We are now on our way to Charleston and are ready to go.....

During the past three days we have set up the bikes and shopped for various supplies. Carrie and Cody have been invaluable in helping us set up, particularly in the tools department. Prior to arriving and in addition to your standard puncture repair tools we were told we needed a chain whip, spoke key, chain breaker and rear hub tool. None of us had knowledge of these items let alone what they looked like! We now have these tools, but there will be some elements of trial and error if we ever have to use them!

The bike set up did not go as smoothly as oringinally intended. After two days of unpacking only one of the bikes was considered to be road worthy! Ben S's front wheet was buckled during transit and had to be straightened. He was also missing a front skewer so his wheel couldn't be attached to his bike. Daves's rear bottle cage was crushed and his front brakes have been causing him all sorts of problems. My front racks were fitted incorrectly by the bike shop which meant that I could only turn my handle bars about 5cm in each direction! After some good old kiwi inginuity all the bikes are kitted out and we depart tomorrow morning from the coast.

The weekend hasn't all been about bikes! On Saturday night we went to a house warming party and met a few of the Columbian locals. They gave us a lesson in the Nascar scene and the 'March Madness' College Basketball tournament. Yesterday we all played our first game of frisbee golf. Well worth a go! Didn't realise that you have different size and weight discs depending the type of shot you want to do. We each had a driver and a putter and were somewhat ill-equiped as others had a complete quiver of discs.

It has been unseasonably cold in Columbia so we are hoping for some warmer weather to come our way soon (which it sure will).....

Here is a high level reasonably rough route estimate. As we go along we will be able to refine our plan and post in our actual path taken.

Arrival

Howdy from South Carolina.

I have been thinking about how to best approach this blog and have decided the best way to go about it is to just pick a subject for the post & just run with it, relating little stories along the way (some stories may end up being an entire post by themsleves). I apologise if i skim over some things or completely forget others - at the moment my memory is a bit ragged after about 4 hrs sleep in the last 2 days.

To sum up our progress to date, Dave and I (Ben S) arrived at LAX on the 23rd (Dave at 0630 after passing via Australia) and I arrived at 1130 direct ex Auckland. Ben B was already around at Jeremy and Rachel's in the O.C. (Orange County) waiting for us.

From JB's place, we went for a walk down to Newport Beach where we intend to finish the cycle in just over 2 months time. Over that two months we will pretty much travel in a straight line across the bottom of the States - starting in Sth Carolina (with a quick swim at Charleston Beach) - with a bit of a curve thrown in from around mid-Texas to take in a few sights.

Down at Newport Beach we sampled a local delicacy known as the "frozen banana". What is it you ask? A banana, with an ice block stick in the end, frozen, dipped in ice cream dipping chocolate, and covered with sprinkles. Superb. Well maybe not - but worth a try... Also a bit of fan spotting - saw Nicholas Cage (he didn't get a frozen banana though).

We flew out from John Wayne airport at about 9pm. Planes taking off from JWA use what I would call the grip, rip, drip, and then re-rip method on take-off. This is in order to install some sort of noise control measures when flying over some of the more valuable real estate around JWA. What happens is they put the hammer down and then take off on an extremely steep angle, then cut the power (feels like you are about to drop out of the air), coast for a while, then put the hammer down and repeat the grip rip dip, before actually flying normally. Adds a point of difference over your usual plane trip.

Our flight was late leaving so on arrival at Vegas I was whipped away (as I was on an earlier connecting flight to Atlanta than Ben B and Dave) by some little lady, bypassing all sorts of security doors via shortcuts & alternate routes, only to miss my flight by 2 mins. At this point the good people at Delta changed my flights to first class and via Cincinnati rather than Atlanta to Columbia, SC. I was surprised by the lengths they went to - especially with my conditioning to our carriers in NZ. In the end I arrived about an hour after BB & D.

Carrie picked us up & we dropped our stuff off at their house before heading to Groucho's Deli for a mean feed - a sub roll with grilled cheese over the top, with a reasonable sized pot of mayo based dipping sauce and a bag of potato chips. Strange combo, but it worked.

Weather report - sunny in Orange County, old snow still on the runway in Cincinnati, and a bit like Christchurch autumn in Columbia. A wide range!

While we havent really got away from the airports yet, there have been a couple of amusing incidents -

- Dave after arriving at LAX with his ski case being asked by an American girl "if he is here for the Olympics"... hmm

- Sitting in a shuttle van doing laps of the LAX concourse for over 40 mins while a rather large woman tried to find a hotel that doesnt exist using the shuttle driver's personal cellphone (thus doubling the time of our shuttle ride), and then blaming the shuttle driver when she found out the hotel did not exist.

- Observing that there are 3 types of articifical sweetener sachets for your coffee

- The biggest line for food at Cinncinati airport at 0630 in the morning being for ice cream...

- At the local supermarket in Columbia - buying some beers - Dave hands the checkout lady his NZ drivers licence - she struggles with it then asks him what his birthdate is (Dave looks about 30 yrs older than his photo). She then continues about asking the normal questions - when did you get here, what are you doing, how long are you here for... Dave answers each of these as you do. Finally she asks - "have you always spoken english?". Dead serious.

- US in general - cheap petrol, economics & politics in the same section (sometimes even the same story) in some papers, innefficiency (a man watering a 5x2m patch of grass at LAX with a hose for over 10 mins), security queues at airports (thank god I dont have to go through one of those for another couple of months)

Plan from here - muck around for a couple of days, then head out to Charleston around Monday to begin riding!

Ben S