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 […]

It was a humdinger of a day. In fact it made the first day up into the mountains from the beach outside San Diego look like a stroll in the park. It’s also my luscious Lizzie’s birthday, so I’m sad not to be with her to celebrate together. What a great woman, and what a lucky man I am! We knew it was going to be difficult, so could we possibly make it, with the state of my knees slowing us down? Probably not, but we’d try. Backtracking to last night, we were hosted by David and Corry Wells, relatives […]

(Arizona scenery) The day got off to an ignominious start for me. Sleep is crucial to recovery in these endurance events, but I woke up at 2am dehydrated, and didn’t get back to sleep at all. I did drink three bottles of water and eat three bananas in the meantime, but largely lay there thinking about how totally daunting this attempt is. Our challenge is that there is almost no room for anything to go wrong, in terms of trying to catch up time, and today something did go wrong. Sleep and food – the keys to lasting the course. […]

When I said goodbye to Geoff last night, he thought he was going to die. It turns out he had had, according to initial tests, a heart attack. What?! His family were flying out, and he said to me he wanted to see them one last time. Sounds dramatic, doesn’t it? But Geoff’s no drama queen, I assure you. That’s how bad things looked. We left to find an RV park on the Colorado River, to get some much-needed sleep. A couple of hours later, Geoff was medically evacuated by helicopter. Dad, who has joined our crew for the first […]

(Our beloved Geoff Morris) Nobody would have guessed how today would pan out. It’s been a very memorable day for the wrong reasons this time. It took us a long time to get away. I’d been up since 4am. The views outside under the stars were amazing. Actually it had taken a while to get to sleep because of my sheer elation to have made it through yesterday. And then I had to contend with Geoff’s snoring, closely followed by John’s, and then Craig’s, all distinctive in tone but equally effective at keeping me awake for a while until the […]

Greetings from somewhere in the desert! What a day! We were up at 515 AM to prepare to leave from just North of San Diego.  We dipped our bikes in the sea and began our 3,152 mile journey across this huge country. These are 8 guys with us for the first few days, and they have brought a great team of chefs and supporters to make the start a real cracker.  (Bike for Burundi team getting ready to bike 3,000+ miles!)  (Team dipping their back tires in the Pacific Ocean)(The RV at the beach) We knew the first 50 miles […]

So we’re almost ready to role. In the pictures you’ll see our home for the next five weeks, with John Stinson (driver, chef, masseuse, shopper, etc) and David Strauss (videographer). Here they are putting on our Bike For Burundi stickers, having just driven across the USA from East to West coast in preparation to be our support back from San Diego to Charleston. Thanks again to Todd Gaylord for lending us his RV for the trip, it’s an incredible blessing. So, now you can picture us, please pray we all make it, stay sane(!), safe and healthy, and raise lots of awareness and interest in […]

Greetings from somewhere in the desert! What a day! We were up at 515am to prepare to leave from just North of San Diego.  We dipped our bikes in the sea and began our 3,152 mile journey across this huge country. There are 8 guys with us for the first few days, and they have brought a great team of chefs and supporters to make the start a real cracker. We knew the first 50 miles would be a killer – it was almost all uphill into the mountains and the sun was blazing down on us. I doubted my knees […]

I’m writing this from Cincinnati on my way to LA. So as the big day for Bike for Burundi draws nearer, this is the culmination of hundreds of emails, dozens of hours of planning, thousands of miles of training on the road, on the treadmill, in the pool, etc. And after 5 months of being injured and trying to build up body strength, particularly in my knees, the moment of truth has arrived. How do I feel? Well, I am desperate to make the whole ride. It has consumed so much of my time, focus, energy, and thoughts for eight […]