So the morning started at 6am, this place is absolutely gorgeous in the morning.  Did I mention my room has an ocean view?  Yea, and it is a college dorm room.  There is something just not right about that.  Anyway, got up and had breakfast early, and was pretty relaxed, however I did feel pretty tired.

Later on we had rec time, which was pretty fun.  It was the typical crazy competitions, where they have divided all the kids into two teams, and they play crazy relay games against each other.  My team is called the Roboboogies, so of course we were dancing a lot.  We also made cut offs with our camp shirts, and then used the sleeves as head bands.  So yea, we looked pretty awesome.

I totally intended on surfing today, but I wanted to take a short nap first.  That nap ended up lasting 3hours, guess I was a little more tired than I had thought.

Night chapel was cool, but the session kind of dragged tonight.  There were no dancing robots with lasers, smoke, and bubbles tonight.  I know it is a little superficial, but I was really hoping to see it again, even though there was no real purpose.

The topics have been on the basic doctrine of our faith, which is a little scary for me to even think about talking to HS students about, but so far it has been good.  Last night Darin, our speaker, talked about who God is, and then tonight he talked about man, and what sin was.  I have a quote for you, which was pretty much my favorite thing he said.  When talking about how there are all kinds of sins, he said, “not all sin is big like kicking babies, or pistol whipping old women.”

Also the band is OK, but like I said in my Twitt, they are no Overdrive.  Oh and by the way, they called a kid on stage and shot him with an air powered tennis gun, while he was blindfolded .

Lastly here is our cool Flip video of the day.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhQbTMlSdTs]

So this has nothing to do with motorcycles or traveling cross country, its just that it is hilarious.  By chance Ryan, Alex, and Tyler heard the camp counselor’s phone going off in his dorm room.  They all decided to dance to it.  Here is what Aaron recorded:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoNJ1w-PaZw]

So Scott Schlatter and I rode are bikes down here to Point Loma University. It was the easiest 100 miles I have ridden yet. For some this may sound lame, but I actually rode 100 miles without taking a break, so I I was pretty excited about that.

Anyway, so far the camp is amazing. For starters, I already knew this, but I was reminded when I got here that Darin McWatters, is the speaker this week. For those of you who don’t know, Darin is the lead singer of an awesome band called Everybody Duck. In high school, Radford and I were big fans of Everybody Duck, especially the album, 8 seconds. The ironic thing about that album is there a song that makes fun of summer camp romances, and we are now at summer camp.

Also I have been really impressed by the program. They started off the week by letting all the kids into a pitch black chapel, so that no one could see the stage, or the seats. This caused people to find a seat wherever they could. It was chaotic, but kids were forced to sit where they could first find a seat, and not where all their friends were. They they started an elaborate dance and light show for about a half hour.

The lights slowly revealed a very elaborate stage. Here is a distant photo of it taken with my iphone. So that part was pretty sweet.

Then they played the rules video which was definitely the best camp rules video I have ever seen. They shot it so it would look like a trailer to a horror movie, where all the kids who break the rules get killed by a big scary robot. I was really impressed.

Lastly they had a neat idea on how to get all the camp information to each of the students. They made these sweet bandanas, and on one side there is printed the whole weeks agenda, all the memory vesrses, and all the devotional material. As soon as the kids got them they expressed their individuality by making sweet head bands out of them almost in unison.

Lastly, Aaron bought a sweet hat from the thrift store, so here is a creepy picture of me wearing it. Yea thats right, its a raccoon head.

So I have been reading Velvet Elvis, by Rob Bell, and today I came across something that was pretty inspiring to me. Rob was talking about church planting, and some of the questions people ask about it. Here is the passage from his book:

“People who are starting churches, or want to someday, often ask me when I knew it was time to do it. And I actually have a coherent answer: I knew it was time when I no longer cared if it was ’successful’.”

OK so what was so amazing about that passage to me was it completely identified the way I feel about this trip. Ever since Ryan and I talked about doing this, I have had this overwhelming feeling that it just isn’t going to work. That we are totally going to fail, and it will be a colossal waste of time.

Well a few months ago, I had an epiphany, or at least I think that is what you would call it. Anyway, I realized that the trip being a success was not really my calling, my calling was to just try, and if I fail, at least I will know I gave it a shot. I would much rather tell my grandchildren, if I ever have any, “When I was young I tried to ride around the whole US on a motorcycle,” than tell them, “Yea I though about doing that.”

That has been such a relieving realization too, to be able to say, yea I might totally fail, and wuss out, but at least I will have given it a shot. Its funny too because as people hear about the trip they will see me and say, “Hey I heard you are going to do some cross country trip.” My response is always the same, “I am going to try.”

So to everyone out there that might ever read this, I can not promise you any type of success, in fact if we do succeed it will only be because God has totally blessed us. The only thing I can promise is that I am going to try.

So I just got back from an over night trip up to Lake Casitas, which is just a few miles out of Ojai. Here is what my bike looked like for the journey.

On the way up I hit a lot of traffic, but just in LA. It took me over an hour just to travel the 40 miles to get past LA. I really don’t like that city. I took the 1 up after that and it was gorgeous. Its funny how I can feel a little nervous on the 5 going just 30mph in traffic, but on the 1 I was averaging around 70, and it just felt so good. There is something about riding with a bunch of cars in ugly scenery that just makes me so frustrated. Anyway, when I got to the campsite I made this quick little video post. Take a look at the temperature I was riding through in full gear.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/zt-9snEQGMs]

So on the way home from Santa Barbara, after our last video clip in that abandoned parking lot, Traffic got really bad and we started splitting lanes.  Ryan went way ahead of me cause his bike is easier to split with.  Also the heat got up to 95 degrees, and I was wearing full gear; jacket, gloves, full face helmet, pants, and boots.  So needless to say, I started to get really hot.  I had to split lanes just to get some air flow back, but it wasn’t enough.  Within a couple minutes of riding in the heat, I started to get a little dizzy, and almost made some big mistakes.  I pulled off and went to a fast food restaurant just to get some water and cool down.  Then on the way back I got stuck behind two big accidents.  After I finally made it home, about 45 minutes after Ryan, we met up and talked about what we learned about riding in the heat…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bisjxioc8L8]

So for Ian’s bachelor party we took a trip up to El Capitan to go camping. This was what we filmed along the journey.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/gf_nk3yTTgY]