Irv and Ian finished their long bike ride early Wednesday afternoon.

They were glad to get off their trusty touring cycles in Lincoln, where Irv practiced medicine for 31 years before moving to Arizona in 1992 and then retiring to Oregon.

Irv Weston is 78. Ian Clark is 15.

Irv is Ian's grandpa, although Ian doesn't call him that. He calls him Irv, which is just fine by Irv.

Ian rode with his grandpa last year too, a shorter ride of 833 miles.

This year they biked 25 days and 1,462 miles. They started just south of the Canadian border, cut across Montana, down the Dakotas, and into Nebraska on U.S. 81.

"I hated Montana," the lanky soon-to-be high school sophomore with a mop of dark hair says Thursday. Nothing but farmland, mile after mile after mile.

And it had crappy cell phone service, too.

"You could call but you couldn't text," he explains.

Two summers ago, Irv began the first leg of the biking odyssey he finished Wednesday, as a bookend to all the years he spent pushing his body to the limit.

(Speaking of bookends, Ian read eight books along the side of the road this year, waiting for Irv to catch up - he started and ended with Tolkien and slipped in some Dan Brown in the middle.)

Ian hadn't ridden his bike any great distance when he asked Irv if he could ride with him last year for the second leg of his journey.

"At first I thought he just wanted to follow me in a car," says the fit, tan and freshly shaved grandfather.

The pair took a couple of trial outings and Ian was in. The boy turned out to be a trouper.

"He didn't complain once."

Not even about the daily 6 a.m. wake-up calls or the unchanging scenery.

Last year, everyone back home was worried about Ian. His grandfather, after all, was the fit guy. The guy who'd run dozens of half-marathons and 31 marathons, moving on to 24-hour races and 100-milers before his knee said no more and he took up biking.

"Last year they told us both to be safe," says Ian. "This year they said, 'Look after Irv'"

Irv can't do what he once could physically, he says, talking doctor talk - ligaments and joints and oxygen and lactic acid.

"Does it bother me? I don't think it bothers me. I'm aware of it. I couldn't do what I did last year. Last year I couldn't do what I did the year before."

But he can still ride.

After he decided on his cycling swan song - he liked the sound of Alaska to Nebraska - he looked for the best way to get from Delta Junction, Alaska, to Lincoln, Nebraska.

He ended up doing the first leg backward, starting in Dawson Creek, British Columbia, and making the trek to the start of the Alaskan Highway with a bicycle tour company that organized the ride and schlepped his gear.

Then he finished the journey with Ian.

This year the pair averaged nearly 60 miles a day.

Irv tried to engage Ian in philosophical discussions.

Ian tried to teach Irv to text.

Irv tried to impart wisdom.

"What a way to live." (On the joys of biking.)

"Stupidity has its own system of reward." (On the ways of the world.)

"Don't urinate into the wind." (The basics.)

Ian listened, then pedaled down the road to read and wait.

Thursday, he was digging into book number nine, relaxing in the east Lincoln home of old friends of Irv's from his Lincoln years.

Irv is sticking around Nebraska a few days longer to spend time with family.

Ian is flying home to Bend - down the road from Irv's home in Sisters. He's going to ride Cycle Oregon next weekend with friends. He and Irv are talking about another long ride, this time from Oregon to Arkansas (has a nice ring to it) to visit Ian's father.

"We're just considering," says Irv. "Nothing for sure."

The good news is that after all that time in the saddle, and on the road, weathering storms, endless cornfields, diner food, flat tires and cheap motels, the 15-year-old seems to still like biking - and Irv's company.

Even if he didn't hesitate when asked his favorite spot along the route.

"This city."

Reach Cindy Lange-Kubick at 473-7218 or clangekubick@journalstar.com