Blog

On Tuesday, after discovering that I’d managed to leave my swimming shorts in the previous motel, we set off to the Typhoon Lagoon water park in Orlando. It is a part of the Disney World complex, though the inside was disappointingly/agreeably (depending on your point of view) empty in terms of Micky Mouse, Goofy et al.

As the name suggests, the park surrounds a large artificial sea, complete with a wave machine to generate an enormous swell every 90 seconds or so. Around the lagoon is a circular river full of inflatable rings, which is quite possibly the most relaxing way to cool down in Florida; the never ending loop of water flows at a gentle pace and without a bit of self-discipline it would be quite possible to spend all day floating on it.

Dotted about the park were a number of slides: some quick, some twisty, some for inflatable rafts and some for groups. They were all fun enough, but an interesting twist to the park was a cold sea-water pool full of fish, stingrays and sharks. After kitting up with a snorkel and mask, we were allowed to swim the short distance across the pool and look at the sealife beneath us.

In the late afternoon, thunder started to rumble and immediately everybody was ordered out of the water. While sitting waiting for the all-clear, Andy returned from a wander accompanied by a few familiar faces. Here in Orlando, more than 4000 miles from Durham, was my college son (don’t be alarmed, a college parent is a mentor assigned to new students at some British collegiate universities), Matt Johnston, and his two friends from Van Mildert College, David Lomax and Andrew Tattersfield. After exchanging the traditional “oh, what a small world” comments (these coincidences seem to happen surprisingly frequently to me), we laughed for a bit and went our separate ways.

The storm never actually hit the park, so once the thunder had ceased the water was re-opened. By this point, most people had given up and gone home, leaving the slides and other attractions delightfully queueless. We squeezed in as many rides as possible before closing time, then headed home via Downtown Disney.

Downtown Disney is basically a fake town with shops, bars and restaurants. After Neil and Leo bought some horrific Dolly Parton CDs from a Virgin Megastore, we ate at a restaurant and went back to the motel for the night.

The following day was the scheduled launch of Space Shuttle Endeavour from Cape Canaveral, so we were planning our activities around that. Rather than going to any particular attraction for a half day, we had a lie-in and drove to International Drive for lunch. I ate a steak with all-you-can-eat shrimp (breaded, so it was essentially scampi); I don’t know whether anyone has ever requested their plate to be refilled with shrimp because I was initially served with at least three or four times more than it was possible for me to eat alongside a steak, and I didn’t even touch my fries.

To highlight the fact that we were definitely not the only Englishmen to ever visit this town, the restaurant was next door to a British themed pub. Sadly, we didn’t go inside, but it fulfilled all of the available exterior requirements courtesy of the red phone box, Union Jack and the fact it was called the George & Dragon. We drove to a nearby flea market which was frankly crap; it sold only fake sunglasses and tacky gifts, although Leo did get a free keyring by redeeming a voucher he’d cut out of a brochure.

We drove through the baking heat back towards the Space Coast and the town of Titusville which overlooks the Kennedy Space Center launch pads. After arriving we found a spare stretch of roadside on which to leave the monster truck and staked out a viewing spot by the water with our towels. Three hours later, Endeavour blasted off from the horizon into the perfectly clear blue sky. Our view of the scene was, of course, nowhere near as spectacular as the close-up TV pictures show, but to see a piece of metal containing humans literally explode off the ground and soar towards the edge of the sky was a sight to behold. Within minutes, the shuttle would be travelling at 15,000 miles per hour, a speed that would have allowed the cyclists to complete their entire journey of the last five weeks in around 6 minutes. Such power is noisy, and perhaps thirty seconds after blast-off we were hit by the sound waves from the launch site. Sadly, the wind direction reduced the impact of the sound, but the low rumble coming from such a distance away was still dramatic.

At the point when the solid rocket boosters detached from the shuttle over the ocean, it became invisible to the naked eye and continued on its journey towards the International Space Station. At almost exactly the same moment, thousands of people jumped in their cars and decided to sit in a miles-long car park for hours. We decided to sit for an hour and a half by the water until the traffic queue at least began to move, then joined it ourselves. Still, it took over three hours to make the 50 mile journey back to Orlando.

Over the following couple of days, the cyclists made their way steadily towards the south of Florida, via Lake Okeechobee (memorable only because of its amusing name). Friday night was spent in the southern suburbs of Miami where we ate out at an Argentinean steak house that specialised in Italian cuisine. The proprietor was a friendly Argentinean man who insisted on talking to us about David Beckham’s LA Galaxy debut upon learning that we are English (perhaps surprisingly, he was the first person to mention Beckham since a Starbuck’s employee in New York state).

That evening I also realised that I’d managed to lose my replacement pair of swimming shorts that I’d bought at Typhoon Lagoon. Quite how I managed to miss a big pair of pinky-orange shorts with a garish design while clearing the motel room, I’m not sure.

The journey so far by Neil Crimes

I’m now sat in a super 8 motel, in a small town called Lumberton in North Carolina (Since initially writing this we have now reached Miami, Florida, but that’s a different story which I haven’t got round to yet!), after spending 3 weeks in the USA cycling over 800 miles! I thought I would update you all with the journey so far from my point of view, how it’s been so far from the point of view of the most unfit member of Team America!

Day One: After some initial bike problems we finally set off from Niagara Falls, Canada and it quickly became obvious that Leo and I would not be able to keep up with the pace of Andy and Alex, who were already a good mile ahead of us at the bottom of the first hill! So after a few miles struggling to keep up, we split up into our two groups, going at our own, still exhausting, pace! We quickly encountered problem one though: our maps. Me and Leo were using road maps of America to navigate from place to place, the problem with them was that they didn’t show any minor roads at all… so after an exhaustive 80 miles cycling we were stranded 10 miles away from the motel, in a different town, with no idea how to get home! This was where our support vehicle quickly came into play: we rang Rob and he was at our side in a few minutes to pick us up.

Day Two: Feeling great from our good cycle the day before, and amazed that we were still alive we set off on the 90+mile journey down to Itacha. We quickly realised that the American dream of straight flat roads was very far from the truth however, and after the most exhausting day we finally made it into Ithaca, over many, many hills and through many backward little towns. Once in Ithaca problem two hit us: Leo’s phone. In a word, rubbish. It doesn’t get signal anywhere and so made contacting Rob very difficult, not having a clue where we were; we wondered around the town for a bit and finally discovered the art of using an American pay phone. Home for 9pm…dead.

Day Three: thankfully we had to add an extra day into the itinerary, and we were also very lucky with terrain: gorgeous valleys to cycle through that made the journey very enjoyable indeed. It was on these days that Leo and I discovered the joys of great American cuisine, in the many amazing diners we frequented. We learnt the lingo and started to develop some muscle!

Problem number 3 surfaced today as well, something which would plague the rest of the trip: my bike. My gears gave in today and whenever I wanted to change the front gears I had to get off and change them manually: not the most enjoyable thing to be doing over the Appalachian mountains. We got it fixed however, and hoped for the best.

Day 4: WARNING: never plan a route that takes you through any town which has ‘summit’ in its title. Clarks Summit, NY in particular. I hope I never have to go there again, or if I do, I hope it is in a car. I was glad to have gears today at least. It is very disheartening to spend 5 hour cycling up hill only to then descend into a valley down a massive hill in the last 5 minutes.

Day 5: Nearly there, only two more days to go and then we would be in New York. At this point, I was a ghost, the walking dead, I was so tired and exhausted. Not only were we doing stupid distances each day, we were doing it day after day and over hills. They were the kind of journeys that you would be proud of if you did them once at home, we were doing them every day.
2 miles into the cycle however, problem 3 resurfaced, my bike, in spectacular fashion this time however: my derailleur came off, snapping the hanger and smashing into my rear spokes. Luckily I was going up hill so I wasn’t badly injured, if it happened 5 miles earlier at the end of the previous day, coming down a massive hill at 40 mph, I most certainly would have been in hospital.
I didn’t know what happened at first, but after looking at it, it became obvious that I would not be cycling anywhere until I could get my bike into a shop that specialises in my model and would be able to replace several parts. It was Sunday, and we were in a small part of New York State, we sat in a motel car park and tried to find a cycle shop… all closed except for those in New York City. Begrudgingly we left for our next destination planning to look further once there. To our surprise however we found a Trek bike specialist in the tiny town we were staying that night! It was closed on Sunday of course, but the next day we were able to take my bike in. My hopes that it would be ready for the afternoon and I could catch them up were soon slashed though, it was a bigger job then I had realised and he had to fashion a new hanger from a newer model for me, a job that took him a few hours. Come the afternoon, and a few trips around mineral museums and the like however, my bike was finally fixed and we rushed to New York to catch up the others, who had just arrived.

The few days in New York were fantastic, what an amazing city! We managed to see two shows, see a few museums and art galleries, wander around, and see the statue of liberty and go up the Empire State Building at night. This was a truely spectacular sight, even more so that I got to share it with Leo.

The next leg of our cycle started with a trip down to Atlantic City.. my first time on the bike in over a week. I was very excited. It looked like we had a fantastic day’s cycle through the forests as well, until my bike broke of course! It was only a simple problem this time though, the bolt securing my seat into place had snapped (metal fatigue like the previous failure I imagine), so we had to ring Rob and get him to pick us up so we could find a shop as quick as possible, not the easiest of tasks in the middle of a forest in New Jersey. We found one though and were back on the road in a few hours. We had a good day’s cycle up until the point our useless maps meant that we ended up in the wrong city on the Interstate, a very scary place to be on a pair of bikes! Rob, as always, came to rescue once again though and we were whisked to safety!

The next day was the loooong day, Atlantic City to Washington, over 3 states and with the added task of catching a ferry in the middle! All Leo and I asked for was that for one day we would not have any problems with our bikes. And guess what?! 5 punctures, a split tire, a broken valve extension and dodgy SPDs…. as expected really. We spent more than 3 hours trying to repair puntures and having to wait for Rob to get a new tire, this was certainly not the thing we wanted on the longest, and hottest days so far. We had to race to catch the ferry in time, we were the last on!

We had a really good cycle though, it was just a shame that we were so far behind because of our problems. We were still cycling at dusk when Rob had to come and collect us, about 15 miles from our destination. We saw some of the most amazing sights that will stay with us for the rest of my life on this day though. Dolphins on the ferry, deer running by the side of the road, and the most amazing sunset peaking through the trees in Delaware. We also had some of the worst food that will stay with us for ever, fried chicken from a very dirty shop in a petrol station… me and Leo are still recovering from the after affects!
Washington.. a few, very needed, days off again. Odd City, the buildings and monuments seemed to have to been placed all around this big green, and none of it really made very must sense to me, and all looked a bit fake, rather like someone had invented the Capital on Sim City or Theme Capital Tycoon.

The next couple of day’s cycling have taken us to where we are today, on the coast in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. I have found these few days cycling very difficult and have wanted to stop on many, many occasions. The surroundings have not been as inspiring, straight roads that go on forever, beside the interstate that zap the soul out of you. It hasn’t been the physical side of things that has been getting to me the most, but the mental, I think. I find that I really don’t enjoy cycling when I am on a busy road, or cycling by an Interstate, it really gets me down and I get tired, hot, and worked up a lot quicker. On the worst day I had to stop for a few hours beside the road and have a nap because the heat had got to me so much! The last few days have been good though because we have made sure that we have got up as early as possible to avoid the heat and have just cycled as fast and hard as possible to try and get everything done in the morning. The weather has been really good as well, a lot of cloud in the morning to keep the weather down, and then getting sunny in the afternoon when we arrive. I’m not sure how we are going to cope, or how we are going to plan our day in the next couple of days when the distances are longer and the weather may not be as forgiving!

Neil

Orlando is just crammed full of theme parks and other entertaining days out; it would take literally weeks to visit even just the highlights of what is on offer, so our three days was always going to be difficult to plan. We wanted to fit in a theme park and a water park on Monday and Tuesday, before finding something to do on the Wednesday morning before the scheduled launch of space shuttle Endeavour.

In the end we tossed a coin to decide between Universal Studios and Disney World’s Magical Kingdom (the main theme park in Disney’s complex of attractions). Universal won, so we rose early on Monday to get there before the queues. The attraction is split into two separate parks: the Islands of Adventure, which is like a small Alton Towers, and the main Universal Studios attraction, which contains mostly shows and IMAX films.

We bought tickets to allow entry into both parks and headed straight for the roller coasters of Islands of Adventure at 8.30am in order to beat the queues. We were able to walk right onto the Incredible Hulk, a hair-raising course of twisted green metal. I’ve not been on a decent roller-coaster in years, due to an irrational dislike that I developed during my teens, and Neil has never been on one, so we approached the Hulk nervously. As it happens, I loved it, though it would take a couple more roller-coasters before Neil grew to enjoy them.

The highlight of my morning was the Spiderman ride (although it was responsible for forcing the Spiderpig song from The Simpsons Movie to be stuck in my head for the rest of the day). It was a cross between a conventional roller-coaster and a 3D simulator. The carriage we were in actually moved through the streets as Spiderman and his foes swung right up to our 3D glasses, but then at times we apparently moved on the spot while surrounded by screens. This led to a disconcerting suspension of reality for us, as at times we had no idea whether we were really falling off the top of a building and being caught by a spider’s web or whether we were simply rocking backwards in our seats to make it feel like we were falling. This blurring of reality and fiction made for a superb ride.

Next, we mistakenly queued for half an hour for what turned out to be a children’s ride (which nonetheless caused Neil to scream with terror), before riding a couple of log flumes and an under-hanging double roller-coaster (two trains on separate tracks that pass hair-raisingly close to one another at ridiculous speeds).

In the afternoon we entered the main Universal Studios site and watched a couple of IMAX 3D films. The first, based on Terminator, uniquely combined live action characters on a stage in front of us with Arnie and co on the silver screen behind them. At times, the actors (lip-synching in time with the Governator’s speech) actually walked into the screen and appeared to become the on-screen actors. I thought that was pretty cool, but the others weren’t so impressed. The second was a showing of Shrek 4D, which is the same as Shrek 3D (available on DVD with glasses) but in moving seats and with water and air being sprayed at appropriate moments.

We had hoped to ride the only roller-coaster in the main park, The Mummy, but as we approached the front of the queue technical problems closed it for what would turn out to be the remainder of the day. Instead we tried their latest ride: the Men in Black simulator. This is much like the ghost train at Alton Towers in that riders are given laser guns and asked to shoot at aliens in the streets. Andy got the highest score in our car.

Before the day was out we experienced some of Universal’s more senior rides, including the famous Jaws riverboat experience, the ET ride and simulators of both tornados and earthquakes. The day ended by the lake in the centre of the park for an epic showcase of Universal films. Giant balloons on the surface of the lake were internally projected with movie clips, and accompanied by classic soundtracks such as Jurassic Park and Back to the Future. Finally, the show was rounded off with a stunning firework display, before thousands of people simultaneously headed for the car parks.

On Sunday morning opinion was mixed among the cyclists as to whether it was worth cycling an arbitrary distance towards Orlando before driving to the Kennedy Space Center back on the coast. Our motel for the next few days was to the south of Orlando, so the planned cycle of 20 miles or so to the north of the city would be purely for show. In the end, Alex and Andy set off, while Neil and Leo got their exercise by going for a swim in the sea instead.

Alex and Andy didn’t get very far. After about 9 miles, they called for a pick-up as Alex had had his first three punctures of the trip within half an hour (these things seem to come like buses). The five of us drove directly down the coast towards Cape Canaveral, stopping for lunch at a Taco Bell where, as is the case at every fast food restaurant in the USA, a member of the local law enforcement community was stopping for sustenance.

At the Kennedy Space Center we joined a bus tour of the complex which took in three sites: the Apollo/Saturn 5 Center, the International Space Station Center and a viewing platform over the space shuttle launch pad. At the Apollo/Saturn 5 Center we were treated to a simulation of a rocket launch from a 1960s mission control room, before moving through to a massive hangar containing a full Saturn 5 rocket. The Saturn 5 was used to launch the Apollo missions to the moon and it is absolutely enormous due to its need to transport lunar modules the 239,000 miles to the moon. It is more than 110 metres high and weighs over 3 million kilograms.

The Apollo/Saturn 5 Center also contained display boards about each mission in the Apollo program. The first Apollo launch resulted in the deaths of three astronauts in a launchpad fire, a massive setback for the US space program which led to the development of the Saturn 5 and the next five Apollo missions being unmanned. Finally, Apollo 7 launched three astronauts into space in late 1968 and over the next nine months a further four Apollo missions would launch, culminating in the historic moon landing of Apollo 11 in July 1969. Six more spacecraft headed for the moon in the following few years (all successfully landing apart from the infamous Apollo 13), yet no human has left the Earth’s lower orbit since Apollo 17 landed on the moon 35 years ago.

The International Space Station Center gives visitors the opportunity to observe NASA engineers and technicians as they work on preparing the ISS components for launch. We also got the opportunity to walk through some mock-ups of a few of the modules; they seemed extremely spacious compared to some of the rocket modules we would sit in later in the day, and it was refreshing to see the US and Russia working so closely together on a space project after decades of rivalry. Although the vast majority of the components are being contributed by NASA and the Russians, the European, Japanese, Brazilian and Canadian Space Agencies are all providing parts. The ISS was supposed to be finished a couple of years ago, but the suspension of the shuttle program after the Columbia disaster in 2003 has caused major set-backs, and there is now a race to get it completed before the space shuttles are retired in 2010.

The final stop of our tour took us past the massive shuttle assembly building (there’s a US flag painted on the side of a portion of it; to give you an idea of its size, each of the 50 stars is around 6-feet wide) and the Crawler-Transporter. This is a huge tracked vehicle that was originally built to move the Saturn 5 rockets to the launch pad and is now used for the space shuttle program. It weighs in at almost 2,500 tonnes unloaded and moves the shuttle at a hair-raising top speed of 1 mile per hour along a road constructed especially for the enormous size and weight.

At the viewing platform we were able to see Endeavour primed for launch in just a few days time. It was difficult to see the shuttle itself, as it was attached to its fuel tank and solid rockets and surrounded by scaffolding, though it was interesting to note that if we were standing that close to the shuttle during the launch sequence we would be killed by the heat and noise.

Back at the main visitor center we boarded a brand new simulator called the Shuttle Launch Experience. It is supposed to be an extremely realistic representation of the first few minutes after take-off in a shuttle, though it really just tipped us backwards and shook us a lot. It may have been realistic, but it wasn’t all that exciting; Neil in particular left a little disappointed.

We wandered around a collection of NASA rockets and tried to fit ourselves inside the sardine-can nose cones; 1960s astronauts had a pretty tough time compared to the spacious shuttles and the ISS. The Space Center closed a few moments later at 7pm, so we drove to the nearby Astronaut Hall of Fame which was open for another hour.

The Hall of Fame contained a hands-on area in the mould of the one at London’s Science Museum, including a simulator that claimed to provide the experience of driving a buggy really quickly across the surface of Mars. I’m not sure how they planned to verify these claims, but it was certainly more fun than the shuttle simulator. They also had one of those g-force spinners like in James Bond’s Thunderball and what was essentially a baby bouncer on the end of a boom to simulate a moon walk.

One noticeable thing during the day had been the number of English accents around. Other than in New York, and to a lesser extent Washington, we have heard very few voices from home over the last five weeks. In some places (namely Lumberton), we were the first English accents that the locals had ever heard, yet down in Florida they are everywhere. Mind you, the American South perversely appears to end as you cross the border from Georgia into Florida, and this place really is a cross between a massive retirement home and a giant holiday camp. One question was still lingering, though: why is it that all British tourists abroad are from Sussex.

Andy’s perspective: Right, so we’re down in Florida (the last state), and having not written anything yet I think it’s about the best time to start.

Having completed the hilly sections of our tour I am now at liberty to describe (what I’m sure you’re all dying to know) which is quite how hard this task actually is.

Consider a Sauna – well the temperatures circle around that of a Sauna about 93 to 106 degrees Fahrenheit. Now consider sitting in a Sauna for between 4 and 7 hours a day and consider that as many as 6 of these hours in the sauna will be spent on a cycling machine. I think you’ll understand quite how tiring this is, and I neglected to mention the first five days were through the Appalachian mountain range.

Further to the Sauna point, one might also assume that the task would become easier the further south we travel as the land becomes flatter and easier to navigate, as well as the fact that we will benefit from a “cool” sea breeze. Alas, no. Sadly the further south we go the more humid it gets, with humidity in the region of 70 to 90%. Now I don’t quite know what it means (I should, having done a small part of a module on it in second year), but I’ll try to describe it. Do you know when you have a cold and you’re trying to clean out your sinuses, so you shove your head over a bowl of boiling water in the hope that it dislodges that tremendous amount of gunk you’ve got up there. It feels kind of like that. When you stop cycling you’re not quite sure whether it’s your sweat, or the water particles that you’ve managed to pick up on your way dribbling down your back.

On top of all this there’s the hazards of local wildlife with snakes, insects and even squirrels causing us to swerve on several occasions and this is neglecting to mention the dogs that seem to spot bikes from thousands of metres away and then proceed to chase them at break neck speeds along the roads. These dogs often require an intervention from the nearest moving car to get rid of them, needless to say there is a lot of road kill in America, I get the feeling they don’t take kindly to wildlife here.

However having complained somewhat about all the things that are hard about this task I think I should run through the things that are bonuses.

The Locals

The locals are very interesting, they honestly cannot understand how anyone could do this much cycling, then again they can’t understand much! (although I’m sure many of the people back home are in the same boat with regards the cycling). They love the English accent – Alex actually managed to turn a lass weak at the knees (literally) just by saying… “Yes I am English”, it was quite a sight to behold, and its not just the women it has an effect on. So far it has got us a free towel, water, several beers, a tour of Washington (which we didn’t follow up), free maps, several offers of places to stay and lots and lots of advice however that usually involves “take the interstate”. They don’t quite understand we’re not allowed. This may be due to the fact that so few people do cycle.

The food

People often complain that America doesn’t have enough variation on food. It’s not true. Admittedly its hard to find, but it is out there. Sadly we try to avoid finding it, but thats for good reason. With quality family restaurants like Mc’y D’s, Wendy’s, Burger King and KFC on every street corner who would eat anywhere else. We have strayed away from these places occasionally, mainly in pursuit of Neil’s perfect steak; his aim is to have his photo on the wall of a bar somewhere for completing a true American steak challenge.

The Cycling

Admittedly this may contradict a hell of a lot of the stuff that I have mentioned earlier, but it has been one of the most amazing experiences of my life. Admittedly it can get hard, and it does make me sleep at least an hour and a half every afternoon, but there is so much fun in between. On top of that the opportunity to see a country so rarely investigated in any other guise than its tourist hotspots, on a mode of transport that I’m not sure the Americans have even discovered, has given all of us the opportunity to see areas of the East Coast (if not the east coast as a whole) from a perspective that I suspect many of its inhabitants will never experience. In short, to date I have no qualms or hesitation in saying that this trip has lived up to everything I expected and more. …Perhaps my only regret is having not bought a softer saddle earlier in the trip.

However we’ll hold the final judgement to Key West, which I believe will be in just 3 cycling days time.

Andy

Our journey through North Carolina continued early on Tuesday morning as I drove the cyclists inland towards the town of Hemingway. A journey directly along Route 17 (the coastal road) to Charleston appeared too busy with traffic for the cyclists, so I was dropping them inland for an equivalent cycle ride. On the way, we passed through a drive-thru bank. In the States, almost every type of outlet has been converted to allow Americans to obtain a service without leaving the comfort of their car. As well as drive thru restaurants of every type (donuts, ice cream, burgers), there are drive-thru pharmacies and banks. If somebody one day invents a drive thru that doesn’t require the user to wind down a window and inflict fresh air on the car’s occupants, America will have one more millionaire.

It is easy to assume that the South is made up solely of backward little towns with a gas station and general store, but in fact the coast of South Carolina and Georgia is scattered with wonderful little cities, dating back almost as far as modern American history will stretch. Charleston was founded in 1670 as Charles Town, named for the newly restored British monarch, and it was twice attacked by the British during the American Revolution. After South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union in 1860, the first shots of the civil war were fired from Charleston at a Union ship entering the harbour. Nowadays, the city is an attractive coastal town with a long promenade fronted by grand Georgian buildings.

On Wednesday morning we once again set off early in the monster truck towards a suitable spot for the cyclists to cycle from. The roads into Savannah were not at all conducive to good cycling, so in the end a 45 mile ride from Hampton to Hardeeville was planned. On the way to Hampton, we stopped for breakfast at a diner. The US immigration service should make foreign visitors aware on arrival of all the possible ways that an egg may be served, to save embarrassment for both customer and waitress. Earlier in the trip, Neil had been caught out by this issue when he asked for his egg to be “fried” – he got a withering look and was asked whether he wanted it sunny side up, easy over or on his face. This time it was my turn. Having ordered an egg and sausage muffin, I attempted not to repeat Neil’s mistake and asked for my egg to be sunny side up (I think this means they serve a fried egg with the yolk on the top; why you’d want it the other way up, I don’t know), but the waitress looked confused and asked me if I wanted it hard over or something equally baffling. I nodded to the first option and sank into a pit of simple-egged embarrassment.

Without wanting to sound like Ed and talk about food the whole time, my sandwich was served with cheddar grits. A grit is a bizarrely (though not entirely inappropriately) named dish served in the Southern states and is basically identical to porridge. The previous evening Alex had been served some with his restaurant meal and now I was being asked to eat it with my breakfast, except mine had been enhanced with cheese. Cheesey porridge is not a dish anybody should eat for breakfast.

Savannah, like Charleston, is a classy harbour town with a long sea front and oodles of history. If I may once again stray into the territory of food (if only to demonstrate to my parents that we don’t only eat fast food), we ate lunch in a little wrap café. We could choose any items off the menu, any meats, any salads, any dressings, anything, to put in our wraps. There were no complicated rules about what combinations I could make, they just made my wrap. What’s more, it came with a bag of crisps (or a pasta salad) and a bottomless drink from the soda fountains. A few minutes later, the welcoming couple brought our wraps right over to our table and even gave us advice on what to visit in Savannah. I find this kind of service so contrasting to typical operations in Britain, particularly with respect to soft drinks. British cafés, restaurants and bars will charge a fortune for a glass of Coke, whereas here the waiters fall over themselves to top up your glass every time you take a sip, they never flinch when someone orders tap water and sometimes they don’t even charge you for the soft drinks at all.

That evening we turned on the news to learn that a bridge had collapsed in Minnesota. Over the next two or three days, the rolling news stations covered literally nothing else, and continued to claim it was breaking news for nearly 24 hours. For the first 12 hours they reported a death toll far higher than the actual one, and repeatedly compared the bridge collapse with 9/11, while at the same time saying that there was no reason to suspect terrorism. At least when the steam pipe exploded in New York, filling Manhattan streets with debris and plumes of steam, it could’ve actually reminded people of the terrible scenes they’d witnessed in 2001. The reason the media reported for the bridge collapse being like the WTC attacks was that “there were emergency services everywhere”.

The following day we continued through Georgia to the town of Darien, just north of Brunswick. After heading to Wal-mart to take advantage of a tax-free weekend on selected items, we settled down to a quiet evening in the motel. On TV we watched a brilliant film called Little Miss Sunshine: I recommend it to everybody – it was the funniest thing I’d seen in ages. That was basically the most exciting thing that happened in the whole of Thursday, so I’ll move on…

We awoke early yesterday to violent thunderstorms and decided to go back to sleep as the cyclists weren’t going to get far in that weather. Apparently, the rain was the end of a long drought for Georgia, so pretty much everybody else was pleased to see it. For us, it meant that the conditions were far too dangerous for the cyclists (I could barely see other cars, the visibility was so poor) so the 75 mile journey across the border into the Sunshine State was made in the monster truck.

Appropriately, the rain eased and eventually stopped as we moved further into Florida to the city of Jacksonville. While returning the cyclists’ TomTom to a Radioshack store, the shop assistant pointed at my tee-shirt and told me that he had the tattoo. I looked down at my shirt, unsure which one I was wearing, only to find that it was the Yankees shirt I’d bought in NYC. I had to admit to the guy that I knew literally nothing about baseball and had just thought it was a cool tee-shirt.

We spent the afternoon and the evening doing wet weather activities (even though the weather had actually brightened up a little). First up, we played three games of ten-pin bowling. It was incredible to see the skills of some of the people playing in the lanes around us as we guttered the ball. We then went to the cinema to see The Simpsons Movie; highly recommended – the first half in particular was hilarious.

This morning I drove the cyclists to the coastal road, the A1A, so that they could cycle the 60-odd miles down to Daytona Beach. The scenery along the road was great, with palm trees swaying on one side and the Atlantic Ocean glistening on the other. Unfortunately, the sun was beating down temperatures in the low 90s Fahrenheit (mid-30s Celsius) which made the experience a little unpleasant for the cyclists. On the other hand, for me it was another opportunity to work on my trucker’s elbow; my left arm is now a significantly darker shade of brown than my right.

For the first time since our unforgettable experience in Flint, Michigan, we had not booked a motel in advance, so I drove along the coastal road through Daytona Beach with a book of motel vouchers and decided to try my luck at a Travelodge. As it happens, my luck was in as for $85 (about £8 each) we ended up with an enormous suite with two bathrooms, a bedroom, a lounge (with sofa bed for our fifth person), a kitchenette and a balcony with a sea view (if you lean over it and look left).

We all went for a swim in the sea (better waves than Myrtle Beach, but not as warm) and splashed for about an hour until Andy yelped after being stung by a jellyfish. Anybody who has seen the Friends episode ‘The One with the Jellyfish’ will be aware of the treatment for jellyfish stings, which Andy bravely performed on himself.

So anyway, that mammoth blog brings you right up to date. Tomorrow the cyclists are riding to near Orlando, then we’re driving back out to the coast to visit the Kennedy Space Center before spending three days with the attractions of Orlando. On 8th August we hope to see a space shuttle launch, though we won’t be surprised if it’s postponed again. Don’t forget to keep sponsoring the cyclists for the pain they’re going through and I promise to bring you Andy’s view of the trip so far in the next day or so.

Monday had been scheduled as a rest day, so we were all looking forward to a lie in and a day on Myrtle Beach. You can perhaps, therefore, imagine our annoyance as we stepped out of the motel room into a torrential rainstorm; if so, you’d be entirely incorrect. The rain was so warm it felt like a hot shower and splashing through the puddles was like wading through a hot spring. Since we were all dressed for the beach, it didn’t matter so much that we were almost immediately soaked to the skin, though we probably did look a bit daft loaded up with inflatable rings and bucket and spades. There was a slightly hairy moment when I stepped into a gutter and my flip-flop was swept away, but fortunately Leo was standing downstream and was able to recover it for me.

We spent a showery afternoon at the beach, though we were disappointed to be told by a lifeguard that our inflatables were not allowed in the sea. The lifeguards were later seen telling off the parents of small children for allowing them to play with little inflatable duck-shaped rings. As Ed would probably put it: fascists. Anyway, we swam and sunbathed for a while until eventually the lifeguards went home, then we got the inflatables out and quite possibly violated state law. Meanwhile, Neil, Leo and occasionally Andy had been working on what started as a sand castle and eventually became an enormous complex of citadels, with bridges, moats and towers.

Americans really love the English accent. They just can’t get enough of it, although too many of them think that every English accent is a London accent. In Lumberton on Saturday we went out to a steakhouse for dinner and caused something of a stir amongst the staff, simply because we were from Britain. Lumberton is a small town which clearly does not get many visitors from beyond the county line.

After eating a big juicy steak each (accompanied, as always, with a ’side’ salad which is actually served as a starter and would, in normal circumstances, suffice for a whole meal), we walked back to the motel via a branch of Office Depot. For Neil, the chance to browse an Office Depot was not to be passed up, so we wandered around for a while and on the way out the checkout girl actually used the phrase, “What an evening; I can’t believe I’ve met people who are from England”. For the residents of this particular sample of small-town America, we might as well have been from Narnia; it was as though England (or perhaps Europe in general) is a historical themepark too far away for them to ever visit.

Reaching Myrtle Beach across the state border in South Carolina could not have been much more of a contrast with Lumberton. The motel car park was full of cars from as far away as Ontario and New York, and the moteliers were clearly concerned about the behaviour of some of their guests. We each had to put up $50 cash as a damage deposit because we were under 25 (for some reason they weren’t happy just having my credit card details like every other motel we’ve stayed at) and they told us repeatedly that under no circumstances should we jump off the balcony into the swimming pool; they even threatened to call the police if we did.

After assuring the receptionists that we hadn’t come to Myrtle Beach to trash a motel room and cliff dive into swimming pools, we headed to the beach. It’s years since I last swam in the sea and I was rudely reminded of how horrible it is to get salt water in your eyes, nose and mouth, as well as how irritating sand can be. Still, it was great fun trying to catch the waves as they broke and the water was warm enough to remind us how close to Florida we now were.

In the evening we found a crazy golf site with “two 18-hole championship crazy golf courses”. We opted for the Lagoon course over the Jungle course because it promised water falls. 18 holes later, Andy had narrowly beaten Neil (though Neil claimed a moral victory by holing-in-one the final hole and thus winning a free game token).

Myrtle Beach is a bit of a tacky seaside resort, although it’s not as bad as Niagara Falls, and at least it is actually at the seaside. Consequently, it is full of tat shops selling beach towels and inflatables, as well as the usual flow of tee-shirts, key rings and postcards. We stocked up on inflatable rings to play in the sea with, and Neil bought himself a bucket and spade.

Friday was scheduled to be a semi-rest day, with nothing but a relatively short cycle (35 miles) planned for the late afternoon. In the morning we drove to the nearby city of Durham, County Durham and headed for their tourist information office. They recommended we followed a walking route through the city, but it turned out to be rather dull. In fact, Durham seemed to be a bit of a ghost town: there was almost nobody in the streets and nothing happening. After eating a good Southern lunch served in a basket, we got back into the car and drove out to Durham’s university: Duke’s.

We parked at the Sarah P Duke gardens where Andy and I sat down in the shade with our copies of Harry Potter and set to work. After finishing the book (nice end, shame about the epilogue) I walked around the lake and watched some turtles basking in the water. Duke’s Students’ Union is a little more impressive than the English Durham’s; some of the branded clothing (’stash’, for Durhamites) was manufactured by Nike and the Union building contained a McDonald’s and several shops. To be fair to English Durham, it’s a little harsh to compare the facilities at a campus university to ones at a collegiate town university, but Duke’s still gave off an air of wealth and quality. English Durham may have Palace Green, but Duke’s has some stunning 1920s architecture (including a very cool chapel that would make a pretty impressive cathedral for any English city) as well as facilities that don’t feel like they’re on the losing side of a battle against degradation.

While buying postcards (sadly, they all said “Duke’s” and not “Durham”) I mentioned to the shop assistant that we were from Durham, England. She didn’t seem able to care less. Assuming she must not have understood the gravity of what I was saying, I told some random passers-by who had mistakenly asked us for directions. They also couldn’t have given a monkey’s. I’m sure if an American told me in Durham, UK that they were from Durham, NC I would at least pretend to be interested in their home town.

We left Durham with our illusions of uniting the twin cities shattered, and I set out to drop the cyclists just to the south of Raleigh to start a 35 mile drive to Benson. Then it started raining and lightning bolts shot dramatically across the sky. This was accompanied by a massive traffic tailback, so we decided it wasn’t worth putting the cyclists out in the middle of a storm and drove directly to Benson. It took three hours by car, so they’d have probably been quicker on the bikes.

On our return, I received an email from Durham Alumni telling me all about the trip that I was on at that moment. How odd, I thought. Not for long though, as it turned out that Neil had sent them an article a couple of weeks ago. The message, and link to this website, was sent to thousands of former Durham students around the world, and I had already received a reply from a former Mildertian Engineer who was now based in Rochester. Thanks in part to the email, the website is now receiving hundreds of visits every day.

The road between Roanoke Rapids and Raleigh (the sister town of Durham, but more on that later) was largely unremarkable, so I decided to leave the interstate and instead followed signs for an unspecified historic site. It never materialised, although some signs did indicate that the highway I was on was in some way historic, though in this country that could just mean that it’s at least 40 years old. In fact, the road just seemed to lead towards a prison and a stretch of it was actually sponsored by the local correctional institute. I’m not sure why a jail would need to advertise to passing motorists, maybe the crime rate has dropped too low in North Carolina.

These roadside sponsorships have been commonplace in every state we’ve passed through (and that’s a lot now: Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, District of Columbia, Virginia, North Carolina and the Canadian province of Ontario). The oddest was in New Jersey, where an environmental group had sponsored a stretch of highway, but down here most sponsorships seem to have been purchased by college fraternities and sororities with strange names consisting of three letters of the Greek alphabet.

Things are definitely warmer in the South; the temperature was still 93F (about 34C) at 6.30pm, so the best time by far for cycling appears to be in the cooler mornings.