All good things come to an end. Or not? Or maybe all good things end to make way for other good things? We’ll see. I’ve been home for two days now. And it kind of feels like I never left, like biking from New Orleans to New York is is something I did in another life, some vague memory from my glorious and adventurous past. Not to mention hitchhiking trough Argentina, riding mules in the jungle. Maybe those things were never even real. Maybe I just dreamt all of them… Luckily I have the pictures to prove it!
Anyway, it’s time to start telling you guys about the last leg of my bike trip: Washington DC – New York City. This leg almost didn’t happen. As I was posting some post cards in Washington Union Station, some scandrell stole my bike. My casanova. My only friend. As I came back from the post office, I noticed it was gone. This cannot be, I probably put it somewhe
re else… Untill I noticed the lock, cut in half, at 2 in the afternoon.
My first reaction? I don’t really kn
ow. I guess I was just baffled. I laughed, I mean, it is pretty ironic. I didn’t really believe it, I figured it’d just show up at some point. It didn’t. I went to look for a police officer, to get a report. The officer recommended me to go and talk to the owners of the station’s bike shop. Maybe they had seen it. They didn’t. They did have some reasonably priced second hand bikes. That was a lot to think of… I mean, it’s not like I had the money to buy another bike, but then… I couldn’t really give up on biking. I just couldn’t.
I decide to fundraise. Maybe I’ll be able to gather the money for a new bike? I wasn’t very hopeful at first, but with the help of my wonderful friends, and family. I decide to go for it and buy another bike. Best decision ever. On my whole biking trip, I never enjoyed it as much as I did on that last week from Washington to NYC. Couchsurfing, camping, riding. Even the fact that most of the ride was up hill didn’t bother me anymore. I felt like superwoman. I stayed in a place called Bel Air, I found a riding buddy for a day in Doylestown, camped in someone’s backyard, and last not but least: I drove into New York City. Well, not technically. I
biked to New Jersey City, and took a ferry from there. I mean, Manhattan is still an Island, there’s not much you can change about that. But still, I made it! 
I did it. I biked 2000 km in exactly a month. It felt… weird. Kind of like my life was over. I mean, all I had been doing for a month was bike, eat and sleep. 
What now? 10 days in New York? Don’t get me wrong. It was amazing to see friends after 6 months of meeting strangers. It really was. I could almost not remember what it was like to just have a beer with some friends (I have a feeling this will make my parents quite happy). So I spent most of my days biking around the city, 
and having some beers.
And then. I came home. What a
weird feeling. And really normal at the same time. Let’s just hope I’ll find a job soon. But hey, It’ll be a piece of cake after this?
This will be my last post. It’s the end of an era, of a story. But also the beginning of a new adventure. You’ll hear from me.
Love to all those who read me. I had a blast ventilating myself on the web. I’d like to end this blog with a quote from Hemingway about travelling by bike. I could not word it any better myself:
It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle. ~Ernest Hemingway
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