Last night we stayed at a dumpy little motel in Athens OH.  We didn’t do much of anything except cook some chedderwursts and watch TV.  I did venture out of the room for a short while to go to a local coffee shop.  Athens seemed like a pretty cool town, old buildings, old uneven brick roads, which aren’t great for riding a bike on, but are nice to look at.

This morning we headed to Clarksburg WV, which was only a 11o miles ride.  For some reason my GPS was not working for the first 1/2 of the ride, but half way through I restarted it for the 5th or 6th time and it finally started working.  Since my GPS wasnt working, and Ryan’s gave him different directions than what I had thought, we ended up splitting up for part of the trip.

It was while I was by myself, just 30-40 miles outside of Clarksburg, that a bird flew towards me, I ducked not wanting to hit it with my helmet again.  It tried to dodge me, but I was going to fast, somewhere between 65 and 70.  It ended up flying right into the little pole that holds up my left mirror.  I instantly started screaming like a little girl into my helmet.  Not only cause I was shocked to hit the bird, but because it was now stuck on my mirror, and didn’t look like it was going to come off.  So I pulled over, immediately went for my camera, filmed a short video, and took a quick picture.  Check it out.

Ryan and I met back up at the really nice hotel room that Clarksburg Baptist Church put us up in, and now we are relaxing a bit more.  We did take a very dangerous walk to the Kroger across the street, but other than that it has been a pretty relaxing day.

Miles yesterday: 75

Miles today: 115

Total Miles ~11,750

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Sunday morning we headed over to Grove City Church of the Nazarene to check out their service.  It is a big church, with a lot going on.  The facilities are top notch, and the people were great.  We met up with pastor Don Bowman for the podcast, and then afterwards he bought us lunch.  He was a very nice guy, and very supportive of what we are doing.  Thanks Don, and to the rest of you enjoy…

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Our friend Aaron hooked us up with his buddy from college Ray.  Ray was a cool guy and very interesting guy.  He invited us to tag along with him and his friends as they went to a baseball game.  It was the Indian farm team the Columbus Clippers vs the Lousiville Bats.  The Clippers lost but it was still a good time.

We always have a great time when we stay with people who are willing to show us around their city or town, other wise we have no idea what to do while we are there.  After the game we went down to the Scioto river and checked out waterfire.  Basically they light these floating fire pits and out them out in the water.  The fires are big enough that you can feel the warmth on shore, but not enough that you could actually touch it.  Along with the fires there was live music, and other artsy things.  I thought it was kind of cool, it almost felt like a beach bondfire night.  The pictures don’t really do it justice cause the iphone doesn’t take good pictures in low light.

We were fortunate to get some time with Pastor Rocky from Brookside Church.  He was really nice to meet with us at such short notice.

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We got into Fort Wayne Wednesday night.  I have a lot of extended family there.  First we went over to see my Aunt Nancy, below is a picture of her from when we had to go to the Honda Dealership to pick up a part.  I think it fits her well.

We actually stayed with my other Aunt Nancy, who is actually the sister in law to the Nancy pictured above.  Thursday night some of her kids and grandkids came over for dinner.  They would be some more 2nd cousins that I had never met.  I had met some of their parents, my mom’s cousins before, but that was over 15 years ago.  It was real nice to catch up with all of them, and get to know what they are all interested in.  I can’t tell you how cool it is to meet family members that I never even knew of.  I guess I have a pretty big family really, they are just scattered all over the US.

From left to right, and hopefully spelled right: Nancy Jane, Sherri, Barbara, Tony, Jeff, Nancy, John down below, Alyssa, Rich, and then Ryan and me at the bottom.

Tuesday morning Ryan and I took the Metra down to downtown Chicago, and saw a few of the famous sites.

Here is the top of that tower which we couldn’t even see cause of the fog.

This is me enjoying a Chicago hot dog.  It was overpriced and not all that great, I think I may have gone to the wrong street vendor or something.

If I was a better photographer, I would have shown you that this church is right in between 2 towering buildings, with literally nothing in between them.

This is the famous giant mirror bean in the downtown park.  I personally think it looks more like the spaceship from Flight of the Navigator, which by the way I hear they are making a new version of.

This is a picture of a group filming a short film there called Beatiful People.

And this is the concert hall in the park.

After downtown Chicago, we headed back to the hotel room, and then over to Willow Creek where we had a meeting set up with the High School youth pastor there, but it ended up not working out cause he had to be out of the office that day.  But we were in luck cause the receptionist was very nice, and she gave us a tour of the place.  This is us with her after our tour, her name was Diane.

Sunday night we met up with pastor Alex Cobb (Below) from Bettendorf Christian Church.  He is a great guy, and they are doing some really cool things at their church.  In fact just recently they canceled service on a Sunday and had almost all of their congregants involved in service projects around their city.

The next morning we had breakfast with Ted and Janet Brown and their family.  They went to Parkcrest in the 90s, and so we have a lot of friends in common.  They were really nice, and we were thankful to meet up with them.

We stayed with a guy named Kasey (middle below) who lives downstairs from Brian and his wife Hannah (left below).  They were all real nice, and we got along great with them all.  Ryan and I both said it would have been nice to stay longer, cause it felt like we were old friends.

When we left Bettendorf Kasey wanted to ride with us, and we welcomed his comany for the first half of the ride.  When we got into Illinois we noticed a bolt had broken off my highway bars, so we had to stop and fix it.  At first we tried to fix it ourselves, but the bolt wouldn’t budge.  So we took into a shop that was nearby, and they were able to get the broken bolt out, and put a new one in.

Kasey was a fun guy to hang with, and very generous.  We might get to meet up with him again when we come back through the Chicago area.

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