we had a major, big time problem today! The 6th game of the NBA championships is tonight so I got a room at the place where we were scheduled to camp because they have a 6 room motel as well as the camp sight so we could watch the game on the TV in the room. We got all paid up and went into the room and no TV, I thought all motels had tv!?!? The manager said the they have no satellite dish. The closest place to try and watch it is 60 miles back to Bend, oh well, I won’t grumble, I will cry but no grumbling. Cliff and Kathy decided to keep the room and have a nice and comfortable nights sleep.

We went up and over 3 passes today with each one being a climb of about 1,000 to 2,000 feet. We actually make better time in the hilly stretch than we did on the flat stretch of road today. On the flat riding we go about 12 to 13 mph, and on the uphills we go anywhere from 4 to 7 mph and 25 to 35 down the other side. So going with 6 mph up and 30 mph down that is 30 plus 6 equals 36 divided by 2 equals an average speed in the hills of 18 mph. I would much rather bicycle on flat ground but I won’t complain when it is hilly. Going down the hills I stand on my pedals and give my very sore butt a break.

We bicycled exactly 60 miles today and if it had been a mile further I am pretty sure I would have walked it and pushed the bike, I was all done in when we got to Juntura, Oregon where we are staying tonight. But a nice shower, and then sitting in Tom’s air conditioned RV while I read and write on my iPad has pretty much refreshed me, and I am ready for tomorrow. 2 more days of riding and we get a rest day, and it is at a place with a swimming pool! Yeh!

In my Bible Reading tonight 2 verses in the same chapter in Proverbs 13 stood out to me.

Proverbs 13:19 Desire realized is sweet to the soul,

Proverbs 13:12 Desire fulfilled is a tree of life.

And then also Psalms 37:4 Delight yourself in the Lord; and He will give you the desires of your heart.

The Bible talks about noble desires that are pleasing to God, and then there are selfish, worldly, and evil desires. When I get a desire to do something I write it down in as much detail as I can, put it away for 30 days, and then get it out and read it, if I am still passionate about doing it after 30 days I write it down as a goal and go for it. This bicycle trip along with the previous ones were strong desires in my mind, heart and soul. It has been very rewarding to accomplish each one. I have a bunch more strong desires that I am going to write as goals in the days and years ahead.

Man, I had to think for a little bit what day this was, it sure seems like we have been riding longer than 3 days. It usually takes a couple of days for the soreness to get bad, well today was the day, by the end of our ride today I was hurting every place on my body. But having done this kind of ride 6 times already I know that it goes away as I get in shape on the ride, so I will endure with help of ibuprofen. There really isn’t enough time before a ride like this to ride enough to get in good shape so I just do it the first week of the ride. The picture was taken back toward the way we had come this morning, and was about 30 miles from Bend. One of the major pluses of bicycle touring is the beauty of the scenery that is so much more obvious on a bicycle as apposed to a car. The reason is we are traveling so much slower, we are sitting out in the open with no windows, doors or roofs to obstruct our vision, and there isn’t anything else to do but look around as you ride. We stopped at Brothers for lunch today. I doubt whether there is a dozen people in the whole town. The orders we had today were the biggest and the best I have ever eaten. I plan on stopping there every time I drive on highway 20 through Brothers, Oregon. We are camped in Burns tonight, at Burns RV campground. It it has been in the 90’s all day and now a huge thunder storm is blowing in with lots of lightening and thunder.

I had my first significant trial today, my fine, very comfortable, easy to blow up, and very compact and light when deflated air mattress has a leak. There isn’t much worse than waking up sore because you have been sleeping on the ground with no cushion. What makes it really bad is that it has been a very comfortable friend for the last 10 years. Oh well, the next bigger town we are in I will buy a new one and throw my faithful friend in the garbage can. That sounds bad, but it is just an air mattress, not really my friend.

Proverbs 17:17 A friend loves at all times,

Proverbs 18:24 There is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.

Proverbs 27:10 Do not forsake your friend.

John 15:13-15 Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.

I have a lot of good friends. I will never throw them in the garbage can. I will love them, be faithful to them no matter what, and I will faithfully pray for them.

I want to be the friend of Jesus, not everyone is, even if you are a Christian, even if you go to church. Jesus said, you are my friend if you do what I command you. I read the Bible and look for principles and commands in the Bible, especially the New Testament and I work hard to obey them, and I ask the Lord for the strength from Him to be successful. It is pretty simple, but there must be a desire to know Jesus intimately as a friend, and the recognition that obeying Him is not an option.

Man, I had to think for a little bit what day this was, it sure seems like we have been riding longer than 3 days. It usually takes a couple of days for the soreness to get bad, well today was the day, by the end of our ride today I was hurting every place on my body. But having done this kind of ride 6 times already I know that it goes away as I get in shape on the ride, so I will endure with help of ibuprofen. There really isn’t enough time before a ride like this to ride enough to get in good shape so I just do it the first week of the ride. The picture was taken back toward the way we had come this morning, and was about 30 miles from Bend. One of the major pluses of bicycle touring is the beauty of the scenery that is so much more obvious on a bicycle as apposed to a car. The reason is we are traveling so much slower, we are sitting out in the open with no windows, doors or roofs to obstruct our vision, and there isn’t anything else to do but look around as you ride. We stopped at Brothers for lunch today. I doubt whether there is a dozen people in the whole town. The orders we had today were the biggest and the best I have ever eaten. I plan on stopping there every time I drive on highway 20 through Brothers, Oregon. We are camped in Burns tonight, at Burns RV campground. It it has been in the 90’s all day and now a huge thunder storm is blowing in with lots of lightening and thunder.

I had my first significant trial today, my fine, very comfortable, easy to blow up, and very compact and light when deflated air mattress has a leak. There isn’t much worse than waking up sore because you have been sleeping on the ground with no cushion. What makes it really bad is that it has been a very comfortable friend for the last 10 years. Oh well, the next bigger town we are in I will buy a new one and throw my faithful friend in the garbage can. That sounds bad, but it is just an air mattress, not really my friend.

Proverbs 17:17 A friend loves at all times,

Proverbs 18:24 There is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.

Proverbs 27:10 Do not forsake your friend.

John 15:13-15 Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.

I have a lot of good friends. I will never throw them in the garbage can. I will love them, be faithful to them no matter what, and I will faithfully pray for them.

I want to be the friend of Jesus, not everyone is, even if you are a Christian, even if you go to church. Jesus said, you are my friend if you do what I command you. I read the Bible and look for principles and commands in the Bible, especially the New Testament and I work hard to obey them, and I ask the Lord for the strength from Him to be successful. It is pretty simple, but there must be a desire to know Jesus intimately as a friend, and the recognition that obeying Him is not an option.

Today was day 2 of our round trip bicycle ride to Glacier National Park in Montana. I included 2 pictures of our camp last night. The one with Cliff is to show you how cold it was this morning, which it probably will be for the entire trip because much of the trip is in higher elevations. It was hard to get out of that warm sleeping bag this morning. We bicycled 73 miles today and went over Santiam Pass so there was lots of hill climbing. It was a hot day but all the hard climbing was done by 11am and the last 30 miles was all down hill. My high speed going down into Sisters was 36 mph. It would have been faster but we had a strong head wind as we went East today. Tonight we are staying with the Burkhart’s, a family that Patty and I are very good friends with, and they attended JBC for years before retiring and moving to Bend. We get to sleep in a nice bed, had barbecued burgers for dinner, and I hear we get bacon and eggs for breakfast.

Tomorrow will be a long day as we pedal 105 miles to Riley, a town of one store and a post office, but the store has a little camp sight right behind it. Tomorrow will be nothing but sage brush, and not much else, and very hot. So far my legs, knees, and feet are doing good, but my rear end is screaming and yelling at me. If it weren’t for good old Butt Butter I am not sure I could endure the pain, but a couple more days and I should be toughened up a lot.

Well, I was going to write some more, but I am having a hard time staying awake so I will write more tomorrow.

It is amazing that considering my last couple of fishing trips that nothing went wrong today, at least nothing serious or permanent. As we turned out our driveway it seemed like my bike was exceptionally hard to pedal. Cliff my brother yelled at me that something was wrong with my bike. Oh great, I thought, we haven’t gone 10 feet and it is starting already. Evidently my bicycle which has been on our front porch for the last week fell over when a bunch of the grandkids were having an air soft war at our house. The back tire, which I hadn’t tightened enough after putting new tubes in was rubbing on the frame so I pushed it back where it was supposed to be and tightened up the nuts on the side and off we went. The only problem was the usual buttock pain on the first day. I am going to put a different seat or saddle on for tomorrow to make some different spots hurt, I brought 3 and will rotate between them for a couple of days until the old rear end toughens up a bit more. I brought 2 big tubes of “Butt Butter”, and it works quite well. I am getting ready to boil some water to pour into a pouch of freeze dried dinner, pretty tasty stuff. I will take pictures most days and put on my blog but the WiFi here is pretty weak and I don’t think they would send. Almost all uphill today as we climbed about 3,000 feet but the legs are feeling good so far. It is supposed to be near record heat for the next couple of days so I anticipate drinking lots of water and lattering up with the sunscreen.

Tomorrow at 6 am I am leaving with my brother Cliff, his wife Kathy, and Tom Zilverberg on a 2000 mile bicycle trip. We are going to Glacier National Park and back again in a circular route. We will average about 68 miles each day for 32 biking days with 5 rest days, each one being on Sunday. Tomorrow we are camping in Idanah just past Detroit Lake.

This will be the 6th bicycle trip that I have taken that has been a month or more in length and I still get super nervous, hyped up, excited, and a bit apprehensive thinking about what it will feel like to get hit with a truck on a bicycle.

I enjoy these trips for 5 reasons; (1) I usually lose 20 to 30 lbs, get in really great shape, and come back with so much more energy. I maintain a pulse rate of about 120 beats a minute for about 8 hours minimum each day with about 30 minutes to an hour of over 140 beats a minute so I get a great cardiovascular workout. (2) I get a great time of personal renewal. My job as a pastor requires being around people most of the day and many are sick or have family sick, or they are in some kind of life crisis in their marriage or extended family or finances. Usually they are wanting some counsel from me that will fix it all tomorrow, but most often it is going to be a long, slow, tedious, tiring journey, and they don’t want to hear that particularly. All that to say, I get weary of ministry and run out of gas and these trips are wonderful in their ability to fill my tank to full. (3) All day long I ride along talking to no one but God and I do a lot of reflective thinking about myself, my character and my lack of character and what to do about it. (4) Because of the thinking I do all day long when I get to camp and start writing words come out of me like a water fall. I get lots of sermons written, goals written, and plans and strategies worked out and written down. (5) It isn’t the most dangerous thing in life to do but there is an element of risk involved that gives the trip a bit of an edge to it that is invigorating for me. Pastoring is a noble job, but it can get a bit boring and routine at times and it has been listed as one of the softest jobs there is, safe is not very exciting.

There are certain dates that I remember easily. October 27, 1948 is my birthday, and everybody remembers their birthday because we get asked to put it on so many different things from drivers licenses, income tax returns, and airplane tickets. August 24, 1969 is our wedding day, and I am reminded of that day every year as we celebrate our anniversary and somebody asks how long we have been married so I have to quick do the math and remember the year. This year will be 50 years married to the same beautiful lady. I remember the year our first child was born, Sarah, in 1975, I don’t remember the day, but it was such a momentous day in our lives I couldn’t forget the year. Our doctor had told us we wouldn’t be able to have any kids, but after 6 years along came Sarah and 7 more in the years to follow. But probably the date that is most indelibly impressed in my memory besides my birthday is the day I graduated from High School, 1967. Even though it is only 4 years long, High School seemed to go on for half my life, I didn’t think I was ever going to be out of High School and I had so many dreams that I wanted to get after as soon as I got out of High School. My High School years were good, but there still was this sense that I was finally free after graduating.

Our oldest, Sarah, had her oldest child, our oldest grandchild, Josiah graduate from High School tonight, our first grandchild to graduate from High School. Let’s see, it is 2019, I wonder if I will remember that date in say 5 years, probably not. Since I have graduated from High School 53 years ago my life has been full of experiences, adventures, excitement, near death experiences, accomplishments, failures, disappointments, and growth.

As I sat and watched Josiah’s graduation tonight I wondered what his future held. How many adventures he would have, how many different countries he would visit, how much he would learn and grow, what great things he would accomplish for God, who he would marry, how many great grandchildren he would have for me.

As I sat wondering, knowing that he was a good boy with so much potential, but also knowing that the world is an evil place and can totally mess up the lives of good people, I resolved again to pray for him everyday that God would guide him into His perfect will, that God would protect him from the evil one and temptation, and that He would be a mighty man of God and would accomplish amazing things with his life.

As his grandfather God has given me jurisdiction or authority in Josiah’s life so that my prayers to God for Josiah are honored and answered by God with high priority. I don’t want to be lazy or negligent to exercise the power and authority I have to bless my grandson. Dear Lord, please help me to be a faithful prayer on behalf of all my grandchildren, but especially Josiah as he is in these critical years where his choices will have significant impact on the direction his life goes.

Wisdom is knowing what to do and say in any situation that God sovereignly puts us in. It is great to have wisdom when you are raising your kids, in your marriage, at work, with your neighbors, and especially when problems and obstacles to your goals come up. Knowing what to do and what to say in every situation, that sounds so cool. There are some basic requirements needed to become wise. The first one is humility, that is you have to admit that you are very much lacking in wisdom, the one who thinks he already is wise will remain a fool. Everybody and his Uncle thinks that they are pretty smart, and they have an answer for everything.

1 Corinthians 3:18-19 Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you thinks that he is wise in this age, he must become foolish, so that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness before God. For it is written, “He is the one who catches the wise in their craftiness”.

A humble person is not a know it all, and they are humble enough to ask others for advice and counsel about anything and everything.

Proverbs 1:5 A wise man will hear and increase in learning, and a man of understanding will acquire wise counsel.

A wise person is someone who knows how important wisdom is for success in every area of life. Because they realize how little wisdom they really have they are always seeking for wisdom in every way with a sense of desperation. Fools think they are wise enough, and have an opinion about everything, and seldom ask for advice or counsel from anybody.

We seem to have moved into an age where most people do that which is right in their own eyes. An age where most are a know it all, where most think their opinion is right. As a culture moves in the direction of pride, arrogance, and foolishness more and more conflict erupts in families, in work places, in community’s and between countries.

A characteristic of truly wise people is graciousness and gentleness in relationships. Fools are relationally stupid, and in the midst of the conflicts that they provoke they are sure it is everybody else’s fault. After every tense moment with another person in my life I journal and ask myself, “what could I have said or done differently to have prevented that situation from happening?” Every morning I pray and declare to God that I am greatly lacking in wisdom and I ask God to give me more wisdom and to guide me to those who can give me good counsel in every area of life.

Every year for the last 7 years I have gone on a long bicycle trip with some other people. Last year we went from my house to the Grand Canyon, then up to Yellowstone National Park and then back home. That was about 4,000 miles and took us 65 days to ride including rest days. The year before that in 2017 we did a trip around the State of Oregon that was 2000 miles. In 2016 3 of us took our wives who road in a pickup with a camper and pulling a trailer, and we went from San Diego to St Augustine, Florida. This was probably my most enjoyable trip because of Patty being along and because of all the new country that I hadn’t seen before. In 2014 John Smith and I road all the way across the nation on what is called the “Nortern Tier” and ended in Portand, Maine, this was probably my favorite trip because of all the people we met on the trip and also because of the added challenge of carrying everything on our bikes. The very first trip was in 2013 when my brother Cliff and I road to Fairbanks, Alaska. It is about 2500 miles to Fairbanks from our house and we road about half of it. That was by far the most beautiful of all the trips and we saw 92 bears on the trip to add some excitment to the trip.

This year my brother Cliff, his wife Kathy, and a friend, Tom Zilverberg will ride to Glacier National Park and back home in a circular route. The trip is right at 2000 miles and we plan on leaving on June 10th and getting home on July 9th, exactly one month. So because we are leaving in 4 days I have been really busy getting all my stuff together.  All day long I am writing things down what I need to get before we head on the trip, I keep racking my  brain knowing that I have not remembered everything.

I love doing these bicycle trips because of the “alone time” I get every day as I ride along, talking to no one but God, enjoying the time of reflextion and meditation. I have some ideas for trips for the next 5 years. One is to hit all lower 48 States which would be a long trip and would take about  100 days to complete. Another one that I have already got all routed out is to start at the tip of Flordia and go to Fairbanks, Alaska.

I was recently talking to a guy who had just finished his first marathon. We talked about how your mind takes over around mile 18 to 22 and screams at you to stop running because you are killing yourself. This experience that almost all marathon runners have is called hitting the wall, and until you have actually experienced it, it is hard to understand. But once you have experienced it you are amazed at how much power your brain has to control your actions even contrary to what you really want to do. If a person runs multiple marathons he learns how to run through the wall by ignoring the thoughts that pour into his mind to quit and replacing those thoughts with positive, I can do it thoughts. On the second marathon that I ran which was in Vancouver, British Colombia, I got to mile 18 and there was the beginning of a one mile long hill. As I started up the hill my mind started whining and complaining, and then a spectator stood up out of his lawn chair and held up a sign he had written that said, “you can do it”. He shouted out to me, “Hey, number 440 (that was my bib number), I wrote this sign just for you”. It was amazing how powerful that sign, that shout out of encouragement to me at that perfect time changed my self talk and I kept running and improved my first marathon time by 30 minutes. Our minds are like a spoiled child and we have to train it to be strong and tough. Our mind is connected to our Old Nature that is selfish, lazy, self absorbed, and really likes comfort. The people who accomplish the most in life train their brain, and take every thought captive to the obedience to Christ.