I set out today at the same time as Johnny Pierce, Marc VanOtteren (Michigan) and John Vanderveen (AB) around 7:30. We took our time across the first 20 flat kilometers and when another crew including Manley Barda, Tyler Buitenwerf and Nathan Beach cruised by and invited me to join them I stepped up the pace. They however stopped to wait at the first water stop halfway up the hill and I had no interest in waiting with them so kept pedalling and completed the hill on my own. I caught Eritia and Brian Garrit at the top of the climb and descended with them. Brian and I headed into Malta together, he let me know that he’s got some of his family reading my blog, Hi!

After chatting with some locals in Malta I picked up a cup of coffee for 50 cents at the gas station and then headed south. There was a huge pack of riders all pointed in the same direction, the largest I’ve seen yet on the tour. Video of the momentous occasion below:

After topping off water bottles the pack broke into half dozen subsets and Eritia and myself were both feeling rather fresh and didn’t bother trying to join any pace-lines. We ascended the next climb which was rather gradual but just seemed to go on and on forever. The headwind picked up towards the end and we were really working to hold 25 kph. The road was dead straight for many miles at a time and we had a heat mirage to watch as we rode.

After reaching the summit at around 100 kms we entered Utah. That’s a first time for me. To be honest it looks a lot like southern Idaho so far. Beautiful plains of sagebrush stretching off into the distance and medium sized mountains with patches of trees off in the distance. I quite enjoyed the scenery today, some are getting sick of the desert, I’m still happy to continue enjoying it at least until Saturday when we start into the Rockies.

We peeled off down the gentle decline for the next 25 miles into Snowville and I held a pace of 38 kph through a stiff sidewind. Eritia parked right in the draft over my left shoulder and for the next hour we watched as our destination grew slowly closer and closer. It’s not often that you can see where you’re going for a whole hour at once. I enjoyed it.

We had beat the gear truck into camp and arrived 2 minutes after Hans Doef and Aaron Carpenter (who we could see for about half an hour but couldn’t seem to catch. We pulled into the local cafe, dumped half a salt shaker into our glasses of water and ordered some fries. When the truck showed up we unloaded and got to work setting up. The shower we built here consists of one of our dinner tents shrouded in a tarp with a hose hanging from the roof. The temperature of the hose water is manageable but still garnered a few “Oh shit this is cold” comments from some of the more elderly men. Considering the fact that early on this summer some of the women were commenting on the “learning curve” about the communal showers in the change rooms today’s takes the cake. A dozen naked guys lined up in a hundred square foot tent to take their turn under the hose moves beyond learning to just plain laughing. I think we’ll only have potentially two more such shower situations.

The forecast said 94 degrees, and when you’re not travelling very quickly the breeze doesn’t cool you down as nicely as when you’re cruising along. I could really tell the difference between our pace of 38 kph and the 25 we did while taking in a bit of food. I can imagine that the 15-20 kph pace would be sweltering. I’ve overheard some comments while sitting here and typing that the support crew has had a rough day. That basically means that some of the weaker riders are having a tough go of it today and many are still out there as of 5pm while I’m writing this. Others have arrived and are pretty beat from the day. Len Riersma (Ohio) was rather tired at the end of the day and didn’t make it very far past setting up his tent before crashing, his feet still protruding from the tent. (photo below)

P.S. Thanks for the notes of encouragement via email.They’re… well… encouraging… you can also say hi by posting a comment on the website here.

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.

I began recruiting for the first “Josh Hosted” (as opposed to the other two “Reuben hosted” detours) detour of the summer last Wednesday and at some points during the weekend it seemed as though there was potential for almost 30 people to ride in it. Detouring from the prescribed route took a bit of a hit last week when the 16 extra kilometers as promised ballooned into 105 extra kilometers under Reuben’s guidance. We left camp this morning with 9 individuals around 7:30. Myself, Jon Elzinga, John Vanderveen, Marty Minnesma, Alex VanGeest (Alberta), Art Smit (Ontario), Tyler Buitenwerf (Michigan) and Ryan Bruxvoort (Indiana). Numbers were down partly because of the heat, the length and difficulty of rides coming up later this week and the potential for the trip to turn into a bit longer than promised.

The cause of the detour was Bruneau Dunes State Park which is home to North America’s Largest freestanding Dunes. What exactly that means is up for debate as I’ve been told numerous times that “The dunes from my state are the biggest in the country” and none of those riders are from Idaho. So, Michigan, Indiana and Colorado all have the biggest dunes in the United states and the exact means by which you measure them to come out the winner is prescribed differently in each state. I’m sure there most be 50 cases of “the largest dunes in america” each with a different means by which to measure. In any case, we visited the biggest dunes between Mountain Home and Gooding Idaho today. They were indeed impressive and after climbing one of the smallest ones we were completely beat and out of breath. Dune climbing is a full body workout in case you aren’t aware. Pictures of the adventure are pending as my batteries died after taking the group shot and I don’t have very much photographic evidence of our dune jumping and running.

After stocking up on water we headed back towards the route hoping to catch up with the sweep team so that our water could be provided by SeatoSea support people. We did indeed succeed in that task but once we were back on route our desire to keep up the pace died quickly and we dawdled for the rest of the day taking naps, soaking feet in irrigation ditches, climbing up on top of the longneck dinosaur in Bliss and eating food. Oh did I say we ate a huge amount of food today? When it’s warm I typically don’t feel like eating very much but I did exactly the opposite today, consuming nearly 2500 calories while on the ride. The internal cooling mechanism probably takes more fuel than I had guessed because other than the hour to the dunes (average speed 36 kph) and the hour leaving the dunes to get back on course (average speed 31 kph with big headwind) we really weren’t putting out much power.

I surpassed the 1000 mile mark for this trip today around 3:05 pm.

And another interesting note: Nick Ellens clocked 96 kph today while drafting a 10 passenger van down a hill. It doesn’t count as breaking John’’s record of 84 because he had motor assistance but it is scary fast! I got 74 today while sitting up but had my bag on the front which makes me prone to speed wobbling so I acted as a big draft for the other guys to rip down the edge of the valley towards the snake river.

Vlog – I’ve given up on uploading videos in any chronological order and am going to make attempts in order of potential entertainment value. Here goes:

Ertia Smit and myself headed down towards La Grande together on Tuesday of Week 2.

Sweep Team rolling from Zillah into Sunnyside, sorry about the camera orientation at the end. I don’t have infinite flexibilty to keep it upright when behind my back.

Heading downhill with a tailwind from Baker City to Huntington through sagebrush and rattlesnake country.

Rolling into Yakima from Selah Washington down the bike path.

Setting off from Golden Gardens Beach in Seattle, to get going for the first day of our 9 week journey.

I also got a whole bunch of photos online from Week 2 which can be found in the Week 2 Gallery

Reuben (read some previous blog entries if you’re not already familiar with the fact that this guy is the source of a lot of hilariousness this summer) proposed to myself on Wednesday afternoon that we modify the previous day’s riding schedule to take in some additional miles and additional elevation on the way from Baker city to Huntington. Having had a significantly improved day in the saddle after switching seats for a day I decided it was a good idea and took him up on the offer. 15 more people also got on board for this detour after seeing the success of “detouring” on Monday and a few more easy riding days on the horizon.

Reuben had raced in the area 4 weeks prior and one of the stages in the race had finished on top of a mountain pass somewhere between Baker city and Huntington. After looking the details up on Google the directions were identified and the route was supposed to add something like 2500 feet of elevation and 10 miles to the journey.

Setting out at 8 am we rode 10 miles to the base of the climb and then the unannounced race began. The hill was 9 miles long and had a grade somewhere between 4 and 5 to my best guess, completely manageable to tackle in one shot especially considering that we had shade from the trees on the way up. Within a mile the pack had split and within another mile Reuben had dropped the lead group. John Vanderveen, Ryan Bruxvoort, Theo Bandstra, and Mark Brower and myself followed together for 5 miles and then split off each at their own pace. John won the king of the mountains title to the surprise of lots of us, he hasn’t put in nearly as much time in the bike seat as most of the rest of us. Mark took second and I was third (Reuben is ineligible for these awards because we don’t have a chance to think of dethroning him).

Following the arrival of the others we set off down the other side with 15 second gaps. Reuben second last and myself last. By the time we had reached the bottom Reuben and I had worked our way through the field and emerged in 4th and 5th. My weight and Reuben’s skill and a bit of co-operation on the descent made for what was probably the most exciting 10 miles yet this summer. Hovering between 55 and 65 kph we wound our way down through the trees and corners chins centimeters above the handlebars. The combination of curves and grade was a perfect mix accelerating us just enough that a bit of braking was required in some of the corners but it didn’t feel like we were wasting our speed. That’s probably the worst thing a road can do, make you work hard to gain elevation and then force you to loose the speed with the brakes.

After grouping up and setting out to re-join the planned route we set off through a picturesque valley complete with cows on the road, tractors haying in the fields, horses running alongside us across the fence and a rather curvy road to follow. All was going well until the pavement ran out.

Now the internet search the night before seemed to suggest we’d have pavement all the way back to the main road but that wasn’t exactly the case. After discussing with a local our options were 20 miles on the gravel road or heading back over the pass to town and doing the day’s journey from the start. 16 of us opted to climb the pass and Sylvan Addink opted to tackle the gravel road (equipped with the only bike suitable for the journey and 7 spare tubes for flats and bottles brimming with water).

The second ascent included zero racing as we realized that we now faced a day total of approximately 180 kilometers instead of the 90 we had planned. This time at the summit we remembered to do the group photo and cracked some jokes about the fact that we were destined to do any pass twice if it was called “Dooley”. The second descent was also amazing and setting off in last place again I emerged third at the bottom. It serves all the skinny 5 foot 6 inch guys right that they can’t go as quick. They didn’t have to lug 195 lbs up the hill in the first place.

Back in town we strolled through the local safeway, made use of the “buy three get one free” deal on 1 liter gatorade bottles, stocked our pockets with energy bars and decided to finally get started on the day’s route at 1:15 in the afternoon.

The ride south was fantastic as we generally were loosing elevation and had the blessing of wind ¾ from the rear. After leaving town with the fast boys (Reuben, Nick, Tyler and Ryan) we quickly came upon Larry Stehower, Mark Stehower (father & son from Kalamazoo Michigan), and Eritia Smit who I opted to join for the rest of the ride into Huntington. We cruised along between 40 and 50 and watched the average speed for the day rise and rise and rise. That’s not something that usually happens as you approach the 100 mile mark in a ride. By the time we rolled into Huntington the average had creeped above 30 kph and the grand total for the day was 182.3 kilometers and time in the saddle was 5 hours 59 minutes.

So the moral of the story is that there are more people who are classified as crazy than there were at the beginning of the week. While that is kinda true, the real moral of the story is that we’re incredibly blessed. We set out with bad plans but the day turned out to be spectacular. We set out with enough water to get us about 60 kilometers until we were going to be back on route. Unfortunately we weren’t back on route for 105 kilometers. Fortunately we were able to get water from at tap at the post office in the middle of no-where. We had a tailwind and downhill to finish.

Wednesday on the bike seemed to be the first day of getting into the seatosea routine. I resigned myself to getting up st 5:30 with the rest of the masses. I have a good idea of what kind of stuff I like to grab for lunch for the day and have realized the best thing to do on short days is to bring one lunch with me on the bike and pack another lunch in with my clothes so that when I get to camp I can have lunch number two.

I had brought along another seat for the trip in case my backside wasn’t happy at some point during the summer and decided that this day was as good as any to use it. So as the vast majority of people headed out for the day I was taking apart my seat bracket and swapping seats. When that had all been sorted only 20 odd people remained in camp, 10 of whom formed the sweep team and the others were mostly another riding group. The other stragglers were some of the stronger riders (Tyler and Reuben) and I teamed up with them to head out on the road. While rolling through town the agreement was to take it easy and hold a 28-30 kph average but once on the road the legs decided that that was insufficient and we were rolling along at a pretty good clip of 36-38 kph. The sun was still low in the sky and it wasn’t terribly hot so Reuben and Tyler were making the most of the good conditions. I opted to drop off their pace as we blasted past a straggling Stephanie Webb whose left knee has been causing trouble. We rolled into the first town together and she reconnected with her group which was now mine (for a bit). The day’s ride included a 10 km uphill stretch through a beautiful valley and once I got to the top I looped back to do it again, see the other sides of the trees and make the most of a short day (80 kms scheduled distance) by topping it up to 100kms.

When I reached the summit of the climb the second time round I grouped up with a group of 6 Carrie Groen, Katrina Miller, Kincso, Laura Holtrop, Julie and Nicolas Ellens. That group sailed along with a nice tailwind at a leisurely pace for an hour before rolling through another town where some of the boy’s had stopped for steak sandwiches and the riding group changed again. Alex VanGeest (Taber AB), Brad Geerlinks (Ontario) Jon Elzinga (Edmonton) and I picked up the pace for the last 20 miles and flew into Baker city within the hour including a flat tyre stop at the side of the road.

After setting up tents in the high school soccer field (and eating the second lunch hidden in the gear truck) we headed out for ice cream on the main drag. After sitting in the shop for 40 minutes someone questioned how long we thought it would take to overstay our welcome. Conversation changed and no-one really felt any urgency to leave the air conditioned building in favor of the 85 degree weather outside. Another hour later we decided that 100 minutes was probably verging on overstaying our welcome and opted to head back to camp.

The eating was once again very good and thoroughly enjoyed by all. We’ve been eating well and really there is no end in sight.

As I mentioned in my previous post I wasn’t interested in spending much more time on my bike seat than I had to today so elected to find a quick group to ride with. I started out with Eritia (Ontario) and Joel (BC) and headed out for the hills. Todays ride included a very steady grade of about 3-4% for a solid 9 miles, after blasting out of camp our trio headed up and up and up. Switchbacks are a very interesting mental game, they break down a hill for you into manageable parts. That’s something that almost all of the cyclists are doing on their own, so when the geography makes an attempt to do it on your behalf there can be a bit of disagreement between the two systems. Thrown into that mix was a bit of mental exhaustion from the previous day, a short sleep (5:00 wake-up call as usual) and the fact that no-one actually knew how many switchbacks there were going to be.

Our trio caught Kyle (BC) near the top of the hill and we were now four. We soon caught hold of another big group including Brian (PEI) Sarah (also PEI I think) Jody (Location TBA) Hans Doef (Lacombe/BC) Matt Zantingh (Edmonton) Manley (Location TBA). We rode as a massive pack for a bit and then Reuben Vyn came by at a blistering pace. Joel stuck on for the ride, Eritia and I tried for a bit and the rest of them either didn’t even both trying or didn’t last quite as long as us two.

Knocking off another 500 feet of climbing together Eritia and I grouped up with the “early rising pack” which included. Barb Mellema (Iowa) Cynthia Aukema (Ontario) George Vanderkurr (Location TBA) Andy DeVries (Ontario) Louis Bosma (Ontario I think) John Vandersteen (Ontario) Jake Kuipers (Ontario is my guess) and probably a few others who I forget, but I did impress myself by knowing all their names (or parts thereof obviously).

Anyhow, the point is that there were a lot of people at the top of the hill and a lot of descending to do. We ripped along the road… and because I have a sweet video to prove it and only 5 minutes until the library closes I have to quit writing now and I’ll try to update much more when I’ve got better web access this weekend via Mom and Dad’s hotel when they’ll be in Boise to visit..

Sorry for the abrupt end.

So, if you’re reading other blogs about this bike trip there’s a good chance that you haave already heard that there was a little excursion on Monday that added a few miles to the route for three cyclists. If you are only reading this blog, I’m sorry that there wasn’t an update on Monday but the two events are related.

Reuben Vyn (Portland Oregon) left his bag of toiletries in Settle last Monday and had it shipped via UPS to Sunnyside (our Friday stop) so that his medication would meet us there. It didn’t arrive due to some lousy communication at the front desk in Seattle before Independence day… it was then set to be delivered to Sunnyside by the end of the business day on Monday. The trip from Sunnyside to Kennewick last Saturday was an 80 km ride and the ride from Kennewick to Pendleton set for Monday was a 107 km ride. Reuben recruited Nicolas Ellens to come for the extended trip to pick up the medication on Sunday afternoon. I was out for a run in the park on Sunday evening and upon my return to the campground the invitation was placed in my lap to come for the ride. I flip flopped on the issue for about 15 minutes before agreeing to come.

I was up at 5:30 which you might think is early but is actually “sleeping in” by seatosea standards and we were on the road by 7 am. The ride back to sunnyside greeted us with a headwind to begin our day but our legs were fresh from the day off and hoping to be in Sunnyside to coincide with the earliest possible delivery of the package at 9:30 we co-operated well and managed to average 20.5 miles per hour. In and around 33 kph. We arrived at the delivery address on time and began to wait on the arrival of the package. While sitting on the front step of the local school a UPS truck drove down the road. Unfortunately everyone had their bike shoes off and we weren’t able to chase the guy down. After a bit of searching in town the UPS truck was found but the news wasn’t exactly ideal. There were two trucks making deliveries in Sunnyside that day and the package was on the other one. It would arrive around 2 pm, which was going to make for an extremely late night so we arranged to meet him a further 8 miles up the road in the next town at 12:30.

While visiting the truck stop in the next town (Granger) we put back a sizable lunch and continued to consume water at an incredible rate. We had a few good conversations with the locals there about what in the world we were doing. Both the package retrieval as well as the poverty cause we were riding in support of. One gentleman filling gs askedus how far we intended to ride that day was rather astonished with the reply “oh about 170 miles” that he gave us some apricots from the back of his truck that had been picked fresh that morning. They were a hybrid variety of his own making and were by far the best and biggest apricots I’d ever eaten (peach sized).

Mr. UPS arrived as agreed at 12:30 and we greeted him on the curb, and immediately mounted our bikes and started to head in the correct direction for the first time that day. Instead of retracing our steps and picking up where the rest of the group was riding we opted to climb out of the valley and cut across the mesa south towards the Columbia River. Setting out with what we believed to be 107 miles left to ride for the day we picked up where we had left off with the 20+ miles per hour pace. Water continued to disappear and while re-filling at a gas station just prior to the first big climb Reuben and I questioned one another when the last time Nick had eaten anything was… The answer wasn’t quite to our liking and the reminders began. Drink even though you don’t want to drink. Eat even though you don’t want to eat. Turn over the pedals even though you’d rather coast. Take your turn at the front even if it’s short because the rest o us are hurting too. While it was Nick who needed the first reminder it was only a matter of time until I needed to be reminded to keep eating and even Reuben himself was reminded on occasion that it was a good idea to put away a few more calories.

The 5% grade out of the valley has just been paved within the past few years and still had the really black blacktop that new asphalt has for a few years. It was HOT! The climb culminated with a rather intimidating sign warning truckers to check their brakes before the descent and we broke out of the valley and onto the top of a mesa that stretched out for 30 miles to the south and s far as we could see to the east and west. We battled a serious headwind while riding south and arrived in the columbia river valley almost run-dry on water and in need of a bit of recuperation. The truck stop that hosted us was rather entertaining one. Staffed by a lone 30 year old woman and having 6 men in line to order take out supper we parked ourselves at the table in front of the A/C machine and helped ourselves to the gatorade in the fridge, the water in the washroom and the entertaining posters on the walls. After cooling down we set out eastwards towards the bridge over the Columbia River. I forgot how big rivers can be, the Bow, North Saskatchewan, etc etc, in Alberta are all pretty tame in comparison.

The wind was mostly from the side through this section and were within an hour of the river crossing within a half mile of getting back on the intended course for the day. We stopped at a state park that had a funny geological formation called “Hat Rock” to refill water and take a peek at the big rock. The general store was “Closed Mondays” so we helped ourselves to some warm hose-water from around back, stuffed back another few hundred calories and once again started climbing. After climbing out of the valley on a 5% grade for a few miles the hill smartened up and was much more gradual. We decided that farmland in this area must be very expensive as the road wound its way through the bottom of a steep sided valley instead of arrow-straight across the plain. With only 50 kms left to ride the heads were down and effort was high, there was a rather significant amount of saddle shifting going on and even though we were climbing at a quick rate we managed to keep the average above 18 miles an hour for the final stretch up the hill.

We arrived at the summit (well second summit) for the day around 7:30 and could see down in the valley the town of Pendleton. We descended into town and were at camp at approximately 8pm. My totals for the day were 21 bottles of water, (30 lbs of water!) 12 pee breaks, 281 kilometers, 8 hours and 46 minutes ride time, 31.7 kph average speed. I estimated burning 8500 calories and ate approximately 5500 while on the bike. (2.9 times my BMR!)

The devotion last night with small groups pondered the wonder of a bicycle wheel, the different components working together to make an amazingly functional tool. The commentary suggested that for a cyclist perhaps a wheel is the kind of illustration we need to remind us what it is like to be members of the “Body of Christ”, our community of cyclists and believers. Well, the body of Christ is so called because it’s a fine example in itself of different parts working together. While there’s was a whole ton of effort put in by the leg muscles yesterday they did little complaining today. The effort put in by the mind yesterday was amazing, I could tell We’d put in a solid day’s effort of mental energy. The effort put in by the digestive system was amazing, while it started out taking everything I was throwing in it’s direction it eventually decided that it only wanted to process sugar, and in some sense that’s OK. But it didn’t get any reprieve when we rolled in to camp, it got to work hard for the next couple hours. The effort put in by my “seat area” is one that non-cyclists are always amazed at. Well I don’t typically like to admit that a bike seat can be anything other than comfortable, the final 50 kms riding with clothing saturated in sweat did put that notion to the test. If “hurting the next day” is the best way to measure the amount of effort put out, then the backside contribution takes the cake.

The question other cyclists around here like to ask when you mention that you’re not sitting comfortably today is “are you worn raw?”. Now I have no idea why someone in their right mind would ask that question when there is the potential of dealing with a “yes” response, but plenty did today none-the-less. Oh, and by the way the answer is no, I am quite content to keep riding thank you very much.

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)

Vlog 10 – Filmed at Golden Gardens Beach

That’s all for now, I have another video but am having trouble getting it online. Hang tight, it’ll happen at some point in the next couple days or weeks.