Came home the conquering super man who bicycled 4,000 miles across the nation, and in a few short hours became the invalid stuck in a chair with my pee running into a plastic bag via a catheter! I started getting sick when we got on the plane in Maine and by the time we landed I was feeling awful. Patty stopped several times on the drive home for me to puke and I had dry heaves until 4 am this morning when she took me to the ER in Albany. They did a CAT scan and discovered my bladder was the size of a basketball (my words), so they put in a catheter, and I set a hospital record for the most urine drained off at one time. The good news is I lost another 10 lbs and look way skinnier, the bad news is I have to go see a Urologist this week and try and find out what is wrong with the plumbing. Everyone’s  guess is that sitting on that bicycle seat 10 hours a day for 2 months is the cause and it will probably heal itself shortly. I am hoping and praying that is so. Reminds me again of Provers16:9, “the mind of man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps”. This certainly is an irritant and a major inconvience, and is messing with all the plans I had about all I was going to accomplish when I got home, but I trust the Lord completely with the details of my life, and have peace about whatever the future holds. In the mean time I will take advantage of the down time to rest up from the trip, read, and have Patty bring me something to drink 😄

i appreciate all of your prayers for my healing and getting back to ministry.

i love you all very much. Dee

Came home the conquering super man who bicycled 4,000 miles across the nation, and in a few short hours became the invalid stuck in a chair with my pee running into a plastic bag via a catheter! I started getting sick when we got on the plane in Maine and by the time we landed I was feeling awful. Patty stopped several times on the drive home for me to puke and I had dry heaves until 4 am this morning when she took me to the ER in Albany. They did a CAT scan and discovered my bladder was the size of a basketball (my words), so they put in a catheter, and I set a hospital record for the most urine drained off at one time. The good news is I lost another 10 lbs and look way skinnier, the bad news is I have to go see a Urologist this week and try and find out what is wrong with the plumbing. Everyone’s  guess is that sitting on that bicycle seat 10 hours a day for 2 months is the cause and it will probably heal itself shortly. I am hoping and praying that is so. Reminds me again of Provers16:9, “the mind of man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps”. This certainly is an irritant and a major inconvience, and is messing with all the plans I had about all I was going to accomplish when I got home, but I trust the Lord completely with the details of my life, and have peace about whatever the future holds. In the mean time I will take advantage of the down time to rest up from the trip, read, and have Patty bring me something to drink 😄

i appreciate all of your prayers for my healing and getting back to ministry.

i love you all very much. Dee

Sitting here in the airport in Portland, Maine waiting for our flight. I went back and reread all, almost 100 blog entries that I have written in the last 66 days, and got totally overwhelmed with gratitude to God for this awesome experience He has allowed me to have, and sadness that it is over. I moved off by myself so no one would notice me blubbering. The whole trip seemed so long, but now seems like it was just a few days ago that we started.

The sad thing is that all the memories of accomplishment, pain, beauty, excitement, fatigue will fade and it won’t be long before it will be like it didn’t even happen. But the character that has been shaped in me by the experience I will work hard at not losing. I am going to put the pictures and blogs together and go back and read it periodically to refresh my memory.

That is the way life is, you forget a lot, but keep pushing on to new experiences, growth, and accomplishments. The Apostle Paul said it this way, “forgetting what is past, and pressing on to becoming  more like Jesus”, that is my life purpose.

I wonder if I could build a sailboat from plans, sail it to Hawaii and sell it? Just a thought, don’t get excited :-).

I do think I will keep writing this blog, if you are interested in reading it. I will work at making it entertaining, and meaningful as I write about going to Vietnam in November, going mountain lion hunting in December, getting along with my wife all the time :-), being a grandpa, being a pastor, working on my next BHAG of competing in and finishing an Ironman event. Woops they are calling for us to board.

I love you all very much. Dee

You all know that I did this trip with John Smith. He retired recently from an Oregon State job, and he and I are in an accountability group together with a number of other guys that meets once each week in the morning. When I started talking about the trip he expressed interest in going with me and over the course of several months made the commitment to go. A number of other guys also expressed strong interest in going but family and job commitments prevented it. So, John going along just “happened”, it wasn’t anything that I planned or thought about. I fretted a great deal about it before we left because I knew 2 months was a long time, and getting along well with anybody who you are with 24 hours a day for that long is difficult if not impossible. But in spite of my worries, his being on the trip with me was a very positive part of the trip, here are a few reasons why.

john was very patient with the limitations that I had because of having Parkinson’s. This was a big worry of mine before we left because I knew that he was an experienced bicycle rider and in shape and 10 years younger than me. He never created a spirit of competition or rivalry that made me feel like a wimp, and treated me as an equal physically that was honoring.

John and I are both natural leaders who intuitively shift into a higher gear when a crisis or problem arises and think quickly about the problem and make decisions about what to do decisively. The problem is that it is easy to “run over” others in the process of fixing things. He and I worked well together as we made decisions and practiced deference with each other that didn’t create hurts or offenses. Everyday there were decisions to be made about how far to bike, where to stay, etc and the decision making process was mutual and unified and fun.

john didn’t talk a lot. One of the main reasons that I go on trips like this is to practice solitude so as to recover from the emotional energy drain that comes from my job and ministry of working with people most of the time and who often have problems and issues that need solved and help. We were comfortable with silence without feeling the need to fill it up with chit chat. We did talk and our conversations about our families and goals was enjoyable.

We were on the same page when it came to our faith in Jesus and our desire to faithfully read the Bible everyday and to pray together several times each day when we ate asking God for protection, guidance, and thanking Him for our wonderful trip.

This trip, as I have said several times already has been an adventure of a lifetime, and John has been a key reason why. The Lord blessed me by Soveregnly working that out.

i love you all very much. Dee

I have been thinking a lot  the last couple of days about my next trip, and what I will do differently. I don’t have a goal or a date, but I would like to do this again in the future before I die. It would be cool if I could bring one of my grandsons with me and give them some “grandpa wisdom” on the trip if their parents would trust me to get them back home.

1. I would make the “Warm Shower” hosts a much bigger priority on the trip. The time spent in the homes with the various hosts was a major highlight of the trip for me. They all were so gracious, friendly, and helpful, and even seemed interested in all the pictures of my grandkids that I showed them.  We were locked into the Adventure Cycling Northern Tier Route and didn’t want to go off route very much so as not to add additional miles, and in so doing we eliminated most of the people who were signed up as hosts along the way. I would work hard at being in a “Host” home almost every night. That would require some zigzagging, but it would be worth it and would save a lot of money.

2. I would do the research and spend the money to buy the best rain gear to wear while biking in the rain. That was really the only negative part of the trip including the hills. We only rode in the rain about 7 days but it was very unpleasant. What I had for this trip was cheap and didn’t work very well and didn’t breath.

3. Make our own route instead of using an established one. There is information “on line”where we could determine the size of the shoulders of any road in the US. I would make that the priority in choosing the route. The established bicycle routes make traffic the main issue, but most of them have very little shoulder, and even a little traffic especially truck makes riding  hairy! Choosing our own route would make it easy to connect with Warm Shower Hosts as well and hit places that would be fun to see.

4. Make the daily mileage goals for the trip less than what we did on this trip so the evenings would be a bit more enjoyable and relaxing. On this trip I usually was so tired at the end of the day that I didn’t read much, visit much, just eat and go to bed.

5. Save my pennies and buy a recumbent trike to ride instead of a traditional bicycle. My biggest problem with my Parkinsons is getting started, stopping, and going slow up hills because my balance is now so poor. With a Trike I wouldn’t have to worry about that. It would also eliminate almost all the butt soreness, the hand numbness, and the neck pain that was a constant on this trip.

Almost everything else about this trip was perfect, and very enjoyable and rewarding.

Ilove you all very much. Dee

Well, we pedaled the 28 miles this morning to the Super 8 Motel in Portland, Maine that we are staying at tonight which gives us a grand total of 4,018 miles for the trip. We will pedal 4 miles to the bike shop in the morning to make it 4,022 miles. As we pulled into the parking lot I felt a great sense of relief that we made it, we finished the whole trip. Once we got into our room I called Patty and told her and she started crying and was getting me all emotional so I told her I would call her back this evening 🙂

I am feeling sad that is over, feeling a great sense of fulfillment that the trip was successful, feeling excited about all that I am going to do when I get home, feeling very thankful that I got to do something like this, feeling very grateful to all those who prayed for us, our safety, and that we would make it. It still hasn’t fully sunk in that we have accomplished the goal, I think on the airplane ride home as I have a number of hours to replay everything in my mind that it will hit.

love you all. Dee

Our plans were to bike all the way to Portland today but about 10 miles after starting this morning John had a blowout on his bike tire. We were going down a hill into a town about 25 mph and John ran over something and his back tire blew. I was behind him and I heard the tire blow, it sounded like a gun shot, and his tire went flat immediately. I thought for sure that he would wreck but he was able to get the bike stopped quickly and dragged up on the sidewalk. We were crossing a bridge with zero shoulder, and had he wrecked he probably would have been hit by a car. We got across the bridge into a parking lot and spent the next hour working on the tire. It made a pretty big hole in the tire and when he pumped it full of air the tube pooched out so we knew that he needed a new tire. I called Jim, the fellow who hosted us last night, and asked if he could check on his computer and find the closest bike shop for us. He did that and discovered a shop right on our route 11 miles away. We headed off hoping that the tire would last until we got there, and pretty soon a car pulled off the road in front of us, and Jim got out asking if he could take us to the shop. I thought, “Wow, what a nice guy, to drive out where we were and see if we needed help!” His car wasn’t near big enough to hold even one of our bikes so we said we would make it which we did. After getting the new tire on we realized that we didn’t have enough time to make Portland. I called Jim again and asked him if he could locate a cheap motel about 30 miles from Portland. He called back a few minutes later and found a nice and cheap motel in Cornish, Maine so we made that our new goal. We biked 63 miles today and it was a very nice day of biking in spite of our slow start, very few hills and in spite of the forcast we had no rain.

We went to a Resturant next to the motel to eat dinner and found it was a very nice sea food Resturant with a big tub full of  big lobsters. I decided to have my celebration dinner of lobster one night early. It was an incredibly nice dinner with amazingly tasty bread and lots of lobster meat. I probably gained some of my weight back, but it sure was fun!!.

We are going to sleep in until 7 am tomorrow morning and after breakfast head off to Portland which is 27 miles away. We can’t check in until 2 pm, and once we are in our room we will sort through stuff and throw a bunch away and get everything packed into a bag. Friday morning we will be at the bike shop at 10 am per our appointment and then take a cab to the airport and be there around noon, board the plane at 4 pm and land in Portland, Oregon at 11 pm.

At least that is our plan unless we blow a tire!

love you all very much and see you soon 😃 Dee

Pictures of a 24 mile trail we biked on yesterday. Old railroad bed. All gravel and very slow and tiring. Lots of loose gravel and mud holes. Mountain bike trail ridden on with a touring bike. But very pretty and no traffic. Also a picture of the country side. Went over the border from Vermont to New Hampshire on back road so no “entering” picture. Getting ready to leave this morning on our last day’s ride. 80 miles today. I think we will make it. Tomorrow only 15 miles and then Friday on the airplane and home. See you soon.

Biked 84 miles today and it was mostly hills. Got to our “Warm Shower” host home at Meredith New Hampshire at 7 pm and it was dark. Our hosts are wonderful people and fed us a great dinner with ice cream for dessert, and are feeding us blueberry pancakes for breakfast!!!  The husband, Jim has walked from Portland, Maine to the Pacific Ocean. He takes a walking trip of 4 weeks each summer, and after he finished walking across the US he is now walking the Eastern Coast. He carries everything in a pack on his back and camps each night and cooks his meal from what he is carrying. We had a great time swapping stories of our respective trips.

We are headed for a motel tomorrow that is 15 miles from the airport in Portland, Maine. It is 81 miles and it is supposed to rain a bunch, but who cares because it will be our last day bicycling. Our host said that it is flat and slightly downhill the whole day so the day should be relately easy compared to the last 10 days!

I am already feeling a bit blue about the trip coming to an end. This has been a great adventure, and the challenge of my life. I thank the Lord everyday for giving me this opportunity.

love you all very much. Dee

ermontEntered into Vermont today, and we declared it first place in several categories. The first is it is the hilliest of all the States. It seems when you look out over the State from a high place that it is nothing but mountains. We climbed a hill or I should say Mountain that was 14 miles from bottom to top and climbed 2,000 ft with grades as high as 12%. It was a killer!! The second category is it has the worst roads of any State we have been in. When we headed down from Mt Molly as I fondly named her we immediately got up to speeds of 30 mph but the roads were so bad that we had to brake hard or be shaken to death, or fly off the road or have our bikes blow apart. I touched the disks on my disk brakes on my bicycle after 15 minutes of descending Mt Molly and got burned and got a blister on my finger.

Rode 86 miles today and because of all the climbing, especially Mt Molly we got to our Bed and Breakfast in Bethel, Vermont after dark. We have bright red blinking lights on our bikes so other cars can see us easily, but it is still spooky riding a bicycle in busy traffic after the sun goes down.

My shin splints started hurting again today with a vengence. I am sure it is because of all the hard biking we did today.  Praying that a good nights rest will help along with the Aleve and compression sock.

all day long when I would feel super exhausted or my shin hurting I would say, “2 more days after today”, “you can do it”! I do the same thing with difficulties in life, “you are going to heaven” “quit fussing!”

love you all very much. Dee