Our Journey is over

Hey all,

We are returning our rental car here in Dillion, MT. Tomorrow we leave Montana via the Greyhound. Jamie goes to visit family in South Dakota, I go to Portland and eventually a prosthetics conference in Vancouver, BC. We've shipped our bikes home. The past couple days we've spent driving the course as my shoulder injuries from spearing a tree with my head* make riding very uncomfortable. Now there's plenty time to reflect on what happened to us over the past 10 weeks.

The riding portion of this trip was only a small fraction of what it takes to complete the Great Divide. Dealing with weather, food and water supplies (sometimes foul), navigation, never ending hospital adventures, and each other make this one of the hardest things I've ever accomplished. In the end, it was also one of the most rewarding things I have ever done. You see and experience so many amazing things while learning so much about how your body responds to the enviroment that it makes up for all the hard climbs, sitting in the ER with an IV in your arm, the rain, wind and intense heat, running away from bears, injuries, the list goes on and on. In the end the trip was indeed "Brutiful"** and we're both glad we expereinced every bit of it. We may not have been able to complete every mile on the trail but in the end it's all about the journey and we've had quite a journey.

So a great big thank you to all the folks that have helped us out along the way. People that carried us to the hospital when we got sick, gave us water in South Park, took us into town to buy groceries, shipped us out new tires, once again the list goes on and on. This trip has certianly shown that there are indeed a lot of nice folks out there and we thank y'all very much.

I will be back in Atlanta by August 7th, Jamie will return August 10th. Hope all is well with y'all!

Lee

The final statistic is that my odometer reads 2068 miles. That took 316 hours of riding in the saddle over about 65 days. My average speed for all of that is 6.54 miles per hour. Jamie's ride ended at about mile 1700. We spent 14 days recovering from some sort of sickness.

*See previous post "New Pictures are uploaded"

**"Brutiful" coined by the marketing lady at Big Anges in Steamboat during her bike ride across Turkey. Sorry, we can't remember her name.