SF to NY - Done & Dusted!

As promised, here is Chris' final word on what has been a remarkable achievement. No official word from Paul but I think he may be too busy with the business of pram shopping and Lamaze classes ... Yes indeed, in a move reminiscent of a group of drinkers sneaking in a double round before Last Orders, Bugs has managed to complete his 36 day trip just in time before the arrival of 'Baby Bear' - Lucy confirmed this news to him during the trip but he was able to keep schtum until now... Congrats to you both!

See the side panel for some great photos of the welcome reception - thanks to all who could make it ... Here's Chris...

"Hi Dave,
Its something of a thrill to be typing to you from my computer rather than via blackberry in a small town motel room with Bugola in the background oohing and aahing over news of a change in wind direction on The Weather Channel.

I can't describe how exciting it was to reach New York on Saturday evening. Even right up to the end there were twists and turns and the last day was anything but the easy run in we expected. This was due of course to our poor planning and unrealistic expectation more than anything else. We underestimated how much slower it would be cycling across dense urban areas and the huge city of Philadelphia didn't turn out to be too bike friendly.

We knew from Thursday morning that we couldn't make our target Friday evening arrival to NY. Like Eric Bristow on a bad day we hadn't left ourselves with a checkout when we stepped up to the oche on Friday morning, so we thought we'd lay ourselves up for a comfortable 'double top' New York finish on Saturday afternoon. So we'd planned to be north east of Philly by stumps on Friday leaving an easy Saturday run knowing the weather was turning but we ran out of daylight and ended up in downtown Philly on the Friday night. Despite not wanting to be there we enjoyed the fact that our last night of 35 on tour was in one of America's great cities.

The 100 or so miles up to Manhattan was well within our range on the flat so we felt ok, until we had a string of last day mechanical problems. We both had punctures and I don't know what I ran over but I had a bad tear in my back tyre that was rideable but not for long. This was near Princeton so we made a small detour to the delightful University town (and therefore guaranteed to have a bike shop) which is also home to that famous Study Group glamour couple, Peter and Madge "Lord & Lady" Lightburn.

Jay's Cycles sorted me out with a new back tyre and we were off again. It basically rained all day and by the time we got up to near Newark Airport it was blowing a gale and starting to get dark. Buggy went into another phase of his Crocodile Dundee 'instinct' navigating, and before we knew it, we were cycling in the middle of 6 lanes of the extremely wet and incredibly windy New Jersey Turnpike at which point we encountered our final brush with the law on tour.

I have to say that we found the New Jersey police to be infinitely more polite than their shirty counterparts in Delaware, where a diminutive, shoulder chipped, Napoleonesque jobsworth copper fined us for riding across a bridge and aggressively told us if he saw us there again he'd put us in jail (I know I do exaggerate sometimes but that is true). Anyway the more friendly NJ cop told us if we tried to carry on the short distance on this road to the Lincoln Tunnel we'd "definitely" be killed and that if we tried to go back we'd also get ourselves killed (now he was getting hip with the exaggeration thing but he did have something of a point). Well, on a Saturday night he obviously didn't fancy the paperwork involved with 2 deceased foreign cyclists so he called for a van to get us & our bikes through the tunnel and on to Manhattan. From there, we had the the glory run to the Triple Crown and our incredible reception committee.

We were staggered to see so many people there which was wonderful. The Study Group crew out in force, Alison & co, the Trumpton AFC lads.. We even had an official finish line tape courtesy of Sam and Joe who managed to nip out between the traffic as we approached and unreel a length of toilet roll across half the width of 7th Avenue for us to ride through (the type of inspired initiative that has made the SG IT dept legendary).

The rest of the evening (and most of Sunday actually) is somewhat hazy. We would like to say a sincere thank you to everyone who helped us along in our adventure. We had no idea that our 'holiday' would generate so much interest. It has been positively overwhelming really and all the messages of support and encouragement played a big part in getting us to NYC. This is largely down to blogmeister extraordinaire Dave 'DC' Crossen who has been fantastic with his creative blog wizardry and also as our general communication, logistics and PR guru. Thanks also to the solid South Wales crew down in Swansea, to the wonderful Erin and the whole extraordinary team at Study Group (its unimaginable that there could be a better group of people to work with) and our friends everywhere who have got involved.

Sincere thanks to everyone who has donated money to our two charities. The response has been extremely generous and the money is going to two wonderful causes. If you haven't yet contributed and would like to, the charity website pages will be open for just a few more days so this is your last chance...

Bugs is now tantalizingly just short of the thousand pound barrier at GBP 964.99
My Building Futures fund currently stands at $ 5920, and with the matching amount pledged by Study Group, my generous employer, we totalling just short of $ 12,000..

Those site links again:
Paul:

http://www.justgiving.com/sanfrancisconewyork2008
Chris: http://www.firstgiving.com/christaylor2008

Oh well, back to my day job now...
CT."