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.
The celebration service this morning was once again excellent. Rev. Jerry Dykstra spoke on the topic of taking action towards creating a world with a greater sense of justice. That while we believe God is powerful enough to make those changes, we’re in this world with the capability to take steps in that direction ourselves.
We all rode in to the service on our bikes this morning which is the first time we’ve had 140+ people all together within a few hundred meters. I filmed the following video, I was only a third of the way back so tried to film over my back by got a lot of my helmet and two people. Unfortunately it was a “one take only” kind of production…
The news on my bike… Still riding with the same bent hanger. The so called “Cervelo Dealer” here is not so much of a cervelo dealer as a cervelo seller. Their drawer with cervelo parts consisted of one spare seat-post. I was thoroughly unimpressed. I’ve put some feelers out to try and track one down and have it shipped to me. I have a full range of gears at the moment but there is potential that it will break at some point now if I stress it again. We’re setting up for 2 weeks where one of our main sources of entertainment while on the road is city line sprints (definition below) and they’re not particularily gentle on components.
City Line Sprint – sitē līn sprĭnt: A race that spontaneously occurs when riding in a group. Points are awarded for the first rider for any sign that introduces the boundary to a town, county or state. Riders may or may not see the sign, occasionaly suspicion of a sign initiates a sprint race. In theory there is a point distribution and the points are tallied for the day, typically however, no-one bothers to keep track.
We departed Winter Park and set out for Berthoud Pass at 7:20 am with anticipation of what might be our most exciting detour to date. A damper was put on the excitement when there was a crash in the paceline and Tyler Buitenwerf broke his shoulder in two spots. He is done riding for the tour. Please pray that he’d manage this devastating news well and that there will be full healing in those bones. He appeared in good spirits when I arrived in camp and he told me the news later on in the evening.
Berthoud Pass rises to 11307 feet above sea level. Compare this with the summit of Mount Temple near Lake Louise at 11624 feet which is the peak of the highest mountain in Banff National Park. This was merely a pass between two peaks and was nearly as high! The climb was gentle at 4% and 5% grade which is quite manageable but the air does get thin and people were breathing hard at the top. I was absolutely no exception and my heart rate stayed way high for a solid 2 minutes once at the top, my body just racing to try and catch up with the oxygen supply.
Descending from the pass I clocked a new personal speed record of 84.2 kph! I even was wearing a windbreaker because it’s cold at those sorts of elevations and that certainly didn’t help with aerodynamics. I filmed the following video on the descent, my fastest riding video to date. You can see where I decided that riding with one hand was unwise and grabbed the handlebars with two. That was when I eclipsed 70 kph. (Reuben is the rider drafting the SUV and Eritia is the one passing me in a tuck)
After the very quick descent we continued to loose elevation but the speeds were manageable to co-operate in a paceline.. and hence easy enough to film. I caught my meter on camera going ~50 kph.
We then continued along the “official” seatosea route to the town of Idaho Springs where we turned right and began climbing once again starting from 7526 feet above sea level. I should identify “we” at this point: Josh Krabbe, Reuben Vyn, Nicolas Ellens, Alex VanGeest, John Vanderveen, Eritia Smit, Lawrence Bakelaar, Brad Geerlinks and Peter Kranenburg. Reuben and Alex had parents visiting and they served as our personal support vehicle for the excursion. We climbed 14 miles to Echo Lake at 10600 feet above sea level and took a break and then continued up the road to the summit of Mount Evans at 14130 feet above sea level. Needless to say, the air is thin up there. We were greeted with rain and a temperature of 45 F or 7 C.
Turning around we blasted down the mountain back to Echo Lake wearing every scrap of clothing we could find. Some was even borrowed from Reuben’s Mom who could ride down in the heated car. Once off the main stretch of the mountain we stripped down to normal riding attire, ate again, regrouped and then set out to catch one more pass (Squaw Pass) on the way to Denver. From the base of the Mount Evans road on down into the first suburb of Denver we averaged 45.4 kph for 53.9 kms. That’s blazing fast for an average speed. It included a 9.4 kilometer stretch where my speed never fell below 50 kph. By the time we had reached camp our total for the day was 224 kms in 8 hours 2 minutes (27.9 kph). After a bit of work online pouring over many resources we tallied up the total elevation gained for the day to 11550 feet. That’s more elevation gained in a single day than if we had somehow started at sea level and summitted Berthoud!
The RCA and CRC churches in Denver have been excellent hosts for us. Ice cream, haircuts, care packages, billets for some of the riders and lots and lots of cookies.
I also received mail here from River Park Church in Calgary with a huge stack of encouragement notes from all sorts of people from the congregation. Thank you so much if you wrote! It was great to roll into camp, eat some of that ice cream and then read through so many messages that people are praying for my safety on the road and that this summer would be a powerful experience in my life. I also got a copy of the Saturday Globe and Mail which is now a week out of date… but who cares, I’ve missed out on that luxury for 5 weeks now.
Today is the day that many have been looking forward to since rear-ends got sore earlier on this week with a bunch of longs days in a row. We had only 55 kms to cover between Kremmling and Winter Park. Ed mandated that the morning wasn’t allowed to start until 6:30 with breakfast. Many of us rejoiced prematurely expecting to get that extra half hour of sleep which wasn’t to be, clanging of tent poles began as usual around quarter past 5 am. Some said it was below 10 degrees this morning when they woke up. By the time I was on the road it was plenty warm enough for just a jersey and shorts though. There really is a difference between 5:00 am and 8:30 am, and one is certainly better than the other in my opinion.
I did my best during breakfast to recruit a few other riders to come with me for a climb up to the local ski hill before getting to camp. I figure that I’ll likely not have the opportunity to train at altitude again for at least a couple years so should soak up the opportunity while possible. That argument didn’t convince very many people, it was only Eritia and myself who were headed for Sol-Vista today.
Before reaching our little detour we passed through sulphur springs canyon just north of the town of Hot Sulphur Springs. It was amazingly beautiful, so beautiful in fact that we decided to do it twice just to make sure it was also amazing in the other direction. Here’s the video:
I have a good internet connection so I got another video online from Monday it’s posted along with it’s corresponding blog entry
We did indeed then make the climb up to the ski hill which was pretty interesting. I’d guess that three or so years ago plans were made for a massive resort expansion surrounding the village, the roads were paved and the lots went up for sale. The bad news is that most of the lots are still up for sale. The good news for us was that there was nice pavement weaving all over the mountain side. Eritia set a personal best for top speed on the way down by drafting off me but the same cannot be said for myself. I cracked 80 kph but what once was a huge milestone isn’t quite as special anymore unfortunately.
Last night Dave Geerlings suggested that we try riding with only one gear on our bikes today. It would give us the opportunity to meditate a bit on what it means to be stuck in poverty. The focus of the effort supported by our fundraising is to try and break those cycles of poverty. After riding 100 miles on Wednesday with only 2 gears and knowing that my knees wouldn’t be pleased with another round of it I didn’t stop shifting gears just made a point of thinking about the luxury each time I had to. What begins as the obvious limitation is selecting a gear that is easy enough. In so many ways many individuals wind up in poverty due to being dealt tough cards. Their place of birth, their family, their acquired skillset, their vulnerability to addiction. What Dave’s exercise with shifting gears did for me though was teach a lesson about the other end of the spectrum. When the gear isn’t hard enough, when there’s no way for me to spin my legs fast enough to make any progress with the pedals. When situations are subject to massive inefficiencies it’s just as difficult to make much progress. When there are loops to jump through to ensure that welfare cheques arrive the focus can wind up on maintaining rather than escaping the situation. When farmers in the third world sell their crops into multinationals corporations for unfair prices their inefficiency in lifting their standard of living is too big an obstacle to overcome alone. It’s here that I feel like I’d like to make a comment about the need for co-operation, about looking out for the bigger picture, Maybe relate the experience with one gear to drafting in one another’s slipstream. Unfortunately the metaphor breaks down about 2 sentences ago so I won’t try to continue.
So today was a rather amazing day on the road. The computer I am using has a bundle of sticky keys and I don’t have a ton of time so I think I’ll just cover the day in point form.
Set out from camp around 9:30 am into a massive headwind and rode 50 miles from Craig through to Steamboat Springs.
Visited one of the coolest bike shops I’ve ever been in. They couldn’t help me with a massive chainring nor a derailleur hanger.
Loaded up on caffeine at a little coffee shop on the main drag.
The big hill of the day was 7.5 miles long at a 7 % grade peaking out at 9300 feet. Excellent grade, steep enough to really hurt but within the capabilities of all the riders in good health. (If you’ve been reading for a few days… Steph skipped the hill but successfully rode the rest of the miles. Art is not riding.)
I was part of the 4 person team riding “sweep duty” today meaning we had to be the last group on the road to help with mechanical trouble and motivation kind of stuff. We arrived at the top of the hill just as the riders ahead of us did. We wanted to give these slower riders a head start on us so we cruised back down the mountain to give the hill another shot. (Not the whole thing, only the final 12 kms or final 3/4 or so)
We crossed the continental divide today and Alex and I seized the opportunity to pee in both ocean drainages at the same time.
The downhill on the other side had fantastic pavement and I reached a top speed of 83.1 kph. A personal record! That’s faster than I got on Monday while drafting a semi-trailer, this one required no assistance.
We arrived at camp at quarter to seven after just barely missing a series of thunderstorms on the way down the final valley. I had ridden 181.1 kms. I stepped off my bike and had food on my plate within 2 minutes, it was great!
I was a bit fried from doing sweep duties for 13 hours straight today so went for a run just out of town this evening. Watched the sun set for the second day in a row while out for a run overlooking town. Running at 7300 feet is tougher than 6600 feet. I’ll let you know what it’s like at 8000 feet which is our elevation tomorrow evening.
We had our weekly prayer service this evening out in the field by candlelight. Meditation was on the topic of injustice and peace. Scripture was Lamentations 5 and Isaiah 25 if you’re interested in what’s rolling around in my head this evening. The blessing to close the night follows:
May God bless us with discomfort
At easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships
So that we may live from deep within our hearts.
May God bless us with anger
At injustice, oppression, and exploitation of God’s creations
So that we may work for justice, freedom, and peace.
May God bless us with tears
To shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, hunger, and war,
So that we may reach out our hands to comfort them and
To turn their pain into joy.
And may God bless us with just enough foolishness
To believe that we can make a difference in the world,
So that we can do what others claim cannot be done:
To bring justice and kindness to all our children and all our neighbors who are poor.
I just got back from a beautiful 30 minute run along a ridge overlooking the town of Craig this evening. The sun was setting in the west and the lights were coming on in the valley, once I got up there I could see the higher mountains that we’ll be entering tomorrow as we once again climb above 9000 feet.
The reason for my second post of the day though is that I got news that I’ll be cycling with the GPS tracking device tomorrow (Thursday) I anticipate that it will be moving along from about 9 am right through 7 or 8 pm Mountain Standard Time. To check up on my whereabouts you can log on to This Webpage which should query the location every 15 minutes or so. Last time I carried this thing it didn’t work at all but this is a new system.
I just wrapped up my toughest day of the summer but still have a smile on my face because I still could ride all the miles and am in good enough shape to give it a crack tomorrow
I did a nice dance at the side of the road as Betsy drove by and succeeded in stopping her. She didn’t have the tools we were looking for but she loaded me up and drove me back to the 19 mile mark where there was a tool kit. I succeeded in making myself a bike with two gears out of a bike with none and then set out to ride the rest of the day (plus 8 miles of bonus mileage) with those two gears (I could shift from my big to my small chain-ring up front).
The route today was a bunch of rolling hills that generally gained elevation for about the first half of the ride followed by rolling hills that generally lost elevation for the second half of the ride. Doing this with two gears makes for a rather difficult day. A very difficult day in fact. My two gears gave me the option of riding at 20 kph or 32 kph, I gave up on doing 20 because it would take far too long and opted to try and ride at 32 kph.
I rolled in to town ragged from the ride and searched out the bike shop. It of course wasn’t a cervelo dealer and I couldn’t replace the hanger but the man in there did a pretty good job of straightening it out. I should in in good shape until Denver at which point I’ll have to replace the thing. I also will be replacing my big ring up front which is missing a tooth and has a mean wobble. I’m debating whether I should enlarge it to a 55 tooth or a 57 tooth from the standard 53. I’ll let you know what I decide.
There’s a picture of me with the angel at the bike shop.
Sunday we were warned that early this week we’d be traveling through an area that would teach us why the dinosaur’s died. Hopefully we’d experience the beauty of this paleontological hotspot rather than the brute force of it. Indeed we did today, it’s hard to capture on camera because it’s rather spread out so photos tend to include a little strip of cool stuff (hoodoos, badlands etc) across a ton of sagebrush and a ton of sky. Here’s the best I got:
Today was a good day on the road as far as cycling is concerned. We began with a headwind and downhill similar to how we finished up yesterday. Tyler and myself took turns shifting off up front and then freewheeling in the rear. The first hour and a half resulted in an average speed of 36kph and we picked up Eritia along the way. Following a 10 mile climb into the town of Vernal we had caught Matt Zanting, Hans Doef and Laura Holtrop. Eritia and I joined their group and Tyler went off with some others to explore a bit of town. After stopping in at an outdoors store and the bike shop we sat on the feet of a giant pink dinosaur and ate a bit of lunch at quarter to 11 am.
From there on out we had another 10 miles of downhill (again in the mid forties for speed) and the day wound up with a 20 mile gradual climb into the little town of Dinosaur. We do indeed have showers here but the visitor center at the national park has trouble with a shifting foundation and is closed. So all of us that hurried out here so we could go check out the national park are a bit lacking with things to do. Some of us are going to go buy a bag of ice and have a bit of cold therapy for some of them muscles.
We’ve got another medium difficulty day Wednesday and a tough one on Thursday. I’ll be on the sweep crew for Thursday which should make for a very long day on the road.
Regarding yesterday’s prayer items, Stephanie left camp and turned around after 4 kms aware that she had swelling and fluid on her knee, she doesn’t plan to try and ride tomorrow either. Art is still undecided when he’ll give riding another kick at the can.
Today was no doubt one of the best days thus far on the trip. Our route was long, challenging, beautiful and rather rewarding. The people on the road alongside me were full of hilarious conversation. The weather was splendid, overcast and mid-twenties. I got to sleep in all the way until 6 am.
I’ll make an attempt to give a brief overview of the day because these broad sweeping strokes don’t paint a terribly beautiful picture for everyone who couldn’t ride a bike today.
I have to start out by saying that there was no elevation profile given for the ride today, a blessing and a curse. We knew there was a pass to cross but didn’t know how steep or how high it would be. We didn’t know how soon the climbing started once we left camp and didn’t really know if it was downhill or rolling after that. We set out on our bikes soon after 7 am knowing there were about 150 kms to travel and not a whole lot else.
I teamed up with 5 others while leaving camp, Jeff Schoon, Jenna Zee, Jessica Fox, Julia Wissink and Hilena Zylstra who was quickly re-named Jelena for the day so that she’d fit the mold with the others on the J-team.
We started by loosing around 500 feet of elevation within the first 5 miles. It was downright cold to be blasting along at 60 kph without getting warmed up first but there wasn’t much complaining about that. After a quick left we proceeded to gain that 500 feet back and another 300 within 2.5 miles of highway. If we could coast along at 60 stretched out over 5 miles you can imagine that all that elevation squeezed into a 2.5 mile stretch meant for a bit of a steep “Welcome to Monday Morning!” kind of climb.
When we reached anoverlook and turned around we saw that the downhill grade had a warning for an 8% grade. Serious stuff to accomplish before 7:30 in the morning.
We proceeded to cross a few rolling hills before Hilena… sorry… Jelena got a flat tyre and insisted on changing it herself. 36 minutes later we were rolling along again and that was going to be the flavour of the day, lots of breaks, lots of long breaks, and not a lot of reason for them to be so frequent or so long except that we were in no rush. Jessica and Jeff were long gone, 36 minutes long gone by then and our riding group was whittled down to 4.
The climb to the pass started without much of an announcement, we were following the bank of a small river up the valley and were distracted by the water so didn’t pay much attention to the fact that we were crawling along at 26 kph. 26 soon became 24 and soon became 22, We rolled up to Walter Vink’s support vehicle and filled up our water around the 50 km mark of the day. Everyone felt like our tyres were low on air, that our hubs were full of glue and that our legs were out of practice from taking Sunday off. That lack of elevation profile was probably a good thing, no reason to take on the hill climbing mentality, we just pretended we were slow and needed to rest more than normal.
Walter then told us that we were going to be going up, and that there were about 7.5 miles of it before the peak. That’s a big climb and the mentality changed. We were now climbing a hill. The sluggish legs were traded in for climbing legs and the dawdling minds were traded in for the focused ones. Those 7.5 miles were tough, the climb was steep and the lungs burned more than the legs. We were reaching the level at which elevation would begin to influence the riding, not by much, maybe only 1% but enough to notice and that was exciting in and of itself.
The second to last mile was a real kicker, I was out of the seat in my second to easiest gear (that’s about 2 gears easier than my easiest gear while sitting) and really going at it. The final mile gave a bit of reprieve and soon enough the summit sign was in sight. 9485 feet above sea level to boot.
After taking a much longer than necessary break at the summit and shooting photos with the sign we saw a semi-trailer go past and bemoaned the fact that we weren’t ready to try and draft it down the hill. Just then a second semi trailer came around the bend and John Vanderveen, Alex VanGeest and myself lept into action. We worked harder for the first 2 kilometers of the descent than the entire ascent trying to catch up to the semi trailer on the downhill and finally caught it’s draft. The driver was taking it easy and we could see that the semi trailer ahead of it was going a bit faster. Out of the draft we went, into the passing lane and passed the semi trailer on the downhill at around 75 kph. We worked hard again and I managed to catch the draft of the semi trailer ahead. John also caught on for a stretch but fell off. I was all by myself behind that semi trailer and I had high hopes of breaking 80 kph. Indeed we had a straightaway and the semi trailer let off the brakes a bit and got up to 81.6 kph a new personal record top speed! The semi trailer honked, I backed off and he turned off into a neighbouring farm. I then proceeded to set another record of my own and crossed a cattle grate at 71 kph. I waited up for John and Alex to catch me and together we cruised into the town of Hanna.
I waited up for the J-team at the local cafe and we got some coffee and pie. Everyone else hd the same bright idea and the cafe was standing room only, we ate all of their apple and blueberry pies. Their cherry and peach pies were almost running out by the time we left as well. We guessed that they were supposed to be the entire week’s supply. Leaving town the gradual downhill continued and we cruised along into a moderate headwind for another 20 miles. At this point Jenna decided to have a flat tyre and changed it herself in only 5 minutes much to Jelena’s dismay. It was done 98% correctly but Lawrence and myself needed to get in there and reposition the tube so it wasn’t pinched under the bead because there was no way this was going to turn into another 36 minute tyre changing game.
The ride from there into Duchesne was more downhill and between Jelena and myself we managed to suck John Vanderveen along at 25 miles an hour for almost the entire 18 remaining miles into the headwind without him pedaling at all.
Arriving in camp we had spent 10 hours on the road and ridden for 5 hours and 26 minutes. We had ascended 4700 vertical feet and covered 149 kilometers. Arrangements had been made to use the local pool for showers and a quick swim. The lifeguards there were amazing and didn’t care what kind of stunts we tried on the diving boards, quite opposite to our experiences in La-Grande and Ellensburg. That’s all for now though, I’m off to bed. We’ve got another relatively long day ahead with a moderate amount of climbing, it’s split up though so shouldn’t be too tricky. Rumour is that we’ve got to build a tent shower tomorrow for our stay in Dinosaur, that announcement tonight was greeted with 50% cheers and 50% groans. Read back to the account from Snowville last Thursday if you missed it, I suppose it was a polarizing experience.
A couple of items for prayer:
Arnie Isset ruptured his achilles tendon last thursday and has returned to Michigan for medical attention. Pray for complete healing and that he would be at peace with the fact that he likely won’t be able to rejoin the tour this summer.
Art Smit (whom I’ve done a lot of riding with this summer) who had a sprained ankle in week one has had knee trouble recently which may or may not be related to a modified riding style trying to keep stress off that ankle. He’s had to take a few days off even though the rest of his body would love to get out and ride. Pray for quick recovery.
Stephanie Webb (whom I have ridden with a bit this summer) arrived with knee trouble but has been able to ride each day thus far. Today was too much and she had to pack it in before getting to camp. The decision to take a ride in a vehicle ‘is a very tough one and I couldn’t imagine having to make it for myself. Pray for peace with her decision, that there would be no regrets about having to miss a piece of one day. Pray that she would reap the rewards of not pushing it too far today and that she would be able to successfully ride many more days this week and the rest of the summer.
