Holy $·#¡/!!!!!!!!

Claudia, me, Marta, Eric and Ximena


Montevideo cityscape...the one on the left used to be the tallest building in South America back in it`s heyday...like the Smith Tower.


Lue styling with the Mercedes hood ornament and the rope holding the front pannier on for dear life


Eric and Elisa at Estancia Cerro Zarco, a beautiful 17th century hacienda


Lue looking unnaturally short on the walk back to Claudia`s house :c(

This is it folks, the moment we`ve all been waiting for. With great humility, pride, awe and amazement I am here to say that..WE MADE IT!!!! After 15 months, 15 countries, $10,000 worth of penny pinching, even more thousands of kilometers, and more flat tires than we can count, we have arrived at the end of the road. We are broke but exponentially richer than when we first set off from the Californian coast, good bye seeming like the understatement of the year as we rode away from Dad two Februarys ago. We officially rode our bikes from San Diego to Montevideo with only two exceptions: 1) the sailboat crossing between Panama and Colombia because there are no roads connecting the two countries and 2) 100 kilometers by bus on the coast of Peru to avoid being robbed at gunpoint, which seems to happen to cyclists about once every two weeks in that area. I don`t even know what to say...it is an unbelievable, overwhelming, speechless moment for me. I am so proud of us!!!! Hell yeah!!!! But we`re still waiting until Buenos Aires to buy and eat an entire cake in celebration of the achievement :c)

So, if it is a bit surprising to some of you that we are finished, here`s the whole story. We were planning to ride a bit further to Colonia del Sacramento here in Uruguay, but Eric took things into his own hands. We had been staying in Montevideo with another cyclist, Claudia, who is great. She kindly put us up in our very own room with two beds, washed our clothes, gave us free use of her kitchen, and introduced us to several of her lovely friends. She and Ximena decided to ride with us for a bit on our way out of town, so we all left yesterday, a sunny, beautiful morning. A mere kilometer or two from her house a giant pothole/manhole/black hole combo stopped Eric`s bike in its tracks. Actually, judging from the bent spokes it rolled the front rack through three of them before coming to a complete halt. In a spectacular crash Eric flew ¨like a blonde arrow,¨ as Ximena put it, over the handlebars of his now-stationary bike. Luckily the worst that happened to him was a rock in a blood blister in one finger and a goosegg on his hip. Lue, on the other hand, was officially retired. As the fork took all the blow of the crash it was left completely bent and unusable. And where can we find a replacement fork for an ancient, huge Trek with an outdated headset system? That`s right, nowhere. So, we take our bows and have our official curtain call here in Montevideo which is, coincidentally, further away than if we had merely ridden to Buenos Aires, and no one would have known where Colonia is anyway. So there you have it!! Wow.

We still have a bit of traveling to do as well as major culture shock awaiting us back at home, so we`ll be posting a few more times for any of you who still want to read up on our experience.

ALSO, we are hoping to do a couple of fundraisers to benefit the schools that we volunteered for along the way. We have received so much support along the way that the least we can do is try to give back to the communities that received us so beautifully. We are having a potluck BBQ in Vancouver on Saturday July 16th and a silent auction event in Seattle, hopefully sometime in August. Keep your eyes on this page for more info!