I’m back home this week, after finishing my bicycle trek across the country a week or so ago. I can’t take enough time off to do the whole trip in one year, so essentially did the western half last year, and the eastern half this year, with the little connector in Kansas the year before. All in all, a little shy of 4000 miles from coast to coast, something between 30 and 40 days of riding.
It was the trip of a lifetime really, with some tough days and some glorious days, a few ugly incidents, but those were vastly outweighed by the kindness and consideration shown me by people from one coast to the other.
Throughout, from start to almost the finish, I found it easy to focus on each day as it came. I fell into a wonderful rhythm of simplicity that wrapped itself around me each day. Get up, pack the bike, eat a snack, start pedaling, eat some breakfast, pedal some more. The underlying focus revolved around the next place I’d be able to find drink to stay hydrated, and food to snack on. Arriving at my hotel each evening, I’d wash out my riding clothes, hang ‘em to dry, get some supper, read a little, and fall asleep.
Then get up and do it all over again.
Simplicity, with an easy focus.
But something happened as I approached the east coast. Riding across the hills in eastern Ohio, I realized that I only had 3 more days of riding, and I’d be at the east coast. Three days… Three short days… (Well, long days really.)
For the first time on the trip, a sense of accomplishment for this journey started to invade that simple daily focus that had marked the journey so far. I began to see that, within sight now, was the completion of a very cool thing. And it felt really good.
This isn’t a particularly common sense in life. Big accomplishments don’t happen every day. Too often we don’t savor the moments of accomplishment when they do occur.
 
But over those last three days, I savored that sense of accomplishment more than I recall ever doing so before. It was probably the simplicity of my days that allowed this – pedaling for 8 or 10 hours a day lets things seep pretty deeply into your mind. By the time I was three or four hours into that last day of riding, there was just no holding back. That emerging sense of accomplishment washed all the weariness out of my body, and pumped energy into my legs. I felt stronger than I’d felt in the last 10 days of riding or more.
As we came out of the rollers of central Maryland, and flew across the flats of eastern Maryland, I could barely contain myself. Finally, as we pedaled down a bike path toward Annapolis, dusk settling in around us, I made myself back off one last time, and begin to savor these final 15 or 20 miles of an epic journey across the country.
The bike path dumped us onto a road for the last few miles to the ocean as darkness grew. The road climbed up over a long bridge coming into Annapolis, with the final vestiges of sunset on the horizon, and the mouth of Chesapeake Bay setting in for the night. A lone sailboat crossed the bay half a mile away, and the waxing moon lit the sky.
Dave and I stopped our bikes at the top of the bridge, pulling them up on the sidewalk. We took a few pictures, but I don’t think we said much. It was a pretty big moment for me, and I was surprised at just how good it felt.
We had two whole beers to celebrate, while we ate Maryland crab at a local hangout in Annapolis. It felt good, but I’m not sure there can be many moments in life to compare to that feeling I had standing at the top of that bridge over Chesapeake Bay at sunset.
Accomplishment.
Rare and sweet.
