This Guy Blogs: Bike and Blog - Almost Time to Turn The Handlebars Toward Home

I can't believe this trip is almost over. It's a bit surreal, glancing around at the 26 other crazy people that make up my team and knowing that we will never be one huge group again. We did our last century ride a few days ago, and we have our last build day a couple towns over. Before we know it we'll have our last ride day. My butt hurts, but they have chamois cream to aid that. Where's the cream to smooth over the ache we'll all have in our chest? That dull, longing of continuation, the desire to extend the feeling of freedom? I guess I really shouldn't be talking too much about the end because we still have 11 days to go, and that's a long time depending on how it's viewed.

Rolling right along, it's been forever since I've blogged (again), so sorry for the wait. We've crossed two more state lines since I've last updated you, and let me just take the time to say Wyoming is one of the prettiest states I've ever seen. So glad we got to spend a week there.

We managed to ride around in Yellowstone National Park, and it was so worth going broke over (Sooo low on money now). From the roaming wildlife to the bubbling springs, Yellowstone was gorgeous. When I get a job (some fateful day in the near future) I'm definitely planning a trip and taking my mom with me. I managed to see a lot, but sadly I wasn't able to see the grand canyon of the park. First stop on my next visit.

So I probably didn't mention this before now, but I've had a few animals on my to-see list, and I finally checked the last one off this week. I saw a moose when we were rolling past the Teton mountain range (such a magnificent ride), an eagle that same day, and I finally saw grizzly in Yellowstone a few days after those. I was only 15-25 yards away from it. I was praying and praying to see a grizzly, and God finally answered my prayer in the most specific way possible.

Let me just pause and say GOD IS AWESOME! Observing this mighty fine creation of his has given me chills a number of times before the trip started, but I've never experienced the breathless awe that's stricken me on more than one occasion this summer. It's truly awesome to serve a God as great as that.

We had our second to last build day today and it was only half a day. Not the most fun but it wasn't a bad day. My team was broken into three groups and my group went to the build site (one group went to a food pantry and another group stayed at one of the host church to help fold envelopes) and I helped shovel/compact some gravel for the concrete walkway. Also got to splice some boards together and other members of my group put up some drywall.

Missoula, MT is awesome btw. I'm totally gonna look for jobs here because it would be an awesome town to live in. Tomorrow is our last day in MT, and then it's back to ID for a few days before good ol WA. Completely unrelated, I finally partook in an ice cream challenge and passed...despite eating 3 scoops of ice cream and a burger within the same half hour. The challenge was over 7 pounds of ice cream...yum.