Here are some Grand Canyon pictures that I couldn’t send yesterday because of poor WiFi.

Today takes over as the hardest day. It was a grinder with a bunch of uphill, really steep uphill. We are camped at 8,800 ft in elevation tonight at Kaibab Camper Village not to far from the North rim of the Grand Canyon, and last night we were camped at 3,000 ft. I shift my bike down to it’s lowest gear, stand on the pedals, and pull over just about every mile for a puff break and a glut of water. It is really slow going, and sucks the energy right out of me. We walked around for awhile and looked at the Grand Canyon and took pictures, and then we went into a restaurant with an amazing window view and had a super delicious Navajo Taco, so much for the calories that I burned. So far on the trip we have been heading South and South East, tomorrow we change directions and head North for Yellowstone.

Today was a good day of riding except for the traffic and with no shoulder to ride on (check out the picture) we had cars and trucks going by us fast and close, and an occasional rude person who yells at us or when they are right beside us they lay on the horn, but they will pay for their behavior because I prayed the “dysentery prayer”for them.. we rode 52 miles and the first 25 miles was all uphill with some very steep grades (again, check the picture), but the weather was great, there was no head wind, and we enjoyed ourselves very much! Tomorrow we will get to the Grand Canyon and we will check that out good, and I will take lots of pictures. Tonight we are camped at Kaibab Paiute RV Campground just inside the Arizona border past the town of Colorado City. Three different people gave me a gift card for “Sub Sandwich” because they heard that I liked stopping at them on bike trips, the total from the three cards was well over $100, and I just today finished off one of the cards. They are the best when you are biking like we are, they are fast, cheap, and lots of carbs for energy. I usually eat half of a foot long sandwich and eat the second half when we get to camp to tide me over until dinner. The campground has a huge TV in their lounge so we are going to watch the NBA playoff game between Golden State and the Houston Rockets. We are going to eat barbecued chicken that Tom is cooking during the game.

Today we only rode about 30 miles on our bicycles, but they were very, very enjoyable miles. We are camped 30 miles from Zion National Park at a KOA Campground, that was the closest one we could find, all the others were full. So this morning we loaded all the bikes onto the RV and drove about 25 miles back towards Zion and parked along side the road in a wide place. We then unloaded the bikes and rode them 5 miles to the entrance to the National Park and then rode on a bike trail that went about 20 miles through the park. The scenery was amazing, and I took lots of pictures. We got back to camp a few minutes ago, and I promptly jumped into the swimming pool that they have here at this campground. Boy did that feel good, it is starting to heat up, tomorrow is supposed to be 88 degrees. Tomorrow we head towards the Grand Canyon.

we are camped outside of St George, Utah, and have this beautiful view from our tent sights. Tomorrow we are going to spend the day bicycling through Zion Canyon, and that should be amazing. Today I bought a new IPad, I broke my old one yesterday when I fell over on my bike with the IPad in one of my Panniers ( bicycle saddle bags). I also bought a little device to load the pictures from the SD card on my Cannon Camera onto my IPad so I should have many pictures to choose from to put on my blog tomorrow. One of the blessings of bicycle trips is that we go relatively slow, so we get to see everything and we get to see it in detail. As I see the beauty of creation every day there is the obvious signs of a very intelligent creator-God. As I see it mile after mile several thoughts just sort of wash over me. The first is “God is amazing, He is amazing in His creativity, and He is amazing in His power”. The second thought is “I am very, very small and insignificant compared to all this that I see”. The third is, “God created me in His image, He is now molding and shaping me to be like Him in character and saved me because He desires that I be with Him forever”. And the last is, “In spite of my tiny size compared with all creation, I am very important to God, in fact I am loved by God.” Those thoughts running through my mind all day long over and over, have a strong impact and effect in my life. My sense of value and worth goes up and up, not in a prideful way because of what I have done, but because of my value and worth to God. My sense of “I need to do something with my life that matters” gets stronger and more motivating, not because I feel obligated, but because I feel capable, more than capable because God has created me, and “my, oh my” look at all this power and creativity on display, I must be amazing. And last, a very serious reoccurring thought, “don’t mess with God”, that is don’t be making Him less than first place in my life, or thinking of Him as my personal vending machine, and just simply forgetting about Him, and letting the stuff in the world control me. He is Almighty, all wise, all knowing, infinite, eternal God, and He owes me nothing, but I owe Him everything.

Today takes over first place for the hardest day of riding for the trip even though we only rode 65 miles. We had almost 30 miles of up hill, most very steep, and then when we got to the downhill part we had a huge headwind, and we had to peddle hard to go even downhill. When we got into camp tonight I was totally exhausted. Our daughter Sally, her husband Aaron and their 3 wonderful kids, who live in Hawaii are here on vacation touring this part of the US, and they came by to see me and we went out to dinner together. I was probably awful company as I kept falling asleep. I took my iPad with me this morning in one of my bicycle panniers because the camera on my iPhone doesn’t work and I wanted to get a bunch of great pictures as we get into this beautiful part of our country. Because of the balance issues I have because of Parkinson’s I can’t get started on my bicycle without falling over, it is kind of embarrassing if people are around. To help solve the problem I bought and installed an electric motor that is the front hub of my bicycle. I use it when I start up on the bike by pushing this button that gives me power and gets the bike up to 4 mph very quickly. Once I am up to 4 mph the centrifugal force of the bicycle keeps me up and going. Well, this morning I got into one of the panniers for a bottle of water and inadvertently turned the battery off that powers the motor. I got on the bike and locked my right foot onto the peddle and pushed the button, but nothing happened and before I realized that I had no power and got my shoe disconnected, I fell over flat on the ground. I bruised my right leg pretty good, but the worst thing is I broke my iPad that was in the pannier. I need to get a new one quickly because I do most of my work on it, so Aaron my son-in-law is going to take me shopping for one in the morning in St George, where we are camped.

Well, today is officially one third done on the trip, we have been gone 20 days, and have bicycled 1,100 miles, have climbed about 50,000 feet in elevation, and I have lost 13 lbs. we have not yet seen Zion, Bryce, or the Grand Canyon, and we haven’t gone through Yellowstone, so the scenic part of the trip is yet to come, but the scenery has been beautiful so far.

Everyone Cliff, Kathy, Tom, and I are all in good health, and feeling good, and all are borrowing my little travel scale regularly to see how much weight they are loosing. Cliff has lost the most so far, but he was the fattest starting out 😀 (brothers). The bicycles are doing great with nothing breaking or wearing out, no flat tires, or any such thing. I have read about 500 pages, written about 10,000 words, and spent about 15 hours memorizing Bible verses, not counting all the hours of prayer, reflective thinking, and creative thinking that I have done as I ride along for 8 hours each day on my bicycle.

Today we are at Young’s RV Campground in Caliente, Nevada, and it is a rest day. We are going to have bacon and eggs for breakfast instead of our usual oatmeal, and then we are going to walk one mile to “Agape Baptist Church”. My goal is to not miss more than 2 times of going to a worship service each week during the year. If I miss making the goal because of circumstances, I am not going to get upset with myself, but I do want to establish a priority and a value in my life. My primary motive is an act of submission and obedience to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Many today who say they are followers of Jesus don’t take attendance, involvement or love for their church seriously, which illustrates the Biblical principle that what we value and what God values are usually opposite of each other.

One of my life axioms is “Don’t make a decision to make a major change in direction or quit anything until the very last moment so you have had all the information possible, and every second possible to think about it, so as not to be impulsive or reacting to ‘difficult’ or hard’ “. About 2 am I woke up with severe leg cramps from the 112 mile day with all the hills, and I knew today was 88 miles with even more hills than yesterday, so I decided that I would take the day off and ride in the motorhome. I tossed and turned until 4:30 am and got up and packed all my stuff. While doing it I realized I was feeling pretty good, and I could probably do it, but the decision to not ride was so “comfortable” I couldn’t bring myself to choose to get on that hard, ugly bicycle seat. A few minutes later Cliff and Kathy got up, and I told them my decision, half thinking that they might follow my lead and ride in the RV as well, but, no, off they went on their bicycles. All day long I kicked myself for wimping out, especially when we passed them chugging up a long hill. Oh well, I feel really good right now sitting in camp. In my personal journal that I write in most days, I rewrote my axiom so that I don’t forget it in the future. Choosing to ride a bicycle or not is not that big of a deal, but there are many other decisions that are a big deal, and living a life of faithfulness and endurance is a really big deal to God. He is the one who gives assignments in life, and He gives the important ones to faithful people who don’t quit, and I really want to be considered by Him to be worthy of significant responsibilities.

I don’t have much service where we are camped tonight so I will make my blog tonight short and go longer tomorrow night. Well we made the 112 miles today and summited 5 different passes, that means we went up and down 5 different times. Here are a couple pictures of the summits.Lloyd

Today we rode 70 miles with lots of climbing, but we had a nice tail wind all day. I think a tail wind is about my favorite blessing while riding all day on a bicycle. Here is a video of me chugging up a hill, and I use the word chugging fairly literally. We are at Tolopah, Nevada tonight and tomorrow we will be in Rachel. Tomorrow we are going to ride 113 miles with 4 big monster hill climbs, in fact we will either be going up a hill or coming down a hill, not much flat tomorrow. We are going to start at 6 am and probably won’t pull into camp until at least 6 pm so it is going to be a 12 to 14 hour day, whoooeeeee. The nice thing is we are going to stay at an Inn so we won’t have to set up tents and all the rest when we get into camp, and we will get to sleep on nice beds, and they have dinner and breakfast for us so no cooking either.

In the 4 previous long bike rides like this that I have done it seems like day 21 is the tipping point. Every day before that is a grind and I mumble a lot during the day about being crazy, and never doing anything like this again, and act your age, and what are you trying to prove, and on on it goes. This year has been similar except that I am expecting that all to change on day 21 like in past years, so I kind of humor myself as I grumble, and focus on the end of the ride and how much more enjoyable it is going to be. My life is like that now, I am well past the “tipping point”, and I am on the end of the trip now. The main difference now is that I have a peace about life and don’t get all uptight about difficulties, unexpected trials, conflicts, and all the rest of the pressures of life, because we have gone through so much and it has turned out. There really isn’t that much new coming around, same old stuff often in a different format, but the same. At this point there is a very strong sense and faith in the fact that everything has happened according to God’s plan and will continue to, so it is all good.