Time for lunch. We are about 65 miles from our final destination - Rollins Pond.

We must be getting close. We are only 9 miles from the next church, so it looks like we may eat lunch there and press onward & upward.

Where were we? Part last.

If you look very closely you may see that our flags are starting to fray just like Dan's did.

One quick post. Yesterday max

One quick post. Yesterday max was 39.7 & average was 13.0

Friday's Ride

Where are-were we? Part cuatro

Welcome to Watertown! Now in our tenth county, Tyler & I have seen large expanses of farmland - some even go to great lengths by labelling their crops so that we know what they are growing. We've also seen a lot ofwildlife ... Deer, enormous hawks, fox, dead frogs all along the road. Which brings me to tonight's question ... What kind of live animal did Ray hit with his bike today? Since we are highlighting Ray today ... you would be correct in deducing that our only flat tire of the trip thus far was Tyler. Tomorrow looks to be a lighter biking day ... But it may be another wet one. Time to eat dinner ... Oh goody! Another MRE! Soon a new clue for the 'where are we' game ... Although, we should start calling it the 'where were we' game, cuz we aren't there anymore. :-D

Tyler said to send the lighthouse picture for Barbie

Lake Ontario ... 17 miles from Watertown

Ray's doing the dishes ...

Looks like a good spot for lunch.

Lemonade tastes great in Mexico!!

Nuts ... Wrong direction!

Dan can sing you the song ...

BTW ... yesterday maximum was

BTW ... yesterday maximum was 35.2 & moving average was 12.4

Where are we? Part drei ... Remember that these are all the same place & we're looking for something specific.

Waking up from our 8th county this morning ... Thanks again to Pastor Carl & Community Wesleyan for their hospitality. Only 72 miles to Watertown!

Thursday's Ride

Where are we? Part deux.

We have arrived at Community Wesleyan Church in Baldwinsville just outside Syracuse. Pastor Carl has taken extremely good care of us since it rained on us since lunch. We have access to the dryer and have taken advantage of that. Another dinner. Another MRE. The answer to the stop light question ... We went thru 11 and were stopped by 2 ofthose. A new question tonight ... And it's a 50-50 one ... Who do you guess had our first flat tire, and only flat to this point? And no, Dan & Dan, it wasn't Rob!

Where are we? More clues coming.

Tyler picked up a lil' something something.

Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls?

Significance?

Geneva NY

Good morning from our fifth county. I know many of you are anxious for the answer to yesterday's speed questions. Maximum was 35 mph and the moving average was 12.5 mph. To make it simpler I'm not putting anything in metric. Today is a little longer ride. We'll be doing over 66 miles, but hopefully fewer hills. Thank you for the comments & encouragements you posted. Mary has been reading them to us. Keep praying, today may be wet.

Wednesday's Ride

Tyler is having his military issued cappuccino.

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Tyler found his parking spot!

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Thank you to Crosswinds Wesleyan Church for giving us a patch of ground to pitch the tent. Tonight's question: how many traffic-stop lights did we pass through & how many of those did we have to stop at?

Ding dong ... 40 miles done & stopping for lunch.

Time to tell you the stats from yesterday ... Maximum speed was 62.4 kph & average speed was 16.4 ... For those who are having a tough time figuring out what that means in America, maximum was 38.9 & average was 10.2 ... Today we are looking at one of our longer rides - 64.9 miles, just a little more than a Metric Century. It's about the same distance as Roswell, but this time we have loaded bikes. You can check the elevations me each ride using the map that is hopefully in the post below. We start the day with a steep descent and then we are relatively level the rest of the day. Keep praying for us. Our Lord is with us.

Tuesday's Ride

Do you know???

Varysburg, the home to Camp Hickory Hill, where we spent our first night, was purchased in______ (what year) and what was the purchase price?

Please use your best guess, no fair looking up this info.

Well we arrived at Hickory Hill. We're set up in an adirondack shelter down by the pond. All in all it took about 3 hours to ride ... Some big inclines but we're showered and ready for dinner.

7 miles from camp, we ran out me water, God provided a nice couple to give us water.

We stopped for a break at a restaurant to fill up water bottles ... It was closed. 12 miles to camp.

Finally, on the road, see you Sunday, Boys!!!

It's Official, 1:04 pm-- the boys are gone, down the road.

And We're Off ...

Ready to go ... somewhat

So ... tomorrow Tyler is coming to my house so that we can leave. We should be departing the house around 2:00 PM and heading to Camp Hickory Hill in Varysburg, NY. Our two sons are at the camp this week, so we'll see them around dinner time. If you've never heard of Camp Hickory Hill, check out their website. This is a great boys camp, affiliated with Christian Service Brigade. Both Tyler & I grew up attending & working at the camp ... most of what I learned about ministry (before I began my full-time career), I learned at CHH. Tomorrow's ride will be fairly short (only about 25 miles), but will contain some of the most difficult climbs of the entire trip. It's either great that we'll get them out of the way while we're fresh ... or it'll stink because we will tire out on the first day ... I'm hoping for the first.



This will be the last blog post that I put on the site before we are on the road. From now on, we'll be posting using my phone, so the posts will be shorter and possibly a little cryptic. We won't have too many fancy games to play each day (like our friend who recently crossed the US on bike), but we'll try to have some. Unfortunately we cannot check the blog until we return home on August 8th. Just for fun ... and to make our trip sound more impressive (for Dan Richbart's sake) I'm thinking that I'll be posting all of our stats for the day in metric.

To start the games ... what will our maximum speed be each day? or our average moving speed? You can post by clicking comments just below this blog.

Almost Time

So Tyler came over to the house today to go over what we had & what we still needed. I think we're basically ready to ride on Monday. We've decided to go with fewer MREs for meals while we're on the road ... that's OK because they are easily the heaviest things that we are carrying. However ... I need to re-hash an earlier post ... it was about Tyler shopping for the appropriate meals for our trip. Check it out here. In that post, I made a comment about how I was training for the trip and Tyler was shopping for food for the trip -- not only that, but he didn't even get what we needed. Long story short ... he has yet to find any more MREs since that day ... and most of the MREs he bought that day ARE meatless. So his fussing about buying no vegetarian meals has back-fired. That's OK though ... since the MREs are laiden with calories anyway. Penne Pasta & Imitation Pork Ribs here we come!!!!

Tomorrow I plan to take a fully loaded bike on the road for the first time. We'll see it handles ... and how it handles me!

Warm-up ride

I rode out Millersport and back down Transit today--16.5 miles. Tried my seat a slight bit high and learned quickly that you can have your seat toooo high. It took about 7 miles and the bottom of my feet were sore and I had a nice case of saddle numbness. So the seat is back down where it was.

Getting close.....

Looks as though we will be leaving a day early; probably Monday. Weather report doesn't look great. We may be riding in the rain at least once. So....I went for a ride on the wet road. The tires take some getting use to as they don't grip the road so good when they're wet. The brakes lock easily because the tires don't have enough friction.

Tomorrow we go through our equipment to see who's got what equipment and make final decission on what we're bringing.

Check out this week's adventure ...

Our youth group is in Newark, NJ to work with a Haitian church. Check out our youth group's blog ... http://shine09.wordpress.com