Today, we rode 99.68 miles, according to my bicycle odometer. I am rounding it off to 100 miles. I am as close to death as I have ever felt. It was a long, hard day, for sure. We are camping at a KOA campground in Klamath Falls. The showers were excellent; I stood in mine for at least 30 minutes, letting the hot water massage me.

Cliff and I walked a couple of blocks to a Sports Bar to watch the NBA playoff game between Dallas and Minnesota. It was super noisy, and we left at halftime; Dallas was getting smeared. I will be in my nice sleeping bag by 8:00 pm There is something about a warm, down sleeping bag that is very appealing.

We will sleep in tomorrow until 7:00 am and get left about 8:00 am. We only ride 53 miles tomorrow with no significant hills. Hallelujah!

Well, the schedule was to be in Klamath Falls tonight after a 97-mile ride, but we were all so tired last night, and this house we are in is so comfortable that we decided to take a “rest day” today and stay right here for another day. I am writing this blog after sleeping ten hours and getting out of bed an hour ago at 8:00 am. I usually schedule a rest day every Sunday, but I phoned the camping spots and rearranged our schedule, so here I sit, enjoying my rest day very much. Yesterday was a killer day, and I am still very tired and exhausted. I think I will schedule a rest day on Thursdays and Sundays for future trips, at least for the first couple of weeks of the trip, until I get in shape. My first bicycle trip to Fairbanks, Alaska, was in 2013. I was 64 years old, and it was so much easier. I should get all caught up on my Bible reading and Bible memory today.

Last night, as we were watching the Dallas Mavericks and the Minnesota Timberwolves play basketball, both teams striving to win so that they could go to the NBA national championships; if they win the best of seven series they are in, I thought of 1 Corinthians 9:24-25, “Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win.” The desire to win, succeed, accomplish, conquer, and overcome a significant challenge is how God made us. We can grow that part of our motivation, and we can also shrink it. As I think about this year’s bicycle trip and what motivates me, I think it is primarily the challenge. There is something very rewarding in attempting to do something challenging and accomplishing it.

That is the cool thing about goals: you can write them while you are sitting in a comfortable chair in a warm room, with a cup of coffee, but all the while you are writing them, you are counting the cost and mentally evaluating whether you can actually do it, or if you want to pay that kind of price.

Someone asked me why I was doing this bicycle trip, and I responded that it is impossible for me to win an NBA championship, even if I wrote a goal to do it, but I think I can still do this bicycle thing for a couple more years. Everyone needs a crazy mountain to climb. My good friend Lloyd is ten years older than I am, and he is still skydiving, now how crazy is that?!

Today was a very, very hard day. We climbed almost all day riding Highway 58 to Willamette Pass. I rode three to four miles an hour nearly all day grinding up the hills. Then, when we got to the pass, it was 32 degrees and snowing, and the wind was blowing hard. I probably have been colder at some point in my life, but I can’t remember when. We entered a little grocery store attached to a gas station when we reached Crescent. They were kind enough to bring out some chairs, and we drank big cups of coffee and hot chocolate, sat, and warmed up. We still had 18 miles to go until our campsite sight, and the weather report was 18 degrees tonight. None of us were excited about sleeping in a tent at that temperature. Donna Cuputo wrote on my yesterday’s blog that we were welcome to stay in the cabin they owned near Crescent. I called, and they said sure. It was just two miles from where we were sitting, so here I sit in a comfortable house, writing this blog and watching the NBA finals on TV. So what started as a terrible day has ended nicely. The only problem is that we will have to pedal 97 miles tomorrow, but the weather is supposed to be warm, and the road is relatively flat, so there is no big deal about the extra miles after a day like today.

I am having to exert extra discipline to get my Bible reading, prayer, and scripture memory done each evening. I am so tired that I fall asleep while doing it. I think in a couple more days, I will get in shape.

Today, we rode 51 miles from Marcola to Oakridge. It was mostly uphill, but only a short stretch was really steep. We were on Highway 58 for a good part of the day, and there was a lot of truck traffic, so we were careful to stay on the side of the road as we peddled, though there were times when there was only an inch of shoulder.

Last night, I went into the emergency room in Springfield. My heart rate was about 130 during the day while I was peddling hard, but after 4 hours of resting at the end of the ride, it was still up to 130 bpm. I called my doctor, and he suggested I go into the emergency. The pastor of the church we slept in last night, who is a good friend, drove me in. When I finally got in after waiting several hours, everything was Normal. They did blood work and an EKG; it was all good.

Today, my heart rate was still up to 130 bpm during the day, but it dropped to 70 after a couple of hours when we got to camp. I think every day, both the high while riding and the resting, will continue to come down as I get in shape.

The campground where we had our reservation also had cheap rooms to rent, and because it is supposed to rain hard between midnight and 3:00 am tonight, we rented a room, and all four of us are sleeping in it, poor Kathy!

Tomorrow we have a very steep climb of 5,000 feet. That should be a lot of fun!

Today we rode from Jefferson to Marcola, a small town East of Springfield. The trip was 56 miles by my GPS with one big monster hill that got me panting pretty good. We are camping in a big room inside a church in Marcola. The pastor and I are good friends. It is nice because we don’t have to set up our tents; we just throw our pads and sleeping bags on the carpeted floor. We all ate Mountain House freeze-dried dinners tonight. I had Teryoke Chicken and Rice, it was delicious. A screw fell out that was holding my rear rack in place, so the last couple of miles were very noisy as it rubbed on my back tire. I think we got it fixed. We will see if it is really fixed tomorrow. I am very tired tonight and I am hoping that ten hours of sleep tonight will fill my gas tank. I am sorry this blog is so short, but my brain isn’t working very well tonight.

Every year for the last twelve years, I have done a bicycle trip of at least 2,000 miles. The very first one was to Fairbanks, Alaska, with my brother Cliff and his wife Kathy; that was the first and probably the most memorable. We saw 92 bears on that trip, some very close. I have made three trips coast to coast across the United States, each with a different route and with different people. The longest trip so far was when four of us went to the Grand Canyon, then to Yellowstone, and then home. That 4000-mile trip was gorgeous, with the scenery of the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, and all the rock formations throughout Utah.

This year’s trip will be interesting as I will use it as a test to see if I will make any more trips. My motive in all of the past trips was as therapy for my Parkinson’s disease. Well, I don’t have Parkinson’s now, so I don’t know what is going to happen to my motivation. It definitely will need to switch to some other reason for doing it. The question is if another reason, such as enjoyment, recreation, challenge, health related to aging, or emotional refueling, will be strong enough to motivate me to do something this strenuous and time-consuming.

It is an excellent time to study and write, but I can do that in my recliner and pretend I am riding my bicycle through the jungles of Africa. It is a hard challenge and positively affects my character traits, such as determination and self-control, which I definitely need to grow in. Still, I can probably get the same results going to the gym at the “Y” in Albany with my wife every morning at 5:00 am.

It is probably a good thing that we don’t have a support vehicle going with us; otherwise, I would probably be riding in it every other day because I was tired, and it was so haaaarrrrd!

Travel with me on this trip by reading my blog every day and see what happens!

“Old Saints” is the phrase I use for the couple of hundred or so people who were part of JBC thirty to fifty years ago. Many have moved away, and many have already died and gone to heaven. I have cut back a lot on what I do as a Pastor in the last couple of years, but I am committed to doing funerals and memorial services for the “Old Saints” if their family wants me to. I think only about a dozen of us are left before we have all gone to be with Jesus. Today, I will preach a sermon at Pat Smith’s Memorial service. She was the piano player in the early years of JBC, before the days of drums, sound systems, and other electronic stuff that typifies modern worship services in the church today. She was also the pioneer of women’s ministries at JBC and many other things as well. There are the old saints, and then there are the faithful foundational old saints; Pat Smith was definitely one of the latter.

Jefferson Baptist Church is a healthy, loving, unified, growing church glorifying God and accomplishing His will. The key to a healthy church is the foundation. When the foundation is strong, solid, and true, the building will usually follow that beginning. Pat Smith has gone ahead of us to heaven, but the effect of her life will be felt for many years to come.

I pray that the younger saints at JBC will continue to build on that foundation with gold, silver, and precious stones, as the apostle Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 3, and will be faithful.

God is faithful and He blesses and uses faithful people. A faithful person is one who makes commitments and keeps them, no matter what. A faithful person invests their life for others, even when it is hard. A faithful person works hard and sacrifices, and is in it for the long haul. Pat Smith was a faithful saint who is experiencing her reward for a life well lived now.

Everybody dies sooner or later, and we all know that. Many people are afraid of death, and most are very nervous about it. Even many who say they aren’t anxious or afraid are deceiving themselves. The main issue about death and dying are all the unknowns. Most deal with their impending death and that of their loved ones by simply ignoring it. The medical business makes a lot of money by keeping people alive just a little bit longer. It isn’t braveness or toughness that makes death a non-issue or even a positive issue; it is our faith.

2 Corinthians 5:6-8 Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord— for we walk by faith, not by sight— we are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.

Philippians 1:23 But I am hard-pressed from both directions, having the desire to depart and be with Christ, for that is very much better;

So, we all want to grow strong in our faith so that the other side of death is more attractive to us than this side. Also, so that we can deal with sickness and problems with confidence, peace, and joy because we trust God totally.

2 Thessalonians 1:3 We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brethren, because your faith is greatly enlarged.

Romans 4:20-21 yet, with respect to the promise of God, he did not waver in unbelief but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that what God had promised, He was able also to perform.

How do we grow our faith? How do we become strong in our faith like many of the Biblical heroes in the Bible? Many of us know how to grow tomatoes or zucchini, but how do we pro-actively grow our faith to be stronger every day we live.

Many steps, activities, and disciplines will help us grow in our faith, but let me suggest one that very few people know about. Faith is being confident in what we can’t see, walking by faith, not by sight, but our faith grows by things we can see, hear, and experience. God provides us with life visuals in creation that will build our faith, but most people miss them. The Apostle John in the Epistle of First John says, “what we have seen with our eyes, what we have heard, what we have looked at and touched with our hands.” In Romans 1:20, the Apostle Paul says, “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made.

A great visual faith builder provided by God are flowers. I just bought a package of ten different kinds of flower seeds that, when planted, will result in beautiful flowers. In 1st Corinthians 15, Paul says that we are now like a seed, but when we die, that seed changes into something else. How many times more beautiful is a flower compared to a seed. For “Mother’s Day,” some of our kids bought Patty an orchid plant; it is gorgeous.

Faith is built little by little with many repetitions of what builds our faith. I have programmed myself so that whenever I see a flower in real life or a picture, I tell myself, “That is me with my new, glorified body; I can’t wait! Now, I am just an old shriveled up, ugly seed.”

On this year’s bicycle trip, we will stay overnight at three homes of people who know us, three different churches, three motels, and 30 campgrounds. Next year, I will call more churches and ask about staying at their facility. Most have a foyer we can sleep in, and they often have a shower and kitchen. The best thing is that they are free, and they like helping out a pastor going through a mid-life crisis at 75 and riding a bicycle around the country. This year, I will call “warm showers” host homes that are three days out from our present location. “Warm Showers” is an organization that has organized people who are bicycle enthusiasts into a club. When you join, you agree to host at least two bicycle groups a year, letting them camp in your yard and take a shower. When you join, you gain access to a map of all “Warm Shower” host homes in the USA and their phone number and email address. There are presently about 100,000 members. So, every evening on this trip, I will send out text messages and emails to people to check and see if they would be open to three old people camping in their yard. I have always enjoyed the experiences we have had in the past, staying at people’s homes or yards. They are all very friendly and bicycle-positive; again, they are free. When I send a request, they will go to the “Warm Shower” website and check me out. There will be a description of me and reviews by every person whose home we have stayed at. So they will know that I am a Pastor, have eight kids and 28 grandkids, love to hunt and fish, am 75 years old, and didn’t get vaccinated.
I look forward to these opportunities to meet new people and talk to them about their faith or lack of faith. Our trip this year is not one of the recognized bicycle routes, so there will be fewer “Warm Shower” host homes. However, because there is less bicycle traffic, the ones there are will be more open to having guests.
Some of you have asked about our route, so I have included it.

I am leaving with my brother, Cliff, and his wife, Kathy, on a 2,500-mile bicycle trip on Monday. It will take 40 days to complete, averaging 70 miles daily and taking Sundays off as a rest day. We have mapped out the entire trip and reserved all the campsites. Today, I started packing for the trip. We won’t have a support vehicle, so we must pack everything we need for the trip on our bicycles. I will have two panniers on the back and two on the front. A pannier is like a saddlebag, but they are made of bright yellow canvas instead of leather. I will pack twenty pounds in each rear pannier and fifteen in the front for 70 pounds on the bike besides my slim 220 pounds of pure muscle. I have divided up the food into three groups. The first will be on the bike at the start, and I will mail the other two ahead to pick up on the way. I will have my tent, sleeping bag, pad, lightweight camp chair, non-biking clothes, biking clothes, food, cooking and eating stuff, bike stuff, an extra tire, two extra tubes, a few tools, oil, toothpaste, etc. The batteries and stuff we will need to charge them are major-weight items. The e-bikes we ride are nice for going up hills, but the extra weight we will carry when there is no support vehicle is a major trade-off. Each of us will have two 20-pound batteries and chargers, one 100-foot extension cord, and a power strip.

Deciding what to take and what to do without is a significant challenge. I have a fancy hand-held digital scale to weigh each pannier, and when they get to their weight, that is it, not on once more. So some questions are: do I include mosquito repellent? How about sunblock? Shampoo? One pair of underwear? How much laundry detergent? I can probably buy that at the campsites.

The whole process reminds me of Hebrews 12:1, “Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.”

In real life, a bunch of stuff dramatically hinders us from running the race Jesus gave us. We need to determine what is essential and what isn’t and eliminate the extra weight. It is too bad that we don’t have some kind of measuring device that we can use to determine when we need to cut back on excess baggage. There isn’t, so we will just have to use wisdom.