"Day 14": Warsaw, Poland to Washington, DC

PLEASE SUPPORT MY RIDE BY MAKING A TAX-DEDUCTIBLE CONTRIBUTION TO the Parkinson's Disease Support Network of Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana. Follow this link:

http://www.pdsnoki.org/

Fundraising Goal: $9,000, or $9 per kilometer!!! $1,910 raised so far.

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So this marks the end of 3 weeks of riding and learning. It has been an amazing experience, with 700 miles (1,100 km) behind me and 5 countries visited. Thursday morning, I woke up at 4:30 am, switched on CNN to hear what was happening with the financial crisis in the US (frightening) and caught my cab for the airport.

Taxis aren't permitted in Old Town in Warsaw, so I had to lug the bike box and my luggage out to the edge of Old Town. It was a short, dark ride to the airport, but it was very satisfying to see Warsaw by night and realize that, 3 weeks before, I had set out from Helsinki and made it all the way down here from Tallinn on only pedal power.

At the airport, despite the fact that I had carefully confirmed many times with United and LOT that my bike box would be treated as a free piece of luggage, I fully expected to hear that I would need to pay a big fee to transport the bike. With a tip of my hat to LOT, they were totally professional and followed the policy they explained to me on the phone from their office at JFK before I left, and the bike was treated as normal luggage.

By the time my flight left at 7:55 am, the sun was up and it was clear this was going to be a sunny day in Warsaw. Finally sun...just as I was leaving. As I flew to London, I was able to get a great view of both Berlin and London. Berlin -- the Brandenburg Gate and the big television tower -- was especially spectacular from the air. I connected at Heathrow and then arrived at Dulles and waited for my bike to come out.

As I came to the baggage claim, to my horror, I saw that the bike box was already there, with the bottom of the box ripped open and full of holes. As far as I could tell, the bike was not damaged, but my bike shop in Georgetown is putting the bike back together now and they will be able to tell me for sure whether this was the case. I was pretty angry to see how the luggage had been treated -- it would have taken a lot of work to rip that solid corrugated box apart like that.

Now I'm back in the US and have been heartened to hear that about $1,500 in contributions have come in. However, it is well short of my goal of $9,000. I know that this is mainly because the credit card giving page is not yet active, but it should be soon and I hope that will bring a lot more donations in.

Soon I'll have one more blog entry with some observations on this trip overall, as well as some details on credit card/paypal giving.