El fin.

67 days, over 4,000 miles, 117 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  I can now say I biked across the United States of America and it won’t be a lie.  I started my journey at Point Pleasant Beach, NJ on August 13th.  It was summer and rained for two days straight.  I got a flat before I had gone 50 miles.  Despite that I made it out of New Jersey and across Penn “what does flat mean” sylvania.  I blitzed through Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois as fast as I could before I finally slowed down in Iowa.  I also started meeting incredibly friendly strangers who helped me along my way. Corn gave way to cattle as Iowa became Nebraska and then Colorado.  The Rockies proved to be fairly easy, but the next two states made up for it.  Utah was one of my hardest states, but also one of the most beautiful.  In Nevada I developed a love/hate relationship with Summit signs.  And California was a welcome return to warm weather. 

Today, Tuesday October 18, my journey ended at Limantour Beach in Point Reyes, CA just around sunset.  Not that you can tell from my picture due to the heavy fog.  It was exciting to finish, but I don’t think I’ve completely processed what it is I just did.  Looking back its hard to imagine that all those miles, each one difficult in its own way, added up to take me here.  Part of me is saying “holy crap, I can’t believe I just bike across the country, on a bicycle!”  But another part of me is going “ok, that was fun, what’s next?” 

I’d like to thank everyone who enjoyed the blog: friends, family, and people I don’t know but somehow found their way here. I’d especially like to thank everyone who let me be their guest: Greg, Christine, Dick, Polly, Jon, Suzanne, Tom, Jane, Todd, Dana, Tracey, Gia, Short, Deb, Bruce, Joan, David, Marsha, Ben, Randy, Lois, Mark, Jan, Keith, Rosa, Terri Ann, Lyman, Lynn, Jodie, Wally, Scott, Pam, and anyone I might have accidentally left out.  People were always suprised that I was riding by myself, but you all made sure I wasn’t lonely.

This will be the last official blog post.  I’ll probably do one more followup once I get home in a couple weeks, update the map and stats page, upload more photos, etc.  Thanks for sharing my journey with me.  I’ll be back for gibbsonabike.com Part II: Eurotrip.