Thank You

It's Sunday morning. It feels like 12 in the afternoon but everyone is asleep. I caught a beautiful sunrise on the lake and I can't help but think it doesn't get too much better than this.

I finished my ride on Friday night. I want to say thank you to everyone for your support.

I can't say I really have any sort of parting message. There are so many things I have to say, a few posts I started but never completed, but they'll have to wait for now.

So take it for what you will. If you felt inspired, that's more than I intended and more than I could have asked for. If you think this was a little crazy and now you're worried about me, just remember I'm at home now and in good hands. If you think this was pointless, then i'd ask you to reconsider, because even though I don't know exactly what it means, it means something. What that something was, I'm not sure, but a lot of things in this life don't make sense right away.

Oh and Don, like you said at the end of Blue Like Jazz, "I hope we get to meet some day soon."

I leave you now with this parting video. Enjoy.

Sprint

This is it. The final week. The final state. Some might call it the "Final Frontier". Today I crossed the border into Virginia which means the next border I cross will be into Washington DC. Not only is this the final week of my bike ride, but this is also my final week in London town. What a trip. Oprah says it's ok to cry, and I think I might. In fact I almost cried on the bike this morning, but that was mostly because this morning I didn't see how it was possible for me to finish this ride before leaving London and I was feeling very discouraged, hence the measly 30 k when the morning before I had gone 60 in almost the same amount of time. This final week is going to be a sprint to the finish in every aspect of my life in London. I have one suitcase packed and ready to go. The other will have to wait until Friday night when I've had a chance to wash all my smelly gym clothes (my bathroom now officially smells like a locker room, my flat mate Lynn can vouch... sorry Lynn, but at least I'm putting the detergent in the right compartment now).

At work today some of my teammates were talking about working out as we watched the olympics on one of the screens on our floor. My other coworker who sits opposite me and away from my team was talking about how he could beat any one of the bicycle sprinters. I don't think he works out though... ever. I turned around and chimed in with a request to take a little bit of a longer lunch break to go work out. I had a chat with my coworker Andy, whose also kind of my manager... but not really, and I told him about my ride and how I wasn't going to be able to make it unless I took a longer lunch hour for the rest of the week to go ride. As I explained to him what I was doing and showed him my map and the plan of attack I made on excel (it's always good to work on excel spreadsheets at work, no matter what you're doing with them) he became more and more sympathetic and by the time I was finished explaining my goal he was getting excited about it as well. He ran the London Marathon this year so I know how much he must LOVE training plans.

I went home, changed into my gym clothes and brought my work clothes to the gym and put them in a locker. I rode 50 km faster than ever before, just over 56 minutes. With the extra riding I would be doing during my lunch hours this week, I was back on track to finish. I am again hopeful that this whole fiasco will not fizzle out in a most disappointing display of extravagant, drawn out failure. I have reason to believe that God is with me an dhas been with me the entire time, providing me with just enough guidance and hope to keep me going at every point throughout this "trip". It would be foolish of me to credit it to myself, not to mention extremely arrogant that I could actually control the external factors the have been driving me and keeping me motivated just beyond the point of quitting.

For the past two weeks there have been about 60 seconds every morning when I've debated whether or not to just give up and go back to sleep. Every morning I tell myself that if I give up today, I give up forever, and so I get up and go to the gym without really seeing how I can finish. In a Theories of Personality psych course I took my junior year I was given a test that measures your likelihood of future success based on two factors: your Will power, and your Way power. Your Will power is intended to measure you're drive and determination to succeed in any given goal whereas your Way power is intended to measure your ability to analyze exactly what needs to be done and set up a plan of attack with which to follow through. I scored very high on Will power, but below average on Way power. It seems to be hold true yet today, although I must say, with the whole excel thing I drew up I might be improving on that front :)

It should also be noted that If I were to simply have given up my social life, I would have no problem finishing, and I'd probably be done already. But I've also decided that to completely quit on my social life would also be a failure of sorts. True, I have missed out on some things here and there, but overall, I'm content with the choices I've made.

Tomorrow I have my leaving drinks with four of my other friends who work on our same floor of over 300, four other interns who are also leaving at the end of the week. (sigh)

Well, this is it. My next post will be the one that tells you whether I made it or not.

The American Dream

A few weeks ago, I met another Ironmonger staffer.

"You know who you look like? Ah what’s his name, you know, he's in that movie... Ah, what is his name? Oh! Edward Norton!"
“Oh yeah?! Is that how you recognize me when I come in here?"
"Yeah. Well, don't forget about me in your next movie!"
"Ok, I won't! My name is Scott, by the way."
"George"
"Right, well I'll see ya later George."

Monday night, while George was cleaning up the equipment for the night and I was finishing my ride, we got to talking. He commented on how hard I was working lately and asked what I was training for. I told him about the ride across America and how I'm trying to finish it before I leave London in a few weeks. From there we got to talking about America and how great a country it is and how he grew up in a home in Portugal where his Dad supported everything America stood for and everything America did. He told me how he thinks it is the most advanced country in the world. He's never been to America but he would love to go. He spoke of freedom and a place to call your own. He thinks that even the countries who don't like us, still try to imitate us. I told him how refreshing it was to hear someone speak so highly of America because I haven't been hearing a lot of that around these parts lately. He thinks that a lot of the anti-American sentiment is being fuelled by the media and is kind of the popular thing to do right now but deep down, people still think America is the greatest country to live in, and with the next election upon us, American sentiment world wide is sure to pick up.
The vision of the American Dream is still alive. He described freedom as the American suburbs, where there are no walls and no fences separating you from your neighbours. There is only grass. It's a place where mutual respect and community thrive, where the whole town knows the name of the running back on the local football team who scored the winning touchdown on Friday night. And all this coming from a Portuguese guy who’s never been there! I told him it was all true. I told him how I loved seeing my picture in the paper when I had a good game. I confirmed that there really are no fences separating me from my neighbours. (And yes, we own guns but we only use them for hunting).
We promised to exchange information. I told him I would love to give him a place to stay in Chicago if he ever decided to come. He wants to go to some jazz clubs. George offered me a place to stay in Portugal as well; his girlfriend owns a house with a pool on the beach. I hope I can take him up on that sometime (and I hope his girlfriend doesn't mind!). Before I knew it a half hour had gone by and we were the only two left in the place. It was time to go home.

80 miles a day

This past week I came down with a throat virus. Nothing serious but it made me a bit weak. I actually didn't get on the bike once as I tried to adhere to Grandma Rosie's advice of not trying to do everything at once. It has been a slow week because of this. This past weekend I passed by body weight in urine and I spent the first hour of Sunday morning coughing up an entire lung's worth of green gunk. But by Sunday afternoon I decided that I had had enough of this sitting around and decided it was time to get back on the bike. I eased back into my routine with a 40K ride on Sunday afternoon and this week I plan to really kick out a good amount of miles as I regain my strength and attack the bike with a fresh pair of legs. The task of finishing is looking daunting now as I'm approaching a necessity of around 80 miles a day to finish by the time I leave this city.

But in the words of Coldplay, I maintain the refrain, "Just because I'm losing, doesn't mean I'm Lost!"