Malibu!

Hello everyone,

Our final day as I already mentioned was by far our longest at about 155 miles. The nice thing about this was we were able to give our bags to my sister in Palm Springs so we shed about 50 pounds off the bikes by doing that. We still knew we were in for a rough start as we were headed out of Palm Springs and saw tons of windmills off in the distance spinning like crazy. Before long we hit the strongest headwind of the trip that lasted for about twenty miles. If we stopped pedaling the wind literally blew us backwards. After we got out of the wind we had a slight problem that forced us to alter our route a bit. The Morongo Indians won't let anyone but tribe members on their reservation so we had to ride past the giant sign that said no bicycles for another little trip on I-10. I don't think the cops care too much about that law though because three of them drove past us and didn't even slow down. As we got closer to our destination and the giant cloud of smog that is Los Angeles enveloped us we seemed to have new life and our pace quickened. At the same time though we hit LA traffic lights and LA traffic, which in turn slowed us down. We took Wilshire all the way from downtown LA to the coast and it was definitely an adventure riding through traffic like that. At one point we were stopped in the middle of a traffic jam that we couldn't even squeeze through and Chris somehow managed to topple over. I think the people in the car behind us probably got a pretty good laugh about it. I think the most exciting part of the day though was when we reached Santa Monica and saw the Pacific Ocean (it was the first time Chris had ever seen it. We then just had a short ten mile ride along the coast to where we met my sister in Malibu. Upon our arrival I finally got to satisfy my sushi craving that I've had for the past 29 days, and I got to sit back and enjoy a beer with the knowledge that I didn't have to get back on the bike the next morning.

Just to give you a little overview of the trip, we averaged 13.7 miles per hour over the course of our 2,635 mile journey. We also had 90,670 feet of climbing over this distance, which is equivalent to climbing Mt. Everest....3 times. We aslo burned a total of 113,000 calories in our 28 days of riding. We would have to eat 210 big macs to put that back in to our bodies (which we definitely do not plan to do).

Well we are here but we are still a few hundred miles short of our goal distance so Chris and I are planning some day trips around the area that will get us up to 3,000 miles in the next few weeks that we plan to spend hanging out around Malibu. Also we want to thank everyone that has been so supportive during our whole trip. We will be sending out a letter to everyone that has pledged throughout the course of our trip with the details of donating. Also if you are reading this and would like more information or are interested in donating just drop me a line at cummingd@msu.edu. Some details are included in our post from Day 8 as well. We'll keep you posted on when we hit that elusive 3,000 mile mark and we look forward to hearing from you all again soon.

Thanks again,
Don & Chris