Rhine that I am unable to attach landmarks in sequence because there weren't any. The language barrier could have played a role. So many of the place names were hard to read and pronounce, making them harder to commit to memory. All of these probably play a role in my inability to replay the trip sequentially in my head.
Yet, I hope I do not give the impression that somehow this trip was in anyway "lacking". It was a wonderful adventure! We had to problem solve, route find and negotiate everyday. We laughed heartily and felt accomplishment and joy daily. We learned so much; about people, history, geography, religion, governments, and Europe as a whole. Would we do it again? Already making plans for the next one.
Here is a table showing distances and location per day, on the days we rode:
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