Booneville, Ky.

We had an easy morning of riding from Berea. We went over some good-sized hills, but also enjoyed some nice downhills. It started to rain slightly when we were getting into Booneville.

We both got the catfish special in town (deep fried, of course) and then went back to Booneville Presbyterian Church, which lets bicyclists camp in the back.

I rode up first to the church, going around it up a sloping hill, noticing that my tires spun on the slippery pavement and then discovering a dead-end that forced me to loop back around, down the hill. I eventually got to the back and found a nice pavilion and grassy area for camping as well as a shower. They didn't have that 25 years ago.

Dad was slow in coming so I went back to check on him. He was sitting on the driveway, right by a sharp left turn that came down the hill from the church, right at the "Cyclists Welcome" sign. His bike was also laying on the ground. I asked if he was OK, and he said, "I'm not sure."

He had fallen on the slippery pavement while making the sharp left turn. He said he couldn't put weight on his leg, but also said it didn't seem as bad as when he had broken his other hip a couple years ago while shoveling snow.

At first we tried having him hold onto the bicycle while I wheeled it back to the camp. That didn't work. Then we tried just having him lean on me and try to walk that way. That didn't work either. At one point he started crawling, but it was clear pretty soon that this wasn't the kind of injury that would be OK following a long afternoon of rest. So I called 911 and was patched through to the local ambulance service, which sent over an ambulance to take him to the hospital.

The hospital was in Jackson, about 30 minutes away. I wasn't sure what I should do, but we decided I'd stay and just wait to hear how serious it was.

Well, he did, indeed, break his hip. He said the doctors wanted to take him to Lexington to have screws put in. In the meantime, mom had been called. She was at some kind of music workshop in West Virginia and was headed for Pennsylvania, but turned and headed toward us.

After more than two months and 3,500 miles, dad and I had settled into a way of life that had come to feel routine. We'd get ready when it was still dark and start riding as soon as it got light. We'd been riding for so far and had gone through so many places that the beginning of the trip had started to seem like another trip, it was so long ago.

We were both thinking more and more about getting to the end. Two nights ago we got out all of our last maps, spread them out on the table and calculated how far we would ride each remaining day and where we'd stay. We figured out that we could finish with a short day into Yorktown, Va., on August 13. Things were wrapping up.
The end was in sight.

Now, suddenly, there's a very different end in sight. I plan to continue the trip from here, and if I don't see dad in Yorktown, I'll see him when I ride up from Virginia to New Holland on the final leg of my trip.

It's hard to believe that this is how it is going to be. It's depressing, actually.

We made a pretty low-key bicycling duo, having similar ideas about how and when to ride, moving along with minimum hardship.

We were so comfortable together that I took him for granted. I'm going to miss him the rest of the way.