Today has been a crazy day! It rained hard all night long, but my tent stayed dry, and I stayed warm. We took off this morning with all of our rain cloths on, and dressed warm because it was about 50 degrees and raining. About 5 minutes after starting it started raining very hard, and the wind starting blowing about 15 to 20 mph, and it was a head wind, and the wind was very cold, VERY COLD! We were about 25 miles into the ride and my feet were so cold I couldn’t feel them, my hands, nose, ears were in similar shape. We had 2 really tall passes to go over and it was snowing at both of them. Tom who was driving the RV to our next camping spot stopped at the top of the second pass and texted to me that it was snowing there and that he was going to sit there for awhile to make sure we were going to be all right. I texted him back and declared I was minutes from death so please come get us, which he thankfully did. We drove to Wisdom, Montana to a campground, and it was still so rainy and cold we decided to check on some motels and see what the price would be, the second one was very reasonable so we are staying in a warm place with beds to sleep on, hurray!! 47 days on this bicycle trip, and this is really our first rain issue, that is a good trip, so I am not complaining about the rain. So, it is now 5:00 pm in Wisdom, Montana, and I am sitting in a recliner writing this blog feeling quite comfortable after a miserable morning, declaring that life is good.

While riding along on my bicycle all day long I do a lot of thinking about my life, the past, the present, and the future. It is one of the reasons I do these trips. There is something about riding, exercising, looking at the sights and the scenery that promotes reflective thinking. I especially think, “what now”, “what next”, I have some more left in me, a lot more, show me Lord.

Getting a lot done with our life that matters, that really matters, ought to be a desire of our heart. Ephesians 5:15-16 says, “Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil.”John 15:8 says, “My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples.” And John 14:12 says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father.”

There are numerous reasons why most don’t ever do much with their life that really matters, none of them evil or sinful just bad habits in managing their life and choices. One of the most prevalent that I witness all the time is choosing to do things that are urgent, things that grab our attention easily, they are comfortable in that they are not hard to do, so there is no fear of failing, they very easily become habitual, and have almost zero power to make something happen that matters. But these activities do take time, in fact, end up taking almost all of our time so there is this constant excuse, “I am to busy”. We unconsciously fill our lives with menial work, and then genuinely feel like we are busy being productive. We do e-mails, text messages, talk on the phone, chit chat, space out, do personal errands, read the mail, check Facebook, watch television, and on the list goes. We are engaged in activity all day long but at the end of the day we have nothing to show for it, at the end of the week, at the end of the month, at the end of the year, at the end of our life, nothing that really mattered.

At some point we need to do some kind of inventory of our lives, an inventory that is brutally honest, and from that self-evaluation there needs to be growing want to change that grows stronger in our heart, a very strong want, not a casual discontent.

What works very effectively to promote reflective thinking besides a 2 month bicycle trip is a 15 minute time of prayer with God everyday, and besides the requests that you make for needs and problems in your life and in the life of those you care for, also spend a little time everyday asking God what He wants you to do with your life now. Psalms 143:10 says, “Teach me to do Your will, for You are my God; let Your good Spirit lead me on level ground.” There are about a dozen verses like this in the book of Psalms, look them up and read them each day during your prayer time. The power of prayer, the power of God’s Word, and the small desire to serve God will be honored by God, and you will find yourself having an awesome time investing your life for eternity.

Most people who do any kind of reflective thinking about their life and what they have done that matters go from feeling guilty, then to some form of despair, and then just a quite resignation, “ Oh well, I guess it just wasn’t in the cards for me”. Choose not to be that person.

Today we rode 72 miles, leaving Ennis, Montana at 7:00 am, and pulling into the KOA campground in Dillion, Montana at 2:30 pm. We started right out by climbing for 2 hours going up about 2,000 feet. It was nice that it was first thing while we were fresh and it was cooler. The rest of the ride was mostly downhill with some rollers thrown in for fun (note the picture as an exclamation of what a roller is). When I first started doing these bicycle trips in 2011 a hill like we had this morning on a trip profile that I would look at in preparation for the next day would totally psyche me out. I would think about it all night long, have dreams about it, and I was totally exhausted before I ever even attempted to climb it the next day. Now, it really isn’t that much of a big deal. The big hills are hard, but that is what the bicycle trip is about, challenges. I usually have to shift down into my lowest gear and crank along at about 4mph. I take a 1 minute break just about every mile to drink a little bit and rest my body, especially my butt. Sometimes with hills that are greater than 6 % grade I will have to get off and walk, but I enjoy using different muscles, and giving my butt a longer break. But after awhile we are at the summit, and then we get to go down. “Inch by inch, anything is a cinch”.

we biked 72 miles today and we are back in the cell and internet world. We are at Ennis, Montana which is very famous for amazing fly fishing in the Madison River. Hope you enjoy just a few of the pictures that I took. I will write some more later this evening.

Tomorrow morning we will leave at 6 am and we will camp in a primitive campground, which means pit toilets, no showers, no cell service, no internet, and no running water, cool, I like it. That will probably be the case for the next 5 days so I am throwing in this extra blog just for fun. My next blog will have lots of geyser, mud pit, and boiling pool pictures with maybe some buffalo, bear and elk pictures as well.

I had a few problems today with reserving camp sights. I got the impression somewhere, somehow a month ago that all the Yellowstone camp sights were non-reservation, first come, first serve basis, and then today as I was investigating camp sights I saw that you can reserve them. As I began doing that I found that they were all full except one, so I reserved 3 nights in a row at one camp sight. So that means that the day after tomorrow will be a 105 mile day and then the next day we will ride probably ride around 50 miles as we tour the geysers and stuff. Then the 14th of June we will leave and bike 125 miles to our next camp sight. Wow, that will be an accomplishment if we pull it off. We have the RV as backup so we really haven’t decided for sure how we are going to work that. Might be exciting to set a new personal best on daily miles, and then again it might not😀

This is a rest day for us, and I am enjoying sitting in my lawn chair all day reading sports news, planning the rest of the trip, planning next years trip, drinking lots of coffee, and taking two or three naps. We usually take rest days on Sunday so we can go to church, but tomorrow and the next 5 days we will be at primitive campgrounds, near no towns with churches, the kind with a pit toilet, a central water source and nothing else, so we stayed here so we could get all the cloths washed.

Wow, it doesn’t seem like 40 days have gone by already on this bicycle trip, seems like I have just now gotten into shape. 21 days left until we are home again, 2 rest days and 19 ride days, with 4 days being 82 miles long each day, and the rest less with only 2 days being hard climb days, like the last week has been, which means we are now on the easiest 1/3 of the trip😀 We also are on the most scenic part of the trip, with Yellowstone, mountains, trees, rivers, and lakes as part of the scenery we will be riding through.

I am not sure when zippers were invented, but it was before I was born I am sure, and in all those years hardly any improvement has been done. You would think that with rocket ships, cell phones, computers etc that someone could invent a zipper that works. I have two zippers on my tent, and they both now come apart in the middle after they have been zipped up leaving a gaping hole where there should be none. One on the rain fly which means that if we get into a rain storm at night, it will let a ton of water inside my tent. The second is the screen on the inside wall of the tent which means mosquito’s have a free pass into the inside of my tent at night while I am sleeping, and a free pass to bite me and suck all my blood out at night. And then there is the zipper on my sleeping bag that zips up fine, but in the middle of the night when you want to get out to go to the bathroom it gets stuck, and you are locked into your sleeping bag until you die, but I am not grumbling, I like sleeping in a soaking wet sleeping bag, and I really like waking up with thousands of mosquito bites all over my body, in fact it is one of my favorite things😂😫😩😬

we rode 92 miles today, leaving camp at 6 am and pulling into this camp at Boulder, Wyoming at 4:30pm, so I was really out of gas. But with a shower and a “Mountain House” freeze dried dinner it didn’t take long until I was feeling good again. We saw lots of antelope along the way today. It reminded me of when the kids were young and we drove through Wyoming, and they would have a contest on who could see the most antelope. We can now see the Teton Mountains clearly so it really adds to the beauty of what we see as we ride. This picture is me with my IPad watching the final game of the NBA playoff’s. Often the campgrounds don’t have a strong enough WiFi to do this, but this Campground did as long as I sat in my lawn chair close to the office. Watching the game was a great way to end a long, hard day on a bicycle seat. I am bundled up in the sweats more to keep the mosquitos off than to stay warm. I had my first dog encounter today. He came running out, and ran around me and my bike several times barking his head off, I yelled at him with my loudest, meanest sounding voice, but I think what worked is I just picked up my speed considerably and he couldn’t keep up with me, wimpy dog!

I felt really good and strong today riding my bicycle. Taking yesterday off and resting was a good idea for me. It was a great,day of bicycling, the scenery was awesome, there was very little traffic often with no vehicles passing us for 15 minutes, and we saw lots of wildlife which always gets me excited. We left Utah and crossed into Wyoming today and almost immediately upon crossing the State line we started seeing antelope and elk, Wyoming is a great State for wildlife and hunting. We rode 65 miles today, the first 32 miles was all uphill, steep uphill, up to 14% grade. The second 32 miles was all down hill, nice downhill where you cruised along at 20 to 25 mph with little to no peddling. The first 32 miles took us 7 hours, and the second 32 miles took us 90 minutes. When we pulled into the KOA campground in Rock Springs I was ready for the swimming pool that they had, it only took me about 15 minutes to be in the pool cooling off. Tomorrow is a 92 mile day but there is much less hill climbing then the last 5 ride days have had, the steepest climb is just 4.8% grade. We probably will finish the day in less time than it took to ride 65 miles today.

A major part of the definition of wisdom is balance. Almost every truth or principle that exists is in tension with what appears to be an opposite truth or principle. Most people usually swing to one truth or the other, living their lives out of balance. I just wrote about the balance of getting strength from God and also by resting. There is also a very important balance to be achieved in the discipline of resting. I was born lazy and so were you. Our flesh is powerfully drawn to easy and comfortable. We can become way over balanced and become very lazy and hardly ever accomplish anything worthwhile in the name of or in the guise of resting. Early in this trip I took a day off, like I did this morning, but later came to the conclusion that it was a wrong choice and that I was a wimp for not riding that day because I was motivated by “easy and comfort”, but I think the choice this morning is right. The decision a month ago was made quickly without much thought, and it was made because I didn’t want to get out of bed that morning. The decision this morning to not ride was made last night, after thinking about it for some time realizing that I was truly tired and run out of gas and that I needed to get some extra rest. This is an important “balancing act” to get figured out otherwise we won’t accomplish much because we are either to lazy or to tired.