| Day 62 - Home! | << Index |
| Click on the photos below to enlarge | ||
 Sunset from motel in Honolulu—this is indicative of the final day of the CanAmAthon |
 Rachael and her crew interviewing Pat and Jim at the Grand Rapids airport |
 Holly’s welcome home sign |
 Jim and Pat being interviewed at the airport |
 Pat at the keyboard assembling this final journal |
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After we’ve had a few weeks to gather our thoughts, we’ll also be putting a final recap of the CanAmAthon on this website.
We had ridden all night from Honolulu to Cincinnati which had brought us to the final leg of our journey on Thursday, October 20, 2005 from Cincinnati to Grand Rapids. We arrived at the Gerald R. Ford Airport shortly before 2:00PM. The local TV reporter, Rachael Calderon of FOX News-channel 5 was in the lobby to interview us. Rachael had done a feature story when we were in Grand Rapids to play our Michigan round of golf (round 26), so this was a “follow-up” that we had actually completed our 61 days. Today she had Leandra Postema, an intern, with her and the cameraman was Pete Burd. After about half an hour we were on our way home.
As we approached our driveway we saw a large banner spread across the top of our garage. It read: “Welcome Home Grandma and Grandpa” and on the bottom on the left was the US flag with the words “CanAmAthon” in the middle, and on the right was the Canadian flag. Our 10-year old granddaughter Holly Postma made the sign (see picture) .
We did it!!! We still can’t believe that we were able to actually complete the 61-day golfing odyssey (CanAmAthon)! We played one 18-hole round of golf (on regulation courses) in all 50 US States, all 10 Canadian Provinces, and Washington DC. (Total 61 consecutive days – 61 courses – 61 eighteen-hole rounds of golf)
This feat would not have been possible without the support of family and friends who gave us encouragement along the way. We want to especially thank those who opened their homes for us to stay overnight as well as providing us with delicious meals.
We also extend our appreciation to the many golf course personnel who granted us complementary green and cart fees. In addition we will treasure the souvenirs we received from them.
When we started this “impossible dream”, even we were a little skeptical that we could actually “pull it off”. We had to have a lot of luck with the weather. We had to hope the van would make it for 13,500 miles (22,500 km). We had to stay healthy!! After all, we are not exactly “spring chickens”! Jim is a heart attack survivor (2 years), and Pat is a Breast Cancer survivor (8 years), so maybe we wanted to prove to ourselves that we could do it. We have documentation from each of the 61 golf courses that we played, so we will gather all of this information and send it to Guinness World Records. There is not a category for something like this, so it will have to go through a committee and be approved. This will take a while to complete, but if it makes it, we’ll let you know.
We have been asked on several occasions “what is the most amazing thing that has happened to us on our trip?” Two things: The tremendous amount of good-will and hospitality from everyone with whom we came in contact, and we were surprised at all the interest from the media. We had several radio interviews, at least 11 newspaper interviews and 5 Television interviews.
Our golf statistics as well as our expense-spread sheets are shown below. If anyone has questions, please feel free to email us. We will be acknowledging all of the emails that we have received throughout the trip.
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