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!

Today was the first day of a 60 day, 3,400 mile bicycle trip. We started at 6 am from Ricks Market parking lot in Jefferson, Oregpnand got into camp in Dexter at 4:00 pm so we were on the road for 10 hours and we went 78 miles with about 1800 feet of elevation gain. I expected the first day to be very, very hard, and it was very hard, but not very, very hard. But I think tomorrow is going to be very, very, very, very hard with over 6000 ft of elevation gain though we will be only riding 56 miles. Tomorrow we will be at Odell lake lodge and we are going to take a rest day on Thursday there, and John the owner is going to take me fishing all day for Kokanee and mackinaw. Now that is what I call a great rest day! Today was a great first day of bike riding. I was able to ride the entire thing, we had no flat tires, a new bike riding friend bought my lunch, there was no headwind, traffic was minimal, nothing broke, and I am thinking that I will sleep very, very, very sound. I would write more, but I keep falling asleep and dropping my IPad on the floor. There is no electricity in our tent camping spot so I am sitting in the men’s shower room writing this with my bike tail light, cell phone, and bike gps all plugged into the wall plug in.

I don’t like doing taxes, but I do them anyway. I really don’t want to ride my stationary bike an hour everyday, but I do it anyway, in fact some days I don’t want to get out of bed, but I do anyway. It is a very long list of things I don’t like to do, that I don’t want to do. Why do them? Why not just take the route in life that eliminates all “have to’s”, and enjoy life to the max. In our day and age we are moving more and more in that direction. One of the new definitions of right and wrong is doing what I like and not doing what I don’t like.

Let me suggest 3 reasons to do what you don’t like,or don’t want to do. (1) Doing what we don’t want to do is almost always the responsible thing to do. Almost everything we do impacts other people in some way. Choosing to do things we don’t like to do because it blesses, or helps those around us is what it means to be responsible. When the kids were little there were many things that I chose to do because I knew it was the best thing for them. (2) The most successful people in the world are the ones who consistently choose to do what most others choose not to do because they don’t like doing it or don’t want to. To be a successful person means we have accomplished a lot of significant and meaningful work that will influence many people for a long time. (3) self-discipline or self-control is the ultimate in character traits, and most people are very low on this. Choosing to do what we don’t like to do, what we don’t feel like doing, and what we really, really don’t want to do is one of the best tools for self-training in growing in self-control. People with a high level of self-control conquer addictions, manage time well, don’t procrastinate, speak graciously, manage their money well, and keep the Lord first place in their lives, to mention just a few.