When you are traveling by bike for 8-9 hours per day (this includes breaks, lunch, and site-seeing too) your mind wanders. Here are the places my head has gone on the long stretches of riding…solving the world’s problems, reflecting on scripture, engineering some improvement to my bike set up, planning a project at home, singing the parts of songs I remember, praying or just counting stuff. Yesterday as we rode from Baxter to Sartell, I did all of these different things during our trip. This in addition to: the construction detour, an unplanned stop to let the thunderstorm pass and the normal navigation tasks.

Here is a peek into the stuff I counted:

Road kill – 2 deer, chipmunk, mouse, 2 birds, rabbit, and possum

Stuff along Hwy 371 – 1 work glove, 2 sunglasses, bungee cord, broken bucket, cigarette packs, parts of a truck tire and at least 3 banana peels

Mississippi River crossings – 4

Live critters – deer, cows, turkeys, lots of birds, some humans too

Blessings recognized – tailwind all day, cloud cover to stay cool, radar showed the storm, shady spot (with friendly farm dog) when waiting for the storm to pass, no bike issues, encouragement from friends, time to pray, nice hotel, warm shower and enjoying God’s creation all day with my wife.

Overall we had a great day. It was our longest but legs felt good – and so did a warm shower and nice dinner at the end!