Faithfulness and endurance are two character traits that God values highly in us, and they are in my opinion the two most important character traits for general success in life in every area as opposed to talent, giftedness, or intelligence.  A lot of people start well but few finish well. I have wanted to quit this stupid bicycle trip often, but I haven’t and I won’t. Most days it is fun, exciting, challenging, and I thank God for the awesome privilege of doing it.  But other days it is hard, tedious, and I would rather be doing anything else.  Before we left I wrote a little sermon to myself to help keep me motivated,  faithful to the goal, and determined to persevere through the “I want to quit times”. 

(1) Know without a doubt that the “I want to quit” days will happen, and probably happen a lot considering what a wimp I am. Our flesh hates “hard”. Don’t be surprised when they happen and plan on it happening.

(2) remind yourself over and over that the desire to quit will pass if you persevere.

(3) remind yourself that when you persevere and don’t quit when you feel like it, you will be a bit stronger as a person and it will be easier to persevere the next time the desire to quit comes.

(4) God loves to give His strength to those who ask. Ask a lot.

(5) Remind yourself often that short lived relief comes from quitting, followed by remorse, but long felt joy and satisfaction comes from finishing strong and completing the goal.

(6) Remind yourself that the desire to quit will be overwhelmingly strong, conquer it or it will conquer you.

(7) Doing this trip with John makes the probability of succeeding go up substantially. We are always stronger with others than by ourselves. God made us that way.

(8) the more people who pray for me for strength, faithfulness, and endurance the better I Will do. 

Thank you all for your prayers and encouragement. I love you all. Dee

It has monsooned  on us all night. It is now 7 am and I am laying in my little tent hoping that my recent treatment of the bottom of my tent and the rain fly work and hold the lake my tent is sitting in out. I am glad this our rest day so that we would not be out riding in this stuff. I thought North Dakota was like close to the Sahara desert in the amount of rain they got. Evidently not! Wow, listen to it come down out their! I hope it lets up a little pretty soon. I have to go to the bathroom and it is about 50 yards away. I might have to make a break for it soon regardless. All my rain cloths are out in my dry bag under the picnic table. Looks like I will be sleeping a lot today.

We left Beach, North Dakota this morning and pedaled 65 miles to Dickinson, North Dakota. The forecast was for very heavy rains all day so we were prepared to ride in the rain today, but it was nice all day. Nice ride today. We road on old highway 10 and there was virtually no traffic. As we road through beautiful farm land we must have jumped at least 50 pheasant that were along the side of the road. As they would bust into the air I would point my imaginary shotgun at them and blast them out of the air. My shooting tended to create quite a bit of wobbling on my bicycle, and I am sure John, who was riding behind me  was wondering what was going on.  We are at a campground that was built specifically for all the oil workers flooding into the area. It is probably the largest RV park I have ever seen. They have a very nice area just for tents. Picnic table, lots of shade, close to the shower room, free WiFi, little room with table and chairs that we can set in and read, very nice. Tomorrow is are scheduled “day of rest” so we will be here all day tomorrow. I will sleep in real late, take several naps, read and write a bunch, and take several showers during the day. I will also be biking over to a local Bike Store and buy some new tires. I have worn the ones I started with out. They were advertised to last 4,000 miles but didn’t even make 2000. Probably all the weight I am carrying on the bike.

Many of you enjoyed me making a fool of myself doing a jig when we reached 1,000 miles on our trip. So when we reach the half way point on our journey I am going to do another one for you. I am thinking about how to make it special and I am am thinking of adding a little song as well so don’t miss it 🙂

love you all. Dee

Today we met this interesting fellow from England. He had a very strong English accent and was a very jolly individual who was super interesting to talk to. He built this bicycle and is riding it all over the world. He started on this particular trip in Toronto and is riding to the West coast and then down to the tip of South America. He had all his camping stuff on the bike as we do and he had solar panels on top of his stuff to charge his iPad, phone, camera, etc. When he rode up to us on the opposite side of the road he hopped off the bike like someone jumping off of a horse and then when he got back on he pushed it from behind building up some speed and then hopped on from the back the way Roy Rogers used to do with Trigger. I don’t know how he is going to peddle that thing up the mountains and hills we have come over, but he said he was looking forward to it.

John and I make rules as we travel as we have various experiences. One rule is we don’t plan on camping in a spot if we can’t talk to a real live person about it. We made that rule after getting to one of our earlier camping spots to discover we would be camping in a weed patch with no water and no bathroom. Our new rule after last night is no motel rooms in basements. We stayed in Beach, North Dakota, and because of all the workers there working in the oil fields there wasn’t much available so we settled on a room in a Motel that was low class to say the least, and the room was in the basement. Patty my wife suffers with asthma, and has attacks often. My daughter Sherri does as well. Well last night I had my very first ever asthma attack. I woke up in the middle of the night gasping for air struggling to breath. I didn’t know what was happening and as I came fully awake I thought I must be having a heart attack. I thought about what I could do, and not knowing what that would be I assumed I was going to die. I thought, here I come Jesus, I hope You are as glad to see me as I will be to see You. I thought also, this sure is going to mess up John’s bicycle trip. I laid there for a few more minutes struggling to breath, and then I began doing what I did sky diving when it was hard to breath as well. I pushed as much air out as I could slowly and then breathed in slow and filled my lungs as full as I could. After a few minutes of this I decided it wasn’t a heart attack after all but was very much like what Patty had often. I got up and got a big drink of water and went back to bed though I didn’t sleep much after that. Once we got to riding every thing cleared up and I feel fine now, but no more dank motel rooms in basements.

We crossed into North Dakota today. This was the easiest ride of the trip. We were on Freeway I-94 all day. The reason it was the easiest was because (1) it was 37 miles, (2) the Freeway builders filled up the low spots and chopped off the high spots so the climbs were much more gradual than in the last several days, (3) there was an 8 foot shoulder so it was a very relaxed ride in the sense of worrying about getting run over, (4) every time a truck went by his draft would pick up my speed by 2 mph for a minute, and they were coming by very often, (5) and it was overcast with a little rain so we were nice and cool, unlike yesterday’s 97 degrees.

Couldn’t find any campgrounds in the area, and Motels were all full, but I cried on the phone as I was checking for places and said we were two old, tired guys riding bicycles from the West Coast to the East coast and we really needed a place to stay for the night, so this lady took pity and gave us a room in the basement with one bed. John gets the bed and I have my very fine blow up air mattress on the floor. No air conditioning, but it does have a working ceiling fan and a shower.

Tomorrow we are headed for Dickinson, North Dakota about 64 miles ride. We will have our rest day there. I found a campground that is advertised as tents only and called and reserved a spot for us. Zoomed in on it with Google Earth and it looks like somebody’s backyard. The lady said that they had showers so it should work. Love you all. Dee

Today was supposed to be our easy day. 16 miles gradual uphill and then 40 miles gradual downhill that would be easy pedaling. I was so much looking forward to an easy day. The first 16 miles went as well as could be expected going uphill. When we started the downhill part the wind started blowing hard from the east. We had to pedal hard even to maintain 7 mph and we could have coasted faster than that without the wind. On top of the wind was the heat. It was 97 degrees when we arrived at Glendive, Montana. When we got here we pedaled to the camp site that we had planned on staying at. It had no showers, no bathroom, and no water. No thank you! We headed off to another camp ground and it was about the same. By this time I am totally run out of gas. So we are sitting in a motel room with air conditioning, nice beds, a hot tub, and free wifi. So a tough day ended well!

i am thinking that the reason that we had that big wind in our faces is because John sinned, but he thinks it was me! 

Tomorrow we enter into North Dakota. We are finding that the oil boom has made finding a campsite or motel very challenging. We might have to camp along the road. Love ya all. Dee

Rode 67 miles today and it is the new champion for the hardest day of the trip. We went up and down over 50 hills. 25 mph going down and 4 mph going up. I had to push my bike 6 times because the road was to steep for me to pedal it up. I started getting a bit whinny in my self talk as I would crest a hill thinking surly this the last one and see a literal roller coaster of them as far as I could see. I then reminded myself of some of my goals for doing this bicycle thing. Get in really good shape. Yep, these rollers were doing that for sure. Lose weight. I have lost 15 pounds so far and I have been eating like a pig and today I lost over a pound. Hills are wonderful things! Another goal for the trip is to Learn to be tough minded and develope a strong character trait of endurance. So I kept saying at the top of every hill upon seeing some more, “enjoy the challenge”!

We are camping in a field next to an RV park. There is a bathroom in the laundermat, but no shower but a truck stop a couple blocks away had showers for $5.  Well spent money. We were scheduled to bike 90 miles tomorrow, but we were so tired that we decided to do it in 2 days. We have 4 extra unsceduled days so we decided to use one. Good decision.  Love you all. Dee

I think one of the most annoying things riding a bicycle is bugs. A couple days ago we rode by a bunch of bee hives. As we rode by there were bees flying everywhere. One went in the front of my shirt and went all the way around to my back. We were barreling down a steep hill at 25 mph and I got braked and stopped as fast as I could, and as John rode up wondering why I stopped I was pulling my shirt off over my head. Got him out and didn’t even get stung!

one night camping I hung my socks on a bush to air out a bit. I only have two pair so they get kind of stinky. In the middle of the night some kind of mean bug crawled into one of my socks. The next day while riding I felt something bite me on my ankle under my sock. It was a very painful bite. Stopped quick and pulled my sock down but didn’t find the critter, but my whole lower legg swole up and I had a rash all over it as well. It all cleared up by the time we reached camp that evening. I shake out my socks good now before putting them on.

today we rode through an area that was thick with these little, bitty bugs. Hundreds of them got stuck in my sweat. They didn’t bite but as they buzzed around in the sweat all over my body trying to get free and it drove me crazy. Kind of like being tickled by a whole bunch of little feathers. 

And then there is the everyday mosquito that is a constant annoyance for me. I am a mosquito magnet. When you ride a bicycle your behind sorta sticks up in the air making it a prime target, but I have on padded bicycle shorts and a pair of regular shorts on over them. Seems impossible that a mosquito could bite you through that, but they do, many times. Montana Mosquitos must have really flexible beaks.

The fellow in Lewistown, Montana who told us it was all downhill from there to the Atlantic was not telling the truth. Notice the picture that I took of what was on my cell phone that is today’s route. The blue line at the bottom is the elevation profile. All those squiggles represent a hill and most were several hundred feet in elevation change. We would grind our way to the top at 4 mph and then shoot down the other side at 20+ mph. We did that well over 20 times. We rode 76 miles doing that, but took a cold shower in Jordan, Montana where we are staying, and now I feel pretty good. Tomorrow looks like pretty much the same kind of day. We had planned on riding 109 miles tomorrow, but after today decided to shorten it up to 66 miles.