The end of Impermanence - Greensboro

The perfection of the ride to Reidsville was also in the inclemency of the weather the following day.  More rain and headwinds - but with the end in sight a mere 42 km away, one feels bouyed and the load lightened.  Ongoing icing of my knee in the evenings, proper warm-ups and stretching in the morning, and a healthy diet of regular anti-inflammatories were delivering some power back to my right leg.  Leftie was feeling fit with all the extra work done in the days before.  

On a bridge in North Carolina - matching bike and clothes you'll note.

 I had some calls in the morning, and another in the afternoon, so I just hammered the last bit in two hours with photo stops on the way.  The scenery, despite the weather, was fantastic America all the way.

The outskirts of Greensboro - the big dog arrives.

On Big Blue at a traffic light in Greensboro - the season's leaves landing.

Day 5 - Reidsville to the O'Henry Hotel in Greensboro - 42km

All in all I rode just over 500 kms - about 20kms more than Knysna to Cape Town via the N2, to put it in perspective.  What takes five and a bit hours by car, takes four and a half days working hard under human power. 

Arriving in Greensboro was one sort of joy - the hotel was entirely another.  It's a long journey, both figuratively and literally, from the Lake Anna Lodge to the O'Henry Hotel of Greensboro.  Standing in the lobby, literally dripping, I was asked (ever so slightly frostily) "How can I help you ... sir" to which I could answer with a super endorphin cheer "I am coming to stay with you for a few days".

The lounge at the O'Henry Hotel.

My group at CCL - superbright interesting people.  The first part of the program was
FANTASTIC.

I will try to describe what I learned along the way in some other form - but it really was an incredible (and frankly, quite humbling) experience that I feel hugely motivated by.  I will however leave you with this anecdote which made me laugh: one of the group activities was in a big room, and your group had to unpack something from a box and assemble it.  Of course the learning was much more fiendishly clever than the task (which I could do with closed eyes, practically), but it was none other than to assemble ... a bicycle :-)

At the end of it all I was spinning with questions and doubts and optimism and life-regret and all the stuff that a killer learning confrontation contained.  I had not really planned my trip back to Charlottesville where I'm working for the first four days of this week - but thankfully my delightful colleague Craig Linqvist stepped in - he'd driven down in his absolute beast of a bakkie - and I didn't even need to take one of the wheels off to fit big blue in.

Rollin with The Linqvist - what a touring bike limo really looks like.