Today we are at Junipers Reservoir Campground, just outside Lakeview, for the day. Probably the nicest camping place we have stayed at. Super showers, a covered area to sit and read, nice grassy area for the tents, free coffee, deer wandering around on the lawn, and very gracious camp hosts. Tomorrow morning we will turn and head north on our Around Oregon bicycle trip up Highway 395. It is about 160 miles to Burns and there are no camp sights approximately halfway so we have identified an old road from Google Earth with nothing on it and we are going to go up that a few hundred yards and spend the night there. We won't have electricity, cell service, water, or bathrooms but I think we can make it work for one night. We will ride for 3 days starting in the morning, each of them in excess of 80 miles, and then we are going to camp in Prairie City at the Baptist Church for 3 days until the Eclipse craziness clears up, then up to Ukiah, then we head West over to Heppner, then Condon, and Tye Valley, Culver, Mehama, and home!!

My muscles are getting stronger every day and as a result I am enjoying the bicycling more because of less pain. During this trip, especially on rest days like today, I have planned out every day in detail from September 1st until the end of April, and it is very full with lots of teaching time at JBC, I will be traveling and speaking a lot, and I will be writing a lot. When I have things planned out very well and in detail it gives me a great sense of energy, excitement and confidence in what I will accomplish, which is so much better than feeling tenuous, apathetic, and confused. One of my key memory verses is Psalms 37:3-5 and verse 5 says,"commit your plans to the Lord, trust in Him and He will make it happen", so I am careful to present my completed calendar to Him and say "I believe this is Your will for my life for the next 8 months, I present it now to You as my offering to You, if You would like to change anything in it or all of it I will enthusiastically adjust, but in the meantime I will move ahead full speed in faith. Please grant me Your strength to accomplish all that is in my plans and to bear much fruit for Your glory".

we went over 3 passes today, 2 were 5,300 feet high, and this one was 5,504 feet high, and we road 84.4 miles. Last night we were looking forward to over 60 miles of today's ride being on a bike trail but today when we got started on it, it soon turned into all gravel and was very difficult to ride on so we bailed off of that and got on hwy 140 and rode it all the way to our camp outside of Lakeview. It was a long day in the old bike saddle today so it is now 9;45 pm as I sit in our tent writing this. We found out tonight that our planned route to go into Nevada down Hwy 140 has some very dangerous stretches for bicycles so we have decided to go up 395 to Riley and then into Burns instead of going to Burns through French Glen. All of that to say we shortened up the trip by a day with this decision so we decided to stay here tomorrow and head off on Wednesday, because this camp sight is so wonderful, and I am so tired and wimpy!

Tired and wimpy is an issue with everyone sooner or later, especially as you get older, and my wimpiness is amplified by Parkinson's. If you give in to it, you will do less and less, and exercise less and less , and then you feel even more tired, and down we go in this spiral until we crash and burn. The key for me is to anticipate the feeling and make commitments to myself to exercise anyway in spite of how I feel, to get up and Bicycle another 80 miles, or if home I make a daily todo list, and make a commitment to myself that I am not going to let my body run my life. Most tiredness is in our mind and we all are good at letting our tired body tell our mind what we are going to do. The Apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 9, "I discipline my body and it my slave". Positive self-talk, lots of prayers asking God for strength, a daily list of things you are going to get done, a personal resolve to be a disciplined person, no matter what, and control every thought so we thinking our way up instead of down.

I got a number of responses to my blog yesterday about my "Reflective Thinking" comments while riding my bicycle. I have become a student of the the topic and a growing practitioner of the discipline of reflective thinking, let me share a few observations and principles that I have learned.

1. Very few people spend much time in "reflective thinking" because it is a discipline, that is we don't think this way naturally or easily, so we need to train ourselves to do it.

2. Very few people think reflectively because our thinking is prompted by what we see, hear, and experience all day. Our thinking is focused on the details of life and often moves to thinking patterns that are self-destructive like thinking anxious thoughts about the future, the unknown, or problems, thinking bitter thoughts because of how we have been treated, thinking about the unfairness we have experienced and wallowing in self-pity, thinking angry thoughts. discontent thinking, judgmental-critical thinking, and on the list goes.

3. Reflective thinking has as it's purpose to grow, to become a mature person who has the character of Jesus. Reflective thinking is looking in the mirror and examining our behavior, our habits, our flaws, our motives, our character strengths and weaknesses, our relationship with God, and doing that very honestly without any hint of denial, justifying, blaming, ignoring, or excusing because we don't like what we see in ourselves.

4. Solitude is an absolute requirement to think reflectively, which most must program into their life to make happen.

5. Journaling is the best tool that I have discovered to grow in our skill of thinking about ourselves honestly. Writing about the day not just about events, but what we did, said, thought and why. Journaling has a great power to move us away from the events and look at ourselves as another person. Writing out what we did wrong, or what our flaws are is very powerful in making us an honest, transparent, real person.

6. I ask God to search me and to show me what needs work. I confess all the negatives I see in myself to God and experience his joy and feel the value He places on me.

7. I regularly ask other people who know me well what they see that I could work on, and journal about that experience.

Today we bicycled 66 miles and ended up at the KOA Campground in Klamath Falls. Today takes over top place for the hardest day. We climbed almost 6,000 total feet and averaged 10 mph which is our slowest day because of the climbing. There were not only a lot of hills but they were very steep, well in excess of a 6% grade. Today was the first day I had to walk and push my bike, which I did for over 4 miles. I can walk up a steep hill at 2.5 mph and John was pedaling 3 mph, and I don't have the balance to keep my bike upright going that slow, but they didn't have to wait long for me. It was hot and I had sweat dripping off my nose at a steady pace, but I drank lots of water. Of course with the uphills comes the downhills, and I set a personal best for bike speed of 37 mph going down one of them today. I could have gone faster, but I was a bit nervous going any faster on a bicycle with skinny tires, so I did quite a lot of braking, especially for corners.

The Campground has a swimming pool so the first thing I did was put on my swimming suite and jump in. Cooling off my hot muscles and body felt so good. Tomorrow is a rest day so I plan on spending a lot of time in the pool. We are planning on going to church in the morning.

One of the things I like about bicycling, and going on trips like this is the amount of time I can think. Not just regular kind of thinking that tends to be controlled by all the events of life that go on around us, but reflective thinking about myself, who I am, how much or little that I am growing in character, in my relationship with the Lord, and in my relationship with Patty and other family and friends. I think about things I want to do and accomplish, I think a lot about JBC and what I can do in ministry to make her more and more a beautiful bride of Christ. I think about heaven and what that will be like. It is only 9 pm but I think I am going to crawl into my sleeping bag. Talk to you tomorrow.

I am a big believer in the character trait of "Grit", "Toughness", and, "Endurance", of being a person who goes after their goals without quitting. I am also a big believer in the character trait of "Flexibility", which would be a cross between endurance and wisdom. Endurance would be picking the destination and pursuing it, flexibility would be picking the best route and plan. It is important that flexibility isn't used as an excuse for laziness, and in thinking about choices in life carefully thinking about our motives is important. John and I decided to practice being flexible and take an extra rest day today because we were both not feeling well, John with a pretty serious case of the flu, and the last several days have been particularly exhausting with all the hill climbing. Normally we would have stayed where we were last night, but because of the difficulty of finding campsites we didn't want to cancel the spot we had reserved for tonight because we wouldn't have had a place to camp , and we would have lost our money that we paid for the site, so we decided to drive today's route. MaryAnn drove and John and I slept. We kicked around for a couple of seconds the idea of sitting on our bikes in the back of the pickup, and having the back tires propped up off the floor so the wind would blow them around and our bike computers/gps would record the miles. I think that would have violated the spirit of being flexible. The bad thing was that even though it was 88 miles it was almost flat, I love flat!! And about half the miles were on paved bike trails, I love paved bike trails!!! It has been a very relaxing day here in Glenyan Campground in Ashland, and we will have a great day tomorrow riding 66 miles to The KOA Campground in Klamath Falls.

It doesn't seem like we have been riding now, for 10 days, but that is what the calendar says. 10 down and 20 to go!! Today we rode up the mother of all monster hills!! We went from sea level to 2,500 feet with a bunch of rollers in the process, and half way up it got hot, 98 degrees. We have been riding down the coast for the last week and the mid 60's sounds super right now. We rode up the Redwood Highway along the Smith River and the road was windy and often there was no shoulder, so we had cars going around us VERY close. For the most part people were patient and courteous as they often waited to pass us until they could see ahead of us a ways. It was nerve wracking but I focused on the white line because often there was no guard rail and a long fall down to the river if I wandered over the edge. That white line became my own personal road and I tried to stay right in the middle of it.

We are camped in a very nice campsite in the town of O,Brian on Hwy 199 not to far before you get to Cave Junction. Tomorrow we will ride 88 miles to Emigrant Lake just past Ashland. It looks like from the profile on my IPad that it will be relatively flat, that will be super after the last couple of days. We will get up and be on the road at 6:30 am to try and beat the heat.

One of the major challenges has been finding campsites. It seems that Oregon is getting swarmed with people who have come into the State to watch the eclipse. I said something to someone that this particular Campground was a ways from the main track of the eclipse, and they said they just wanted to get close enough to drive to where they could see it in less than 5 hours. I said, well you still have over a week and they wanted to get a spot before they are all taken, which is exactly the problem we have been having. We have already made some adjustments to our route and schedule because of availability issues.

Planning the next day's route and camping location has become a major activity each evening, and many phone calls are being made in the process. The Lord said that if we trust in Him with all of our heart and life that He will direct our path. Now that is an awesome promise.

Today was by far the hardest day for me. There are a couple of numbers among the half dozen that we get on our bicycle GPS each day that are a pretty good gauge of a day's difficulty. One of them is the average speed for the day. The slower the average the more difficult the ride. For the fist 8 days we averaged about 12 miles per hour, and today we averaged 11 mph. Another number is the total number of feet climbed for the day. This is not a net amount of feet climbed, but the total of every foot that we climbed even if we went back down again. We have been in the 2,000 foot range most days, but today we climbed almost 6,000 ft. One would have thought that riding along the coast would have been flat, but that sure is not the case. Sitting here in my tent writing this I am more fatigued than at the end of any other day we have ridden. I am hoping the good meal, the hot shower, the ibuprofen, and the 8 hours of sleep will make me feel like a new man tomorrow morning.

We are camped just across the Oregon border in California at the mouth of the Smith River, and tomorrow we head up the Redwood Highway, Highway 199, 72 miles. We will leave at sea level and go steadily up for 40 miles where we will be at 2,500 feet in elevation so it is going to be another tough day of biking. I expect that as we follow the Smith River up that it is going to be a beautiful ride.

Today we stopped at a little food mart along the way. As we were working at getting the bicycles up on the sidewalk to lean against the building I was still straddled my bike, and I inadvertently stepped off of the edge of the sidewalk and lost my balance and fell over on the ground with a thud with my bicycle on top of me. The worst part was there were lots of people standing around who saw the whole thing. Very hard on a guys pride!! The only other damage is my left elbow is a bit swollen having landed on it when I fell. It should be as good as new in a couple of days.

It has been pretty cool, even cold at times along the coast, but tomorrow as we head East the temperature will increase. It is 56 degrees at 7:30'pm where we are this evening but where we will be camping tomorrow it is 91 degrees at the same time!!! I haven't put any sun screen on so far and I have been wearing a long sleeve wool shirt as I have been riding my bike, I think that will change tomorrow.

Today we biked 66.6 miles, and it included the "Seven Devils", which are a group of 7 monster hills one after the other in a span of about 15 miles. Today actually felt harder than yesterday's 105 miles, but I am sure it was because I started out today short on energy because of yesterday. We started out this morning in the fog and it was a bit chilly as well, but by the end of the day the sun was shining, though I have my sweat shirt on as I sit in our camp site. We are in a nice KOA Campground South of Bandon, and it has a super nice Hot Tub that I sat in for 30 minutes, oh my, it felt soooooo nice, but as I walked back to our camp site my legs felt like jello!

Patty and I are sleeping in a 4 person dome tent, and in the evening we tip the pads we sleep on, up against the inside of the tent and put our 2 lawn chairs inside, and sit and read and write in the evening. When we get ready for sleep we put the lawn chairs outside, lay the pads down and put out the sleeping bags and pillows, and just like home. Because it has been so dewy outside Patty has a line strung in the tent that she hangs all my bike cloths on so that they will dry out from all the sweat that is in them, and they are handy to grab and put on in the morning. The tent is fairly well ventilated so the smell isn't to bad.

Tomorrow we are riding 76 miles with a bunch of killer hills, and we will end up in California just North of Crescent City. Our campsite will be on the Smith River so maybe I will have a little time for some fishing.

Some of you may be a bit spooked by the 66.6 miles and our riding up 7 devils mountains. No problem. A thought to ponder though on the subject of the devil. His goal is to get people to be bad, to rebel against God, to deny that He even exists, to be their own bosses, and make up their own rules. What kind of people does he target that are "easy"? The answer; those who are passive in their relationship with God. The Bible says he is always on the lookout for those he can devour. To be passive is to take God for granted, to presume upon His goodness and love, to assume you have a relationship with Him because you "believe" in Him. The promise of God is that those who actively seek Him will find Him, He will bless them, and He will protect them from the devil.

Well, today John and I road 105 miles starting in Lincoln City and ending at the Umpqua Lighthouse State Campground just outside Winchester Bay. Besides the 105 miles we also had three killer hills and one of them had no shoulder and it was very curvy. This is the first century ride that either John or I have ever done. When we got into camp at 5:30 pm after leaving this morning at 6:15 am I felt pretty good, but after a warm shower and dinner I can hardly keep my eyes open as I write this blog, I am totally run out of gas. We have 66 miles tomorrow so we are going to sleep in a little and leave at 8 am. The Oregon Coast is a beautiful ride on a bicycle, and we stopped often for breaks and pictures.

I am going to call that enough for tonight, talk to you tomorrow.

Today was our "Rest Day" so I slept in, and took several naps during the day, and ate a lot, including a big bowl of ice cream. We all went to church at Faith Baptist here in Lincoln City this morning, and our good friends the Bruggeman's were at the church giving a Missions report, and also Katrina Beranek who attends JBC was there on vacation, and sat with us, and then we all went to MO's for lunch and a former JBC'er, Frank Stutzman who manages at MO's paid for our lunch.

Russ Williams who has been riding with us since the start left today as planned, and Doug is to sore to ride anymore, so it is just John Smith and I riding tomorrow. His wife, MaryAnn and Patty are riding together in our "support vehicle" and will get to our camping spot tomorrow before we get there. When we pull in Patty will have our tent set up, the lawn chairs set up and a cold Coke already opened for me, what a woman😀!!

Because of some adjustments we have had to make because of all the full campgrounds caused by all those coming over to the coast to escape the heat, our schedule is off a bit so we are riding 106 miles tomorrow to get caught up, and we have three major hills to climb as well. The good thing is that I got good and rested today, and the weather forecast is calling for winds out of the North at 9 mph, so all I need to do is make a big sail😜!! We will be camping at the "Umpqua Lighthouse State Park" just South of Reedsport.

One of the life principles taught in the Bible is the need for "rest". Our physical body needs rest, we need rest to recuperate emotionally, and we need rest for our minds to function well. The kind of rest that works best is systematic, regular rest, along with activity that is energy renewing. I take these annual bicycle trips or activities like them to "rest" and experience renewal in my spirit and heart as a result of the spiritual, emotional, and mental energy that I use up in ministry to people. It is one of the reasons I plan on continuing to Pastor as long as I still have my wits about me. I am feeling good enough right now to go another 20 years in ministry, but first we will see if I can go 106 miles on the bicycle tomorrow.