Wednesday July 1st - morning

6:30 am and I am packed and ready to ride another 380 miles to get me into Nebraska. Very cold last night sleeping, very cold this morning. If it were a hundred degrees, which it normally is in South Dakota in July, I would be whining that I couldn't sleep. I made a daily commitment this morning that I wouldn't complain today, only rejoice. They had a double header last night with the baseball games. I went to bed after the first. I thought that the noise would keep me awake. It didn't, but at 10 pm when the second one was over, they set off a bunch of fireworks. I guess the home team won or something. I didn't get up to see where the fireworks were, but it sounded like they were right outside my tent:-O When I got up this morning there was a baseball laying by my tent, evidently a foul tip. I took it as a souvenir and will give it to one of my grand kids. Well, I have read 5 chapters in Psalms this morning, prayed through it, asked God to fill me with His Spirit, give me strength, give me wisdom, to guide in every detail, to keep me from having any accidents on my bike, and not let it tip over.

I like South Dakota. The only paper I could find in the McDonald's that I stopped to get coffee in at Pierre, was a "Capitol Journal". For you unlearned people, that is the premiere farm newspaper. If you asked somebody why that is the only newspaper, the answer would be, "who cares about anything else?" I saw dozens of pheasant this morning next to the road getting grit for their craw. Very pretty birds. Very good roads, very little traffic, a little wind, wide open fields of corn, grain, and grass. You can almost see the thousands of buffalo that once roamed over the fields. One other thing is that is nice about South Dakota is the road signs that I have seen, most are pro-life. Very well done billboards.

I got thinking as I was riding this morning how easy it is to pretend to be something you really aren't. Rick in Rhode Island took me to the biker bar and introduced his friends to me and told them what I was doing. He was proud to be the one showing me off to his friends. They shook my hand with obvious admiration. I thought, Yeah, I am wearing the right clothes, I have the biker wave down, I have learned to sit on the bike with a sloutch, but if they knew how many times I have tipped over in parking lots! If they knew the sick feeling I get every morning when I start the old bike up again. If they knew the number of times I can't remember if I shift the lever up or down when I come up to a stop sign. If they could witness the number of times I kill my bike starting out from a stop sign because I am still in second gear instead of first. I guess until I get it all figured out and become a real biker dude I will just pretend. I don't want to do that as a Christian. I want to be real and genuine with God, others, and myself. Only then can I become the real thing, a mature son of God.