Almost instantly as the message came through it started raining. When I’m at home in bed, I love the sound of rain hitting the window, its gives you that feeling of warmth and security. This was not the same; it could not have been more different. The rain drops felt like bowling balls hitting the RV lightning crashed all around us, and the thunder bellowed in the heavens so loud and angry that the RV seemed to cower in fear. The humidity of the day was being broken in the most tremendous way. I lay there thinking to myself, “Are we even going to be here in the morning?”
Can You Tell Me the Way to Columbia?
Everything hurt – everything. Not just my legs or my feet, but everything. I felt like I had been giving a piggy back to the heaviest person on the planet. I wittered to myself all morning on the bike, cursing the stupid idea of ever coming to America in the first place. “What sort of an idiot does this for their summer holidays?” I asked myself. “What sort of an imbecile is out in the pouring rain on a bike that changes gears whenever it feels like it?” I barked.
I kept myself busy most of the morning cursing the film Forest Gump. “It can’t have been real,” I said to myself, “it is utter rubbish! There is no way he ran all that way and didn’t swear once!” I was swearing at anything and everything, if a squirrel farted 3 miles away it got a piece of my mind, but mainly, I was swearing at myself.
WEATHER WARNING FLASH FLOOD ALERT FOR PITTSBURGH AREA Photo Gallery
I also couldn’t help but swear at the rain, it was becoming a joke now. The maps we were following were pretty much of no use now as the roads were being closed due to flooding. Imagine if you can, been in a foreign country, then imagine you have decided (stupidly decided – I might add) to run and cycle across it (around 3000 miles). Imagine then that you don’t have a clue where you’re going and to top it all off after 6 days of running and cycling you end up getting lost and it becomes apparent that you have simply travelled in a big circle – I do not have to imagine this, I have done it! As you can probably appreciate, when I began to see the same shops coming back into sight my heart sank. I couldn’t get mad at the team; they were doing everything they could to make sure I was safe and to help me get to the other side of America. It is at times like this, the times where you want to cry, that you realise that you have just hit bottom
My ass was sore from the saddle, my legs were empty, water dripped off of the end of my nose, a constant torturous drip, the kind you start to focus on and then get angry at. Just as this entire morning was seemingly building to a scream-infested, crying-fit of a climax, Helen wound down the window and asked me:
“So, how far is it to Colombia?”
“Well Helen, it’s about 5000 miles I reckon and it’s on a different continent! I don’t think I will make it today!” I replied forcing the words out through tears of laughter.
“OOOOOO.. .that’s a long way!” was the only reply Helen could muster.
This is the reason that I had the team there, something so simple put a big smile back on my face.
It was now 1 o’clock in the afternoon and I had spent the entire morning cycling in a deluge of rain that had continued from the previous evening. Saturated and thoroughly fed up I pushed onwards towards Columbus. We were heading out of the sticky and sweaty state of Pennsylvania and on in to Ohio.
Prior to my departure I had been sent some kit to use whilst I was in America, the majority of it was clothing to keep me warm which I didn’t think I would ever need but I was happy to take any donations. During a torrential downpour I wore every piece of clothing that they had sent me. It was scuba diving clothing and it proved brilliant on the bike, especially when it was raining.
We had come out of the south side of Pittsburgh, heading west towards Columbus. Earlier after we had been told we were not allowed to cycle on the interstates, we had tried to mirror the line of the interstate as much as possible, where quite often the older, quieter highways ran parallel.
As we moved into Ohio the weather changed again, the sun came out and the rain disappeared, clothing was quickly shed and the horrific morning of rain was forgotten in a haze of blistering heat. The little towns look so much more appealing in the sun, the white picket fences reflect the sunlight and help to brighten up the day. Moving through the little towns, families sat on their porches, sometimes sitting on a little swing seat and children played with baseballs and basketballs in the streets – this was Middle America, deep in the heart of the country. I loved it.
I was in the saddle eleven and a half hours – however, taking into account the breaks and rest stops, it totalled thirteen hours. From the rain soaked morning in Pittsburgh we had arrived just outside Columbus. It was late in the evening and navigation was the last thing on our minds, we avoided the city centre and set up camp on the outskirts of the city.
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