Day 62 - Golden Gate Bridge Victory Ride - 6 mi

After arriving in San Fran and enjoying the festivities setup for us by Don we all went off to the business district Hilton across from Chinatown in San Fran. This gave us a sweet location to grab some really good dinner! Later that night most of the team got together for one last hurrah to celebrate our ride and time together. It was a TON of fun and everyone was semi-sentimental at one point or another through the night.

We awoke to a day filled with more important landmarks along our journey. This included biking down to the Golden Gate Bridge and doing the ceremonial front tire dip in the "Pacific Ocean." We had to travel about 6 miles to the bridge and it became clearly visible at some points along our trip. This is one of the first photos I snagged:


We arrived!!!!! What a long journey!!! The next few photos describe what happened better than I can with words. Everyone got the ceremonial picture with their bikes in the water, Leigh and I lit up a few cigars that most of the team enjoyed in one fashion or another, a few people took the frigid dip into the water, and about half of the team ventured up to the actual bridge to ride across it (tourist loaded!).












Following the fun festivities we all got stuck in a glass case of emotion as people started heading their own way with family or friends. Needless to say it was one of the hardest and weirdest goodbyes that I have ever had to do. In two months, as a group and even smaller riding/friend groups, we all became really, really, really, really close and would probably do anything in the world for each other. It was amazing to get to know 26 other people in such a short time but with such a truly bonding life experience - we will all know each other forever and never forget what we accomplished as a group of riders and more importantly as a group of friends.

As we stood around seeing people of left and right many of the group remarked that biking became the least of the worries over the course of this trip. Meeting people dealing with MS, becoming ambassadors for BUS4MS and MS in general, getting to know everyone in the group, and savoring the time we had together was by far more important than the physical toll of biking across the US.