We Made it Half Way!

The people of Nebraska are great. As far as the biking, this week was awful. I thought that the prevailing winds of the summer in the U.S. are suppose to be from the West. Somebody forgot to tell Nebraska that. The last five days have been terrible. The wind has been blowing 20-30 mph day and night, mostly in me face. Sometimes it was so hard that I had to stand up or pedal in first gear just to keep moving, and that was on flat ground! At times it was a challenge not being blown off the road or into traffic. The wind was so strong that there was one big pond that had about a hundred breaking waves! To make matter worse when I planned this trip I knew that I would be done with the mountains so I planned this week as the most miles to go. I averaged 70 miles a day for 420 miles total in six days. Because of the wind I fell behind and tried all week to catch up. Some days where from morning tell night maybe 8 1/2 hours on the bike. I now truly understand the meaning of the phrase, "Saddle sore."I was so exhausted each day. For the first time I wondered why in the heck I was doing this, and wondered if I wanted to keep it up. One time this week the wind did stop...for about 20 seconds. It was perhaps the most glories 20 seconds of my life.

Enough whining and complaining. I did re-learn an important lesson. No matter how hard things are, if you focus on the negative it makes things worse. If you focus on the positive, time goes faster and life seems better. We had some great blessings this week. One night I was 7 miles from Laura and the campsite for the night. It was getting dark and I couldn't fall behind any more miles than I already was this week. It was getting dark and I didn't have lights. I was so tired that I just wanted to fall over on the side of the road and sleep. I prayed for help and all of the sudden such a burst of strength came over me that even Hercules would have been jealous. Then I noticed that the wind actually changed direction and was blowing me forward. After I made it the seven miles the wind changed back to how it was before.

In Alliance, Nebraska the Duitsmans' had the key to apartment complex that they lived in and let us stay in not one but two vacant apartments! Nine year old Faith was so cute. she said, "Baya and I are now adults because we have our own apartment." Another night we got a vacant ranch house all to ourselves thanks the Ramseys' near Ashby. And the Sillivans' in Arcadia, NE also had a vacant house that we had to ourselves. Wow, three homes of our own in one week! Mr. Sillivan is a leader of a congregation in Broken Bow and he arranged for our family to give the entire Fourth of July program at church. We went with them that night to watch the fireworks in Comstock.