Finished!

-Bittersweet-

Saturday was the last day of the tour we did 98km into Jersey City. The last 15km we had a police escort and even got to ride on the highway. It was crazy to get to the end and dip my tires in the water and to be able to say that its done. It was/is so surreal, it was like "now what?" some of us joked about jumping on the bikes and heading south. In a way im ready for it to be over but im going to miss the tour and the people on the tour so much. The week leading up to the end was incredible, i rode in really large groups almost every day making the most of our end time togeather. We finaly got hills and that made alot of us very happy. Climbing hills is the next best thing to climbing mountains. Anyways the week was incredible. Saturday night we had our last celebration service and it was really good, one of the best ones yet. That ended around 10 and then said goodbye to everyone and then we took off. We (Mom, Dad, Amanada, Darrell) drove right through the night and got home by 6:00 just in time for a quick nap before church. I got to see a bunch of friends and play hockey at church and that was awesome. Since then ive been packing for school and 2morrow morning I leave for school.

Thank you all so much for your support!

The End (for real this time)

Jon Elzinga is excited that we are soooooooo close to being done.Kyle, John and I partying it up the last week.The end tiring diping/celebrating like mad.

Jenna and I. I missed the funny face memo.

I got to sleep in a forest one night!
All 200 of us about to finish the tour.

The last wednesday

This week has been a week of alot of "lasts" everytime we do something we are like "thats the last time we will do that on a "-----day" example: today is the last time that i will ride on a wednesday on the tour. Today was the last day on the tour that I will ever ride sweep. Today is the last day that I will ride with team "g-unit" our nick name for our final sweep team (our full sweep team is called sweep team g). Anyways you get the point its kinda sad that we almost done im gonna miss so many people on this tour.





3 more rides

Alex is so cuteThis is the Chapel at Cornell College its part of the Ivy League of colleges including Yale and Harvard. We took a tour around it it was CRAZY. Its in the town of Ithica, the towns population is 35,000 in the summer and during the school year it is 65,000. This is a daily occurance, strongly discouraged by alot of people on the tour but deffinitely worth it. Nick Ellens is tucked behind this tanker.

Home!

Right now its 11:00 at night and it feels more like 3 in the morning. This morning i left Redeemer campus by bike to get to Saint Catharines in time to drive to the blue jays game in Toronto. The day was just incredible. Jenna, Aleida, Brian, Doug, Kyle, Theo, Eric and I all got to camp before noon and showered quickly and then left to go to the game. It was awesome. I havent been to a Jays game in years because im not normally really a big baseball fan but it was sweet. (they owned Boston) Then we all came to my house and ate and then we played some street hockey :) and then we all crashed and were watching a movie. (well about half of us were watching the other half fell asleep within a couple minutes) So i have had an incredible day and i think im rejuvenated for another awesome week of the tour.

Sorry i havnt been blogging much ive had internet issues a couple times and my computer died a couple nights ago on me... and well... ive been lazy.

The last night that we were in Michigan, Alex, John, Peter and myself went bull riding! It was INCREDIBLE! The story goes something like this.

Peter knew this guy named Tim and Tim is a bull rider/reptile collector. When I got into camp i showered and when i got out of the shower John and Alex said "hey bradley are you coming bull riding" and i was slightly hesitant at first thinking "um... thats a stupid idea if i ride a bull i could get like... really hurt and i still have a week and a half left on this tour" but then that hesitation was quickly replaced by "well frig how often do you get a chance to ride bulls?" (not to mention if John or Alex was going to do it i naturally couldnt be outdone) So about a group of 10 of us got a ride to the farm only 3 of us with the intent of actually riding the other 7 with the intent of laughing alot and enjoying the show. When we got to farm Tim brought us to his "warm room" this room is a heated shed where Tim keeps all his reptiles. He let us hold a monster snake and an alligator as well as look at all his other snakes. Including a Cobra and a Rattlesnake (the rattler was going crazy the whole time we were in the room) After this we headed to the bull ring. Tim explained the basics of the riding to us and then i foolishly volunteered to go first. I put on a hockey helmet and a safety vest (in case that i got steped on it would save my life) and then i proceeded to get owned by the bull. After this Alex, John and Peter went and then i decided to go for another round on a different bull. This time was much more successful and I held on for probably about twice as long (probably still less then 5 seconds lol)

Needless to say riding the next couple days was very uncomfortable and painful more so for Alex then the rest of us but we all made it. When people would ask me how it was and i had to describe it in short i would say "well it feels a little bit like i imagine getting hit by a train would feel like" but heck id do it again in a second.

THANK YOU so much everyone from the farm (sorry i dont remember all your names) for dinner and for letting us ride the bulls and for just being awesome.At the Jay's gameI know you can hardly see the bull in these pictures ill work on getting better ones from other people as well as a video soon enough.

Lawrance is staring the Alligator down and Theo is playing with a ginormous snake

Illinois, Indiana, Michigan

I dont know what to say so im going to post pictures.




Today we made it to Michigan! wow we have biked really far.
We decided it would be fun to lay on the tracks (Me, John, Theo)Trump Tower in downtown Chicago!
Doug, Alex, John, Me, Kyle touring downtown Chicago last night.
Stupid pictures are fun!

Into Madison, the end of week 6

Yesterday was our third "century" (100+ mile) ride in a row. It really didnt seam that hard because it was "only" 160km instead of the previous day's 180km. I decided that I wanted some alone time and I ended up riding by myself all day. I made good timing and got to camp by 3:30. It was really nice to have some down time. I was going to try to keep it this a secret so that my mom wouldnt find out but when I told Darrell he managed to promptly tell her anyways lol.Anyways I managed to break the tours fastest top speed. Its the blurry number at the bottom. (The top one is my current speed and the middle is my average) It was CRAZY fast, def finitely got the adrenalin pumping!
Today I woke up to it raining during the night. It was awesome. I love sleeping in a tent when its raining the sound of rain on a tent is flipping awesome. I got up really late as per usual on a "short" 116km day. Ate breakfast and then it started raining fairly good again so naturally, I went back to bed lol. I ended up leaving camp around 8:30 and then John Vanderveen and I started going really fast. We did the first 40km averaging over 35km/hr. It was awesome. After that we slowed down. I am now in Madison, Wisconsin for the weekend and Im very very thankful for a day off.

The Mississippi river on the way into Wisconsin!

Onto a new state! This one is way better then the last one.

Regularly we are reminded, especially by the older people on the tour that it is "not" a race that it is a tour but this video proves otherwise.

Is ready for the weekend

Yet another 180km day completed, 180km is a long time on a bike. For the first couple weeks of the tour i would get bored after about 100km and just want to be done ridding but recently ive upgraded my bored levels and i do ok until about 140k and then im just ready to be in camp. Tomorrow we have our third "century" (100miles) ride in a row.

For most of the day today I rode with Jon Elzinga, Julia, Kaitlyn, Jeff, and Justin we rode a pretty steady pace, not fast but not slow. It was fun. It was funny because Julia would go fast down hills and then Jon or i would get mad at her and say "hey brick slow down!" we call Julia are brick because we want someone to keep us going slowly.

One of the highlights of the day was when a Tractor pulling a hay bailer turned a corner in front of us and Jon, Kaitlyn and I quickly took advantage of this and pulled into the draft behind it. We didnt go very fast but we also didnt have to work very hard. It was awesome! The tractor pulled off after about 5km and we continued into the next town. When we were eating at the next town Jon said "i could really use anothe tractor" and within a minute a tractor pulling 2 huge feeder bings starts coming through town. I quickly shove my sandwhich in my mouth and Jon tucks his granola bar into his shorts and we take off again. This time going around 35km an hour with almost no work we drafted this tractor for around 10km. It was incredible! When it turned off we realized again how much wind sucks. lol.

We pulled into camp around 4:30 and then I sat in my chair and put my ipod on and was asleep within minutes. It was a wonderful catnap.

1 more long day and the tour should start to get easier.Yesterdays riding on nice smooth black pavement right after the rain.

Drafting the hay bailer!Yay corn!!! wahoo we love you corn.... lol

Longest sceduled day of the tour

Today was the longest sceduled day of the tour. Meaning it would be the longest day of the tour if I didnt go on those othe adventures that were rediculously long. lol.

Today I rode sweep With Nick, Annete, Ryan and Jim. We had a great time. We went to a little dutch store in town and sat and drank coffee and ate dohnuts for a while and then we went a ways and then at the 80km mark we sat down and played Eukre for about an hour. (while it was pouring rain.) We ended up getting to camp at around 7:30 making for a pretty long day, but we were blessed with a slight tail wind (supposedly around 5-8km/hr) and it pushed us along right to camp.

On another note, i found my camera! so when i have time i will probably start uploading pictures again. :)

bedtime!

thanks for your prayers (and comments)

Dordt College

Today we had a really "short" day. (still as long as my longest training ride) we did 98km from Souix City Iowa to Souix Center Iowa. The day was awesome. We stoped at a church along the way and they served us Rootbeer floats and some sorta strawberry banana drink it was wonderful. When we got here to Dordt College we got a dorm room! an air conditioned dorm room! We then found out that there is a pool with a hottub that we could get into for $1 They are also going to serve us food its awesome.

Tomorrow is the longest day of the tour, 182km. Lucky for me I get to ride sweep tomorrow. If you could pray for me for patience for the slower riders as well as for perserverence to get through the really long day that would be awesome. Another thing to pray for is pray that my camera shows up because i havnt been able to find it since the weekend..... im kinda thinking it may have been stollen in Freemont...

Dinner time!!! gooooooodbye

The prairies continued.

Hey everyone,

Saturday was debatable one of the best days of the tour for me. I left camp around 7:30 with John Vanderveen, we decided that we wanted to bike fairly hard so we warmed up for a bit and then we took off going around 30km/hr. When we passed Lawrance he decided he wanted to go fast so he took off after us and caught up quickly. At this time we had a side wind so we were in a paceline and we kept changing up the leader (because the leader has to break the wind and the guys behind get a bit of a free ride) We went hard like this all day but the best part was when we got to go north meaning we had a tailwind. When we went north we were going a minimum of 40km/hr and going fast is so fun!

Saturday night we were staying at a hockey rink! They had "freeskate" so we asked if they had any sticks and if we could play hockey. They agreed and for $5 a person we got a skate rental and a stick and pucks! About 20 of us (all but 1 Canadian) played hockey for around 3 hours. It was INCREDIBLE! just what the doctor ordered.

6 hours of biking + 3.5 hours of hockey = exhaustion

slept like a baby.

Sunday we went to church in Omaha "Im off to Omaha, spelled o-m-a-h-a, change planes in Minneapolis, why Omaha? a good question. Because its somewhere else thats why." Church was good it was nice to be in a building for church rather then outside like every other service this trip. It just felt a bit more like a church service. After the service they had food. It was really cool to talk to people and realize that they were behind us on this tour and to have the hospitality was incredible.

Today we had to ride 140km and we had another headwind. It wasn't 2 strong and i think we are just starting to accept it as a fact of the tour. Me and Justin road together for most of the day and we rode veryyyyy slowly. It was alot like Monday. At around the 90km mark we met up with John, Alex and Kyle and then we all rode together going very slowly and doing a bunch of random dumb things to keep entertained. Overall it was a good day.

We crossed the Missouri river into Iowa today, hopefully this state is more entertaining then the last. I wont get my hopes up.

"The wind goes West to East" ya i bet it does...

Today we had a brutal headwind. Headwinds are really frustrating. My average speed today was 24. It sucks when it takes just as much work to pedal at 24km an hour as it does the day before to go 32. Thats it for today, there isnt much to say about endless fields of corn and soy beans.

Comments on the blog are greatly appreciated because then i atleast know im not writing to myself. Also prayers are appreciated as this week and next have been and will be a pretty big mental challenge.

thanks alot.