May 8 - Day 120

Today was a fabulous day!  It seemed everything came into alignment to make for a special last day of riding before entering Capetown.  It was a crisp cold start to the day.  I had on my windbreaker vest jacket, my arm warmers and my windbreaker jacket and I was still freezing.  Even when the sun was up it took a while to warm up.  It had that crispness of fall in the air again.  The ride was wonderful as we rode past orchards of Apple trees and groves of maple and oak trees painted with beautiful fall colors.  It was a quintessential fall day.  All we needed was a hay ride and some hot chocolate to make it a full midwestern fall day.  Priceless....

Sign sharing humor:

There was a sign on the road today.  It read:  Potholes Ahead.  Most people would have thought... Ok, thanks I will be on the lookout.  But of course, I thought about in a different way.  My first thought was... A complaint must have come into the highway department and brought up at a meeting.  The meeting probably went something like this...  the head of the department asked what is to be done about the pothole complaint.  And a person attending the meeting responded, let's call him Dilbert.  Dilbert said those potholes can be dangerous and cause accidents and injuries.  The boss responded with a high degree of concern... We need to do something, what should we do?  Dilbert responded...  we should warn them with a sign.  Everyone at the meeting agreed that it was a good idea.  Dilbert was assigned the Pothole Sign Warning Project and told to report back with progress on a regular basis.  Dilbert called the graphics department and asked for them to work on mock ups since there were no stock "Pothole Warning" signs.  Graphics works up several different versions and sends them to Dilbert.  But Dilbert doesn't want to make a decision of this magnitude on his own so he sends it to a committee.  The committee orders several more revisions until they arrive at one that then needs to be sent to the head of the department for final sign off.  Once that has taken place, Dilbert can order the sign department to make up the sign.  The sign department sends an order over to the paint department who makes the sign background, yellow color of course and sends it to the lettering department.  Once this is done it is sent to Dilbert who sends an order to the road crew to have a post put up for the sign.  The road crew sends an order to the survey crew to assign the right spot on the roadway for the sign.  They go out and mark the spot with a marker.  They then contact the road crew to go out and dig a hole for the post.  Then a crew comes out to pour cement to solidify the post.  Then an order is dispatched to the installation crew to come out 5 days later to allow time for the post to set in the concrete.  Once the installation crew comes out and affixes the sign, then I can ride by it and read it and wonder ....  Why in the hell didn't they just fill the pothole and save everybody all the time and money and aggravation?!

(See what 4 months on a bike can do to your mind?)

Here is another sign you won't see on one of your weekend rides:

Tomorrow is the day we ride into Capetown and finish this Epic of Adventures.  It is so hard to believe, it has been an amazing hard fought journey.  Four months of an adventure...  Wow!

By the time you get up tomorrow (Saturday) I will have finished my ride.  It will be bittersweet.  :)      :(