There are just 22 days left in this bicycle trip, my oh my, how the days have flown. I have already been thinking about next year’s trip. I have now done three coast to coast trips. The first was across the Northern States and the second was across the Southern States and this one has been across the middle. They have all been fun and a great way to see the country. One of the trips we did a few years ago was from Jefferson to the Grand Canyon then to Yellowstone and then back home. It was probably my favorite trip in terms of scenery. I want to do another “out and back” kind of trip, so I am thinking about a circular journey that would take approximately 30 to 40 days. On this trip, we have averaged 70 miles a day, but I am thinking that next year, we will average 60 miles a day with no day being over 70 miles. I am getting older, you know! I will also schedule a rest day on Sunday and plan on attending a local church.

We are in Wyoming tonight so we have now bicycled through Virginia, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, and Colorado with Montana, Idaho and Oregon to come.

There are only 22 days left 😢😢😢. I am always sad to see theses trips end, but they do, everything does sooner or later, except our life after death, that will never end, we will either be in heaven or hell, forever.

Today was a beautiful scenery day with mountains, mountain meadows, big open spaces, rivers and creeks. We saw antelope, elk, deer, a couple of moose, and a beaver. We traveled 76 miles with a couple of hills to climb, but not real bad ones. There was a little tail wind, no head wind, no dogs, no mosquitos, no rain, overcast so relatively cool and comfortable, no rumble strips, and fairly light traffic with careful and polite drivers. We are in Cowdrey, Colodado tonight and tomorrow we will be in Wyoming..

I am feeling good physically and slept really good last night. I have even lost 15 pounds so far. Today I was thinking as I was riding that I don’t want to lose my physical conditioning that this trip has brought about. I am thinking that I will start running again, and I know myself well enough to know that I have to have a goal and an upcoming event to motivate me. I think I am going to register for the half Marathon in Albany on November 24th, Thanksgiving day, “Gobbler’s Revenge.” If anybody wants to run it with me let me know.

Today the scenery is gorgeous as we have entered the Rockie Mountains.

As I wrote yesterday we are camped at 10,000 feet tonight at Fairplay, Colorado, and tomorrow we will ride all day with that view or better. Tomorrow we will be in Kremmling, Colorado camping at 7,000 feet so we get to go down 3,000 feet on our bicycles tomorrow. The descent takes place over 40 miles so it won’t be ripping fast speeds but I bet I don’t do much pedaling for that 40 miles.

I got pretty sick last night, diarrhea all night and an upset stomach. We went and ate at a Bar and Grill last night and I ate a huge Patty Melt and fries, but feeling better tonight.

We haven’t had too much in the way of excitement the last two days. Everybody’s bike seems to be working well but I had another flat tire bringing the total to five for the trip.

65 miles today with a lot of climbing and 82 miles tomorrow with 20 miles of climbing at the start and then gradual downhill the rest of the way in camp.

Today we had a short mileage day but a lot of climbing. We headed up into the Rockies today. I was getting pretty bored with all that flat riding anyway. The big difference between the climbing we did today compared with the Appalachian Mts and the Ozarks is that they were up and down, up and down, up and down, and the ups were very steep. Today we just climbed, no down, and the grade was mostly 4 to 6 percent. You figure out what gear works and then just crank away. Whenever it flattens out, we take a butt break and a water break. I never stop on an incline because I have difficulty getting started without tipping over. It was cold this morning but no rain and sunny right now in camp, though chilly in the shade because we are at about 6,000 feet elevation. We are camped at Royal Gorge, Colorado. Tomorrow we will be camped at Fairplay, Colorado and it is 10,000 feet in elevation, so tomorrow will be one big long climb all day long for 65 miles. At 7:00 pm some of us are going to drive the pick-up half a mile to a “Grill and Pub” and watch the first game of the NBA championships – go Warriors!

In yesterday’s blog I stated 6 reasons why I go on these kinds of trips and one more that I didn’t mention is because they are fun. That is a little hard to compute for many, how bicycling for 70 miles in the heat or the rain can be fun, but it is. Enjoyment comes in a variety of ways to everyone. I will have fun watching the game tonight. I really enjoy spending time with Patty, my kids and grandkids. I enjoy preaching and teaching the Bible. I really enjoy fishing! The fun or joy from bicycling trips comes from conquering and achieving something very difficult.

Sometimes I hear people say that life is hard. If it weren’t hard it would be boring, like Kansas. It would be boring and there would be very little character growth. A hard life is a good life, and a hard life is a fun life.

It started raining about midnight and rained until noon. We all bundled up with warm cloths and rain gear this morning and took off at 6:00 am. I am pretty sure that is the coldest I have ever been in my life. I couldn’t feel my feet or my hands, and my face hurt it was so cold. We were scheduled to camp at a county campground but decided to get a motel instead to reward ourselves for enduring that cold ride. Yesterday I was cooking hot riding and today I was freezing cold. It is amazing how fast and how drastic the weather changes. We met a lot of different people today, and they all expressed great sympathy for our plight. One lady today asked me why we were doing this, and I responded, “ I used to know why, but today I forgot, something about having fun!”Today we rode 65 miles and tomorrow we will ride about the same. We are scheduled to stay at another KOA tomorrow and the weather is supposed to be nice. We do have some major climbing coming tomorrow as we start into the Rocky Mountains.

There are half a dozen reasons why I do these kinds of trips:

1. It is good for my health in general and it has a major impact on my Parkinson’s. I am not trying to live forever, I am not worried about dying and being with the Lord, but I would like to be healthy and have energy while I am here.

2. A major life purpose of mine is to grow in maturity and character so as to be as much like Jesus as is possible in the days remaining for me in this life. Choosing to do difficult and challenging things and persevering in doing them is a great character builder.

3. There is something unique about long distance bicycle riding that causes me to be totally renewed emotionally when I get back to ministry. It could be the alone time on the bike, the scenery, the reflective thinking that I do while riding, or the time I spend thinking about the Lord and His plan for my life in the years remaining. But whatever it is, it works well.

4. I want to make every day that I live to be productive bearing much fruit for Him and growing to be like Him, and clear goals are the key to making the most of my time. As I ride and think I come up with lots of new goals for the days ahead.

5. As a pastor I want to model and be an example of living life out of the safe, secure, and boring zone. So many people want their life to be secure and predictable, but when they stay there they grow very little and accomplish only a small amount of fruit with their life for the Lord. As I do this ride and others like it I hope to encourage people to do some risky and hard things.

6. So many more issues, challenges, and difficulties come up as we get older and if we are tough enough to manage them we accelerate our character growth and our accomplishments. Bicycle trips like ours causes us to become tough

Last night we slept in Sheridan Lake Bible Church after eating a ton of food at the church barbecue. I sat at a table with a couple of the local farmers and talked about the farming methods they use compared to ours in the Willamette valley. They were pretty intrigued with all the emphasis now on filberts or hazelnuts.

We hit the road this morning at 5:00 am because our planned route was 105 miles and it was predicted to get warm. The roads were flat and we had a tailwind or partial tailwind for most of the day so it was an easy day, but 105 miles is 105 miles and my legs tonight are jello. We are in La Junta, Colorado at a KOA campground and it has a swimming pool. When we got into camp the first thing I did was jump into the pool, and it felt so good, and was very refreshing.

It is supposed to start raining tonight and go through most of the day tomorrow, so that will be fun🤪 I hope this blog makes sense, I keep falling asleep while I am writing it. I will write more tomorrow and have some pictures.

Wind – May 30th WNW 20 mph Wind gusts 30 mph occasional 40 mph

That was the forecast last night for todaynfor the route we were scheduled to take and WNW was going to be a direct headwind.

Riding into a 20 mph headwind is a near-death experience😫😳🥺😢

Wind – May 31st NE 20 mph. Wind gusts 30 mph occasional 40 mph

That is also the forecast last night made for Tuesday. NE is a direct tailwind. A 20 mph tailwind for most of the day will be amazingly fun.

So we canceled our ride for today and took a day off and are resting in this very comfortable, air-conditioned church, watching the wind blow hard in the wrong direction, and tomorrow we will ride 96 miles to La Junta, Colorado and camp in a KOA campground with a hot tub and a swimming pool, after experiencing jet propulsion all day. Whoooooeee

Because of the high winds and low humidity Colorado has a “stage 2” fire warning in place, and there are a couple if forest fires going now that will be on our route in the next week. We have had a variety of challenges and problems so we might as well add a forest fire to the list!

Today we rode our bikes on one road. The road did not make a bend, it was straight as a string for 78 miles. Supposedly we gained 200 feet of elevation but over 78 miles it appeared to be perfectly flat. We left at 5:00 am this morning riding in the dark for about 40 minutes to beat the heat, which we did, getting to our destination right about noon and it still wasn’t up to 70 degrees yet.

We are staying at a church tonight. We got here just as the Sunday morning service was getting over. They have been having Vacation Bible School all week so the pastor invited us to the church barbecue and the VBS program.

The town we are in, “Sheridan Lake”is probably a hundred people in the city limits, but the church appears to have at least a hundred attending so they must draw from the surrounding area. It is a “Village Mission” church and appears to be very healthy.

Tomorrow we have an easy day, 56 miles and mostly flat. Hopefully, there is not a big headwind. A fellow we talked to today said every other day lately was big wind days, up to 50 mph. The wind today was coming straight out of the north and we were traveling straight West, so we had a side wind, which wasn’t much of a problem for us. We crossed into Colorado today and got a picture with the “Welcome to Colorado” sign, and because we didn’t get an “Entering Kansas” picture when we came into Kansas we turned around and got one on the other side of the road.

While we were at the “Entering Colorado” sign a family stopped to take pictures and we discovered that they were very good friends of Erik and Paula Frisk who attend JBC and are good friends of Patty and I. We have met a lot of people who used to live in Oregon or have friends there.

Today is the last day we will be in Kansas, and today we are officially halfway done on our trip. We are in Scott City, Kansas, and are in a recreational facility that has a swimming pool and is air-conditioned, which is nice because it is 100 degrees outside.

Let me give you a tour of my bicycle that I have been spending considerable time with lately.

Also notice my handlebars. The lower one has my brake handles and shifter levers, and I ride in the typical bent over position when my hands are on those. When I put my hands on the upper bars I am sitting almost straight up. I sit on a different part of my rear-end with each position so it is great to switch back and forth.

This is the holder that I have my Iphone in. I have each day mapped out and the map of the route is on the screen and it is bluetoothed with my hearing aids so I get audible turn by turn directions as I ride.

We left Hoisington, Kansas this morning at 7:00 am and had a great day of biking until 10:00 am when we had 30 miles done. The weather was sunny but cool and very comfortable, there was no wind, and the roads were flat. Then at 10:00 am the wind started, and the weather app said it was a steady 20 mph with gusts to 35 mph coming from the Southwest. We were bicycling west than north than west and then north again as we headed for our campsite that was northwest of us. When we were going west we were fighting a fierce headwind but when we turned north we had a fun ride. I hardly needed to pedal at all to cruise at 20 mph. I would stand up on my pedals to make myself as big of a sail as possible.

The forecast for tomorrow is for more of the same so we are going to try and get left at 5:30 am for two reasons. The first is to get as many miles as possible done before the wind starts. We leave camp and head straight South for 25 miles so we want to get that part done early for sure. The second reason is that it is supposed to be 100 degrees by 2:00 pm Our route and destination tomorrow calls for a 90 mile day but I am going to quit at 62 miles and Dave is going to pick me up, a semi-rest day. The others may as well, but they are waiting until they ride for awhile before deciding.

We are camped tonight at Cedar Bluff State Park and they only charged us five dollars and gave us a covered area to camp under, note picture.

I was thinking that today is a lot like life. You want something a lot and the days just drag on forever it seems before it happens. I remember our wedding day was like that, the days seemed to go on forever, but it does finally happen. Today I wanted the West Roads to end so we could turn North and have those wonderful tailwinds. I watched my odometer knowing the number of miles we needed to go and it just crawled. I came up with a new motto, “ a watched odometer does not move!”

You can almost see the curvature of the earth Kansas is so flat