Aaron Chase/Cannondale Press Tour

Day #12 11/17/03

Aaron
Well the last day was pretty uneventful, pretty much just packing up and saying good-bye to friends that we had made along the way. Mailed out a lot of our luggage from Cannondale and went out to ride a few things that we had seen on the earlier drive. First a flying diaper shaped roof, which had more still camera appeal than video. After checking out some of the other spots and coming up short on things to ride I saw this driveway gap that looked really nice. The take off was a steep grass hill kicker and the landing was a nice grass hill all hipped out. It was nice to rap up a great trip with a fun gap like that. So I guess that the day was somewhat eventful.

If you would have asked me a few years ago if I thought I would ever go to Japan or Australia I would have most likely said no. I just couldn’t imagine that riding my bike for all these years could ever take me all around the world. I never planed on getting sponsored and flying around promoting myself and the companies that support me but I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. I just wanted to thank Cannondale back in the states, and out in Japan and Australia, also Jeff Mcguane and Kara for all putting this trip together for Don and I. We took care of business and had lots of fun at the same time. So again thank you very much to every one that helped, and I’d love to do it all over again some day soon.

Don
Our last day included packing up our gear, saying goodbye to new friends and shooting some last minute street spots in Australia. Now it’s off to the Sydney airport for close to 27 hours of non-stop traveling, Sydney to Tokyo and then Tokyo to JKF in NYC. We depart from Tokyo at 11am on Tuesday and arrive at JFK at 9am on the same Tuesday. How cool is that? Flying across the international dateline and all the of the time zone changes, gives us the chance to experience the same day twice.

The end of our trip is bitter sweet. It will be nice get back home to see my wife and family that gives me so much support, but at the same time, it means that this amazing road trip is over. I agree with Aaron, this trip has been a dream come true. When I started DH Productions back in the day, was one of my major business goals was covering assignments like this trip and dealing with clients like Cannondale. Like Aaron, I’ve been riding a bike my whole life and it’s very cool to realize that my passion for riding has taken me around the world. You can check out the video coverage of our journeys in the Chain Reaction 5 DVD which will be released in the Spring of 2004 and the Killing Time II DVD which will be released in the summer of 2004.

I would like to thank Aaron, Kara, Jeff McGuane, Yoshihiko Matsuzaka, Yoshi Watase, Matt Moon, Lucien Loyens, Aiden Lefman and everyone else from Cannondale USA, Japan & Australia for including DH Productions as part of this tour. MUCH RESPECT!!