One last (icy) blast

It would be out of keeping with our record thus far to make a quiet exit from this road trip of a lifetime. Think selling our car 2 days before our departure, driving a car into a snowy ditch, twizzling gracefully across a frozen pond in Central Park and one last hell-bent careen down a ski slope.

Abandoning our lovemobile in Anneke and David's driveway, we hopped on the downtown train to the city on Thursday night. Courtesy of our fairygodmother and father in Seattle, we spent the night in an eclectic loft apartment BnB in lower Manhattan. Oh, the lights! The lights! The Rockefeller Christmas tree. The freezing wind funneling through the skyscrapers. Muffled up to our eyeballs we roamed the streets and sought refuge in the alluring shops and eateries around Union Square. A memorable meal was consumed at Joe's Shanghai in Chinatown before skeetering back to Pleasantville.

The Leffels had dangled a huge carrot of a chance to ski one last time with them at a resort in Vermont, but we had to sell our car. Phone calls flew back and forth and we were awoken on Saturday morning by a Nigerian paediatrician at the door. The deal was sealed then and there and before you could say 'off-piste', we were gunning it up the Taconic Parkway to join the Leffels for a morning of skiing on Sunday.

It was all going swimmingly until we lept into David's car to drive back to Pleasantville. The one piece of advice any experienced snow-and-ice driver tells you is: don't use the brakes. This works until you have to avoid an oncoming car in your lane. Mark cleverly chose the fluffiest snow drift to drive into, so no damage was done, but the wheels were firmly cemented into the ditch. A cold three hours passed before the last party was back on the road heading South in snow, sleet, rain and black ice to do our final pack and say goodbye to Uncle Sam.

We are currently in a jet-lagged fug, but happy to be with Nicci and Lyons to gird our loins for the final leg to Cape Town.

We are considering setting up a support group for our readers after our next and final blog. Some of you might be wondering: what will we do while sipping our morning coffee? how will we fulfil our need for escapism now? how will we get that psychological boost we're used to from comparing our settled, safe lives with the madness and risk of robynandmarksroadtrip? While of course others will be thinking...uh, where did you guys go again? No travel souvenirs for you lot. In any event, in our last blog, we'll be giving back to you loyal readers. Expect: The Blog Awards.

R