Achtung! Correction!

In Day 2's post, I made an error. The festival of St. Peter where we drank beer and ate bratwurst and met some extremely nice folks was not in Offstein, it was in Westhofen. Michael, who took the lovely photo of us eating bratwurst and drinking beer, sent us an email to let us know the mistake, but we didn't find it until today amid all the bustle of the trip.

Sorry for the mistake, but thanks for the wonderful lunch!

Epilogue :: Prologue

As I said before, Big Ben wasn't quite the end of our journey. We'd only covered about 772 miles when we got there, so we still had a bit of work to do. Around 12:30 AM, on 07/07/07, we headed out into the cool London night to finish what we started. The sections of the prologue course on the main roads of central London wouldn't be closed until morning, but we were able to get out onto the back section of the prologue course in Hyde Park to ride a couple of laps. Here we are outside of the fancy gates into Hyde Park. Nigel has become too fast for focus.

Riding around the Tour de France prologue course was an incredible feeling of being in the presence of greatness. There were a bunch of cyclists out on the course, all grinning from ear to ear just like I'm sure we were. In short order, we'd crossed over 777 on 07/07/07, and we headed off to bed to finally get a much deserved morning sleeping in before watching the big prologue on Saturday afternoon.

The prologue was packed. Between the prologue and the following day's stage 1 from London to Canterbury, several million people came out to watch the tour in England. I took that picture above as I was walking over a temporary pedestrian bridge next to Buckingham Palace. There were so many cycling fans in attendance that it took about 20 minutes to wait in line and finally get over the bridge, but fortunately, I stayed well hydrated thanks to my friends at Big Shark Bicycles.

In addition, Mike Weiss and his crew were a big help with our fundraising efforts. Mike put us in touch with a bunch of events, including the Tour de Winghaven and the Tuesday Night World Championship Criteriums, where we were able to set up shop and talk to folks about allsevens and World Bicycle Relief. So a big allsevens thanks goes out.

The racing was crazy fast. I've been around a lot of bicycles in my life, but I've never heard anything like the deep-throated thrumming of the disc wheels rolling by on the pavement. The most incredible thing of all was that the sound didn't go whoomp-whoomp-whoomp as they pedalled by – it was just a completely smooth, even sound to match the perfectly smooth pedalling of these professional badasses.

I had a great vantage point to watch the race, just up from the flamme rouge - aka the 1 km to go marker. Riders were really winding it up at this point, and I also had a view of one of the big video screens so that I could follow along with who was winning and losing while I watched the racers go by. This was also one of the points on the course where riders were going both ways, so I was lucky to get right up against the barriers and get to see a ton of action. This was not a day I'll soon forget.

That night, we headed out for a celebratory dinner. Chris was excited to be done riding and move on to enjoying some fine wine.

We sat out on the sidewalk at a beautiful little Italian restaurant, where out cockney waiter/aspiring actor did a fine job of pretending to be Italian all night, although sometimes he slipped into speaking French instead of Italian as he chased every woman who passed by down the sidewalk. All things considered, a beautiful meal, a wonderful evening, and a fantastic end to a great adventure. The next morning, I was up early to catch a train to Heathrow and board the 777 that would take me back home to St. Louis via New York, exhausted, happy, and feeling like a champion.

Thanks for reading. There should be more appendices/updates coming in the next few weeks, but that's the end of this chapter of my story. It feels funny and a bit sad writing that, but I'm grateful for all the memories and the stories I'll be telling long into the future. If it's true that, as my dad loves to say, 'al tapuach lo yaredt ra'choch ma ha'etz' which is my terrible transliteration of the hebrew phrase which means 'the apple doesn't fall far from the tree', years from now, I'll be asking my grown children, who have heard the story of the time I climbed La Redout about 777 times, whether I've ever told them about the time I climbed La Redout. I'm looking forward to that.

Please do check back for fundraising totals, more pictures, and updates from the other members of the allsevens team. Also, if you're reading this on Tuesday, check the today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch for their follow-up article on the conclusion of the allsevens tour. Thanks to Joe Holleman at the Post for checking back in with us and to Kathy Leonard at Geile-Leon Marketing Communications for helping us to make those connections – it was good meeting you, and we appreciate your help in getting the word out about allsevens and World Bicycle Relief.

From Basel to Big Ben - We Made It!!!

6 days after reaching Big Ben, I still feel taller than that old clock tower.

Day 7 wasn't completely easy, but it felt like a victory lap. We rolled off the ferry early in the morning and found a parking lot to unload the bikes. It almost felt tingly getting on the bike – despite the wind being in our faces, we only (ha!) had 85 miles to cover and there weren't any big hills to climb. Right off the bat, we saw a sign we'd been waiting all week to see.

We followed a signed bicycle route for most of the morning, and made it to the outskirts of London for a late lunch, where we Met up with Lizzie and Maggie to plan our final assault on London.

We were a bit nervous about the traffic going into London, especially with it being a Friday afternoon, so we agreed to take it just a little bit at a time, and if it got too crazy, we would pull a classic Tour de France move and take the train or call the van or something. However, I'd like to take this chance to give big ups to Ken Livingston, the Mayor of London, for his efforts to make London a more cycle-friendly place. All the way in, we had the right of way in the bus lanes, and drivers were relatively nice to us. Chris and Nigel both seemed to remember riding in London having been much scarier than it turned out to be, and before we knew it, whoomp! There it was:

I can't describe the feeling of getting there. After 777 miles (almost, more below) of rain, cold, climbs, and wandering, there we were, riding up to the base of Big Ben. From the Rhine to red buses. From Switzerland to the Sea. From Basel to Big Ben.

We rolled up to meet Maggie and Lizze, and I ran across the street in my cycling shoes to the Tesco express and bought a bottle of Champagne. We popped the cork standing at the base of Big Ben and passed it around. I guess our dirty cycling jerseys made us look enough like we had a reason to celebrate that nobody bothered us for drinking on the corner in front of the houses of parliament in the middle of a Friday afternoon. This is how we all felt:

And here's the happy family: tired, sore, and full of pride at all we'd accomplished together. Everyone in this picture is straight down for the cause – don't doubt it:

Of course, nothing as complicated as the allsevens tour could be this simple – we had actually overestimated our distance a bit, and had only ridden about 772 miles, so we had a little more ground to cover before we could be totally satisfied to pack it away. But yeah, cover that ground we would, in the fabulous epilogue to our ride to the prologue (check this space tomorrow).

But standing there at the base of Big Ben, with 777 miles (almost) in our legs and a bottle of bubbly in our heads, we felt on top of the world in a way I never have before. I'd never done anything as hard or as fun as allsevens. I'd never felt so high.

I owe a great debt of gratitude to all those who supported and encouraged me in preparing for and executing the allsevens tour, both materially and emotionally. It was your support that pulled me over the highest hills and through the bitterest cold. Thank you.

Yo, Ho, Yo, Ho, A Dutch Seaman's Life For We!

By day 6, our second day in the Netherlands, we'd realized that we didn't really need to stick to the marked long distance cycle routes, since there were bike lanes absolutely everywhere we went. Armed with this newfound knowledge, we set off for Scheveningen and Hoek Ver Holland via a more direct route, to ensure we'd make it in plenty of time to board the overnight ferry to Harwich.

The wind was mostly whipping in our faces on Thursday, but we saw little rain and more sun than we'd seen since day 2, so were glad for that, and the wind gave us the chance to see some of Holland's antique windmills actually operating along the route.

By mid-afternoon, the wind and too much map reading had us a bit worn down, when out of nowhere, a magical character, who we have come to refer to as Peter von Bombadil (after J.R.R. Tolkien's Tom Bombadil) appeared to help us along the way. We were riding along a canal on the South side of Rotterdam When Peter rode up and asked where we were going (we must have looked a bit lost). He offered to show us the way for the next 25 or so km, and pulled to the front of the pack, setting a pace we could barely hold of 20+ mph into the wind. He proudly told us that he was 60 years old, had been racing for 40 years, and that this was his first time back on the bike after being layed up for several weeks with bronchitis – the resemblance to Molly Shannon's high-kicking 50-year-old character on SNL was striking (YOUTUBE LINK). He pointed out many of the local sights for us, including the spot where the levees broke in 1953, putting the city of Rotterdam under 6 meters of water, and proudly told us all about the Dutch flood protection system, in between waving to all his friends who were out running and cycling along the levee. I tried to take our new friend's picture while we were riding, but he demurred. I thought maybe he was camera shy (if not in any other way) until he pulled over into the parking lot of a restaurant inside an old windmill and declared that this was the spot for pictures.

Standing in the parking lot, we told Peter what we were doing and where we were going, which launched him into a diatribe about how much he hated the Tour de France, because so many of his talented friends had never had the chance to compete in it, and because everyone who did was on dope. He said that many of those he'd ridden with in his younger days were either dead, imbecilic, or impotent from doping, but he assured us that, even at 60 years old, he was none of these. Unfortunately, I can't print his exact wording of that threat in this space. From there, Peter led us on a few more kilometers to get us pointed in the right direction out of Rotterdam.

Later, Chris caught a draft on a golf cart at about 12 mpg, and it was hilarious. Invigorated by the high spirits of our new friend, we soon reached a site we'd been dreaming of for several days.

Sea ho!

From there, it was just a short ride up the coast to Schveiningen, site of the (year) prologue, where we met up with Lizzie and Maggie and drove down to Hoek ver Holland to catch the ferry to Harwich. Along the way, we stopped for a photo with one of our 3 favorite road signs of the trip (not counting German exit signs – if you want to know, plug “exit” into a German translator – we're not a mature group)

Thinking happy thoughts of my puppy back home, we boarded the ferry, ate some dinner, and caught some sleep to get ready for what we could hardly believe would already be our final day of riding on the allsevens tour – Harwich to Big Ben and Le Grand Depárt!

Over The River And Through The Woods, To S'Hertogenbosch We Go.

For day 5, the weather was looking somewhat improved. We weren't expecting rain all day this time. Plus, it was mostly a flat course after a couple tough but short climbs on the way out from Liege, the armpit of the allsevens tour, to S'Hertogenbosch (pronounciation note: not for the faint of heart, includes strong stops on both the t and the n, coming in at a cool 7 syllables). Even though today's ride only covered about 110 miles, it turned out to be our longest day out on the road, at about 14 hours. This day was a good example of what made the allsevens tour such an adventure – we never quite knew what the day's big challenge would be until we got out there and started riding.

The first challenge was a couple of steep, unexpected climbs, but those were quickly behind us, and we made our way into the low country of Holland and the region of Belgium that borders it. At our feeding stop, I got to try my first ever gooseberries. They're tart and delicious, especially when baked into a fruit tart.

Soon after breakfast, we crossed the river (woods to come) into Holland and hooked up with the network of Dutch long-distance cycle routes. Let me just say that Holland has got their bike lane situation locked down – it's incredible. Every road in Holland has bike lanes, and cyclists have the right of way everywhere but on the major highways, which all have parallel cycle tracks, often on both sides. I absolutely tip my helmet to the Dutch on this. Even better, everyone seems to use the lanes – there were cyclists all over the place, even in some crummy weather, riding with groceries, for exercise, and even to take the pony out for a trot.

(editorial note – that photo is actually from day 6)

As it turned out, the Dutch have such an amazing network of bike lanes for getting from place to place that their long-distance cycle tracks are built for a different purpose than we might have imagined. They're really sightseeing tracks, that weave over the cobblestones of every town center, with lots of twists and turns that made our progress slow and a bit difficult. But eventually, we got the hang of reading the road signs and began to pick up the pace.

Around then, as promised, we hit the woods. Although our long-distance cycle maps didn't indicate it, the path we were on took an unfortunate turn through the woods on a road that had been completely washed out, and had degraded into a narrow, sandy trail, not especially suited for road racing bikes. But as before, we pressed on and made it through with only our 3^rd flat tire of the day (it was my turn, and Nigel would get his 2^nd of the day before S'Hertogenbosch). About halfway through the forest, when we had just about collapsed into a heap of hysterical laughter at our situation, we came upon a convoy of military Land Rovers and soldiers on foot practicing their outdoor survival skills. This was not something any of us expected to pass on the allsevens tour.

When we finally made it to our last stop, we were dirty and soaked, but the sun was coming out and we enjoyed a snack at an outdoor cafe sitting under a windmill. This is what my bike looked like by that point:

Now that's what I call a bike. You might notice the orange-topped water bottle there from Mesa Cycles, one of the sponsors of the allsevens tour, as well as my fine steed, a Giant TCR C2, which I love and which rode beautifully under some difficult conditions. From the totally shameless plugs department, Mesa is a Giant dealer (among other fine brands), and they're real nice folks if you're in the market.

This is the part of the day where riding got really fun, we headed out for the last hour or two into S'Hertogenbosch, and found ourselves in a tailwind on a beautiful country road between colonnades of tall trees. Zooming along, it felt absolutely like the end of one of professional cycling's spring classics you see on television.

We finally rolled up to our hotel, the Golden Tulip, at nearly 10 PM, just as the light was failing. It was a beautiful old hotel, and S'Hertogenbosch, site of the 1996 Tour prologue, was an incredibly beautiful old city. It was so gorgeous, in fact, that we were all a little surprised that we didn't really know about this city beforehand, and disappointed that all we had time for was a quick bite and off to bed after burying the day's casualties:

S'Hertogenbosch, we will definitely meet again.

Belgium Is As Flat As A Waffle With Ice Cream And Whipped Cream On Top.

There were a lot of things that we thought might go wrong on the allsevens tour. We thought it might be blazing hot or raining buckets, that we might get hopelessly lost, that someone might crash or break a wheel, or that we might be detained by authorities who thought my carbon fiber bike was some sort of stealth spying device. Fortunately, none of those things happened. Unfortunately, today was ridiculously cold - none of us ever thought that it might be too cold, but it was. When I left St. Louis, I didn't even bring tights or long-sleeved bike jerseys. Only as an afterthought did I ask Jenny to take them to Nigel so that he could bring them along when he and Mark came a few days later. I have never been as glad as yesterday to have warm clothes.

It was day 2 in the Ardennes, a hilly region in Luxembourg and Belgium. We set off from our hotel just North of central Luxembourg early in the morning, looped down to the city center and picked up our route to the Northwest. On the way out of town, we dropped down a ridiculously steep hill through the back of a neighborhood, and I hadn't had coffee yet, so I was taking the corners extremely slowly and the guys got ahead of me. I came up to a corner and a security guard started shouting at me – all I understood was “privat” so I went straight out to the road, but I saw no team. It turned out that they had taken a 'shortcut' straight through the porcelain factory at the bottom of the hill. Unsurprisingly, shortcut was an ironic name for the route they took, because Chris had a piece of porcelain through his tire and it went flat. But, while he changed it, I found some wild raspberries by the roadside for a delicious morning snack.

Around 10, we stopped for a coffee, and were so freezing cold and wet that we seriously considered whether or not we could make it to the end. That's right, in July, we weren't sure whether it would be warm enough to ride our bicycles. But we hadn't come all this way just to wimp out, and we did have on fairly warm gear, so we decided to ride for another couple of hours and see how we felt. So, we started to climb. And climb. And climb. Several long climbs were over 3-5 km, all with switchbacks where as soon as you thought the top was in sight, another top would appear around the corner to crush all your hopes, dreams, and legs.

After we dropped down from one particularly vicious pass, with the wind howling and the raindrops stinging our faces, we noticed that all of a sudden, the road signs had changed, and we were now in Belgium – 5 coutries down, 2 to go. This had our spirits high when we reached Bastogne, site of the Battle of the Bulge. There's a memorial there with an American tank that was destroyed during the battle of the bulge, and despite the rain, there was a constant stream of kids climbing on and in the tank to have their pictures taken.

We decided to stop for lunch, but Mark didn't want to include a slow walk across a parking lot in his day's average speed, so he picked up the front wheel. We are absolutely committed to our cause.

On the way out of lunch, it was so cold and wet that I was shaking by the time we closed the 10 feet from the front door to our bikes. We all knew that once we got rolling, we would warm up, so we moved fast to get out of town and moving. We got a great surprise when we turned up the road out of Bastogne into a strong tailwind and were actually quite comfortable as long as we kept moving, though we were neither warm nor dry by any stretch of the imagination.

The route to Liege that we were following was approximately the route of one of professional cycling's spring classics, Liege-Bastogne-Liege, which as you might imagine, goes from Liege to Bastogne and back. At the gas station that served as our final stop, we got some insight into what Belgium is supposed to look like in July.

Finally, as the sun came out and began to dry us out, our last task after that was to climb one of the great hills of Bastogne-Liege, known as La Redout. La Redout is not long – only 1.7 kilometers, and the first half is not very steep at all. But La Redout is, at parts, an absolute wall, curving sharply around a hillside that constantly obscures the top, tricking you again and again into thinking it's nearly done, so that even when you've reached the summit, you can't quite trust yourself to celebrate. This is what makes La Redout a classic, and conquering La Redout is one of the things that hopefully makes us cyclists by the end of the week.

From there, it was a relatively easy drop down into Liege, and it only took us a few minutes to find our hotel. Another successful day, that left us soaking, tired, cold, and feeling like champions. That's what it's all about.

P.S. If you're reading this, you may be saying to yourself "Hey, self, shouldn't they have reached London by now?" Well, we have. This afternoon around 5, we rolled up to the base of Big Ben , where we popped a cork and drank a bottle of champagne standing at the base. I promise more on the last days of the trip in the next couple of days, and I apologize for some technical and tiredness issues that have delayed postings. Thanks to everyone who helped make allsevens a success.

A Long Day's Journey Into Almost Night

First things first, I'd like to give you all an update on day 3 (Monday). There's a lot to say about Monday's ride. The first, and most important, thing is that it was very long, and very hard. The word 'epic' is completely appropriate in this situation. In 13 total hours, we covered 135 miles (217 km)

We started out from Mainz in a light rain, making our way towards Luxembourg before nightfall.

Riding the expected 150 miles during daylight hours was certainly not physically beyond us, but to do so on top of whatever weather conditions we might face, and the difficulties of navigating in a foreign country with unfamiliar roads was not something we were sure we could do. After the day's first couple of rainy hours, we stopped at a little cafe for a snack. We ordered coffee, thinking that was all we would get, but then I remembered the “brot” from yesterday's menus and we managed to order some bread and cheese, which came out as a gorgeous ploughman's breakfast of German Rye, cheese, tomatoes, onions, and boiled eggs. As we sat and ate, the sun came out. Things were definitely looking up.

From there, we set off for several hours of climbing in the this section of Southwest Germany is extremely hilly, and all day we were heading up into the wind, but we felt strong and we just kept spinning. We reached our highest peak at 713m sometime around midday.

But somehow, it just seemed like we kept climbing and climbing and climbing, through intermittent rain and continuous headwinds. That's seemed to be the way the last couple of days, but we must be crazy, because we're still having fun, laughing and joking with each other to keep spirits up. Nigel was telling us all afternoon that the Mosel river was just up ahead, but then there was always one more line of hills. Finally, around 6, we came over the last hill saw the river up ahead. The view from the top of that hill was breathtaking. It was like the last scene in The Land Before Time when the dinosaurs finally come over the hill to the breeding grounds.

It's a pretty picture, but I won't even try to explain what a beautiful sight it was to us. From there, we dropped down by the river, got in a paceline, and started making good time. We headed down into Trier, which is one of the best-preserved Roman cities in the world, but only had time for a glance on our way past. The hour or two along the river there turned into what I hope will be the toughest time of the tour for me. I got behind on food, and nearly quit, but the guys encouraged me, made sure I got some more food in, and we agreed to keep going for a little while and then re-evaluate. Within about 15 minutes of shoving down a bunch of food, I was feeling good again and taking my turns at the front of the paceline. We finally made it into Luxembourg around 8, feeling like champions. Despite the wind, despite the rain, despite fatigue, we'd made it.

Now tell me that's not the face of a champion. I dare you. Just by the way – there's an “xembourg” behind my head in that photo – the sign doesn't just say “Lu”

Although we felt great at that point, we weren't out of the woods yet. The sun was sinking, and we still had about 60 km to go by our planned route. This required some serious considering. We brought out the maps and Chris's GPS unit, and got some help from a guy who was out in his garage working on the car, and we quickly found a route about half that distance. As the rain picked up, and with some faint thunder off in the distance, we started up what turned out to be one of the prettiest roads we'd been on. It wound through the forest paralleling a stream and the railroad tracks from Trier to Luxembourg. Being so close to our destination, and a bit giddy to be frank, really had us rolling.

The final kilometers went by quickly, and in no time at all, we were near to the Plateau de Kirchberg and our hotel for the night. As our little road joined with a main highway, we stopped for a last snack and got directions from a convenience store clerk who pointed us onto the bike path that brought us all the way down within a mile or so of the hotel. Around 9:30, after 135 miles and 13 hours on the road, we rolled into the hotel parking lot under a setting sun, and couldn't have been more thrilled.

The Plateau de Kirchberg is a trip – it's an area to the Northwest of Luxembourg that I think can best be described as Dubai Europe. It's filled with skyscrapers and office parks sprouting up in the middle of a forest, a few miles distant from the center of Luxembourg, and obviously way ahead of the demand, as most of the place is still empty. It's definitely eerie.

Exhausted, we showered, ate dinner in the hotel restaurant, and went to bed to get up for another early start. C'est la allsevens.

On a side note, I'm sorry to be a day behind, but I'll do my best to catch up. As a quick update, day 4 was another tough one. It rained all day, and there were some tough climbs that never seemed like they would end, but our spirits stayed high, and we made it in. Now to bed.