Blessings? Yes Please!

This past weekend was pretty standard at first... on Saturday I cycled 100 miles and then consumed about 8,000 calories. The weather was unreal for January! I can't believe that it was 70 degrees and that I am still able to train in shorts every day. The warm weather made me happy and so I rode the 100 miles faster than I have since I started training in late October; 5 hrs 48 mins.

The morning session was actually quite different than usual because David Strauss, the man who will be making a full length documentary about the Bike for Burundi trip, came out to shoot some video. It was quite strange to have a man driving closely to me with a camera strapped onto the roof. Every now and then he would zip off into the distance and then I didn't know when I would see him again. One time I was having trouble finding him and then I realized he had his camera set up in a crop field about 200 yards from the road. Ha. Since I am not used to having someone video anything that I do, I thought it was hilarious to be followed by David. Every time I passed him I started laughing. I suppose I am a bit camera shy. At lunch he interviewed me for a few minutes and then he left. He said he is not sure what the focus of the documentary will be, but that he will gather lots of footage and will then decide on a story.

Later on Saturday night I went to have dinner with Bonnie Turco, the woman who is organizing Bike for Burundi, and her husband. They were great and they gave me the Garmin GPS that will be attached to my bike during the trip. The only problem is that the map software we will use to link our maps to the GPS requires a computer with a CD player. My computer died a few months ago, so I realized now was the time to buy a new computer. Bonnie had a little computer that she wanted to give me, but then we saw that it did not have a CD player. Bummer! On Sunday morning I told the people at breakfast that after church I was going to buy a computer. When I came back for lunch, right before leaving to go downtown to buy a computer, Jack Rankin, the weekend manager at St. Christopher, said that he and his wife Ardy wanted to give me one of their barely used computers so that I can blog during the bike ride and have a computer to use afterwards. What?!?! Huge blessing! I was extremely excited. Later in the night my buddy Daniel Dunn donated an Under Armour cold gear shirt and a pair of nice cold weather tights for the ride. Whoo hoo! This past weekend was great was a great! I can already see tons of ways that God is using people to bless this trip.

Less than 5 weeks until the ride.

It's Really Happening...on March 5

There has been a bit of change in the past few months. In early December I asked my boss, David, if he could find a replacement for me so that I might be able to ride with the Bike For Burundi crew (www.bikeforburundi.com) I told David that I would not leave my position unless they found a replacement before January 9. I was praying hard that there would be a good candidate to replace me, but surprisingly, not many people applied for my job. There was, however, a great candidate who applied and was offered the job in early January. I was super excited, but then he rejected the position! I was slightly discouraged, but still had hope. It was a huge blessing and relief when my boss David called me on January 3 to tell me that he had hired someone!

This, however, left me out of work until at least the end of the bike trip around early April. The people out here at St. Christopher Camp and Conference Center were great to me however, and they said that I could live and work out here in the facilities department until the bike trip. That's what I am doing now. My temporary job pretty much now consists of painting, fixing random things around the camp, and moving equipment for people who actually know how to do technical things such as carpentry and plumbing. It's pretty great to have a 2 month temporary gig out here.

Around Valentines Day I will be leaving here and will be moving to Greenville, SC for 2.5 weeks before flying to LA to begin the ride. The point of this is so that I can see my valentine :) and then train in the mountains of the upstate. It will be much more effective training up there because if you are not aware, Charleston is about as flat as it gets. Even though my legs feel pretty fit from the training here, the low country is not exactly preparing me for successive 100+ mile days in the Sierra Nevada mountains.

In other news, I'm getting really pumped up about what we are raising money for in Burundi. The man Simon that I will be riding with wrote a great book called Dangerously Alive, which is about his experiences there for 10 years as a missionary. It truly inspired me to ride so that more people in that nation can know the love of Christ. Check out the book Dangerously Alive here.


Exactly 6 weeks until the trip. Let's do this!