Cannonballing into the Ocean

Cannonball:
1. a missile, usually round and made of iron or steel, designed to be fired from a cannon.
2. anything that moves with great speed, as an express train.

3. Cycling. A double century with fully loaded trailers.

A Cannonball had been a frequent topic of conversation during our trip. We spoke about it as more of a joke than anything, something maybe we could do on Halloween in costumes. We sat in 'the berg' eating breakfast and discussing our final two day mileage strategy. We were two big days away, 230 miles we thought. How should we do it, 130 then 100? 150 then an easy 80? ‘Well I guess we could just cannonball it’ Justin commented almost under his breath as he sipped his OJ. That was all it took, our final push, it had to be done.

A cannonball was soon underway and before we knew it we were lost. Well not so much lost just a wrong turn, 3 to 5 miscellaneous miles and were back on track. 6 O’clock came and the sun started to disappear, flashbacks from the gutterball started to come as we got the lights and highly visible gear (AKA high vis).
The night went well and we seemed to be making incredibly good time, too good we thought, at this rate we’ll arrive at the beach in the dark. That might be the worst thing imaginable, one of our reasons for pushing through the night was to see the beach during the day we arrived. We had a century to go and it was only eight O’clock. We started to stop more frequently to eat and talk to friendly South Carolinians about our grand finale.

At 4:45AM we were at our 2nd waffle house in about a twenty mile stretch. A waffle house is a phenomenal tool for performance enhancing in gutterballing and cannonballing. Massive amounts of carbs were consumed. It was getting tough out on the road though, our pace had slowed significantly and the cold of the night was wearing us down. As usual we discussed our situation with our waiter and Bob, who was an old war vet in the booth next to us. Bob offered us two recliners to nap in, to regain some strength for the final thirty miles. We happily accepted, and around eight in the morning we found ourselves back at the same waffle house ready to complete our journey.

The countdown began and in a couple hours we could see the ocean. The floral department was unleashed. Our ridiculous Halloween costumes which never got used in Knoxville were put into play for the final 10 miles. We ripped through the streets of Myrtle Beach and rode down to the water. What a feeling, we made it, 43 days from our start from Bay View Washington. We rode the bikes down the beach and into the ocean officially destorying our machines and completing the cannonball finale.