Thanks.

On another note, I just found out I have relatives in North Carolina that I never met, and we got to connect through email today.  They told me they have a place for me to stay, and so needless to say, I am really excited about meeting them.

If you have a chance, take a look at our tour schedule page and see if there are any places where you know of people that would be willing to put us up for a night.  We are relying a lot on you, our friends and readers, to help us find people from all over who want to help with the trip.

• I have caught kids sneaking under our half-pipe to do, who knows what.
• I have watched kids hammer away at our lock until they broke it just so they could skate. At this time there was a sign with my name and number on it, just in case anyone wanted to skate. I guess braking it was just easier.
• I have watched kids run away with things previously stolen out of my office.

And today was no different. Today I watched a kid tag my ramp in broad day light, and then him and his homies proceeded to smoke some weed right there in plain view of the police. Funny thing is that as soon as I saw them walk up, I was going to go out and see if they wanted to skate the ramp, cause they had boards in hand. But as soon as I saw him tag, I was just mad. We get tagged here all the time, and it is annoying. Jim has painted that shed and ramp several times to cover up these guys stupid things they write all over the place. So once again I called the police, and just sat and waited for them to come and bust these guys. The police didn’t come until they were walking away, but I kept watching them even when they were halfway to Mayfair. I pointed them out to the police, and they rolled them right away. They all got tickets for possession, and the tagger got arrested.

I think there might be something wrong with me, cause I just enjoy this way to much, and I have zero mercy on punk kids who vandalize a church. What can I say, Rachel was right, I love justice and hate mercy. Maybe someday I will stop relishing in punk kids getting in trouble, but for now, I really do enjoy it.

“The more we associate money with life, the more we convince ourselves that we’re too poor to buy our freedom”

This is something I have been thinking a lot about in the last couple months, and since Paul’s comment about his friends slogan which was “Live simple, Live free.”  I think as a culture, we enslave ourselves to our stuff.  We buy things that we think we need, and then we have to pay money to maintain those things, and so we just end up enslaving ourselves more and more.  We do this with no mater what we buy, houses, cars, motorcycles, iphones.  The ironic thing is that the more we own, the more we enslave ourselves.  I have been working hard to own less things, so that I can be more generous, and so that I can be more free.  It is hard, even this computer I am typing on can be a hindrance.  We think we can’t afford to buy our freedom, but financial freedom comes when we just stop buying more than we actually need.

What if we just bought what we needed, maybe even just what we needed to be comforable?  I picture everyone living in airstream aluminum trailers, with crappy cars, and no yard, but maybe that is just cause I grew up in Victorville.  But imagine what people could collectively do with all that money.  On the selfish side of things, people could travel the whole world, whereve they wanted.  And on the philanthropy side, we could make it so that everyone in the world has access to clean water.

I don’t think having things is bad, I just think it is sad that we are so enslaved to our stuff, and so caught up in the idea that money is all there is, that we believe we will never be able to buy our own freedom.

*Note: Kozmo did eventually fix his bike.

Cheers

Ryan

1. Its the Holy Spirit’s job to convict, Its God’s Job to judge, and its our job to love.
2. We are called to live in relation to and relationship with the GLBT community.
3. The number one way to encourage someone in the gay community to pursue a relationship with Jesus (which should be our goal as the church, not trying to make them straight) is to teach them, and affirm the belief that God exists, and desires a communicating relationship with them.

What I was so blown away by, was that this is really no different then how we respond to any community that needs Jesus, but for some reason we act so differently with GLBT community.  Anyway, if you have the time check out there site, themarinfoundation.org.  He was a fun speaker to listen to, and he had a lot of really good points.

On a completely different note, the 605 has got to be the worst freeway to ride a bike on.  It is so bumpy, and just overall scary compared to any other freeway I have been on, even the worse then the 710.  I am the only that feels this way?

And lastly what is up with the fires today, it is really gross outsibe, and I saw on the news that over 10,000 people have been evacuated from their homes.  Lets remember to pray for then today.

The site is back up.  It was down for a few hours today, because of some glitch with our hosting site, but all is well again.

I thought I would also use this post to share some updates on what has been going on with trip planning.

We are pretty set on the cities we plan to visit, you can see those by going to our tour schedule page.  What we have been working on lately is getting all the church’s names and info together that we plan on visiting.  I am about 60% done with that, and I hope to be completely finished in the next week or so.  From there we are planning on trying to get a hold of these churches, via email and telephone, to schedule the time for us to stop by and visit.  When the list is complete we will have over a 100 churches that we plan on visiting, but for now, there are still a lot of cities where we don’t know of any local churches.  I am sure there are some there, but before I just start doing google searches, I thought I would list some of the cities we plan on visiting and seeing if any of you know of churches close to those areas. So here you go:

Baltimore, MD
Bowman, ND
Butte, MT
Cheyenne, WY
Coeur D’Alene, ID
Custer, MT
Des Moines, IA
Ellensburg, WA
Fairmont, WV
Franklin, NC
Keystone, SD
Knoxville, TN
Long Beach, MS
Louisville, KY
Manchester, NH
Memphis, TN
Miami, OK
Mobile, AB
Montpelier, VT
Murdo, SD
Nashville, TN
Oshkosh, WI
Pittsburgh, PA
Portland, ME
Providence, RI
Redding, CA
Richmond, VA
San Louis Obispo, CA
Seattle, WA
Sioux Falls, SD

The Poll is on the right side of the page.

Please feel free to leave comments on how Ryan’s bike looks already.

Here is what happened.  I was at Mid-Cities Honda looking to see if anyone made a rear crash bar for my bike.  I know pretty ironic right?  I even told the guy working there, after I couldn’t find anything that maybe I should just never drop the bike, then I wouldn’t have to worry about a crash bar.  I did not realize how far off I was.  I got on my bike and headed south on Lakewood, I was headed toward the freeway onramp to the 91 east.  I was just going to go to Bellflower Blvd, and stop by the church.  As i went through the first turn on to the ramp, I was going 20+ mph, I know because I did not have to downshift into 1st gear to make the turn.  Then coming out of the turn, I realized that I was going to fast for the second part of the turn, which was a sharp right u-turn on to the freeway.  I immediately straightened the bike out, and grabbed the brakes.  Instantly the back tire slid to the left, which makes me think I hit an oil spot or some kind of a slick spot, because that is not a normal reaction for a back tire to make.  I tried to straighten out the bike, but it didn’t work.  The whole bike flipped from leaning right to falling on the left side, and it kind of catapulted me off the bike.  I landed just a couple feet away on my left side.  My bike was still on, and for some reason the throttle was still engaged.  This caused the Bike to spin around and hit me in the leg, not hard, but enough to get my attention.  I jumped up, and turned my bike off.  It was then that I noticed the three cars behind me just staring.  Here is the odd thing, they did not look concerned, they looked annoyed.  I can imagine the thoughts going through their heads, “Stupid biker, serves you right for riding one of those things.”  None of them even asked if I was OK.  I picked up my bike, which wasn’t easy, pushed it over to the side, and eventually walked it back down to the sidewalk.

I examined my bike for damage, and all I could find was two things.  My left saddlebag was scratched along the bottom, which isn’t even noticeable from the side, and my left highway bar was bent back a little bit.  I got it started again and road it back to the dealership to have them take a look at it.  I get it back tomorrow, and hopefully that is all the damage done.

I know a lot of people are going to want me to quit riding, but I just can’t.  If anything this makes me feel more confident.  I know it doesn’t make sense, but to actually have an accident and walk away from it fine, scares me just enough to stay humble, but not enough to want to quit.  It does make me realize that full gear is essential, and that I need to be more aware of what is a safe speed at all times.  So far I honestly feel thankful.  Thankful that I had all my gear on, thankful that it was only around a 15 to 20 mph incident, thankful that God was looking out for me, and thankful that I have this experience now.  I actually have prayed several times, first that I would never crash, but secondly that when I did (Cause it happens to everyone) it would be a humbling experience, something that I can learn a lot from, and something that I could walk away from.  Today was both, so thank you for answering my prayers God.

Now, go ahead and leave your smart mouth comments.  I deserve them.

Anyway, he walked off, and I didn’t think nothing of it.  Then last night, when I was riding home.  I stopped in Santa Barbara for dinner.  Went in to a Mcdonalds, which I normally hate, but it is hard to find any fast food places in downtown Santa Barbara.  Anyway, the guy right in front of me in line, was the same guy who asked how far Santa Barbara was the day before in Pismo.

So I asked him his name, he said John.  Then i bought him some dinner, and we chatted for a while.  Turns out he is 19 years old, grew up in the foster care system, and has been hitchhiking his way up and down the coast, and back east for 2 years.  Pretty nice guy, but once he found out I was a pastor he was a little distant in talking about himself.  I tried to let him know that I didn’t care what he had done, and that it wasn’t my place to judge him anyway.  Once he realized that, he had some pretty sweet stories.  You should ask me about the guy if you would like to know more.  I wish guys like that had blogs, cause they seem to have the most adventures.

So this last Friday, Jack, Ryan, and I rode up to San Luis Obispo to hang out with our group of friends, Ron, Ian, Justin, and Dave. They called it Mancation 08, but I had a conflict of interest because that was the same name Goldsworthy, his friend Doug, and I named our backpacking trip back in April. Nevertheless, mancation 2008b, was pretty fun. Here are some of the crazy things that went down.

Friday morning on my way to Jack’s house, I saw Drew with his wife Jen, I’m guessing he was dropping her off somewhere, cause I later saw Drew again on the 405 up in LA. Pretty random seeing someone on the road twice in one day, in two different places.

Anyway, the ride up was fun, until we got past Santa Barbara. From there on there were really strong winds. So much so that in order to go straight we all had to lean hard into the wind. Ryan’s bike is probably the lightest, and so it looked like it was getting tossed around the most. It was very scary, and many times I really thought I was going to get blown right off the road. Speaking of going off the road, Ryan had an incident, but I am going to let him share that with you.

We camped in Morro Bay, and it was a pretty cool place. Here is a picture of Ron and Ian, down by the water.

(For more pictures from our trip click here)

Anyway after camping, we went back to SLO to have lunch, then hang out at Justin’s. It was pretty funny cause we all just passed out on Justin’s floor at the same time, I was the first one to wake up, and so I took a couple of photos of everyone asleep all over Justin’s living room.

Then we went to Pismo Beach for a while, and when we came back to Justin’s. I packed up, and headed home. Now I got on the road around 6:30 at night, just about a half hour before sundown. It was a pretty cold night. My gloves are thin, and not meant for the winter, so my hands were literally numb the whole way home. I have never been that cold on a motorcycle before, but I powered through, and made it home around midnight. It took me a while cause I stopped frequently trying to thaw out my hands.

I learned that I probably wont want to ride at night on my trip, at least not as long as the nights are under 60.