Spinning

Don’t get me wrong, Sister Act is a great movie, but you can only watch it so many times while spinning on your bike before it starts to get a little old.  After almost three months of not going anywhere on my bike I’m ready to start moving.  However, the weather and my basketball schedule (I get done pretty late and it is probably not a great idea for me to ride in the dark by myself) will be keeping me inside for a few more weeks. Since I was getting bored with the movies I decided to turn it off the TV.  Instead, put on some good music and use my time on the bike to pray.  It’s been really good.  To be honest, while I’m on the bike huffing and puffing I’m not coming up with any powerful prayers of my own, so I had to do a little plagiarism and steal prayers from some of the greats…I don’t think they will mind.  I’ve written the prayers on index cards and laid them on the floor by my bike so that I can read them while I’m spinning.  Here are a few of the especially good ones.

Ephesians 3:17-18 “And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.”

Romans 15:13 “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

2 Thessalonians 2:16 “May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word.”

So just know if you are my family, my friend, one of my nephews (or niece), my co-worker, or my teammate one of those prayers is for you.

Oh, and to the ladies in my group this weekend at retreat, I just added another index card prayer for you J.

Outside!!!

I think this nice weather is probably a mean trick.  Undoubtedly, winter still has a few more brutally cold days in store for us, but right now it feels like spring.  Since it was 65 degrees today I decided that I needed to ride outside…and that is exactly what everyone else in Plainfield thought.  The trail was congested with runners, dog walkers and double-wide strollers.  There was even one gentleman who was so excited about the weather that he did not even take the time to change out of his jeans before he went on his run.  I love the first few warm days of the year because everyone is in a good mood.  People on the trail smile and say hello as they pass.  Later in the summer everyone will be to into their IPOD and workout to notice the other people around them. 

It was great to ride outside again.  It kind-of felt like I was flying…and I guess compared to the 0 mph I was doing on the trainer I was flying.  The first half of the ride felt great and I thought, “Wow, I could do this all day, and that is a good thing because this summer I will be doing this all day.”  By the second half of the ride I was starting to think my legs were getting tired and I might want to continue training before I try to conquer the Pacific Coast. 

After three days with temperatures above freezing the trail was almost completely clear of all the ice and snow we have gotten over the last few weeks, but there were still a few places where a layer of ice and slush covered the path.  There was one particularly large section of ice that I, and the seven-year-old riding his bike in the opposite direction, was a little nervous about.  We did some slipping and sliding, but we both made it through without hitting the ground.

This ride taught me an important lesson about puddles.  Riding through puddles causes a lot of spray, and when those puddles come from newly melted ice/snow the spray is very cold on your legs…and butt.  This spray also causes very clean bikes to become very dirty very quickly.  Up until this point the toughest thing my bike encountered was a carpet fuzzy, but today all that changed.  I think I might have spent as much time cleaning my bike as I did actually riding my bike.

I went 10 miles today.  On July 15^th I will ride 116 miles.  I’m not exactly sure what I think of that right now J

Fundraising Update

Thank you, thank you, thank you to all of you who have supported the trip already.  As of Friday, February 11^th my trip is 41% funded.  From what I can tell, that is about where I should be right now.  For those of you who have not yet had a chance to support the trip and Blood:Water Mission, don’t worry, there’s still time.  You can donate online by visiting http://www.ridewelltour.org/ or check out the donations tab above.

The fundraising at school is going well.  A student told me just the other day that they ordered water when they went out to dinner with their family (Order A Water; Donate A Dollar.).  One of the boys has added a little incentive to the process by saying that he will save his legs if enough money is raised!

Thanks again to everyone who has supported this adventure financially and helped out in so many ways!

P.S.  Indiana State Standard 7.2 says “Students will solve problems involving integers, fractions, decimals, ratios, and percentages.”  Just last week I taught my students the percent proportion and I definitely used it to find out what percent of the trip is funded…and they say they won’t use this stuff in real life.

This might be close...

Snow day #1 will be made up on Friday, February 18th.  This is a bummer because we lost our four day weekend...but it's not a problem.

Snow day #2 will be made up on Friday, May 27th.  This is annoying because no one wants to extend the school year...but it's not a big problem.

Snow day #3 will be made up on Tuesday, May 31th.  This is unfortunate because our teacher work day will be pushed back until June 1st...I hope this doesn't become a problem.

I don't have to be in San Diego until June 9th so this shouldn't be an issue.  I'll have exactly one week between school ending and the ride starting.  Unless, of course, we get another blizzard and miss more days of school. 


Did I mention it's been snowing all day.  Just a couple of inches so far but one report I heard said five inches tonight, and it's supposed to keep snowing for the next three days.

This might be close...

Order a Water; Donate a Dollar!

Here’s the challenge for the month of February:

When you go out to eat this month I want you to order water with your meal rather than a soda.  Can you do that?  Can you give up your diet Coke or Cherry Pepsi?  Take that dollar that you just saved and donate it to the Blood:Water Mission.  While you’re drinking that water you can be reminded that, because of your small sacrifice, a person in Africa will have clean water for a year.  That’s right, just one dollar can provide an African with clean water for an entire year!  How many times will you go out to eat this month?  How many lives can you change by just drinking water?

And here is the extreme challenge for all the Starbucks lovers out there:

Take those three plus dollars that you normally spend on coffee and donate them to the Blood:Water Mission instead.  As you are going through those caffeine withdraws you can remember that you sacrifice is changing the lives of our neighbors in Africa.  Now, for some of you the thought of giving up coffee is preposterous. So here is my challenge for you.  For the entire month of February keep track of all the money you spend on your fancy coffees.  Then, at the end of the month, donate that amount to the Blood:Water Mission.  That way our friends in Africa get access to clean water and you are still able to enjoy your delicious coffee.

To donate the money you saved check out the donations tab above.

Ice

School was cancelled today but there will be no snow angels, snowmen or snowball fights because the world is encased in half an inch of ice.  It is beautiful.  I thought I would take a walk and check it all out for myself.  My ‘walk’ ended up being more of a ‘slide.’  I didn’t fall down, although I came extremely close on more than one occasion.  I felt a little bad walking on the grass because I could hear each individual blade of grass, so delicately wrapped in ice, cracking under my feet.  Walking/skating on the road was much better.  The ice was perfectly smooth and it made me wish I had some milk jugs and curling buddies (curling).  Despite the ice there were still birds singing and I could hear the trees groaning in the wind under the added weight of ice.  The parking lot is filled with sounds of ice scrappers trying to free cars from their icy prisons.  I decided I’m not going to drive anywhere for a whileJ  I guess the weather report was right even though their predictions of “extremely hazardous” and “impossible” seemed silly yesterday while the sun was out. 

Needless to say, I don’t think I’ll ride my bike outside today.

Here are some pictures, but they don’t really do the whole situation justice.

“For the beauty of the earth…”