T minus 9

The journey has begun!  Today we are on our way to bring our car near to the ending point of the bike tour.

We packed last night.  Okay, so maybe it would be more accurate to say we packed, weighed, added it all up, unpacked and repacked a few times. (Read: many times.)  We get to  bring 60 pounds of gear per person, including the tent, air mattresses, sleeping bags, clothes, spare parts, electronics, etc. We got to a point where both of us were too tired to trust our decisions about what to take and what to leave behind.  We went to bed knowing we still had to downsize. 

Things always look better in the morning, and this morning our weigh-in showed we had pounds to spare!  We must have been too tired to even do the math correctly!  But this was good news, because we could now use our heavier, wheeled duffle bag.  Every morning and night we will carry our gear between the truck and our tent site, so those wheels will come in handy!  Some days we'll lug our gear only 50 yards, but other days, it might be over 200 yards.

It seems that precious little has gone like clockwork in preparing for this tour.  We've had bike problems, backordered items, scheduling issues, end-of-school stuff, fundraising challenges, crazy windy weather for training, and the list goes on and on. 

When all the planning is said and done, all we can do is bring ourselves to this tour just as we are--feeling unprepared, questioning if we brought the right gear for the unkown weather conditions (especially in the mountains in June!), and realizing in the end that . . .

It is what it is.
And we are who we are. 
This tour will be what it will be. 
We're looking forward to it--the known and the unknown.
Through it all, people around the world will receive God's love in action.

Thanks for journeying with us.