A Driving Marathon...

July 28th, 2006

I woke myself up at 7:00 a.m. to finish some last minute packing, and to get in a shower and breakfast before meeting up with my traveling companion. At 8:30 a.m. I'm at Discovery Christian Community church picking up my traveling companion Julianna. Her nickname is actually just "J", so J. and I left the church shortly after to drive down to the airport to pick up our rental car. Getting a rental car became an adventure in itself. After finding a parking space for my old college car and then taking the airport bus across the expansive parking lot and then waiting on the rental car to be delivered it was an hour before we were actually on the road again.

So by 10:00 a.m. were finally leaving Salt Lake City traveling east on interstate 80. At this point you're probably wondering where I'm headed. Destination is Muddy Gap, Wyoming. If you've never heard of Muddy Gap, Wyoming your definitely not alone. I learned later in the day that Muddy Gap isn't actually a town it's just a junction or a fork where three roads meet. There happens to be one service station there and not much else.

Now comes the why. Why was I headed to Muddy Gap, Wyoming? It just so happens that on that particular day there was a group of Mennonite young adults biking through Muddy Gap. If you've never heard about Bike Movement then you should look it up online at www.bikemovement.org

Of course I'll tell you about Bike Movement at a later time, because it's just that cool and you can be a part of it too.

It was a five and a half hour drive from Salt Lake City to Muddy Gap, Wyoming, but it was really pleasant with J.'s company. We arrived at Muddy Gap in the middle of the afternoon and were looking forward to meeting up with Bike Movement. As it happened the cyclists had a change of plans because of an incident on the road earlier. They had moved on to Casper, Wyoming and there was no way of me finding that out at the time. J. and I drove around the area hoping to find them, but eventually we gave up our quest and headed back home. I decided since we had already come that far we should take a more scenic route home and we got to see some pretty spectacular sites in Wyoming.

We reached Salt Lake City around 11:00 p.m. that same night. If I had been wise I would have headed straight home after dropping J. off at her parent's house. Instead I came inside and stayed visiting with Stacey, J.'s mother, until about 2:30 a.m. Once I arrived home, for some reason I decided to check my email before falling exhausted into bed. Here comes kicker, I had received an email from Alicia Horst with Bike Movement. She related the incident and the fact that they were now in Casper, Wyoming.

Well, I thought to myself, Casper isn't that far from where I had been. I also had no pressing plans for Saturday, why not make a return trip. My next dilemma was over sleep, or lack of it. It's 3:00 a.m. on Saturday, the Bike Movement group would be moving out early Sunday morning. It was a six hour drive to Casper and the same returning and I would have to be back by early Sunday morning for Church services in Salt Lake City. Okay, so here's the quick (and not so thought out plan I devised):

3:30 a.m. sleep
8:30 a.m. awake and get on the road
After some stops along the way that took longer than I expected didn't arrive in Casper until 4:00 p.m.
Spent time with Bike Movement (and I'm sure to share more about these amazing, dedicated persons at a later time).
By 10:00 p.m. I was settling down for sleep with with everyone else.
At 2:00 a.m. I was waking up by myself (well Alicia woke up with me to say good-bye and then went back to bed).
By 9:00 a.m. I was back in Salt Lake City and getting ready for Church.

Of course I spent the Church services trying to keep my eyes open. As a tribute to Pastor Steve's sermon I heard everything he said about being lost and afraid, and that was with my eyes closed.

Here's some random statistics from my driving marathon. During a 54 hour period I only got about 9 hours of sleep. During that same 54 hour period I got in about 23 hours of driving time (and I was the only driver). And to top off my random statistics during a 54 hour period I hit and killed to bunny rabbits with my car (trust me it was horrifying - and by the way Wyoming jack rabbits are stupid creatures that don't have the sense to get off the road).

Everyone with Bike Movement seemed so impressed that I went to the trouble driving to Wyoming and then did it again the next day. This is the way I figure it, at the end of the day I can say that the reward was greater or equal to the cost than I'm happy with what I did. Let me tell you I went for two days with little sleep and drove around an excessive amount, but meeting up with Bike Movement and being part of the dialogue was well worth it.

In my next entry I'll tell you more about Bike Movement and how you can join the dialogue. I hope you find it as rewarding an experience as I did.

So much to share...

Oh boy do I have stuff to share with everyone. It's been awhile since I've posted an entry, so I'm going to make this one a long one, to make up for lost time.

There are a lot of reasons I haven't posted an entry recently. For starters, my keyboarding wasn't working early last week (what a frustration) but my brother fixed it (YEAH Brent). Then I didn't get online to post anything because I was busy playing with my brother, he came to Utah from Virginia and spent about four days with me. After my brother's visit I was busy making up time at work or spending time with my Utah friends that I had neglected. And now since Monday morning I've been trying to get my email account with AOL working, but it's a server problem so I gave up on that frustration and have decided to work online with things that do work, like my blogger. By the way, if you were expecting an email from me on Monday (prayer and support team or online biblestudy) all your email addresses are stored with my AOL account so I'm stuck until AOL starts working for me again...sorry...have patience with me.

So that brings me to the present, where I'm now currently updating my blogger with my most recent exploits. I'm going to start with some pictures of Brent's visit to Utah, maybe you'll get envious of the scenery and want to visit Utah for yourself some time.

This picture was taken from Moss' Ledge in the Big Cottonwood Canyon just east of Salt Lake City. I know you can't really tell from this photo but this is a small waterfall that at this dry time of the year people are actually able to climb up without injury (from rushing water). I had climbed about halfway up when I took this photo. It really is a gorgeous place to visit and have a picnic or short hike up the waterfall. Great views from up top too. I recommend not wearing flipflops though. I made the mistake not thinking we were actually going to climbing up the waterfall. The real kicker is that I had strapped sandals back at the car (they were so close yet so far away).

Anyways, flipflops or not it was still manageable and I had a great time.




The next day Brent and I went back up into Big Cottonwood Canyon and checked out Mt. Olympus and found Hidden Falls. As you probably guessed it the photo to your right is of Hidden Falls. It was a nice secluded waterfall that happened to be real close to the road, but you would never have seen it from the road (ha..."hidden" falls).

When we got to Hidden Falls three women were harnessing up to the left of this photo (I didn't photograph them) to do some rock climbing. They were actually geared for leading climbing and it looked like a right nice place for the climbing. Brent and I took off though before they actually started their climbing (we had some hiking up Mt. Olympus to accomplish).





This photo I took from a higher elevation off of Mt. Olympus (in the Big Cottonwood Canyon). I took a lot of photos from this elevation, but this is one of my favorites. It was great because you'd be hiking along and if you just turned yourself around from the direction you were hiking in (you know looking over your shoulder) this is the view you would see. It's all so absolutely breathtaking. What a wonderful Creator God we have to lovingly give us such beauty to enjoy.




On the third day of Brent's visit we traveled around town (town being Salt Lake City). This photo was taken at This is the Place monument. I've been to that historic site more times than I care to admit, but it does seem to be quite the place to take visitors. It also seems every time I go I take my camera with me. This time I decided to try and take some more unusual photographs while I was there and diversify my collection. Here is just one of those photos I took (you'd probably get bored if I should you all the rest of the photos...pretty standard stuff).









On Brent's last full day in Utah we actually took a short day trip west of Salt Lake City into Nevada. We across the Great Salt Lake Dessert into the border town of Wendover. It was on our way there that we passed this art work out in the dessert along I-80. It was built in 1986 and is known as Utah's Tree - the metaphor.

From a distance Brent and I were perplexed as to what it really was. The closer we got the more perplexed we were. It was just this large thing out in the middle of no where. It wasn't until we were in Nevada and I found a postcard with the metaphor and it's history on the back that I realized what we had actually seen.

It's pretty cool, ain't it?




My brother left to begin his drive back to Virginia on Friday morning. On Saturday night I was astonishingly not scheduled to work at Chili's and I took the evening to enjoy a campfire with my young adult group at Discovery Christian Community Church. It was great, we took a drive out into the western canyons and brought a bunch of food with us. Cooking over a fire, enjoying one another's fellowship and I can't forget the s'mores.

I had a lot of great laughs that night (just remember when a bat flys really close to your head LAUGH).

Hmmm...I could probably go on with a lot of different subjects, but I've probably written enough for one night. I guess I'll wrap this entry up right now...BLESSINGS!!!

Computer Frustrations

Hey there world. If anyone of you out there knows how to make a keyboard start typing again please let me know. My computer stopped working this weekend. It lets me use the cursor and gets me online, but I'm able to get any letter or words from my keyboard to appear.

Just leave me your comments and suggestions. Like I said I can read my emails, but I just can't respond. And if you're going to tell me to restart my computer I've already done that.