We tried to visit him last night, but he had just gotten out of surgery, and so we couldn’t.  I went back today with our friend Ron and said hello.  They didn’t want us in there very long, just because he needs to rest a lot.  He wanted to pose for a picture to show everyone he is in good spirits.  Just a warning these pictures may be a little graphic.

Here is a picture of his helmet

And his backpack, that is not paint.

If you know Ryan, then you know why he is more than OK with me posting these pictures.

Last night I was riding home and noticed my odometer was about to switch over to 30,000 miles.  I pulled over and snapped a picture real quick.  Sometimes, a lot of times actually, I miss my old life on the road.

I did some math, since that is what I do now, and if I rode those 30,000 miles at an average of 50 mph that means I spent about 600 hours on that bike.  Just to give you an idea that would be the equivalent to 24 days straight on a motorcycle.  Which means in the last 30 months of my life, one whole month was spent on a motorcycle.  I am pretty proud of that.

For now it would be great if you guys could just pray for his family and friends, and especially for his wife Rochelle.  They just recently celebrated their one year anniversary.  Sad news, but please keep them in your prayers.

I will still be updating this site with any relevant information pertaining to the trip, like events in the news or possible book updates, but other than that, you now know where to find me.

The first things I did when I got home was I started to work out daily, and cut fast food out of my diet.  We both ate a lot of unhealthy food on the trip, and gained a bunch of weight, so I am trying to cut a few pounds.  My goal is to have lost 25 pounds by my sister’s wedding this December, I have already lost about 12.

I have also landed three different jobs, thats right 3.  I have 5 hours as a video/graphic producer at Parkcrest Christian Church, I am running a skate park at Westside Christian Church on Fridays, and I am a substitute teacher.

It is weird doing normal things like going to work, and not wearing the same clothes everyday.  I have become especially fond of making food at home, something that was never a habit before the trip.

We were featured in the Press Telegram again shortly after I got back, and are actually working on maybe getting a TV spot with a Christian Network.  I will let you guys know more about that if it comes to fruition.

As for the book, I have been slowly working on putting our story together.  Writing is complicated, and not one of my best skills, but I keep telling myself that my only goal is to write a bad book, and then hopefully I can give it to someone else who knows how to make it into a good book.

Lastly, Aaron Caluza and I have had a great time with our new podcast at RealLBC.com, so if your a local, you should tune in some time and tell us what you think.

I think that is it for now, but I will keep you all updated.

Tomorrow I start the job search, and what will hopefully become a daily workout.  On top of that, I am starting a new local podcast with my buddy Aaron Caluza for all those people in the greater Long Beach area. It is called realLBC.com, and the first episode airs this Friday!

I also stopped by Calvary San Luis Obispo for an interview with Pastor Bryan Stupar.  I had a good time talking with Bryan, and it was great to hear about how they do church in a college town.

Tomorrow I go home and the trip will be over!  But I have one last stop on my way home.

I tell you this dream, beacuse recently I had a similar one.  I dreamt that I was back home, but there was no freak out, I was hanging with family and friends and just excited to be home, and starting life again.  I again woke up in the middle of that dream, and this time instead of being relieved that I was still on the road, I was disappointed.  This is how I knew, the trip is over, and I am ready to go home.

With that said, I am finishing up visiting with my good buddy Dave Radford and his wife Angela.  From here I will see my cousin in Monterey, another friend in San Luis Obispo, and then home.  I have 2 more churches to visit on the way home and I am pretty excited about them both.  One is Calvary Chapel SLO, and the other is Cornerstone in Simi Valley.  I am actually visiting Cornerstone on my last day on the road, and I am pretty excited about that cause Francis Chan, the teaching pastor, is one of my favorite preachers.

I am excited to see Dave and Angie this weekend, and am also excited cause I have two more interviews left to finish off the trip with.  I am going to Calvary Chapel San Luis Obispo, and Cornerstone Church in Simi Valley.  Then I will be home, and the trip will officially be over.  Can’t believe this had been my life for the last 5 1/2 months.

After visiting with my grandparents, I stopped by my great aunt Betty’s house.  I helped her with her computer, it was a pretty nice dell computer, but like any PC it was full of problems.  I think people over 60 that are not familiar with computers should just buy macs, they are so much easier to use for someone like my aunt Betty.  I felt bad for her, cause if I was not there she was going to pay someone just to figure out how to change the color scheme.

After that I went to my uncle Kent and aunt Dawn’s house to visit them.  I have two cousins there that live with them, Savannah and Jada.  Savannah is a HS athlete, and I was going to watch one of her games, but she sprained her ankle while I was there, so I didn’t get to see her play.  Jada is almost 4 years old, and she is just full of energy.  She is always singing, running around, or talking about something going on in her imaginary world.  It was a lot of fun to hang out with her, especially since I only see her about once or twice a year.  Yesterday I helped my uncle lay tile, he is a contractor and so it was cool to learn how much work goes into making something like a bathroom look so good.  After a long day of laying tile last night Kent, Dawn and I went to a casino.  We all had a great time, probably cause we all won.  I enjoy hanging out with my uncle, he is bold, loud, funny, and likes to have a good time.

I hope to try and spend more time visiting that side of my family in the future, I always have a good time with them, its just too bad they live so far away.

Tonight I am staying in Brentwood, and will be here for about a week.  My old youth pastor, and some of my old youth leaders live here, and so I am going to spend some time with them helping out at their church, Creekside Christian Church.

I left the fair early, I wasn’t exactly making much money.  I was only making a percentage of every video I sold, and lets just say videos were not the most popular thing.  I did make a good $100 in about 4 days of work though.  Its not a great wage, but its the most I have made the whole trip.  Before I left Sammy and did get to hang out at the fair.  Check out this little video we made.

After the fair I did go back to Zach and Emily’s house for a few days, but I finally left Monmouth yesterday. It was kind of hard cause I really felt at home there. I love the people there, and I appreciate the small town style of life. I don’t know why, but everything seems so much simpler there, maybe it has something to do with less billboards and signs around every corner, and more trees and nature, even if most of it is farmland. Before I headed out I stopped by Zach’s parents house and a had an encouraging talk with his dad, Dale. I want to take this adventure of Ryan’s and I make a book about it, but have felt very insecure about doing that. Dale had some good things to say that really made me feel encouraged about our story, and I think he is right. We have been on the adventure of a lifetime, seen the whole country, and seen the amazing things the church is doing all over the country and all over the world. I will put something together at the end of this, not sure what exactly yet, but a trip this amazing deserves some kind of record.

I rode about 245 miles yesterday, most of which was in the rain, or was at least cold and wet weather. Jerry recommend that I stop by Applegate Christian Fellowship on my way south, so I did.   I didn’t go to a service, but instead went just to check out their outdoor amphitheatre. It is a beautifully landscaped place, check out this picture.

One of the first things I thought being a tech guy is that there is no place for media, or videos, but then I quickly realized, that when you are this close to God’s beautiful creation during worship, you don’t have much need for videos or other media to help drive your service.

After I left the church, I found a trashy little campsite in Jacksonville for $15 a night. The place did not usually have tent campers, mostly just RVs, and mobile homes, and therefore the camper’s restroom was pretty run down. The shower had been used as a storage facility for quite some time, and there were a lot of spiderwebs over the urinal, which also had a trash bag hanging over it. Luckily there was one working toilet.

As the sun set I could see a beautiful display of whites, pinks, and dark blues in the sky. It reminded me to be thankful of God’s beauty even in the midst of a dumpy little campsite.

I went to bed early, around 9 pm, and I did not sleep well. I think I have slept on my little backpacking air mattress for as long as a person possibly can. I am frankly just sick of that thing, so it is a good thing that last night was likely my last night camping. I should have a house to stay in the rest of my trip home.

When I woke up this morning I felt soar and tired. But after I packed up all my stuff, got back on my bike, and turned the music on in my helmet, I was reborn with energy. I thought I would be sick of motorcycles by now, and there are a lot of things about riding a bike that I am sick of, but this morning I was as excited or more than I have ever been before to just ride. The mountains here are gorgeous and full of trees, and so I suppose that has a lot to do with my excitement. The beauty again reminds me to be thankful, thankful for this trip, thankful for all the new friends I have made and all the old ones I have visited, thankful for all the wonderful things I have seen all over this country, and most of all thankful to be alive and living as fully as I know how.

The interview went fine, but the cool thing is that yesterday Jerry and I went for a ride all through the mountains here around the Salem Area of Oregon.  We did about 200 miles yesterday, riding from Keizer to Estacada then to Detroit and then back to Salem.  It was an absolutely gorgeous ride, and I was having a great time riding, until about 15 miles north of Detroit when a bee flew into my helmet and stung me in the eyebrow.

For now I am living in a tent at the state fair.  Its pretty fun, and we like to tell people that we meet at the fair, that we live here.  By we I mean my buddy Sammy from college, and I.

I don’t have a lot of pictures, but I do have this fun little video.

My path from Oregon was great, Started off the trek home by having a great dinner with Dave and Chisti, can’t ride motorcycles hungry!  I left there house fairly early Friday morning and made it 430 miles to Eureka, Ca.  I was pretty sore after that but saw some good sites along the coast.

Saturday was an average day of 200 miles but it was pretty hot.  I met up with Dustin, Heather and their kids in Santa Rosa.  Great people whom I wouldn’t mind seeing more often.  Dustin made Carne Asada which I haven’t had since leaving Cali, hit the spot.  I went to church with them Sunday morning and got her Dustin speak and spent a little of time answering questions for the high school group.  I had an outstanding time in Santa Rosa.

Later Sunday I rode a whopping 80 miles to San Mateo to see Dave and Angela Radford, Dave being a good friend who I’ve known since Jr. High.  Had a good time catching up with them.  Oh I almost forgot, I had In N Out for lunch and dinner on Sunday.  It has been so long but yet it feels like I never left In N Out, they still taste as great as I remember.  While I was at the Radford’s I got a call from my dad saying he wasn’t feeling to good and that he might not be able to meet n Morro Bay like planned.  Were going to wait and see how he feels in the morning.

I called my pops around 9am to see what he wanted to do and we came up with the game plan of meeting at an In N Out in Newhall, CA (Magic Mountain for you So Cal people) and go the rest of the way home from there.  I had lunch with Dave and left around 1:30pm for my 400 mile ride.  Finally got to Newhall around 7pm.  It was great seeing my Dad for the first time in months!  After dinner we finished the ride together.  It was really fun to ride with my dad, he rode out with us on the very first day back in March and then he finished the trip back with me 5 months later.

Maybe I should have wrote this in the beginning but there really has been some culture shock in being home.  I have experienced life to the fullest, living by the seat of my pants for 5 months and now I’m back home.  It feels like just yesterday I was curled up in the fetus position in Michigan waiting out a thunder storm in my tent.

So for a few statistics:  I rode a total of 19, 335 miles over the course of the trip, used approx. 400 gallons of fuel, 1 ticket (Fix it ticket thank you CHP), rode a motorcycle in every state, and a whole lot more but those are the big ones.

Thank you to all for your support in this crazy adventure!  I can’t even begin to thank all the people who helped along the way but you all know who you are and you should all know that this trip could not have happened without all your help.  Thank you.

Ryan

Sammy, another friend from College, drove up here Tuesday cause he is going to be working at the State fair in Salem, which is about 20 minutes form here.  The two of us hung out yesterday, and it was a pretty productive day.  We went fishing in the morning with Zach’s friend Matt, then Sammy took me and another one of Zach’s friend’s, Kyle, off roading through some  back roads here in Monmouth.  After that the three of us rode bicycles over to Kyle’s house, I was on a tandum bike with Kyle which was pretty interesting.  We went over there to chop fire wood.  Chopping wood is actually pretty fun, but it does take some hand eye cordination, which is not exactly one of my strengths.  It was a fun day.

This afternoon I am going to head into Salem to see about working at the state fair with Sammy.  Sammy is going to be the photographer, and I might be the videoographer.  So I will be sure to post that up here as soon as I know what I will be doing for the next couple weeks.  As of now, I still don’t know when I am coming home, cause I haven’t known exactly how long I was going to be up here.  Maybe I will be able to put a schedule together tomorrow.

(Here is a picture of me on my way to Seaside)

This morning I left Seaside and headed towards Seattle, or more specifically Issaquah.  On my way I stopped by Long Beach WA.

I am staying with Doug again who we stayed with about 3 weeks ago.  I came back up here cause I have an interviewed scheduled with Mike Howerton from Overlake Christian Church.  After the interview I will be heading back south again to Monmouth OR to hang out with Zach and his family some more, before I start slowly making my way down south.  I would like to get a temp job in Salem, and hang out here longer.  I really like the northwest, and the smaller towns.  Life is just a lot simpler, but there are also a lot of things that are not as easy to come by, so it is a trade off.

Today Ryan headed home.  School starts for him in just a matter of days, so he needed to start heading back.

I on the other hand, have no reason to get home, so I am slowly making my way home, and I am starting by going North instead of south.  I still have several interviews to do, and one of them is in the Seattle area.  I will be going back up there on Sunday, and then coming back down to Monmouth on Monday.  I do not have an exact schedule yet, but I do know everywhere I am going to stop on the way home, the problem is that I have not yet decided how long to stay in each place, especially how long to stay here in the Portland area.  I really like this area, and so I am not in a rush to leave it, especially since I have a lot of good friends up here.

Here is all the places I plan on stopping at on my way home:

• Medford, OR
• Monterey Bay, California
• Redwood National Park
• Redding, CA
• Brentwood, CA
• San Mateo, CA
• San Luis Obispo, CA
• Fresno, CA (Maybe)
• LONG BEACH, CA

As soon as I figure out how long I am staying everywhere, I will keep you all up to date on my schedule, but as of now it feels very freeing to not have to be anywhere.