Despite Billy Edmonds losing an argument with an attacking dog, we are all happy and healthy. I’d like to take a moment to shout out to our crew here on the Angel’s team. You’d have to see it to believe it. . .but these guys are AWESOME! They have done so much to make our lives better in every way – we’ll be forever grateful.
I think we’ve all had some outstanding moments in this trip so far. I’ll share mine and I hope we can get some notes down from the others riding, and on crew, as they might give you a sense of how inspiring this trip has been.
Yesterday morning I got to ride up through Monument Valley in Utah. This particular 25-mile pull started just as the sky to the east had started to glow a bit, and I rode right into the most beautiful sunrise. It was more uphill than I expected, and my speed dropped off to nearly a crawl. Dan and I had been riding all night, and I was tired. . .real tired. Anyway, in my lowest granny gear, and my speed hovering around the blinding pace of around 6 mph, I started perhaps dwelling a little too much on my sore butt and legs and forgot to look around and enjoy that moment.
I had my iPod cranking through a little speaker mounted on my aerobar; I had requested it to just play random songs from my library. And, as fate would have it, and as usually happens to me when I hit a low point, a member of my family came to my rescue, this time in a rather unusual way. My daughter Taylor had recorded a song she had been working on with her voice teacher, I think it is called, “Lo How the Rose ‘er Blooming,” or something like that. The name of the song, or, even the words of the song really don’t matter. Her beautiful voice all by itself in that cool clear desert air with the sun hitting the peaks of those wonderful sandstone monuments quite literally brought tears to my eyes – and even now as I type this, just the memory of that moment is nearly overwhelming.
I understand it will be getting hot now here in Kansas. Dan and I nearly froze last night crossing the Rockies. The temperature dropped to a low of 36 degrees for us and never climbed much above 50 degrees. We wore all the winter clothing we had and it still wasn’t enough. To bring some perspective on the difference between 2007 and this year -- this morning, in Monument Valley as my daughter sang to me it was 59 degrees -- in 2007 it was 118. I think we’ll pay for that tomorrow, but wow, what a difference.
Well, this is getting kind of long, and I have to get ready to ride. Thanks again for joining us in this adventure. And, I guess my advice to you all for today is not to forget to look around and appreciate what’s around you, even in those low times when you’re hurting. For me it took an angels voice to remind me of that at just the right time yesterday morning.
Steve
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