Today we had a short mileage day but a lot of climbing. We headed up into the Rockies today. I was getting pretty bored with all that flat riding anyway. The big difference between the climbing we did today compared with the Appalachian Mts and the Ozarks is that they were up and down, up and down, up and down, and the ups were very steep. Today we just climbed, no down, and the grade was mostly 4 to 6 percent. You figure out what gear works and then just crank away. Whenever it flattens out, we take a butt break and a water break. I never stop on an incline because I have difficulty getting started without tipping over. It was cold this morning but no rain and sunny right now in camp, though chilly in the shade because we are at about 6,000 feet elevation. We are camped at Royal Gorge, Colorado. Tomorrow we will be camped at Fairplay, Colorado and it is 10,000 feet in elevation, so tomorrow will be one big long climb all day long for 65 miles. At 7:00 pm some of us are going to drive the pick-up half a mile to a “Grill and Pub” and watch the first game of the NBA championships – go Warriors!

In yesterday’s blog I stated 6 reasons why I go on these kinds of trips and one more that I didn’t mention is because they are fun. That is a little hard to compute for many, how bicycling for 70 miles in the heat or the rain can be fun, but it is. Enjoyment comes in a variety of ways to everyone. I will have fun watching the game tonight. I really enjoy spending time with Patty, my kids and grandkids. I enjoy preaching and teaching the Bible. I really enjoy fishing! The fun or joy from bicycling trips comes from conquering and achieving something very difficult.

Sometimes I hear people say that life is hard. If it weren’t hard it would be boring, like Kansas. It would be boring and there would be very little character growth. A hard life is a good life, and a hard life is a fun life.

It started raining about midnight and rained until noon. We all bundled up with warm cloths and rain gear this morning and took off at 6:00 am. I am pretty sure that is the coldest I have ever been in my life. I couldn’t feel my feet or my hands, and my face hurt it was so cold. We were scheduled to camp at a county campground but decided to get a motel instead to reward ourselves for enduring that cold ride. Yesterday I was cooking hot riding and today I was freezing cold. It is amazing how fast and how drastic the weather changes. We met a lot of different people today, and they all expressed great sympathy for our plight. One lady today asked me why we were doing this, and I responded, “ I used to know why, but today I forgot, something about having fun!”Today we rode 65 miles and tomorrow we will ride about the same. We are scheduled to stay at another KOA tomorrow and the weather is supposed to be nice. We do have some major climbing coming tomorrow as we start into the Rocky Mountains.

There are half a dozen reasons why I do these kinds of trips:

1. It is good for my health in general and it has a major impact on my Parkinson’s. I am not trying to live forever, I am not worried about dying and being with the Lord, but I would like to be healthy and have energy while I am here.

2. A major life purpose of mine is to grow in maturity and character so as to be as much like Jesus as is possible in the days remaining for me in this life. Choosing to do difficult and challenging things and persevering in doing them is a great character builder.

3. There is something unique about long distance bicycle riding that causes me to be totally renewed emotionally when I get back to ministry. It could be the alone time on the bike, the scenery, the reflective thinking that I do while riding, or the time I spend thinking about the Lord and His plan for my life in the years remaining. But whatever it is, it works well.

4. I want to make every day that I live to be productive bearing much fruit for Him and growing to be like Him, and clear goals are the key to making the most of my time. As I ride and think I come up with lots of new goals for the days ahead.

5. As a pastor I want to model and be an example of living life out of the safe, secure, and boring zone. So many people want their life to be secure and predictable, but when they stay there they grow very little and accomplish only a small amount of fruit with their life for the Lord. As I do this ride and others like it I hope to encourage people to do some risky and hard things.

6. So many more issues, challenges, and difficulties come up as we get older and if we are tough enough to manage them we accelerate our character growth and our accomplishments. Bicycle trips like ours causes us to become tough

Last night we slept in Sheridan Lake Bible Church after eating a ton of food at the church barbecue. I sat at a table with a couple of the local farmers and talked about the farming methods they use compared to ours in the Willamette valley. They were pretty intrigued with all the emphasis now on filberts or hazelnuts.

We hit the road this morning at 5:00 am because our planned route was 105 miles and it was predicted to get warm. The roads were flat and we had a tailwind or partial tailwind for most of the day so it was an easy day, but 105 miles is 105 miles and my legs tonight are jello. We are in La Junta, Colorado at a KOA campground and it has a swimming pool. When we got into camp the first thing I did was jump into the pool, and it felt so good, and was very refreshing.

It is supposed to start raining tonight and go through most of the day tomorrow, so that will be fun🤪 I hope this blog makes sense, I keep falling asleep while I am writing it. I will write more tomorrow and have some pictures.

Wind – May 30th WNW 20 mph Wind gusts 30 mph occasional 40 mph

That was the forecast last night for todaynfor the route we were scheduled to take and WNW was going to be a direct headwind.

Riding into a 20 mph headwind is a near-death experience😫😳🥺😢

Wind – May 31st NE 20 mph. Wind gusts 30 mph occasional 40 mph

That is also the forecast last night made for Tuesday. NE is a direct tailwind. A 20 mph tailwind for most of the day will be amazingly fun.

So we canceled our ride for today and took a day off and are resting in this very comfortable, air-conditioned church, watching the wind blow hard in the wrong direction, and tomorrow we will ride 96 miles to La Junta, Colorado and camp in a KOA campground with a hot tub and a swimming pool, after experiencing jet propulsion all day. Whoooooeee

Because of the high winds and low humidity Colorado has a “stage 2” fire warning in place, and there are a couple if forest fires going now that will be on our route in the next week. We have had a variety of challenges and problems so we might as well add a forest fire to the list!

Today we rode our bikes on one road. The road did not make a bend, it was straight as a string for 78 miles. Supposedly we gained 200 feet of elevation but over 78 miles it appeared to be perfectly flat. We left at 5:00 am this morning riding in the dark for about 40 minutes to beat the heat, which we did, getting to our destination right about noon and it still wasn’t up to 70 degrees yet.

We are staying at a church tonight. We got here just as the Sunday morning service was getting over. They have been having Vacation Bible School all week so the pastor invited us to the church barbecue and the VBS program.

The town we are in, “Sheridan Lake”is probably a hundred people in the city limits, but the church appears to have at least a hundred attending so they must draw from the surrounding area. It is a “Village Mission” church and appears to be very healthy.

Tomorrow we have an easy day, 56 miles and mostly flat. Hopefully, there is not a big headwind. A fellow we talked to today said every other day lately was big wind days, up to 50 mph. The wind today was coming straight out of the north and we were traveling straight West, so we had a side wind, which wasn’t much of a problem for us. We crossed into Colorado today and got a picture with the “Welcome to Colorado” sign, and because we didn’t get an “Entering Kansas” picture when we came into Kansas we turned around and got one on the other side of the road.

While we were at the “Entering Colorado” sign a family stopped to take pictures and we discovered that they were very good friends of Erik and Paula Frisk who attend JBC and are good friends of Patty and I. We have met a lot of people who used to live in Oregon or have friends there.

Today is the last day we will be in Kansas, and today we are officially halfway done on our trip. We are in Scott City, Kansas, and are in a recreational facility that has a swimming pool and is air-conditioned, which is nice because it is 100 degrees outside.

Let me give you a tour of my bicycle that I have been spending considerable time with lately.

Also notice my handlebars. The lower one has my brake handles and shifter levers, and I ride in the typical bent over position when my hands are on those. When I put my hands on the upper bars I am sitting almost straight up. I sit on a different part of my rear-end with each position so it is great to switch back and forth.

This is the holder that I have my Iphone in. I have each day mapped out and the map of the route is on the screen and it is bluetoothed with my hearing aids so I get audible turn by turn directions as I ride.

We left Hoisington, Kansas this morning at 7:00 am and had a great day of biking until 10:00 am when we had 30 miles done. The weather was sunny but cool and very comfortable, there was no wind, and the roads were flat. Then at 10:00 am the wind started, and the weather app said it was a steady 20 mph with gusts to 35 mph coming from the Southwest. We were bicycling west than north than west and then north again as we headed for our campsite that was northwest of us. When we were going west we were fighting a fierce headwind but when we turned north we had a fun ride. I hardly needed to pedal at all to cruise at 20 mph. I would stand up on my pedals to make myself as big of a sail as possible.

The forecast for tomorrow is for more of the same so we are going to try and get left at 5:30 am for two reasons. The first is to get as many miles as possible done before the wind starts. We leave camp and head straight South for 25 miles so we want to get that part done early for sure. The second reason is that it is supposed to be 100 degrees by 2:00 pm Our route and destination tomorrow calls for a 90 mile day but I am going to quit at 62 miles and Dave is going to pick me up, a semi-rest day. The others may as well, but they are waiting until they ride for awhile before deciding.

We are camped tonight at Cedar Bluff State Park and they only charged us five dollars and gave us a covered area to camp under, note picture.

I was thinking that today is a lot like life. You want something a lot and the days just drag on forever it seems before it happens. I remember our wedding day was like that, the days seemed to go on forever, but it does finally happen. Today I wanted the West Roads to end so we could turn North and have those wonderful tailwinds. I watched my odometer knowing the number of miles we needed to go and it just crawled. I came up with a new motto, “ a watched odometer does not move!”

You can almost see the curvature of the earth Kansas is so flat

Today was a very tough day of bicycling. It was supposed to be 77 miles but because of detours because of all the rain and road construction we ended up riding 89 miles. That was bad enough but we road into a 17 mph headwind all day. Riding into a headwind is worse than hill climbing because you don’t get a rest. With hills you get to go downhill after every hill, but with this wind you have to keep grinding it out all day long. We didn’t get into camp until 8:00 pm and every part of my body was sore. But on a positive note the rain quit and the sun was shining most of the afternoon and is supposed to all day tomorrow as well.

We are camping in a porch area of a sports complex which is handy because we don’t need to set up tents. I was to tired to do much for dinner so I ate two cans of sardines. We are in Hoisington, Kansas tonight.

As I wrote in yesterday’s blog, (which I only sent a couple of hours ago because of no WiFi, I walked up to the Library and used theirs) we are staying in the basement of the Luthern Church in Hutchinson, Kansas. We arrived yesterday in the midst of torrential rain, had a good nights sleep, a great breakfast of bacon, eggs, hash browns, orange juice, and coffee, that Tom cooked. We are hanging out here for the day, spending another night and heading off to Hoisington, Kansas where we will camp in the City Park for free. Probably won’t be any showers there for us. Handi-wipes in the bathroom will have to suffice.

It has been raining all day, today, and the forecast is for heavy rain all night and quitting tomorrow with lots of sunshine!

For those of you who have been praying for me, the last two nights I have slept like a baby and woken up feeling very rested and energized.

Today I am spending my time writing notes to people, getting caught up on my Bible reading and praying, and memorizing Bible verses.

Tomorrow is flat terrain and 77 miles of riding. Two more days and we will be in Colorado.

Day 27! You have got to be kidding me! It seems like we just started, but on the other hand, I can’t remember much of what we did and saw in the first week! Whooooeeeeeee in a couple of days we will be half done, and I am just now getting in shape,

It has rained over four inches last night, and it is still raining. We are at a church tonight, and we are going to hang around here all day tomorrow until the worst of this storm passes, Zion Lutheran Church in Hutchinson, Kansas.

Eddie and Jeanette DeHaven used to attend JBC and Eddie’s Dad and Mom still attend. Eddie got a job in Wichita, Kansas, three years ago, and they are going to come and visit us tonight; they are bringing dessert😀

About four blocks from the church is a bicycle shop, so we took Cliff’s and Tom’s bikes in. Cliff’s bike got a new rear cassette that was worn badly and a new tire, the old one was bald. Tom is getting new rear brakes installed. My bike is working like a charm.

Because we are taking a day off tomorrow Cliff, Dave, and I are going to go to a “Buffalo Hot Wings” place where they have giant screen TV’s and we are going to watch the NBA playoff game between the Golden State Warriors and the Dallas Mavericks.

This morning Tom went to the grocery store and fixed us bacon, eggs, and hash browns!