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.

One of the keys to being successful in life is falling in love with the daily grind instead of dreading it and fussing about it. I used to regularly climb Mt Adams. It is over 12,000 ft tall, it is very steep, and and very hard to climb. Many who start quit before they get to the top because of the difficulty. One of the topics of discussion between people who are getting ready to climb the Mountain is why are we doing this. Those who say they are climbing the mountain because they want to be able to say that they made it to the top of Mt Adams have the highest rate of failure in making it to the top. Those who say they are climbing it because of the challenge of the climb almost always make it to the top. Learning how to enjoy hard is a self training pursuit, and requires that we learn and practice a precise self talk when life does get hard. Our natural self is very wimpy and immediately fusses and feels sorry for itself when life takes a turn towards difficult, but we can, when we realize how important it is, learn to respond to hard with excitement, and gratefulness. Learn to enjoy the daily grind, and the harder it is the more excited we get. It is like getting ready to raft down a class 4 rapids, or climbing into an airplane to go sky diving, or getting ready to ride a bicycle 3,400 miles with over 142,000 feet of elevation gain. The anticipated level of difficulty of an event is what makes it fun and enjoyable. Those who enjoy the difficulty of the journey don’t quit and make it to the top, but those who are simply heading toward a destination or an accomplishment usually quit.

Worked all day with friend Jim McCain cutting and sowing on a roll of waterproof canvas 4 ft wide and 80 feet long to make a cover for my boat. We finished it just in time to make Saturday night church service tonight at JBC. One of my goals is learn something new in the way of a new skill. Well I watched about two hours of you tube instructions on how to make a boat cover. It turned out very nice so I now consider myself a bona fide boat cover maker. There isn’t much that I enjoy more than learning something new especially a new skill.After this picture was taken we put grommets in all along the edges, and have and have it bungy corded down to the frame. Now it is ready to pull up to the Kenai Peninsula to to launch into Cook Inlet to catch a bunch of halibut.

I went for a bicycle ride today. My goal was to go about 20 miles as a comfortable warm up for the 3,400 mile journey we leave on in 5 days. I rode 2 miles and turned around and went back home. I was totally done in when I got home and went and sat in my recliner for a couple hours to recover. When I was recovered enough to think clearly I started getting very uptight about the upcoming bicycle trip and the probability of me making it past the first day. A major part of the fear is that I have successfully finished 5 major bicycle journeys of over 2000 miles and 2 of them were over 4,000 and I blogged about each one and in the process I have picked up around 4000 faithful readers who think that I can successfully ride a bicycle anywhere for any length of time. So if I fail miserably to get past even the first day of riding on this trip it seems like the whole world is going to know, and I am going to feel like a major wimp. Now the challenge is trying to figure out how much I am motivated by the applause of people, and how much of that is ok with God. One thing I do know is the first two days of riding are going to be really, really hard, whoops I make fun of people who say the “hard” word. Anyway, the first two days are going to be a challenge in more than one way.

Patty and I drove up to see my Mom today where she lives in Trout Lake, Washington. It is about a 3 hour drive from our house to hers. She hasn’t been doing very well so I expected the worst in the sense of her attentiveness and memory, but she was very “with it”, and we had a very nice visit. Her and Patty do most of the talking along with my sister who lives just across the driveway from my Mom and is her main caregiver, so I mostly just sit and listen and throw in a grunt now and again to show that I am tracking with the conversation. As the ladies were talking I was reminiscing about my growing up years trying to remember all that my Mom did for me in the way of Christian training and motivation. I have a strong faith and a very close and intimate relationship with the Lord, and God has blessed my life, marriage, family, and ministry over the years, and I know the reason is because I was well parented by my Mom and my Dad. I am a product of very faithful, diligent, and responsible parents. My life is very much a result of factors that I had no part in choosing, so I can hardly take credit for anything that I am or have done, so I want to be especially careful in thanking my Mom and not taking her for granted, and thanking the Lord for the way He has sovereignty worked in my life and never taking Him for granted or forget to thank, praise, and worship the Lord for what He has done in my life.

So I read that a fellow named David Meade from England predicted that the rapture would happen April 23rd, 2018. I woke up this morning and realized that nothing had changed, if the rapture had occurred, I had gotten left behind, and that wouldn’t have been a good thing.

1 Corinthians 15:51-52. Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.

1 Thessalonians 4:16-17. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord.

Leaving this earth and getting a new body is a very attractive thought to me. Aching and hurting muscles are with me pretty much most of the day now, and towards the end each day I begin to think about what it is going to feel like to have my new glorified body. I don’t know when it is going to be but one thing I do know for sure, it is going to happen, and those who love Jesus will be with Him forever.

I have everything done on my boat building project. I took it out and tested it on Foster Reservoir, and it did so good, I was very happy with how it handled and the speed it went. I am planning on towing it up to Alaska in July and taking it out in Cook Inlet and fishing for halibut.

Here is my boat in our yard being a playground for some of my grandkids. I plan on taking them all fishing one of these days in my boat.

I sold my 1949 Ford pickup this last week. A fellow from Illinois bought it. He drove out in a Ford diesel truck with a car trailer, and I helped him load it up and off he drove. It was a bit sad as I had invested literally hundreds of hours of work in that old pickup. It was a pile of junk when I started, and after all the fixing and rebuilding it drove really nice. A number of people have asked why I sold it, and the reason is that I am on a “disciplined pursuit of less” in my life. I started and finished building a 24 foot Dory boat recently, and one of my rules in my “disciplined pursuit of less” is I can’t start a new project unless I get rid of an old project. I will eventually sell the Dory Boat, hopefully making a little profit in the process, and I will then start on a new project. I like to have the new projects include the need to learn a new skill so I am stretching myself and always learning. Some possibilities of new projects are building a three wheeled car from scratch, restarting my aquaponics project with cat fish, building a 30 foot sailboat, putting in a half acre fish pond on our place with lots of fish, and a number of others that are really crazy. I want to be a lifelong learner, and never plateau in my character growth. I can choose to do that , and control the pace that I do that by the goals that I write.