At Home in the Midwest

Tonight, we've been invited to share in some "hobo pie," a scoop of rice filled with pie filling. That's what we get for camping in the middle of an RV park that is mostly populated by several RV's that all belong to a church group. There are a lot of people who go camping together for a variety of reasons. And the more people there are, the easier it gets.

Even though our little band of tent campers consists of only five people, I'm constantly amazed at how widely supported we are, and hence how wide our influence reaches. I can't begin to name all the people who have helped right now, but in addition to all of those who have contributed to Operation Comfort Warriors, many contributed directly to our survival on the road. Some folks helped Pat get the van ready, contributed food, contributed a variety of camping supplies, and Pat herself has contributed above and beyond what is called for for most ordinary support drivers.

In addition to the support part of the trip, people have contributed beds for the night, meals, tours of their home towns, media coverage (today, we had a road maintenance worker come over while we were discussing routes, and asked whether we were the group from Oregon, because he'd heard about us on the local Christian radio program), and personal efforts to make our journey more memorable. Let me give you an example. Three days ago, in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, our local contact was a bicyclist named Joe Siebold. Joe had ridden across the country twice ... both the northern and southern routes. He had fallen ill on one trip and ended up in hospital in Bozeman Montana. But he loves cycling, and cyclists. He tried to get us sleeping berths on a submarine by the maritime museum in Manitowoc. When that fell through, he arranged for us to stay in the converted grain silo at Jon and Annette Henry's house. The house was almost literally a playground for teenaged kids, and that was all thanks to Joe, and the Henrys. The next morning, Joe even went out of his way to ride over to see us off, and to get to the ferry terminal in time to wave us off! Joe is the sort of person who makes our trip possible, and memorable. Since our journey is 59 days long, we will probably meet at least 59 people with big hearts like Joe and his wife Carol, like Jon, like Carl Atkinson, the Legion Commander who came out to join us for pizza dinner, and who is catching us along the road tomorrow with a reporter to help further publicize our journey and our cause.

It doesn't happen alone. Four of us are spinning the pedals. One of us is driving the van. But there are literally hundreds of people making our journey possible. We get to enjoy rides like today, when we had several miles along the Grand Rapids road-to-rail trails in 90-degree, 90% humidity weather, but found a swimming pool at the end.

So, time to go grab a bit of hobo pie, put on all my daily salves and ointments, brush my teeth, and go to sleep so that I can put in another 70 mile day tomorrow.