Yikes!

Well, today I am a little sore. Not nearly as sore as I was last night though. Todd, Trent, and I ended up accomplishing our 50 mile cycling ride last night. It was pretty nuts! We were all pretty much dead after about 40 miles, but we kept on truckin, finally reaching 50. It ended up taking 3 hours and 30 minutes on the dot. We also had to stop more often than usually. I had to stop because my butt and back hurt so much, and Trent was just dead tired. Todd was a machine though, I dont think he complained one time. I think the best part of the night, though, was grilling out afterwards. We grilled some burgers, made some cucumber sandwiches, and drank some Cream Soda and awesome homemade wine. But, man, none of us could walk very well. And stairs were a killer. But luckily, ill get some rest this weekend in Wisconson. Todd and I are hittin the road here in about an hour, so Im basically just waiting for him to come pick me up. So, farewell for a while, be back next week.

Nope...

The 40 mile bike ride wasnt too bad. It wasnt even that hot. Before we were about to leave, a front had rolled in and we thought it was going to storm, so we left anyways haha. But it really cooled things down. But unfortunately, we did run into a little bit of rain, just some sprinkles. We only stopped one time, one purposely. We did hit a few snags at the end when my chain fell off my bike, twice. Oh well. Good times. Im tired. And sore. Farewell.

In Over My Head?

Today Trent, Todd, and I are going on our 40 mile bike ride, tonight at 5:30 we are leaving. Im pretty confident that this is gonna suck. Me and Trent went on a bike ride tuesday, about 20 miles or so, and Im still a little bit sore from it. And I have to go twice as far tonight! Maybe Im getting in over my head. The thing about this long bike ride is that if I feel like I cant go any further.....I have to, because its the only way I can get home! Plus, today it is about 170 degrees outside, so thats not gonna feel good.

Im hoping that Todd and Trent are feeling the same way. I dont wanna be the weiner of the group haha. But although I am a little worried about this trip, Im also pretty excited. Its just one step closer to 50!

30 miler

Well, tonight was interesting. Trent, Todd, and I went on a 30 mile bike ride through three counties. WOW! In case you didnt know, 30 miles is far on a bicycle. It was awesome though. Although we were all pretty much beat by the end, it felt great to accomplish 30 miles. We did have a few incidents though. To start off, the first few miles were brutal: against the wind, bumpy gravel roads, hills, we almost gave up just then. Then we almost got hit by a car.......it wasnt a four way stop, no more blowing stop signs......then we saw a guy in a truck lose a trailer of hay......and didnt realize it. Good times. One of the things I love about biking is that you get to see things you usually dont in a car. In a car, you are most often moving too fast to take in the scenary, and you are enclosed so you cant smell the smells, feel the warmth and breeze, taste the bugs........I actually had a butterfly fly into my mouth while we were riding tonight........seriously. Now generally that doesnt happen to me in a car......but every once in a while.....ha. Here are some pics of our adventure.

Next is a 40 miler, coming up next week.

Dark Knights and Cycling

Last night I went to see the new Batman movie, Dark Knight with Andrew and A.J. I thought it was a pretty good movie, but it was SO freakin long! Just when you think its about to come to an end.......theres about an hour left, unbelievable. But the highlight of the night had to be on the way home. I was driving A.J.'s car, its a VW Jetta I think, taking some backroads to avoid the traffic, and next thing I know, I hear a THA-THUMP underneath the car. At first I though it was a huge rock and I was afraid I had ruined AJs rims, but AJ yelled from the back "Oh my gosh, you just hit a cat!" I never even saw it run out. He said it had taken quite a tumble and was struggling pretty bad in the road. So, of course, we had to go back and look at it. So I turned the car around in the middle of the street, stalled the car, almost rolled into the ditch, and eventually made it to the cat, which actually turned out to be a kitten. Yes, I am a horrible kitten killer. It had quit thrashing by then, and I thought it was dead but they said it was still breathing. So obviously I said "well should we run it over again?" You know, just to make sure its dead. I guess they thought that was a bad idea, and I guess I'm a horrible person for saying that. But anywho, those are the happenings of last night. I do feel bad that I hit the kitten right in front of the peoples house too. The kids probly walked out of the house this morning, saw the cat, screamed bloody mary, and are now scarred forever. All because of me.

Well, this morning was a little less grimm. Trent, Todd, and I went for a 20 mile bike ride around the area. I thought it was great! I always love taking bike rides. It's even more fun when you get to ride with your friends. I've ridden my bike SO much this week. I put just over 94 miles on it and have spent 6.5 hours on the Red Racer this week alone! I told you, I'm a bikin fool! But this morning it took us about 1 hour 29 min. to ride just over 20 miles (20.11 to be exact). Its amazing to me how time flies when I'm on the bike. We are all in such a hurry to do things. We all think we need to get somewhere as fast as we can. It takes me about 20 min to get into town from my house on a bike. Its about 7-10 in a car. Really, it doesn't take that much longer on a bike. While we were on our 20 mile trek today, I asked Trent how much time had gone by, when he said it was about an hour I thought, wow, it only felt like 15 or 20 minuntes. Then, with about a mile or two to go, it started to rain. Then it started to pour. So, we got wet, but it was actually pretty refreshing. Next up, we are going to do a 50 mile excursion. Well, I am. But if Trent and Todd want to, that would be even better!

Let me just leave you today with this quote: "No matter how long you shake and dance, the very last drop goes down your pants."

-Abraham Lincoln, 1926

...I may have made that last part up....

Summer Happenings

Well, i'll like to take some time to talk about my summer happenings and adventures, and yes this might be a long one. I'll say that the beginning of my summer kind of sucked. I had come home from school kind of depressed because I was ending off my junior year of college without a major. I had spent two years in the Industrial Design program, but after two years they only allow 16 people to continue. Long story short, I didn't make the cut. So my future had now become very hazy.
Then to add to that, I had a couple of summer jobs that never followed through. The first one was the job I had last summer working at a factory, making trunkfuls of money (well, for a college student it was good), but they wouldnt hire me back because they weren't doing well and weren't hiring. The second job was working for Ribfest, traveling around the country going to festivals cooking ribs. I was really excited about this job just because I really didn't want to come back home, I needed to get out of Indiana for a while. Now this job was about 99% guarnteed that I would work there. BUT, alas, they eventually said they didn't need me...........because the economy is bad. So I applied to a couple of other places in the area and, of course, no one is hiring. So I am left jobless for the summer.......and still have no job. So the start of my summer, I feel, really really sucked and I couldnt wait till August rolled around so i could go back to school.
So with all this happening, being jobless and such, I knew that I would have a lot of free time to do whatever. So one thing I wanted to do was get back into shape. During school I had lost a lot of weight because I quit working out and hardly ever ate anymore because I was either busy or the food that our chef made looked like vomit. So I started biking everywhere, lifting weights three times a week, and wrestled with the high school wresters twice a week. This is pure bliss for me. I love being active.
I also started reading a lot. And one thing I really wanted to do was to get back in touch with God. During college, its very easy to lose yourself in your studies and the social scene and parties, and eventually lose touch with whats important. And, as much as tried to not to, I too eventually got caught up in everything, mostly my studies, which you probably think is a lie, but getting into the ID program was my number one priority for me last semester, everything else was on the back-burner. But anywho, so at the beginning of the summer, I had borrowed some Christian books from Trent, my sisters bf, and started off with Blue Like Jazz. I thought that was an amazing book, it really opened my eyes to a lot of things.
But as I was reading these books, it got me thinking about my relationship with Christ. Now we all know, or should know, that Christianity is all about Christ. And, as Christians, we have the ability to have a relationship with our God through Christ. So I was thinking about my relationship, and realized that I really didn't know much about Him, just things I had heard in church. So, for the first time in my life, I started reading the Bible. I started in the New Testament (jumped straight to Jesus) to find out who he is. Now, there is so much I could say about the things I read, and how I felt while I was reading, and my thoughts on Jesus......but I'll just leave it at, I'm glad that I started reading the Bible.
Now, there have been a ton more other things I've done this summer, trips and such, but these are the major things. But one thing I have learned this summer that I think everyone should pick up is simplicity. I have been virtually broke all summer, I have picked up small jobs here and there: mowing, one roofing job, taking pictures of foreclosed housed for the bank, you know, odd jobs. But for the most part, I'm usually broke. So, being broke, I have no money for gas, so I can't drive. So I bicycle it up when I need to go to town (5.2 miles away). I never go shopping anymore, I'm not picky about what I eat anymore (I'm basically living off of Ramen Noddles and Chef Boyardee), I'm actually really enjoying being broke.....most of the time.
But recently I did take a trip to Vermont with some peeps from church, but I'll elaborate on that another time. It was a good spiritual journey........also a good learning experience. But this post is getting long enough so i'll end it here.


-Life's not about having what you want, it's about wanting what you have.