10 years isn’t all that long, but it can change a lot of things. The whole world seems to be recounting the last decade, and while this period of time doesn’t delimit any certain and distinctive portion of my life, it’s the period of time that is being discussed right now by a few people. I suppose there’s a lot of ways to recall ten years, but recounting a few things seems appropriate. Best or worst – this list is neither. Perhaps most influential is more appropriate. The last ten years covers a pretty broad range of ages for me, 10 years to be exact, so there’s some maturing that occurred along the way in here. Some of this stuff is “coming-of-age” realizations, but that’s an aspect of life, so they count just like the others.

I started writing this bit earlier last week but had to postpone posting it until I could flesh out a few paragraphs after a fantastic ski trip. So it’s not in time for the 2010 list making that happened last week, but I don’t think that really matters. Readers who were going to read it will likely read it anyways, that’s what readers do – by definition.

1. We’re greedy, selfish, love prejudice and are still somewhat racist – perhaps that’s not the most politically correct means by which to kick off a review of the decade, but the specifics making me note this fall chronologically near the beginning of the 200Xs for myself. Spending a year away from Canada in 2000-2001 highlighted the fact that typically we like ourselves a lot and we don’t like other people all that much. My own experience was probably magnified by being in my early teens at the time, the age that’s arguably got the meanest peers of any age for everyone. My own situation as the foreign kid made that all the trickier. I was the only boy in the grade with long hair I was the only one with an accent. I was one of a few from the village three towns down the road from school. I was too tall. I was damn good at maths. I had the wrong shoes for with the school uniform. I didn’t get the right food packed in my lunch (Mom fixed that one quickly though). I fit no molds and while the prejudices I experienced were rather tame compared with the ethnic cleansing experienced by many people groups around the globe they were certainly noticeable to a wee little GCSE student.
   Oh well, back to Canada in the summer of 2001 I’d escape being the subject of these prejudices, and that should hopefully reduce the amount of tension I felt surrounding this issue. But boom, September 2001 rolls around. Maybe I’m more aware now, or just older, or it’s more extreme than it has been before, but there’s racist commentary all over the place. Everyone Arab is suddenly a terrorist. How did that work? Maybe I needed to have experienced prejudices from the being-dealt end before I had reason to feel uncomfortable finding myself at the dealing-out end. Not a lot has changed by the end of the decade, nearly every media outlet I’m influenced was spewing reports about the climate change summit in Copenhagen. None of it made me happy. There’s an entire global community trying to sit around a pie, and debating how to slice up that pie, and every single nation at the table needs to have an above average slice. All the big polluters want some version of a cap and trade system, yet no system based on cap and trade knows how to distribute the quota. From what I understand, the quota distribution system has basically been proven by economists to not work in the long run. Unfortunately that’s the system the big players are pushing for because they know that if they can weasel their way into an unfair share of the global quota for emissions then while the whole world has to tighten their belts they will have to tighten their belts the least. Alberta will profit from this, I know it, and it makes me sick.
   Intentionally trying to deny developing nations an equal shot at using the planet’s resources is just as self-serving as a game called: “Make a flamethrower out of an aerosol deodorant can and try to light the Canadian kid’s hair of fire in the locker room at school.” Maybe it’s because once we’re grown up we find bigger and more complicated words to use to mean the same thing as ‘bullying’.
2. It was this decade that I made a realization world conflict was current. I distinctly remember watching the BBC news in the living room at our home on School Lane, Staveley Cumbria UK. There was footage from what I only remember was some Serbian conflict in Macedonia sometime in the spring of 2001. There was house to house and street to street armed conflict being shown between people who looked too much like me. I remember being somewhat shocked, sure there were wars going on, but from what I understood, Canada, America and Europe had their shit together we were too intelligent, too highly developed, and too “good” (whatever that means) to rely on anything but diplomacy to set things straight in the world. Canada’s army was for sending on peacekeeping missions with the UN, and that was something that should be highly respected. We were so well advanced in my mind, and we should be proud of it. Our soldiers went to Honduras to help out after hurricanes, or to help dig people out of the rubble after big earthquakes, no soldier that I identified with ever did anything that I didn’t think was good. Wars, genocide and armed conflict happened in places like Rwanda or Chechnya, Israel sometimes bombed what I understood to be “the bad guys” in Lebanon. These weren’t people like me. It’s not like I was out of the loop on the whole Kosovo conflict during the late 90s, but up until this point in life I don’t think I’d realized that this wasn’t too foreign. Perhaps, just because they were fighting, they weren’t at all like me. Perhaps it was the fact that I was now in Europe and the footage was from that afternoon and being shown hours later on the same continent. I remember this distinctly to be a perspective changing occasion, my reality was not as peaceful as I thought it was. People just like me fight, and kill each other. Whoa, what an eye opener for a random weekday afternoon.
   This only happened mere months before September 11, 2001 and mere months after that Canada was off an fighting in a war in Afghanistan. These events weren’t such a hard pill to swallow after the TV broadcast that spring, I seemed to know by then that the world was less at peace than I might have imagined earlier.
3. Pope John Paul II died in April 2005. The world paused for a while it seemed, this man had done so much for humanity during his life that absolutely the entire world took note when he passed on. I didn’t know a whole lot about the man, probably average for the average person outside of the Catholic church, but the way things seemed to pause worldwide when he passed away grabbed my attention. It seemed that the whole world converged on Vatican City to pay their respects to this man who had played such an important role in the history of the world. This fascination by the general public meant that I also started to learn about the Catholic church, and when the media died down I kept on going. This would lead initially to just paying attention, but later beginning to attend weekly mass, reading a few excellent books and taking elective courses through the Catholic college on campus. Pope John Paul II’s death was actually rather immaterial to myself but this set in motion a significant change in perspective and appreciation for differing views and values within the ecumenical church.
4. Perhaps this is the only thing on the list that occurred at a certain time and made the impact right away. Most of the others were events that occurred over months, or catalysts for perspective changes that occurred over the course of years. This happened over the course of maybe 20 minutes one Friday evening in front of the TV in the basement. Bono was giving a speech at the federal Liberal Party convention. It was the night where Paul Martin was taking over leadership from Jean Chretien. Bono took the stage and made a strong case for the power of our nation to do good in the world. He suggested that this period of history would be remembered for three things, the internet, the war on terror, and the lack of the first world’s involvement in the affliction plaguing the continent of Africa. That being a combination economic suppression through debt and exploitation as well as AIDS destroying entire generations of lives. It was a combination of compelling statistics as well as sincere human to human communication. The case was made in my mind for two things; first that there were real things that could be done on a super huge scale to make amends for some of the problems facing different areas on the planet. That if federal governments around the world decided to make it a priority to improve aspects of the global community thing would actually change for the better. Second, he changed how I thought about how I could view my government. If I believed that the potential existed to make positive change in the world, then I should be considering which federal party campaigning to form a government was going to behave most appropriately in that global community, not just for what they could provide me. I was for the first time thinking as a resident of planet earth, rather than as a resident of the overprivileged nation of Canada. I recall the speech relatively frequently when thinking about global issues and definitely every time I’ve been able to cast a ballot since then. If you want to read it, someone graciously typed out the Full Speech and posted it online.
5. It was about mid-decade that Canada changed the legislation governing same sex marriage. This, according to my understanding, was the turning point for gay rights in our country. It seemed that over the course of the previous few years there was an ever increasing frustration with the issue swirling around in the public media, and within different circles of conversation that I participated in. Following approximately 2005, when the same-sex marriage legislation battle came to a close within Canada, there has been a chance for the whole country to calm down and catch it’s breath. I’m certain that this has been for the better. All of the slippery slope arguments that had been made over the course of the previous years failed to hold any water. Religious officials had maintained their right to treat marriage as their traditions saw fit, no-one was trying to marry their pets, and no-one was force-feeding our children messages about their sexual orientation. Society had unambiguously improved, freedom had been granted to a slice of the population without taking anything away from the rest of it. Hallelujah! My own experience relating to the actual issue however, was rather unattached. I didn’t write any letters or join any protests, but I was content to see things change, with me on the sidelines.
   A year later, I was confronted face to face by someone I really respected about almost everything. How could I say I was going to vote for the Liberal party in the 2006 federal election when they had legalized same sex marriage? I was caught totally off guard by that statement. I remember anticipating that the discussion of who we would be voting for in the 2006 election was going to be about something like healthcare, or environmental issues, or the gun registry, or dealing with fallout from the sponsorship scandal, or a fiscal imbalance between the federal and provincial governments… One of those issues that the media kept pushing. Nope, I was mistaken, the question went something like this: If I agreed that biblical teaching was that the God-designed plan for relationships and families was between a man and a woman, how could I support any federal party that would permit otherwise? I distinctly remember having to pause and collect my thoughts for a bit. Well, the fact of the matter was that I wasn’t opposed to that. Actually, I was in support of it. The presence of committed relationships between people of all orientations was undeniable, and it wasn’t going to change because someone else was going to label it as sinful. What good was it going to do in the world to prevent some people from participating in a social structure that was largely run by the government, the insurance guys, and the tax-man?
   The discussion turned into a great one, ideas flowed about our largely undeveloped ability to listen to the needs of other people rather than decide what their needs were. The problem solving strategies that we’d been force fed through school and then university, more often than we’d like to admit were trying to cram round plugs into square holes. If there was a bit more listening and less strategical approaches taken in real life we’d soon realize that our plans for others’ issues had our own fingerprints all over them. Our home-grown solutions unfortunately don’t start out custom designed for other situations. In the subsequent months there was a lot of good that came out of what started as a really tense situation. A ton of trust was developed because, as I recall it, we were actually listening to each other once in a while.
6. Lance Armstrong won his 7th consecutive Tour de France during the summer of 2005. I spent that month of July generally in recovery mode from spending May and June sick in bed. The result was a lot of TV watching, and a new found love for the sport of bike racing. It was a realization for me that I was far more interested in this sport than most others, there seemed to be very little luck in the game, there was skill, effort, fitness, and strategy, and ultimately the best guys seemed to be able to win but they had to try amazingly hard to do it. There was something beautiful about a sport where you could earn fitness by putting in the hard work and quantitatively get better at things. That summer was the catalyst for me heading off to do all sorts of things in the world of endurance sports: learn how to swim, do my first triathlon, bike across an entire continent, run my first marathon, actually win a race. and get myself sufficiently enamored with long distance triathlon to sign up for Ironman. If we’re looking for life-changing and not just mind-changing events this one is it, since that Tour de France I’ve found hundreds of hours each year to put into this endurance sports campaign. As a totally unexpected bonus I’ve made some of the best friends of my life as a result.
7. I changed how I thought about food during this decade. Heading off to University required that I was going to be the person choosing what I would eat every day for breakfast lunch and dinner. I did a decent job right from the start, and got a lot better in the years that followed. Whether that was initiated by seeing the whole world go crazy about the Atkins diet in the few years prior, or due to the hilarity of “Supersize Me”, or just because I didn’t know any better than to eat relatively healthy, I ate better food than 99% of the world living in residence. There was a basic realization that the world chooses to feed itself very poorly sometime in the first half of the decade. During the second half of the decade things changed again, there is a difference between not eating poorly and eating well. Making that change takes some time and some effort but the decision to do so occurred based on conversations with real people who had their heads on straight. My friend Tulani had completely quit eating sugar and I tried that for about two months, before gradually becoming more lax on that front. A family friend, John, was eating strictly according to the direction of a naturopath, nothing processed and huge categories of the supermarket put “on hold” until he developed “better blood”. Neither appeared to be missing out on anything, it was just a decision, and their enjoyment of life and food had improved as a result. A simple realization really: I could choose to eat what I wanted, and I was in complete control of how I was going to decide what I wanted. Rather abruptly I pretty much didn’t want all sorts of things.
8. Friends ended in the spring of 2004. This is, I think, somewhat tied to a realization that occurred when Justin Timberlake tore off part of Janet Jackson’s top in front of all of America at the Superbowl the previous winter. The relationship between society and men and women is far from perfect. Friends wasn’t a show serving up sexist messages, but it wasn’t doing it quite right. If it weren’t for Sarah Jessica Parker being on the TV at the same time and being the go to example of liberated sexuality, perhaps Rachel Green, Monica Geller, or Phoebe Buffay (unlikely) would have been developed into that character. When the second half of the superbowl party turned into a discussion of whether or not the “wardrobe malfunction” was supposed to have happened or not, it wasn’t a marker of emancipation. It was an indication that things weren’t right, despite the fact that people were now suggesting that they were. Sure, women had rights like men but we’re far from having arrived at a solution, or destination. Somehow the end of Friends, made this especially noticeable to me. The fact that the feel good ending to the show is Ross and Rachel back together and Monica and Chandler heading to the suburbs with the twins was kind of a sick joke.
   In theory there’s freedom and equality but in reality in my perception this has just been replaced by almost equally un-beneficial expectations that we just hold in our heads. The issue of women’s rights has migrated from one that existed on paper for one sex to one that exists in the mind of society and afflicts both genders. As of 2004 when Friends came to a close we were far from success. Later in the decade there was an election in America where Hillary Clinton and Tina Fey, err… Sarah Palin, played large roles. Was anything better? Things seemed to be regressing more than they were progressing on this front through the last decade if you ask me.
9. My federal government admits fault with regard to their dealings with the residential schools. This is something that I’d been learning about over the course of a few previous years. Until I had spent a fair amount of time learning and discussing I was almost completely certain that this was not my issue. Despite the severity of the issue or the magnitude of the problem, I was most certainly not involved. Until I started to learn from people instead of books. Suddenly the issue was my issue, but the avenues to do things still seem distant and obscure. I identified with the damage caused and sometimes I think that’s all that anyone hopes from me, to listen, share the pain and to agree that what happened is wrong. When the apology was made in 2008 by the federal government I was lucky to be spending the week with friends, native and white, who also could pause and reflect on the significance of it. Not a lot changed that day, but witnessing the official statement seemed important to me. It was hopefully the beginning of a new renewal and at the time, I remember feeling a sentiment of great hope in so many conversations. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission might have gotten off to a rocky start but I’m certainly rooting for it to be able to overcome those obstacles and make a firm record in history on the second attempt.
10. Quantum mechanics soaked up my life for the better part of two semesters of university. What I at first thought was the pinnacle of my education was nothing more than an ivory tower rather detached from the world. By the time I was part-way through my final year of undergrad I could speak differential equations like the best of them. I had knew the normalization constants for dozens of probability wavefunctions off the top of my head and could basically guess at the forms for most others with an uncanny chance of success. I had started to develop intuition with regards to diagonalizing the matrices necessary to make eigenstates of an interaction matrix orthogonal. I had developed skills that even I myself deemed useless. I didn’t have a huge issue with it at the time, it’s not like I suddenly wanted to un-learn these things. It did cause me to back up however, I wanted to decide which skillsets I was going to develop as a part of my education. Quantum mechanics no longer made the cut. It’s no wonder that Engineering Management and my Christian Theology courses were my most appreciated the next semester. I was basically refusing to become a maven of mathematics, a prima donna of process control feedback or an exemplar of electronic wavefunctions. I was done with learning things to score well on tests. I was only going to train my brain to do things that I knew were useful. Now you could start debating with me the merits of training a brain to focus on putting out the most even wattage on a bicycle over the course of 5, 6, 7 or 8 hours, but that’s besides the point.

I think it’s important for as many people to read the following article as is possible so I’m posting it to my blog. If you’ve already read it consider passing it along to a few people. It represents to me not only the continually pressing issue of womens’ rights but also the kind of attitude that can make improvements. Our world needs people who are brave, really brave. It is no longer bravery to agree that women should have a vote, it is no longer bravery to suggest that black people should have lesser rights. In essence it is not bravery to align your opinion with outspoken groups working towards change in our society and gaining momentum. Real bravery is being one of the few to start trying to create momentum where there is none, and to be loud when there is silence. While the issue at hand in Carter’s article is not one cloaked in silence around the world I think it is one that here at home (wherever the heck you think that means) is losing momentum. Progress still needs to be made and it seems to me that because making corrections and bringing restoration to broken aspects of our culture’s past is something we’ve seen happening it is treated as though it is fixed. It’s a long way from fixed, but not many people are still saying that. Anyhow, read on, this Carter guy keeps making positive impacts on our planet and I’m grateful that “we’ve” got him.

Published on Sunday, July 12, 2009 by The Sunday Observer/UK

The Words of God Do Not Justify Cruelty to Women

Discrimination and abuse wrongly backed by doctrine are damaging society, argues the former US president

by Jimmy Carter

“Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status …” (Article 2, Universal Declaration of Human Rights)

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28)

I have been a practising Christian all my life and a deacon and Bible teacher for many years. My faith is a source of strength and comfort to me, as religious beliefs are to hundreds of millions of people around the world.

So my decision to sever my ties with the Southern Baptist Convention, after six decades, was painful and difficult. It was, however, an unavoidable decision when the convention’s leaders, quoting a few carefully selected Bible verses and claiming that Eve was created second to Adam and was responsible for original sin, ordained that women must be “subservient” to their husbands and prohibited from serving as deacons, pastors or chaplains in the military service. This was in conflict with my belief – confirmed in the holy scriptures – that we are all equal in the eyes of God.

This view that women are somehow inferior to men is not restricted to one religion or belief. It is widespread. Women are prevented from playing a full and equal role in many faiths.

Nor, tragically, does its influence stop at the walls of the church, mosque, synagogue or temple. This discrimination, unjustifiably attributed to a Higher Authority, has provided a reason or excuse for the deprivation of women’s equal rights across the world for centuries. The male interpretations of religious texts and the way they interact with, and reinforce, traditional practices justify some of the most pervasive, persistent, flagrant and damaging examples of human rights abuses.

At their most repugnant, the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime. But it also costs many millions of girls and women control over their own bodies and lives, and continues to deny them fair access to education, health, employment and influence within their own communities.

The impact of these religious beliefs touches every aspect of our lives. They help explain why in many countries boys are educated before girls; why girls are told when and whom they must marry; and why many face enormous and unacceptable risks in pregnancy and childbirth because their basic health needs are not met.

In some Islamic nations, women are restricted in their movements, punished for permitting the exposure of an arm or ankle, deprived of education, prohibited from driving a car or competing with men for a job. If a woman is raped, she is often most severely punished as the guilty party in the crime.

The same discriminatory thinking lies behind the continuing gender gap in pay and why there are still so few women in office in Britain and the United States. The root of this prejudice lies deep in our histories, but its impact is felt every day. It is not women and girls alone who suffer. It damages all of us. The evidence shows that investing in women and girls delivers major benefits for everyone in society. An educated woman has healthier children. She is more likely to send them to school. She earns more and invests what she earns in her family.

It is simply self-defeating for any community to discriminate against half its population. We need to challenge these self-serving and out-dated attitudes and practices – as we are seeing in Iran where women are at the forefront of the battle for democracy and freedom.

I understand, however, why many political leaders can be reluctant about stepping into this minefield. Religion, and tradition, are powerful and sensitive area to challenge.

But my fellow Elders and I, who come from many faiths and backgrounds, no longer need to worry about winning votes or avoiding controversy – and we are deeply committed to challenging injustice wherever we see it.

The Elders have decided to draw particular attention to the responsibility of religious and traditional leaders in ensuring equality and human rights. We have recently published a statement that declares: “The justification of discrimination against women and girls on grounds of religion or tradition, as if it were prescribed by a Higher Authority, is unacceptable.”

We are calling on all leaders to challenge and change the harmful teachings and practices, no matter how ingrained, which justify discrimination against women. We ask, in particular, that leaders of all religions have the courage to acknowledge and emphasise the positive messages of dignity and equality that all the world’s major faiths share.

Although not having training in religion or theology, I understand that the carefully selected verses found in the holy scriptures to justify the superiority of men owe more to time and place – and the determination of male leaders to hold onto their influence – than eternal truths. Similar Biblical excerpts could be found to support the approval of slavery and the timid acquiescence to oppressive rulers.

At the same time, I am also familiar with vivid descriptions in the same scriptures in which women are revered as pre-eminent leaders. During the years of the early Christian church women served as deacons, priests, bishops, apostles, teachers and prophets. It wasn’t until the fourth century that dominant Christian leaders, all men, twisted and distorted holy scriptures to perpetuate their ascendant positions within the religious hierarchy.

I know, too, that Billy Graham, one of the most widely respected and revered Christians during my lifetime, did not understand why women were prevented from being priests and preachers. He said: “Women preach all over the world. It doesn’t bother me from my study of the scriptures.”

The truth is that male religious leaders have had – and still have – an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women. They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter.

Their continuing choice provides the foundation or justification for much of the pervasive persecution and abuse of women throughout the world. This is in clear violation not just of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but also the teachings of Jesus Christ, the Apostle Paul, Moses and the prophets, Muhammad, and founders of other great religions – all of whom have called for proper and equitable treatment of all the children of God. It is time we had the courage to challenge these views.

Guardian News and Media Limited 2009

Jimmy Carter was US president from 1977-81. The Elders are an independent group of eminent global leaders, brought together by Nelson Mandela, who offer their influence and experience to support peace building, help address major causes of human suffering and promote the shared interests of humanity.

I found a video on my SD card that I hadn’t watched… ever. I filmed it on the morning of the day my “original” camera this summer broke. When I transferred that SD card over to my new camera it was formatted differently and was never retrieved and can’t be viewed on the Canon, it can however be viewed on a computer so when fishing through that folder on the PC I remembered filming it.

It’s a song/prayer/hymn that was sung at Roseland Christian Ministries in south Chicago while we were passing through there. It’s not the greatest at capturing the moment but if you’re in doubt as to whether or not it was a powerful experience ask any of the cyclists.

And a few other things I’ve realized never made it onto my blog following the summer. My net gain for each thigh circumference was 2.3 cms (almost an entire inch!) and 1.6 cms on the calf. The total mileage covered by myself is 7105 kms and ride time of 250:56 hours:minutes putting my average pace for the summer at 28.5 kph. I also found myself featured in another Youtube video thanks to Stephanie Webb from way back in Washington State while we were horsing around on the slackline waiting for church to start. It’s a shame this video didn’t start 3 seconds earlier because I made a sweet jumping start onto the line which is only captured right at the end. So be it I guess:

I gave a presentation at my sponsoring church, River Park CRC, in Calgary Alberta on Sunday morning. I think it went well, plenty of people thanked me for sharing so that’s nice. It came in two parts, first me having a bit of time to talk and then during the offering I had a few ppt slides to show what day-to-day life was like while on the road. I thought I had covered the bases pretty well with the slides but when watching them during the service I realized it looked like I was generally riding with a group of about 10 people. Not quite the case, the average for the summer was probably closer to a group of 2.7 considering how often I rode alone of with just one other person.

At any rate, driving back north to Edmonton that afternoon it really started to seem like the Sea-to-Sea bike tour was part of the past. Something it hadn’t felt like before. It was more along the lines of “just finished” even two weeks later.

I’ve included here what I said (or at least what I thought/planned I was going to say) during my 7 minute slot.

Last summer the news of the 2008 Sea to Sea bike tour made its way into my email inbox. I was intrigued by the idea of getting on a bike and heading out across north America. It would be a summer of riding every day – a pretty serious challenge that I felt like I’d like to tackle, I would have the opportunity to live with a group of other people, other cyclists and other Christians. It was going to be good. The tour also had tied up in it the idea that we’d raise a bunch of money, that we hoped to raise awareness and funds to combat poverty. I was happy to have the issue of poverty along for the ride. It gave the trip a real purpose and for that I was grateful.

Arriving in Seattle – the summer’s ride started to play itself out – after so many months of anticipation it was living up to every expectation. Right away on Day 2 we climbed more than 5000 feet of elevation and it really felt like we were thrown headfirst into the adventure. I made great friends from all over Canada and the States and we were really soaking up the riding aspect of the summer. We found ourselves putting in extra miles for the pure joy of riding our bikes.

Early on it was really true however that the issue of poverty wasn’t doing much more than being “along for the ride”. While I can’t speak on behalf of every rider, the general sentiment around camp was just “Bike Bike Bike Bike Bike”.

It took more than 2 weeks for things to begin to shift. Answering the question “Why in the world am I biking across the country?” was something I found myself doing as I tackled 100 degree Fahrenheit weather and miles upon miles of sagebrush. The more times I answered the question while talking with someone the more I began to really identify with my answer. “We’re riding in support of the poor. We’ve been raising funds for organizations to tackle some of the underlying causes that keep people who are poor trapped in cycles of poverty. There are 150 cyclists on the road today from all over North America who are doing the same thing because it’s something we believe in. – Poverty and injustice cannot go unaddressed.”

I was riding by myself into Salt Lake City on one Saturday morning and got passed by a local cyclist out for a ride by himself. I decided to catch up with him and we spent the next 5 miles talking – about the cycling community in Salt Lake City, about the bike ride I was on and about poverty. Leaving Salt Lake City we had a huge hill to climb and I had spent a lot of that day’s energy just trying to keep up with this local. The Sea-to-Sea rider who I had joined still had fresh legs and left me behind on the hill. Normally I would have felt lousy to get dropped right at the start of a 10 mile ascent but I didn’t care. That conversation had been worth it.

I continued to ride far more than necessary for the next few weeks, tacking on trips up ski hills and over mountains, we took roundabout ways across Nebraska and spent a portion of a day lost in Chicago. I spent more and more time each week talking to locals in coffee shops, restaurants and gas stations about why we were riding our bikes across the country. We were on the biggest newscast in Chicago one evening and the next day it seemed as though everyone we met along the road wanted to stop and chat for a bit. The reasoning behind our ride was becoming more and more important, although in reality I hadn’t quite made the shift in my head, poverty was still “along for the ride”.

I was riding another Saturday morning, the day we were to ride into Grand Rapids, with a group of guys intent on going quick. We were flying down the road and I wound up on the pavement. I had a few parts of my body bleeding, my helmet had a pretty good crack in it and my right shoulder didn’t look quite the same as my left. I was off to the hospital in a vehicle for an X-Ray and suddenly the reality set in that I wasn’t going to have biked every inch from Sea to Sea.

With the conclusion that I hadn’t broken my shoulder and I had a separation rather than a full blown dislocation I was allowed to ride the following Monday. I could continue but I was resigning myself to a stretch of 40 kilometers in west Michigan, I wouldn’t ride every inch of the tour. I would be struggling to finish the ride each day and I would be one of the people around camp needing a helping hand more often than I would be able to offer one.

I finally had priority number one nailed down and it wasn’t going for a bike ride. It was participating in the tour, it was being a part of the wave of attention that swept across Southern Ontario the next week and onwards to New York City. Having been part of a huge fundraising effort and now participating in a cross country awareness event was more important than the cycling. It was the participation not the peddling of the bike that was my response to God’s call

Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed. Rescue the weak and needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked

As the tour began to come to a close, my shoulder became a bit less of an obstacle. I still had a few fantastic days on the bike but they were just bonus. My perspective had changed and I was excited to have the opportunity to continue Christ’s work when the tour wrapped up. My favorite discussions became not “bike bike bike” but what are the ways the tour had changed how us as cyclists are going to think and live.

Finally I want to say thank you to this church. I want to thank you for your prayers for my safety this summer, and your prayers that I would be challenged and grow. I also want to thank all of you who sent encouragement notes my way at some point during those 9 weeks. I also want to thank those of you who contributed towards the fundraising of the bike tour, River Park Church made a big impact on the $15 400 raised towards my goal. The final tally from the summer isn’t exactly complete but between all of the riders it’s somewhere near 2.2 million.

New York wrapped up this morning after about an hour of riding. The weather was cool and the sky was overcast but no rain was actually falling out of the sky although I was prepared with my windbreaker for it to start.

Stephanie and myself were riding along at a good clip and joining other groups for bits and pieces of the road for about the first 50 kms. At that point the road split and the planned route continued flat along the river and the other road went up a hill accopanied with a sign that said “No Trailers Longer Than 102 ft”. Well that seemed like quite an invitation so we pulled out the map and made a detour up and over the mountain instead of continuing straight and flat. The detour paid off and even though we probably added more than 1000 feet of climbing and about 4 miles to the day the view from the top and the great descent made it totally worth it.

The campground had 2 showers and enough hot water for about 20 people… But I was one of the early ones and did get my 30 second splash in the warm water. I then took a 3 hour nap which wasn’t supposed to be 3 hours long but that’s just how it turned out.

The meeting this evening included a bit of sharing from a few riders as well as celebrating communion together. Pastor Len shared a revised version of the parable of the workers in the vineyard. Here’s a link to Wikipedia’s description of the parable. I’m sure you can imagine that the modification was one where some riders began out at the Pacific Ocean, others joined in the Mountains and still others caught hold of the tour near the Grand River. Well the point of the story is that the celebration is the same for us all, that we’ve each in our own way ahd the opportunity to work in God’s field and gratefulness is the response not bitterness. There has been a significant amount of effort being poured into making the end of this bike ride end on a high note rather than a low one. It’s tough to see things winding up but at the same time we have so much to be grateful for and happy about that the sadness that will come with the end of cycling is going to pale in comparison with the joy of seeing this journey through to completion.

The celebration in St. Catharine’s was quite an event. From 2 pm until 4 pm we huddled under the pavilions at Queenston park and ate peaches as the rain poured out of the sky. At about 3:50 the rain let up to a drizzle and we made our way to the natural amphitheater and stage. By the time the service had begun the rain had stopped and by 4:05 the sun was shining. Brian Walsh spoke concerning the fruits of the spirit and many of us agreed that his message was one of the best this summer. His invitation to us was to bear fruit with our lives as is instructed in scripture:

• Be fruitful and multiply.
• I will make of you a great nation that will bear much fruit.
• Obey my word and you will be fruitful in all your ways.
• You shall share the fruit of your labours, and the poor will glean from your fields.
• Israel is a vineyard and the covenant God is the vinedresser.
• In exile you are to be fruitful and multiply.
• I will make the wilderness bloom and bear rich fruit.
• They shall plant vineyards and drink their wine, and they shall plant gardens and eat their fruit.

Convincing isn’t it? Fruit bearing has been a part of day to day meditation this summer and I kinda felt like it would have been great to have had had these words spoken to me 8 weeks earlier. After a bit more thinking though I came to the understanding that where the rubber actually hits the road isn’t on the bike tour. Things need to be thrown into action in day to day life… even more than they do while riding a bike across America because that’s where I’ll be in 7 days. So, while 8 weeks ago would have been nice, this week was more appropriate as these thoughts will likely stay fresher in my mind longer into September and I suppose that’s what counts like I’ve already said.

Another bit that stood out to many of us was his use of the word generosity rather than goodness. It’s a preference of translations from the original epistle (NRSV vs. NIV) but it was the source of our best conversation on the bus on the way back to the school where we were staying. I might relay a bit of that conversation at a later date when I figure it out more and have more time to type.

The departure from St. Catharine’s was a quick one as our group made it’s way towards the escarpment. The temperature was cool and the pace was really blazing as we made our way through the first 30 kms towards the Rainbow Bridge at Niagara Falls. We even drafted a tiny tractor for a few hundred yards. Marc took a video which you can find here. If we thought the border crossing into Canada was smooth this one was way better. They just opened up three lanes and waved us through. No passport necessary as we had all been approved.

After checking out Goat Island on the American side of the falls we set out for Byron. We had a stiff cross-tailwind for the day and the effort to maintain mid thirties was negligible. The scenery of New York State thus far has been mostly farmland and quite comparable to Ontario but the hills seem to be getting slightly longer even though they’re not very high.

My grandmother passed away last evening (Monday).

Growing up Grandma lived halfway across the country, meaning I didn’t see her as frequently as might have otherwise been possible. It did mean that when we were together we were spending lots of time together.

Grandma was someone whose influence in my life was one of caring and giving. For years and years we’d have dozens of jars of pears in our pantry, she’d get Pake to pick them from the tree in the backyard and can them and send some of them out west for us. She’d have fruitella in her purse for the grandkids all the time. When her eyesight was getting poor enough that she knew that her days of knitting were limited, she began an ambitious project to knit an entire afghan for each of the grandkids (10!). When her husband of more than 50 years had progressed in his battle with Alzheimer’s to the point her needed to move into a home she moved in basically across the street and would pay visits religiously to spend time with him, talk, and eventually feed him his meals.

When in early elementary school I skipped around between friends at school, not always satisfied by my situation. When complaining to mom at one point during that time she told me that Grandma prayed every day for me, that each day good friends were on the prayer agenda for Joshua out in Calgary. It was something I thought about on and off throughout the next many years. Grandma prayed individually for her family each day of our lives. Eventually I think I forgot that story from mom but when making profession of faith in 2003 I received a card from those grandparents… in it was written a bible verse…

“Ever since we heard about you we have never stopped praying for you”

That verse reminded me of what I had forgotten during the ~8 years. I had someone reminding God to look out for me on my behalf each day of my life.

When Grandma passed away yesterday it was certainly her time to go. Her health had rapidly declined and the period of suffering was kept brief. It doesn’t mean she won’t be missed. I was able to speak with her 2 weeks ago on the phone, the conversation was short as anything more than a sentence at a time took a lot of work. Even so she didn’t leave me without a blessing for this summer’s ride and the subsequent return to school.

I will not be leaving the seatosea bike ride to attend the funeral. Grandma is no longer there to visit, the rest of the family can be visited at a later time, my situation this summer is one that does benefit from a sense of continuity and there is a loving community here alongside me at this time. Also the prospect of getting from the middle of Nebraska to Ontario is a tough one. I will connect with the service this coming Friday via phone.

I’ll catch up with news from the road another day. Two of us are doing 6 century rides in a row this week. Today’s took 4:56 gun time with a total of 4:48 with the wheels turning.

Saturday is now winding up. It was long and hot and a large majority of the group had success today. Some fools (a bunch of 19 and 20 year olds who went out for pancake breakfast in Ogden at 7 am) were on the road at quarter past 5 this morning. They pretty much had to start biking with winter parkas because it gets cold in the desert overnight, then carry the jacket for the rest of the day. Each to their own I suppose. I rolled out of camp soon after 7 am anticipating that Nathan and Tyler would catch me in about half an hour (they were leaving 5 minutes after me) and I would appreciate the longer warm up. I ended up riding the first hour alone and still no sign of the boys. By that time we were entering the town/city of Bountiful. The road was tree lined and in the shade, the hills were gentle and rolling and the pavement was excellent. With beautiful roads like this it’s no surprise that there were locals out for a Saturday morning ride as well. I opted to ride with some of them for a few stretches. It meant that I was cruising along at 25 mph (40 kph) for a solid 45 minutes and really meant that Tyler an Nathan were never going to catch me. On the flip side it did mean that I did get to have a few more fantastic conversations about the tour, the local cycling scene, my church, poverty and the like. That was far better than finding those guys anyways. It was fantastic and by the time I had reached the outskirts of Salt Lake City I decided to just finish with the push into town and forget about joining up with any other tour-cyclists for that portion of the ride. I plugged a song in my head an hammered down for another 45 minutes, reaching SLC with an average speed of 29 kph.

Great is the Lord and worthy of glory,

Great is the Lord and worthy of praise,

Great is the Lord,

Now lift up your voice,

Now lift up your voice;

Great is the Lord!

Great is the Lord,

He is holy and just,

by His power we trust in His love.

Great is the Lord,

He is faithful and true,

by His mercy He proves He is love.

Upon entering SLC my route was blocked by a parked train and a friendly Harley Davidson rider informed me it could be parked for anywhere between 5 minutes and an hour, I opted for the detour and by the time I was back en-route there were other cyclists who had opted to wait who were already ahead. So be it, I had guaranteed that my day would exceed 100 miles now an I didn’t have to do the extra mileage on any big climbs.

First CRC in SLC hosted us for refreshments in their basement before the climb began as we headed out of town, I didn’t get the order of my stops in town correct and went there first, I should have made my stop at the Mormon Temple first and the church second, it would have been shorter. Oh well, more mileage again. The stop at the temple was kinda what I expected, some really well kept gardens, some fancy buildings and plenty of tourists walking around with cameras around their necks wondering why there was some dude decked out in spandex walking around. It would have been better I’m sure if I’d gone on a tour but the aforementioned spandex and more than 5000 feet of climbing still to do that day dissuaded me from that notion.

I returned to the church, now guaranteeing myself more than 170 kms on the day and found Nathan, Eritia and Hilena just getting set to roll out, I joined them for the climb which really just meant we left at the same time and agreed to meet up at the top. Hill climbing is really and every-man-for-himself kind of activity and by the time we had left the city we were already spread out over a couple hundred meters. Nathan is only 160 lbs and no-one could stick with him up the hill.

The first climb was called emigrations canyon and was more of a steep valley than a canyon but that was OK with me, it gave us the ability to see where we were going which is something I am more and more realizing that I appreciate. Lots of the other cyclists say how much they hate it when they can see how far they’ve got to go, I think it’s the best thing we could get. The grade was very manageable and we had patches of share and the ends of the driveways to the half million dollar homes along the road. It was very obvious that we were entering a rather affluent part of the country. Besides Bountiful earlier that morning and a couple of rich suburbs of Boise we really haven’t seen a whole ton of wealth this summer. When we talk about poverty so many times each day the wealth of an area is something you quickly notice from the seat of your bike. We make jokes sometimes about our campsite looking like as refugee camp with 150 people lined up bowls in hand to get dinner. Really though more often than not this week our patch of town has been the wealthiest, thousand dollar bikes in the fields and hundred dollar tents set up amongst them, often clotheslines can be seen with more than a thousand dollars worth of cycling shorts hanging on them (that’s only 10 pairs of bibs if you were wondering how long these clotheslines are). Really though, we’ve spent a lot of time being wealthy in surroundings that are less so. Today was the polar opposite.

Oh yeah, Emigrations Canyon, that’s where I was at. This road was also chock full of recreational cyclists flying up and down the hill, well mostly flying down the hill because they’re locals and are smart enough to climb up in the morning and come downhill in the afternoon when it’s getting hot. There must be a huge shop in town that sells only specialized because it was certainly the majority brand out there. There were a couple really sweet bikes spotted too, people riding HED Jet wheels (90 mm I think) on a 2007 Felt DA for a quick jaunt up the mountain, again the wealth of the area was apparent.

The top of the pass greeted us with the other half of FCRC’s refreshments for the day, gatorade, powerbars and water. The latest joke is that Canadians should spell it Gatourade, I don’t think it’ll catch on though. We then took off down the other side of the pass and hooked up with the interstate. It was freshly paved and black as night. The heat was rising off of it and it was steeper than the first pass. This valley (Parley’s Canyon) was broader and had less shade, well no shade at all, and the sun was even higher in the sky. Within about 10 minutes of getting on that road I had sweat beading on my skin and actually flowing down my arms and legs. All of the sunscreen from my face ended up in my eyes and I started to loose a good amount of water due to tears as well. the three bottles I had filled up were empty in 45 minutes, luckily that meant I was also at the summit; six thousand seven hundred feet or something like that, the highest we’d been on the tour to date.

The roll down from the summit to the campground wasn’t quite just a roll down. We still had plenty of climbing to do but it was all quite a bit tamer. We caught up with Hans Doef and Laura Holtrop in Park city and rode with them for the remainder of the day. Just as we left town and were pretty sure it was a 3 km coast down to the state park we saw our last nemesis for the day, a 5 % mile long hill. The comments were of the flavour that shall not be repeated here.

Camp here is pretty cool, we’ve got a picnic shelter for eating next to the mobile kitchen and our tents are in the walk-in campsites across a bay in the lake. We spent a bit of time down by the lake reading in the shade this afternoon, more laziness is planned for tomorrow and there is a church service planned for the park tomorrow evening. Monday we get started with the Rockies (we crossed Wasatch today they’re apparently independent from the Rockies) and another fantastic week will begin. It’s hard to believe we’re already three weeks in, this one seemed to go fast. Each day that you spend more than 6 hours on the bike there isn’t a whole lot of other stuff that gets accomplished, it means that the days really go by quick.

Yesterday I suggested that people were learning how to sleep in. Well that went out the window this morning as rustling began at ten to five in the morning. I crawled out of my tent after pretending to sleep for another 80 minutes at 6:10 and had pretty much missed out on breakfast. Probably 100 people had already been through the breakfast line which was supposed to begin at 6:00 am. I guess the early risers have figured out how to get breakfast themselves from the pantry.

I was feeling physically energetic and charged up but mentally blasted flat as a pancake this morning and figured I’d ride by myself for the morning and try and group up at lunch time. I hopped aboard my bike around 7:20 am and rolled out of town. The wind wasn’t really for me or against me, the pavement was acceptable and the grade was ever so slightly downhill, a few hundred feet over the first 40 kilometers. After leaving town I held the pace around 38 to 40 kph for the first hour and rolled up to a local dairy farm who was hosting us for milk and a tour having turned the “fresh legs” into burning ones and turned the “mentally drained” in the other direction. God watches out for us!

The stop at the dairy was followed up by a stop at the Reformed Church of America in Twin Falls Idaho. They had subs, ice cream, more milk and watermelon. We then headed out to check out Shoshone Falls which is a pretty impressive (photos in Week 3 gallery) and then wrapped up the final 50 kilometers of the day. Julie told us that there were 10 or 15 people still ahead of us when we stopped to fill water bottles. That certainly wasn’t the case though as afer we passed 6 people and kept pressing onwards we arrived at camp before anyone else. That was a first for me. It’s been within a couple minutes before but never actually first arrivals. Also with me for the last stretch were Eritia and Marc VanOtternen (Michigan).

Wednesday nights around camp are highlighted by a vespers service put on by Hans Doef. They’re quickly becoming a highlight of the week, a few songs,a bit of scripture, some meditations on the theme of the evening and a bit of prayer. This evening the reading was from Isaiah 35 and couldn’t have been more appropriate as we pondered the parts of the creation that we’re traveling through.

The desert and the parched land will be glad;
the wilderness will rejoice and blossom.
Like the crocus, it will burst into bloom;
it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy.
The glory of Lebanon will be given to it,
the splendor of Carmel and Sharon;
they will see the glory of the LORD,
the splendor of our God.

We’re in the middle of a desert this week and without the irrigation we see in the fields every day all there would be is sagebrush. It’s a huge wonder that the desert blooms with the addition of a bit of water (enough so that McCain has a french fry factory here to process all those Idaho Potatoes). Henry drew the parallel that we’re a pretty sorry bunch of dead grass and sagebrush as well without the addition of a little purpose in our lives, that we don’t have anything more going for us than mere desert without Jesus Christ.

A week of cycling is already behind us. For some of the cyclists it seems like we’ve been riding forever, I’ve heard the phrase “So where are we actually right now?” more than once, I on the other hand feel like we just started and am only beginning to catch on to the whole process.

My apologies about the GPS unit. As you probably know if you looked, the GPS tracking didn’t really work all so well. I think it only recorded twice. These are the problems of running a self contained unit. When it doesn’t work the amount of trouble shooting that you can do is quite limited. The self contained satellite internet connection has been suffering the same fate, not a lot of options as far as fixing is concerned, when it works it works and when it doesn’t it doesn’t.

So since I last posted I rode one day as part of the sweep team. It seems that people appreciated the list of names and locations so I’ll try it again even though some of these huge groups are tricky to remember. Art Smit, Eritia Smit, Justin Helder (Ontario) Clare Kooistra (BC) Lynn (No idea where she’s from) Jessica Fox (Michigan) and Shawn (also no clue) We spent the day playing catch-up and wait with a few other groups which was OK, we rode in the rain all day long but it was warm and things weren’t terribly muddy so not a ton of trouble. Following the ride everyone at camp had the same bright idea to clean their bikes at the same time so we had a huge bike cleaning party on the lawn of a school. Doing so without a shirt wasn’t the brightest idea as I am unbelievably white in the non-tanned areas. Following a visit to the local ice cream shop and dinner put on by the local CRC church we headed out to celebrate independence day with fireworks and root-beer floats. The show was pretty good but staying up past 10 pm is really late these days and the 10:30 bed-time was a bit of a stretch.

Saturday we rode downhill again along the Yakima river through a beautiful valley with cliffs along the sides and orchards and vineyards surrounding us. The riding group was Kyle (BC) Stephanie Webb, Julia Wissink (Ontario) and Jenna Zee (Edmonton) and myself. Excellent tailwind on Saturday but the weather once again was a scorcher. We’re currently camped in a park along the Columbia river which serves as our shower and is full of some huge trees. We’ve had the slackline out and about as many people are trying it as there are taking pictures of those who are using it. Photos are pending successful upload… we’ll see how successful that is today.

I’d describe the flavour of the week thus far as one of unity. It’s funny that I mention that in my prayer requests for the past week, with 150 people coming throughthis website each day there are obviously some who are reminding God that we’d really love to be blessed in that way. It’s great that fewer and fewer conversations begin with “I’m Josh and I’m from Calgary, well Edmonton really these days, but I grew up in Calgary”… names are being stored in the head and I think I’ve only got 30 or so more to go. While everyone knowing one another on a first name basis isn’t really the best metric by which to measure community it is one of the only ones I can think of to put into words. I hope it does communicate the amount of effort that so many people are putting in to building relationships amongst the cyclists and support crew. I’m not talking even talking about romantic relationships (there’s a few forming and are an excellent source of humour for the rest of us… I’m not sure if I’m at liberty to mention those two so I won’t quite)

How else can I describe the unity of this team? Well I’ve got a couple examples. Canadian cyclists outfitted all of the riders for independence day with flags for their bikes following the singing of O-Canada at our evening meeting on Tuesday. There have been in excess of 30 flats for the last two days on the road… there are typically a dozen people stopped to watch (tyre changing is a one man job but the moral support is thick!). (Photo of the most hilarious occurrence is about 25 cyclists “helping” to fix a flat just outside Zillah in photo gallery). Then one of the more humourous ones. About 60 cyclists headed around the corner from the park last night to find a beer. The local sports bar was filled with 90% cyclists and they needed to send the guy running Karaoke out to buy more cups from Safeway because there were just so many people. There was line dancing, pool, two stepping and a rousing rendition of “Amazing Grace” done by one of the chaplains (Markus Lisse) that was drown out after two lines by the rest of the bar rising to their feet (locals included) and joining in.

Prayer requests for the next week:

• Safety – this past week has seen more falls from bikes each day than I was aware of occurring all of last summer with my riding partners. No-one’s injuries are severe but they do bring a lot of stress to medical people as well as the group as a whole.
• Awareness – Riders have been challenged to each have a conversation each day with someone at the side of the road as a bare minimum. These conversations are highlights each day for myself as well as many other riders. Please pray that God would use these conversations in mighty ways to challenge and change perspectives, injustices and apathy surrounding poverty. We’re cyclists, not spokespeople by training but by God’s grace we have the opportunity to make big influences. While the 144 conversations each day is a minimum there are hundreds more than that (thousands more might be a stretch this past week, but God is a big God and we’re only getting more comfortable with it)