Out of the mountains and into the flatlands

On Sunday after church we went downtown Denver, going downtown was pretty cool. Its a nice looking city and its clean and the buildings are cool but it wasn't as cool as i was hoping for. Maybe my expectations were just too high. While we were down there there was lots of homeless people, asking for money or talking among themselves. At one point we walked by a security guard talking to one of these men listing off the rules about asking for money. "You have to be 20 feet from any street corner, 20 feet from any bank, 20 feet from... etc. How is this fair? The man has nothing but he is only aloud to ask for money in certain places? This was another reminder that we do have injustices and poverty here in North America and it really made me think of what kind of stuff i have been doing on this trip. Am i making a point to put myself out there?to expose myself to poverty? or am i living in a hole and hiding from it? It kind of seams that Ive been hiding from it even while i am raising money for these people. I thought about this for a while when we were walking around downtown. All the while avoiding eye contact with the people asking for money. On the way back to camp on the train I was thinking of these things. When I got off and started walking back I saw another man on the side of the road asking for money and I walked right by again. As I walked down the street I thought how selfish this was and then I stoped and was feeling like God was pulling on my sleeve telling me I needed to talk to him. I'm not very smart and didnt really want to listen so I put myself through bad things that could happen and gave myself a bunch of reasons why I shouldnt including things I needed to do at camp (nothing). Finally I stoped and saw a couple other people walk up to him and I was like "If they walk right by then ill go ask him if he wants to go for lunch somewhere" and sure enough they walked by. Now a bunch of people on the tour came out of the store right beside where I was sitting and I almost went and walked back with them giving myself another reason to bail but then I decided that was lame so I finally went and asked the man if he wanted to go for lunch. He said yes and we went to Subway. It was really cool to sit down and have a conversation with him. If you could. Pray for Richard.

Monday morning I left at around 8:00 the day was long, relatively flat, and hot. First day out of the mountains and we are bored already its gonna be a long next couple weeks.

This morning I slept in really "late" (7:20) and just caught the tail end of breakfast. Then I was really lazy and took a really long time to get ready so I decided to ride with the sweep team. We went into town and sat at a coffee shop for about 2 and a half hours. It was awesome because we got a second breakfast and it was really good and it was really cheap! $4.19 with tax. We then went next door to a gun shop. It was really fun and they let us play with the guns. We then went to a bike shop looking for some new treads for our bikes but they only had crapy ones being a tiny little hick town... oh well try again in the next town. (this means i just have to hope my tire doesnt blowout before then) We didnt end up leaving town until 12:00 we figured that this was enough time to give people a head start. We got on the road and in a half hour we got hit with a huge headwind. It sucked. We had a headwind for the rest of the ride and made it into camp by around 7. We ended up catching up to a couple of riders just before we got to camp. We then wolfed down supper and took off for the local swimming pool. It was a great day.

The Gun shop! From left to right, Manley, Marc (aka strech), Brian, John

Downtown Denver

If you're intrested in Praying for a couple things in particular pray for safety for the riders in the tour as we have lost 2 riders to broken bones in the last 3 riding days. Also if you could pray for a tailwind that would be wonderful and would keep people in way better spirits. You dont realize how frustrating wind can be until you try to bike against it. And pray that we as cyclists realize that this tour isnt about us and isnt about how well we can bike but that its about poverty and pray that we keep the focus on that.

the end,