What's up?

Hello, hello! Time for a little catch-up I believe. The map you see is a GPS overlay that my friend Lloyd produced from our Saturday ride. He mounted the GPS on his bike and got what looks to be a really accurate representation of the ride. It turned out to be around 67 miles and what a beautiful day it was. We rode with fellow teammate Pete Kresmery. Pete works with Lloyd and he’s a strong rider. Pete actually rode to Lloyd’s house in the morning and logged about 8 more miles than Lloyd and myself. It took approximately 6 hours to complete. We are racing in a 42 mile marathon on Saturday the 1st at Stony Creek. I’ll be racing against Lloyd and Pete that day (this puts me in at least 3rd!). I don’t plan on finishing anywhere near the front of the pack but Lloyd and Pete do have a good chance.

Sunday turned out to be quite a whirlwind day too. Sunday morning I drove to Detroit and was given the opportunity to lead worship in a church/mission/homeless shelter. (If you follow my link to “the core” you can see some photos posted by Pastor Ed). Several Wesleyan churches have adopted the work and are having a 5 day youth mission trip there. So we had a nice crowd and a very good time of music and preaching. I really enjoyed it. I did however lose my voice. I haven’t been singing at all since Easter Sunday and I really gave it all yesterday. On top of that I went to see Nine Inch Nails at Pine Knob (DTE energy) last night and spent the rest of my voice trying to talk over the music and probably screaming a little. I went with Naomi and her friends Jeff and Aaron. I really didn’t know too much about NIN but I do now. They rock very hard. I liked it a lot. I’ve been in a hard rock kind of mood the last few months for whatever reason.

Last weekend was awesome too. Veronica and I went to Petoskey and did some riding and paddling. It’s probably too long a story to elaborate on here so I’ll simply state we had a VERY nice weekend. We rode our bikes on the Boyne Mountain trails and the Little Traverse Wheelway. We put the kayaks in Lake Michigan for a bit and then drove over to a launch on the Jordan River. We paddled upstream and then back down. I do not recommend this! The Jordan has a stiff current and we worked our butts off getting up it.

That’s a small slice of what we’ve been up to lately.

Nathaniel and Val went to see Chad and Regan in Manhattan over the weekend. Haven’t heard from him yet but I’m sure they had a blast. Chad and Regan are great hosts and I’m sure there was never a dull moment. Naomi stayed at Nathaniel’s house for a couple of day and watched their cat. Katie is working long hours on the weekends but has weekdays and weekday evenings off. Ben is glued to the laptop.