As I mentioned in this blog a couple days ago the pain in my neck as I ride is extreme. It isn’t bad when we start riding but the longer we go the worse it gets until we ride into camp I am nauseous from the pain. I have tried every position on the bike, but nothing seems to work, and ibuprofen, Advil, or , Aleive haven’t touched it. I keep repeating to myself as I ride, “pain is good for you, makes you grow, tough it out, give me Your strength Lord, please” but I guess I need to repeat it more. Today Cliff, Kathy and I have come up with a little invention, and tomorrow we see if is going to work.I hooked a bungy cord to my helmet and then to a back brace that Cliff has been wearing. I will adjust the tension on the bungy cord as the day goes along until I find the place where it is supporting my neck and not pulling it back. If it works it will make the bicycle trip so much more enjoyable. I have had very little butt pain this year and minimal hand pain. If this works whoooooeeee will that be nice.

Pain is a problem in life, we have physical pain, relational pain, emotional pain, and self-worth pain, non of them are fun, but all are designed by God to change us and cause us to grow in character to be like Him. My five fold motto regarding personal pain is, “when you hurt fix it if you can, pain stirs up creative thinking, second make adjustments or changes in life, pain helps guide us into God’s will for our life, but be careful you aren’t being irresponsible and wimpy running from pain, third, always ask God for strength to endure it, and fifth, never complain or grumble about it as if you are being mistreated by life, others, or God.”

A major time issue on a trip like this is the time it takes to set up camp, putting up my tent, blowing up my air mattress by mouth, as well as my inflatable pillow, pulling my sleeping bag out of it’s stuff bag and checking inside for spiders and other bugs and critters that find their way in, getting cloths ready that I am riding in the next day, cook dinner on my handy dandy little propane stove, usually a “Mountain House” freeze dried dinner, get stuff ready for the next day, including going over the route to make sure we know where we are going. We need to charge our gps bike computer, as well as our super duper bright red blinking lights that go on the back of the bicycles, and of course our phones and iPads. In the morning we reverse the whole process. This morning I got up at 4:30 am and we were on the road at 7:00 am. Here is a picture of my stove and the oatmeal I have each morning. Patty put the oatmeal as well as dates and protein powder in zip lock bags for me before we left, one for each day. The oatmeal looks funny because Patty used strawberry protein powder, but it tastes good. Then I do my reading, studying, and writing, including this blog on my iPad. It is uncomfortable to try and read in my tent because it is so small so I sit outside until I go to bed usually around 10 pm. Tonight the bugs were so bad I came up to the men’s bathroom, and I am sitting in here on a bench reading and writing on my iPad. It is nice and warm as well.

Today was the first day that it has been hot, and I forgot to put sunscreen on so I got a bit red after today’s ride. The heat and sun seem to take a lot of energy out of me so I was really tired today when we rode into camp, but I am feeling better now after eating a barbecued hamburger that Tom cooked up. We are camped on the California border on the shore of Goose Lake. I had big plans to do some fishing tonight, but right now all I want to do is sit and read. We road 67 miles today with some hills, but not killers. My brother Cliff who is riding on the trip with his wife Kathy is a Vietnam Vet so the lady overseeing the campsite said we all got to stay free in the campground, nice blessing. Cliff fell over on his bike today and has some “road rash” on one leg. Kathy was doctoring it, and I told him to rub some dirt on it! When I wrote about the 7 things I hate while on a bicycle trip I forgot one, “chip seal”. Often when they repair roads they spay the road with oil and then spread crushed gravel on it resulting in a rough surfaced road depending on the size of gravel used. We rode much of today on chip seal that seemed like it was 1 inch minus gravel, and the result is my neck is killing me as the vibration goes up the front tire to my arms and then my shoulders and neck. I let the hot water from the shower beat on it for a long time, then rubbed it good with liniment and I am going to take a billion ibuprofen when I go to bed. We head into California tomorrow and then in 2 days we will swing over into Nevada. So far the trip is going great.

We get a lot of people on the trip talking to us about the trip, in restaurants, and camp sights it is fairly constant. The first question is usually “where are you headed?” And then when I say the Grand Canyon and then Yellowstone and then back home, they almost always say “Oh my” or something equivalent to that, and the discussion begins about our sanity and the details of the trip. The rate for the campground we are in today charges $20 per night per person, but the owner said he wanted to help out on the trip so he charged us $15 instead and let us hang out in a trailer out of the sun today that he rents and the renters left this morning, nice. Here are some pictures of Summer Lake where we are camped with some alkali blowing.

I wrote yesterday’s blog as day 5 but it should be #4, so we will have 2 day 5’s. We road 65 miles today and it was a very nice day with none of the “hated seven” being a factor. We are at “Summer Lake Hot Springs” camping tonight about 4 miles north of Paisley. It is kind of a barren campsite with not a single tree, just sage brush, so we have our tents set up in this field. There aren’t any picnic tables either so we are cooking on the ground. We sat in the hot springs for about an hour and that felt so good.

Riding all day on a bicycle, looking at the country side I have lots of thinking time. Today for some reason I had a strong case of the “should haves”. I was thinking about the past in marriage, raising kids, and pastoring and I started remembering all the things that I should have done differently. The things I was thinking about weren’t necessarily sin, just unwise decisions and choices that probably would have resulted in such better results if I had done things differently. I wish I could go back and have a “mulligan”, a “do over” but that isn’t going to happen. I made the poor choices mostly because of ignorance and inexperience. I can’t do anything about most of the past now, but learn from it, and pass on the wisdom gained to others who want to learn. I wish I had been way more aggressive in seeking wisdom from others. At the time I thought I was, but now I can see that I could have learned so much more if I had sought more. It is such a shame that our pride and “know it all” attitude brings results that can’t be undone.

we are camped tonight near Fort Rock in a nice little campground. I rank campgrounds on several things, but the main one is the showers. A shower with lots of pressure and lots of hot water is like a nice massage after a long day of riding. So many campgrounds in order not to spend to much money on heating water have as much water spraying out as I can spit. We had a very nice day riding today. We rode 63 miles and there wasn’t very many hills. The 7 things that I hate most on a bicycle trip we have been totally free from so far on this trip. No mosquitos, not even one. Mosquitos like to fly along with a bicycle rider and bite him in a place that isn’t easy to swat, and cause him to swerve all over the road trying to get him. No rumble strips. People who plan for rumble strips on roads hate bicycle riders. They make them a foot wide and leave a foot between the rumble strip and the edge of the road which is really difficult and dangerous to ride in, so you are left to ride in the road with everyone who goes by honking, yelling and making various hand gestures because we are not off the main road. No rain, I hate riding in the rain. No head winds. Riding into a head wind is worse than going up a hill because a hill ends and then you get to go down. Head winds are relentless, and if I change direction so does the wind, so far none. No dogs, we haven’t had a single dog chase us with the obvious intent of eating us. No hot weather, the temperature has been in the low 70’s with lots of cloud cover, it has been super comfortable riding so far. Not to many rude and stupid drivers who like to get as close to a bicycle rider as they can without hitting him. I usually pray for them when they pass, that God would curse them with 6 months of really bad diarrhea, but so far no prayers like that. I don’t expect that what we have been having for riding conditions to continue, but I say “Thank You Jesus” for every day like today.

It has been a very nice rest day, catching a 22 lb Mackinaw and then taking several naps and reading and writing a bunch. Tomorrow is going to be a relatively easy day of 62 miles and only 1,495 feet of elevation gain with a maximum grade of 3.3%, a tail wind of about 6 mph with gusts to 20 mph. We will be in a campground near Fort Rock, I think. One of the major challenges on this trip is calling and making arrangements and reservations for the campgrounds ahead. I often don’t have cell service, and it seems regularly that the price they are suggesting is very high for 3 tents and 4 bicycles so I usually do a little discussion on price, usually to no avail. Oh well, still a lot cheaper than what Tom is paying for an RV spot. Part of the problem is that we need to charge cell phones, gps’s, IPad, blinking red tail lights that are very bright and need charging each night, and my camera, so we need a spot with electricity. Tomorrow night is $15 a person and the next night it is $20 per person, but they do have hot springs to sit in. I was hoping to do the entire 60 day trip for $1,000, but it looks like it will be closer to $1,500 if I don’t eat lunch in a restaurant to much. It is a good thing I sold my pickup before we left. It is only 7:00 pm, but I think I am going to go to bed.

On last years bicycle trip I got so run out of gas in the first couple of weeks that this year I scheduled a rest day every 3 days for the first 2 weeks so I could get in shape a little more gradually. Today our rest day is at Odell Lake Lodge and the owner John is a good friend, and this morning early we were out on the Lake fishing for Mackinaw or lake trout, and I caught one that weighed 22 lbs. My first ever Mackinaw and it was a lot of fun. It is now 10:30 am and I am feeling good and rested. The rest of the day I am going to read, write, take naps, and eat.

Today we bicycled from Dexter RV park up highway 58 to east Odell Lake, to Odell Lake Lodge. We road 59 miles and it was all uphill, with some of it being as steep as 17 degrees, that is really steep. I think probably it may be the hardest day of bicycling that I have ever done. I have to confess that I put my bike on the RV that Tom Zilverberg has brought on the trip. The last 4 miles of the uphill part was the steepest of it all, and then the road heads down for a couple of miles into camp. I was totally out of gas so I put my bike on his bicycle rack and road in the Motorhome for 4 miles and then road the 2 miles of the downhill part into camp. I felt like a wimp doing it, but at that point I felt like a wimp period. As I sit on a couch in the lodge writing this I still feel like a wimp, though the dinner I ate at the lodge of fish and chips has restored some of my energy. I get to sleep in a bed in a room in the lodge tonight instead of on the ground in my tent, and I am so much looking forward to it. I have to confess as well that I was tempted to simply forget about the 4 mile ride in the RV, and not mention it, but I was afraid that God wouldn’t let me catch any fish tomorrow. We are taking a rest day tomorrow, and John who owns the lodge is taking me fishing for most of the day. That should get me good and rested up!