Pactour Day 26 "Mission Accomplished"

After 26 days of pedaling, we made it to Williamsburg. 

But not until we rode 80 miles and on the way we saw this cool turtle.  We did rescue it off to the side of the road...

We regrouped at mile 77 to wait for the last riders.  JW and Will found a Civil War cannon to check out.

Finally, the Atlantic Ocean.  26 days and 3500 miles from the Pacific, by bike, if anyone's interested.

Waiting for lunch we checked out the now completed route map.  Each day this our completed route was filled in, starting in Everett, WA.  At our dinner banquet, each rider and crew signed the map and it was auctioned to support Pactour's efforts in Peru.  Jim didn't bid - he had a top bid of $2000 in mind, the map went for $1500.  Kurt the triathlete was obviously going to keep bidding til he got it (funny how Pactour works, you "win" Pactour, then you pay $1500 for the trophy!)  Jim maybe should have bid to bid the price up, but he doesn't believe in engaging a battle you don't plan to win.  Sun Tzu would probably have agreed.

At our dinner banquet, the cake had the names of all the riders and crew.

Time to box up the bikes for their return voyage.  Jim suggested riding home to Texas (gotta be mostly downhill, right?) but that didn't even merit a grunt of acknowledgement.  Dave Jordan (super crewmember) loaned Jim his minivan to go to Home Depot to pickup pipe insulation, bubble wrap and packing tape (the key ingredients, besides the boxes, to get the bikes home safely.)

Today's philosophical theme was "The Journey not the Destination."  Our quote was "Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened." Author unknown.

After some ups and down (lots more ups than downs) we finished, pedaling into Williamsburg to complete the oddesey.   Easy 80 mile, casual ride from Ashland, VA.  We had our usual rest stops and thank goodness we were riding easy, it was blazing hot (84 degrees when we came out of the hotel room for breakfast at 6am!

The boys, Jim and the Turk handled the journey well, thanx to our preparation, the support of our friends, the foundation of Pactour, and the other riders coloring our days.  Really not much more to add.

We rode past our La Quinta at mile 65, which was a little hard to do and pedaled the remaining 15 miles to the ocean.  We regrouped, somewhat in the shade with Dave Jordan doing his second rest stop of the day so we had drinks and ice, a mile from our final destination, then all rode down to the beach together.  After getting our feet wet we had lunch, then rode the 16 miles back to the motel (pretty easy ride with a coastal tailwind pushing us.)

At the motel we began prepping the bikes for travel and cleaned up for our dinner banquet.  This was 2 blocks away and really cemented the trip.  JW was awarded South Dakota license plate (Susan collects license plates and the decorate the trailers.)  This was because he is the youngest rider ever to do a complete Pactour.  We were also their first family to complete Pactour together (we seem to have gotten alot of special attention along the way and that's probably why.)  We signed the Daily Route map, which as mentioned was subsequently auctioned for $1500.  Dinner was excellent with a 900 picture slide show, chronologically reliving our days across the U.S.  After dinner, Susan awarded the Pactour Plaques, which have a picture of each rider on his/her plaque.  The pictures were taken at the foot of the Big Horn climb in Wyoming.  

So was this trip worth $18,000 for a family of 4 to do?  Plus bikes, clothing, supplies, airfare, shipping charges, dinners, etc, etc.  To rip off the Visa commercials, and in a word, this "Family Ride of a Lifetime" was "PRICELESS."

Stay tuned over the next couple of days, we've got a few things to add.

Thanx for reading.  The Slausons.