I got into Brentwood Saturday night.  I have been staying with one of my old youth workers, Chris Kuykendal.  I have pretty much just been hanging out and being lazy, except for today I did go to the gym on Scott and Kathy Kirk’s guest pass.  I swam for the first time in 6 months, and I could barely do half a mile.  Friday I am going to a JH event with the church, and then Sunday I am sharing about the trip with Scott’s church.  I am excited about it, Scott even had me make up a flier to be put out at coffee shops and stuff.  Brentwood is a nice area, everything is new, and it is mainly young families.  I don’t know if I could live here or not though, but so far it seems pretty easy going.

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.

I had a great week last week.  I spent the week with my family that lives in Redding.  First I went to my grandparents house for a couple days (dad’s side).  I had a great time hanging out with them, espcially my grandpa.  He is almost 81 years old and has cancer, and while that does make me sad, I still can’t help but be impressed at what a tough old brute my grandpa is.  This is not his first battle with cancer, it is his 4th go around with it.  On top of that he had a stroke about 10 years ago, and plenty of other health problems.  And get this, he smoked for 55-60 years of his life, the only reason he quit, and this is what my uncle tells me, is because for a short period of time after his stroke, he simply forgot that he was a smoker.  I will be sad when my grandpa passes, but really I am shocked that he has lived this long, some people don’t even see 55 years of life that smoke like he did, let alone 80.  It is a sad thing to hear him talk about Chemo and all the effects it has had on him throughout the years, but he is determined to last as long as possible, and I couldn’t be more proud of him.  Speaking of hearing him talk, every time he shared a story from his youth, I secretly recorded it on my iphone.  Now I was not doing it secretly cause I think he would not want me to, but because I think it would just confuse him to know I am recording him, plus I think he might be bashful in front of a mic.  He is an interesting man, and I want to be able to share his stories with the rest of my family long after he is gone.  Maybe some day I will have grandkids, and I can share his stories with them.

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.

Earlier this week I went to Countryside Christian Church and interviewed Jerry Christiansen and John Thompsen.  Jerry Christiansen used to work at Parkcrest Christian Church, which is my home church, but he has been up here in Oregon for about 10 years.

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.

 

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Well I am working at the state fair, but it is my appointment only.  There is a horse show here that lasts all 11 days of the fair, and there are about 60 -80 classes (different horse show competitions) each day.  In all honesty, I think it is really ridiculous, but what I do is if someone asks, I film their show.  So on busy days I may film quite a few, but today I don’t have any sign ups, at least not any so far.  Its kind of nice cause then I have some free time, to do whatever I want.  I will be working here till labor day, and then shortly after that I will start heading south.

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.

Well I made it!  Monday night around 9pm (Pacific Time) I pulled into the driveway of my dads house in Long Beach marking the end of my adventure.  Since Monday I have been hanging out with all my old friends, gone to school for orientation, and ate a lot of food!  No time for rest!  School starts for the semester this coming Tuesday and I am looking forward to being back on a regular schedule.

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

Well I got back to Monmouth some time Monday afternoon.  I have been staying with my friend Zach, his wife Emily and their daughter Chloe.  My friend Zach says I have to do chores as my rent to stay there.  The first day I edged their lawn, yesterday I brought him lunch at the farm that he works on, and today I mowed the back yard.  I actually like this arrangement, but I am sure I will be moving on eventually.

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.