Well , it finally came, the night before we leave on our 3,700 mile bicycle trip.  Several years ago when my brother and I did a bicycle trip to Fairbanks , Alaska I forgot my bicycle shoes and had to go to a bike shop to buy a new pair before I could ride,  we hauled everything over to to Klindtworth’s to pack into the camper today. The rest of today I kept racking my brain for what I have forgotten.  I can’t think of anything but I will still wake up ten times tonight trying to remember what I am not remembering.  One of the best learning tools and skills is writing down what was done right and what was done wrong after an event and then reviewing it before the next similar event.  Three  problems though, I forget to write stuff down or I forget where I wrote it, or I forget to read it. Oh well, if there weren’t a bunch of problems life would get boring. I bought our return trip airplane tickets last night. We are due to arrive in St Augustine April 23rd so I bought our tickets to leave on the 26th, just in case we are a couple days late. One of the disciplines that the early church fathers practiced was solitude for the purpose of personal reflection in order to grow. One of my goals for these bicycle trips is to be all by myself most of the day as I ride and be able to think, reflect, confess, commit, and make goals. Maybe my memory will improve as well.

Rode 20 miles today on my recumbent trike with John Smith and Richard Klindtworth the guys going on the bicycle trip to Florida with me. The trip out to Talbot and back went great. The trike I built worked flawlessly and it was a fun day anticipating leaving on our trip Friday morning. Puttered around tonight getting things rounded up, and then around 7:30 tonight I just crashed.  I totally ran out of gas and as I sit writing this blog at 9:30 pm I am in a bit of a stupor trying to think with enough clarity so that this doesn’t sound like nonsense. I thought I was in pretty good shape from riding my stationary bike an hour each day, but I guess not as good as I hoped. Oh well, last year I hadn’t exercised, or road much at all before we took off for Portland, Maine so the first two weeks was my conditioning. The first two weeks were miserable, but I did get in shape and get tough also.  We will just do it again.

There is something very refreshing after months of rain and clouds to have a day like today where the sun is shining and it is so bright outside. I can see why people go to Arizona during the winter months. But I think that it is the contrast that brings the real joy, not just the sunshine. Without the contrast of the dreary the bright will become ordinary and unappreciated.  Joy wouldn’t really be joy without sadness. Heaven wouldn’t really be that great if we didn’t have something that made it great, this life with all of its trials and pain.  I am longing for my new life with my new body with God in His presence.  The  more I ache and hurt the more I long and the more beautiful it will be when I get there.  I could just wait passively for that day to get here, but I think instead I will work as hard as I can and do as much as I can so that when I enter glory I do so with a character that is like Jesus’s and when I see Him He gives me great rewards for doing His work. I think it is supposed to be a sunny day tomorrow as well, super.

This weekend I preached a sermon on the power of turning the other cheek instead of retaliating, getting angry, bitter, or defending ourselves when our rights are violated, and trusting God, because He promises to exalt us if we humble ourselves.  The sermon basically was the blog I wrote about a week ago. It isn’t a topic of preaching that would be voted most popular. Today I got three different responses from people who put the principles of the sermon into practice, and they shared their stories of how God worked and blessed. This concept is so opposite of our culture today  and also opposite our natural response to being treated poorly that very few live the principles and experience God exalting and honoring them and doing great things through their life. Jesus said, If you want to follow Me you must deny yourself and pick up your cross daily. It was so cool to read those stories today, and to say to myself, “Thank You Lord, You are faithful and good”.

Here is the route for our bicycle trip.  The stars are where we are camping.

This is my recumbent trike that I built from plans on the Internet. My friend Denny Fryman did the welding and my son in law Luke Doughton made the super comfortable seat. Friday we are leaving for San Diego in a 6 passenger pick up and Sunday morning we start our bike trip to St Augustine, Florida and I give this Trike her ultimate test. I have 81 speeds in it so it will be able to go up any hill I come to with ease, at least that is the plan. We are planning on averaging 70 miles each day. We are going to camp each night in a camp ground and Patty and I are planning on sleeping in a tent. We are planning on a rest day once each week on Sunday, and are planning on going to church each week. The recumbent is supposed to take about 20% more energy and calories to pedal than a conventional bicycle so I should lose more weight than last trip when I lost 45 lbs, but I was eating freeze dried food on the last trip, this one Patty will be cooking for me.

We leave on our almost 4,000 mile, San Diego to St Augistine, Florida Bicycle trip in 5 days and a standard question to me is “Are you excited”. I say “Yes” because that is what they are expecting, but the truth is I don’t think about it a whole lot of the time. I will get excited about it the night before. I set goals for the future and once I am sure all that is needed to accomplish the goal is in place I seldom think about it again. I think it is part of that right brain, left brain thing that I took a test on yesterday. A better question might be, “are you dreading it”? I am recognizing that the effort that I will have to put out to succeed will be very high and I don’t want to fail so I tend to purposely not think about it

I took a test on Facebook that says that I am 90 % left brained and 10 % right brained. Some people taking the test will be just the opposite, like my wife, Patty. I have taken Temperment tests, Spiritual gift tests, and Strength tests, and my results are usually different from most others and theirs as well. I remember years ago when I was still milking cows as an occupation listening to a pastor and he said, “we are all spiritual snow flakes”, we all are unique individuals in many different ways. We are different by creation, God in His sovereignty deciding what we would be like, our strengths and non-strengths. The Bible uses the physical body as an illustration teaching that each of us is like a body part, hands, feet, ears, eyes, and that when we are connected and unified by love, commitment, and acceptance we are very powerful and accomplish a lot. The problem is that our natural tendency is to compare, compete, judge, critique, and gossip. The Bible teaches that we are to “accept one another”. A key is to accept ourselves as being created by God by His design. Once we get comfortable with who we are, not arrogant but comfortable and accepting, we tend to do the same with others. I don’t become comfortable with my character flaws and sins, but I don’t beat myself up over them either. I systematically train myself with spiritual disciplines to grow a little bit at a time like Jesus in character and maturity. In the area of my non- strength areas I learn skills so I am adequate where I need to be for my responsibilities in life. In my non-strength areas I try to learn from those who are the opposite from me so I can be adequate. So my goal is to focus most of my energy and time in the area of my strengths and be adequate in my non- strength areas, and to partner and work with those who balance me out. I think that is why Patty and I do so well together.

The cross is the symbol of Christianity. People wear crosses as jewelry all over the world. The main reason is that Jesus died on a cross. It was an instrument of torture and death, and it’s purpose was to drain a person of all human dignity as they slowly died with hours even days of incalculable pain before a mob of watching spectators. So the cross symbolizes death, but it is also a symbol of new life, eternal life with God, because while Jesus hung on the cross God the Father took our sins and put them on Jesus and His agony and death paid the penalty of our sin. We get the free gift of eternal life if we accept this gift from Him because we believe that we need it. The cross is also the symbol of death and life as we live our life as a Christian. People,today do and say things to us and say things to others about us that wound, hurt, embarrass, violate our rights, and break our hearts. Most choose to get angry, retaliate, get bitter, and defend themselves, and it seems right, but is equivalent of Jesus calling 10,000 angels and wiping out the mob that was mocking Him as He hung on the cross or at least jumping off of the cross and telling people to go to hell, both which He had the power to do. Instead he stayed and died and the Father raised Him from the dead, exalted His name above every name, and gave us eternal life. God the Father gave His Son, that is, He is the one who put Him on the cross and Jesus submitted to it. God purposely puts us in situations where we are hurt, dishonored, and taken advantage of, and if we trust Him and humble ourselves He will exalt us and use us to give life to others, but it is our choice. Memory verses for the week, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains alone, but if it dies it bears much fruit.” John 12:24 “Deny yourself, take up your cross daily and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake, he is the one who will save it.” Luke 9:23-24

I usually do my taxes on April 13th or 14th and occasionally the 15th. Today I realized that I was going to be pedaling my bike somewhere in West Florida on those dates so I was going to need to get them done before we leave on our biking trip across the USA. I started this evening. I have never gotten into doing them on line, I like doing them on paper with the good old 1040 forms. They don’t mail them to me any more so I decided to find a spot online and download and print them off. It took me about an hour to figure out where to go on line To find ones that I could print off. I got about half way done filling in all the numbers, and I realized that I had printed a form for 2014. I couldn’t figure out why they had those available still, but I went back and found the right year and started again. By this time I was getting a bit cranky so I decided to finish tomorrow and write this blog. Taxes have been part of man’s life since there has been government and I am pretty sure have caused people to get cranky from the very beginning. The cost of government seems to be going up and I found myself mentally fussing about it. Oh well, ours is still way better than most of the countries in Africa. Someday Jesus will be the King of the whole world and then there won’t be any taxes. Cool.