Category: General

Hoorah! At last, we’re done with Texas. I’ll refer to Texas as a she henceforth, not knowing if that’s correct protocol. She is a staggering 5.3 times the size of England, to give you an idea of how McMassive she is (England is 50,356 square miles compared to Texas’ 266,807, for those who like random stats). We spent twelve days – more than a third of the whole trip – inside her. She played mind games with us, taunted us, heckled us, wooed us, and then opened her mouth wide for us to enter into her cavernous mouth. She chewed […]

Last night we found ourselves in Katy (named after my sister), which a suburb of Houston. After completing yesterday’s ride, we had a two-hour drive here, as we had gone so far past our planned stop (wanting to get some contingency miles stored up in case of anything going wrong – and plenty has gone wrong so far to keep us on our toes). John as driver brought up whether we should just stay at an RV park for the weekend to save on fuel, and I guess on his energy, but I thought having two nights in decent beds […]

I remember a terrible film in the ’80s called ‘Ernie Goes to Camp’. It was meant to be a comedy but was simply dire. The makers of that film should have spent some time with this Ernie, our host, because he is hi-la-rious. He’s got ideas coming out of his ears and is like a little boy without a filter between his brain and his mouth. He knew we had to make an early start, so he arrived at dawn, bringing with him a few gifts. The conversation went like this (and to really get into it, for Ernie you […]

I only got a few hours sleep, as usual. At 6am, we regrouped. Geoff came out and said he was feeling too rough and needed to go back to England. He couldn’t put his family through any more of this, and didn’t want to be a further liability to the team. It was horrible, and deeply sad. He is the reason we’re here. Bike for Burundi was his idea. So his contribution’s been massive even now that he leaves, but that doesn’t make him feel any better when he’s invested thousands of pounds and hundreds of hours in training and […]

The great modern philosopher and sage, Jennifer Aniston, once declared: “There are no regrets in life, just lessons.” It sounds profound at first, but actually on closer inspection it’s really stupid, I think. Sorry to shoot you down, Jen, when you’re not here to defend yourself (you’re welcome to make a guest appearance though if you’re good for lubing my chain each day and fixing my inner tubes). I mean, how could I/she/you not regret hurting people along the way, making mistakes that had negative repercussions on others’ lives? That would make us hopelessly heartless and egotistical, which I’m sure […]

Lance Armstrong once said: “Pain is temporary; quitting lasts forever.” Today was very nearly the end of my ride. As I write this, I’m so grateful to still be in the fight. What happened? Read on. The day started early, as it always does due to my relative insomnia. Actually Craig was so desperate to talk to his little Joel that he got up at 3am to catch him (in the UK) before he went to school – such is Daddy’s love, all the more because I know Craig really needs his beauty sleep. Even as I dosed and tried […]

Warning: this was written very late in a semi-comatose state, and the censoring police had already gone to sleep, so maybe some bits got through that shouldn’t have – apologies in advance, but it’s sharing the real experience. Skip if easily offended. Today was a fabulous day. We left Brackettville at dawn, just so grateful after yesterday’s killer session to have found an RV park with both shower and electricity. We got lost almost immediately and I hailed down a cowboy. He asked where we wanted to get to. I said: “Charleston, South Carolina!” It’s tongue in cheek really, and […]

I worked late last night to get as much GLO business out of the way to try to stay on top of things, which is an added pressure on this trip. We had internet access in the church hall, and as John and I finished and walked back home under the starry sky a family of five deer waltzed by, and then the tree above us exploded into life as I guess we disturbed a hundred or so vultures from their sleep. Jeff said earlier over supper: “Do you know the best thing I like about Simon?” Jeff’s great by […]

So we’ve finished Week 2! In the last six days we covered 96miles, then 107, 108, 103, 84, and 103, bringing the overall total to 1,203miles, so we are over a third of the way through. People who have ridden this Southern Tier route before us (most of whom take 10-30 more days to do it), have said that if you can get through the first two weeks without getting broken by it, then you’re well on your way. So that’s encouraging. Today was a rest day. I’m the worst sleeper, but forced myself to stay in bed until 830am. […]

At breakfast, Liz said she was going to join us on the first 12miles of the ride, which was great because it meant we could have some more time with her. She’ll turn 60 this year so is no spring chicken and feared she’d slow us down, but we’re no speed merchants anyway, and having others join us always adds to the mix. We made it to our launch pad, got the bikes ready, and she promptly fell off as soon as she got on! I had just vomited up my breakfast, annoyingly, because I’d swallowed six pills in one […]

(Long, straight road)  It was a pretty borrrrring day, at least the first half was. Overall, in crude terms, we did 84miles at 13.6mph average from Valentine to Marathon (almost). We stayed at a basic RVpark in Marfa (has to be said with a cockney accent) with no showers or internet access, just electricity and water – in fact considering we drove 35miles to get there, I’m not sure it was really worth it. So we got up at 515am and drove back to Valentine to start where we’d left off yesterday. On the way, as per usual, I phoned […]

Last night I ended up speaking at two meetings. We were hosted by this superb lady Kelly, who had been at the Citadel (military school like Sandhurst or West Point) with both John (driver) and Olivia (who is GLO National Director in Burundi right now filling my shoes). In fact Olivia had had a massive influence on Kelly’s life at the Citadel, and now Kelly is a similarly impressive lady, recently back from a tour of duty in Afghanistan, passionate, focused, generous, a go-getter, etc. So she had fixed us up to speak to these two groups, and food was […]

  (Taking a break) Disclaimer: something in this blog isn’t true – I’m just trying to keep you on your toes, and may do it over the next few days, we’ll see – but I wonder if you’ll be able to work out which bit. I love the USA, it’s a great country, and there are some crazy bits to it which are worth sharing. Get back to me if you think you can spot it. Thanks by the way for all those who are writing in. It’s a huge encouragement at the end of the day to read messages […]

The day didn’t get off to a good start. If you haven’t seen the film ‘RV’ starring Robin Williams, I give it a strong recommendation. In it he has a very messy sewage accident on what is a nightmare holiday experience. Well, our RV’s water and sewage system hasn’t been working for a while. So John drove it over to have the tank of sewage emptied, and the connecting tube which was cracked actually broke away, spewing out our previous week’s refuse, and emitting as you’d expect some fairly choice aromae. That changed our day’s plans, in that he now […]

I I took a sleeping pill last night so actually got a reasonable night’s rest. We rendezvoused at 530am from four different locations and set off for the start of the ride. 8-year-old Grant, my little host for the weekend, had left me an envelope on the table with some kinds words, a lovely picture, and $2.25 for cause, so that was touching. It was freezing cold to begin with as we were high up in the mountains, and before long we had left Arizona and entered New Mexico. The roads in NM were not terrible by any stretch, but […]

(Team picture) Last night we arrived back in Safford totally wasted after 107miles. Great folks at First Baptist were waiting for us with a gorgeous meal, which we scoffed down, and then split up to stay at four different hosts for the night. I’m with the Smiths, who are a delightful family with two boys. I really needed my sleep but in between a dozen or so trips to the bathroom during the night to deal with my gut issues, I got maybe two hours sleep. In my fleeting bouts of half sleep I think I was constantly paranoid of […]

We were off on the road by 7am and made good progress at first. We are at high altitude so were wrapped up in all our cold gear. In fact, there were some clouds for the first time this week, which was a pleasant change. Soon enough, we had our second dog encounter. Again I just had my head down looking at the road ahead, so would have got the shock of my life had Jeff not shouted from behind. I looked up to see three big black bitches bearing down on us, fangs specially sharpened for the occasion. So […]