Friday August 7, 2009

THE FAMILY VACATION IS A GO.
I successfully made it to Omaha, Nebraska in time to make the flight to Utah so it looks like I will be able to go on the FAMILY LAKE POWELL VACATION. I am sitting in the Airport reliving the past week through preparing this blog entry.

It has been a very interesting week and bicycle ride. And what a ride it was. I left Nauvoo late Friday afternoon (6:00 pm). The Mission President at the Nauvoo Visitors Center and Stephanie Fugal helped me figure out how and where to go to Church on Sunday. The Centerville branch was 111 miles away and met at 10:00 am. By riding as far and as fast as I possibly could on Friday, Saturday and Sunday Morning I made it. I was even 30 minutes early.
I met some of the best people at Church – Branch President Rodebush and his two councilors: Brother Bishop and Brother Bob White. Brother White was kind enough to feed me a Sunday afternoon meal and help me figure out how to get the Locust Creek Camp site where William Clayton wrote one of the most beloved Church Hymns “Come Come Ye Saints”. There were other interesting and very fine brothers and sisters at Church as well.

I also crossed paths with an outstanding young married couple that were also bicycling across the United States. Bill and Stephanie Brodegard live in Minneapolis, Minnesota where he is now attending Law School. They flew with their bicycles and equipment to Oregon, dipped their rear wheels in the Pacific Ocean and headed east where they will dip their front wheels in the Atlantic Ocean. They ride over 100 miles per day, one day covering 130 miles. They ride the same bicycle that I do – “Surly Long Haul Trucker”. They use the same 4 panniers – “ORTLIEB Waterproof Classic” and much of the same equipment that I use. They are also carrying a laptop. The only thing is that they are smart enough to ride together so they share the weight and each carry only 2 bags. They are very outgoing and make friends almost every night to stay with. They researched an internet group called “Warm Showers”. Those people are mostly cyclists themselves and have agreed to let cross country cyclists stay at their homes.

Bill linked me up with a great guy named Todd Smith in Council Bluffs Iowa who agreed to garage my bicycle and equipment while I travel to Utah. He fed me, let me sleep and shower at his house and brought me to the airport. He even showed me a bicycle path that will take me from his house to Winter Quarters Nebraska (a neighborhood of Omaha) after I return from Utah. Todd is a very accomplished and experienced bicyclist himself and was fun to talk to.
For the past 9 days I have ridden between 50 and 80 miles per day. I feel good about my cross country touring capabilities now. It is not 100 miles per day but there is a difference between 26 year old legs and 66 year old legs. 26 year old legs are better.

EXPERIENCE THE RIDE. There are no flat spots in southern Iowa. There is only up and down. Sometimes the ups and downs are steep and sometimes they are shallow but everything is either up or down. The ups can be difficult (when you pedal them) and they can also be relaxing (when you walk and push the bike up them). I pushed the bike up enough hills that I never really got a sore butt in Iowa. The downs can be exhilarating or they can be terrifying. You are going around 28 miles per hour trying to stay on a little white line with big trucks, cars and farm equipment whizzing past you on a road with lots of potholes and you are almost naked. There are no pants covering your knees and there are no shirt sleeves covering your elbows. Just imagine the road rash you would get in a spectacular crash at that speed. The upside is that you cover a lot of distance fast and it is very thrilling with the wind blowing through your hair and all your senses alert and in survival mode. Northern Iowa is flat because 20,000 years ago a glacier came through and scrapped the ground flat but it did not make it down to southern Iowa so erosion had longer to work there.
There is a reason that most cyclist cross the country from west to east. That reason is the trade winds. Almost every day I am riding into a headwind. It varies between 3 and 20 MPH but it is almost always there when you are headed west. Occasionally the wind blows out of the south so it only has a cross wind component. A couple of times I rode north to connect to another highway and had a tailwind. It was amazing. Instead of riding 15 MPH up a slight incline I was going 23 MPH and that was going up. I couldn’t believe it.

PIONEER PERSPECTIVE. No matter how hard I think I have had it the Pioneers had it 50 times harder – Serious Mud. On a bad day with rain, headwind and constant rolling hills I can travel 50 miles. I have a paved road with bridges over the streams. I have never encountered mud. On a bad day the Pioneers were only able to travel 1 mile. Sometimes the mud was so deep that wagon wheels would sink up to their axles. They had to cut roads through the trees. They had to ford rivers or build bridges. Often they built bridges for the benefit of those who were following.
When the first party of pioneers were crossing the Iowa territory it was not settled. No one lived here. Missouri to the south was settled. The first group of Mormon Pioneers traveled through southern Iowa because they did not have enough food. They would go into Missouri to trade for food. Later pioneers used a more northern route through Iowa that did not have as many hills and mud was not as much a problem.

The Mormon History aspect of the trip has been very enlightening. I have gained a major respect for those strong individuals. They were just ordinary people. They did not know then that later generations would venerate them as “PIONEERS”. I better understand the trials they endured, the mental, moral and physical strength they exhibited and the reasons behind the decisions that they made. They were always thinking about and preparing for those following. Garden Grove is a town that they built to grow food for later pioneers. Those pioneers were trying with everything they had to try to follow what they thought the Lord expected of them. When I got tired, I stopped and rested in my waterproof tent, warm sleeping bag and pulled goodies out of my bags that the bicycle carried for me. When I got hungry I stopped at a café in one of the small towns along the way. When I got wet and cold I would spend a night in a motel and take a warm shower. When the pioneers got wet, cold, tired, or hungry they kept going to the end of the day. In some cases they actually worked themselves to death.

All in all I have gotten everything that I hoped I would get out of this trip so far. I truly believe that the Lord has blessed me and I also believe that he blessed the pioneers so they could accomplish what they did.