Celebration Sunday, Mundane Monday, and Tim-Horton's Tuesday

Well... I think it's a noticeable pattern that my blogs have been getting longer and longer. This is partly due to how far apart I space them, but also how much great stuff happens that I want to share! To keep it short, I'm going to try to break up the past 8 days into a couple of posts so as not to overwhelm you, and include simple explanations of pictures to reduce reading and writing time.

Sunday in Grand Rapids was mostly busy with the celebration rally put together at Calvin College. So many people came out to support us and join in the celebration, and gave a warm welcome to all of the cyclists there.



As Cyclists we walked our bikes in around the upper level track. We were applauded in with a standing ovation!




We were also able to raise over $6000.00 from an offering taken at the service! It is also a tradition to have several cyclists speak at each celebration service about what the tour means to them. This week Cristeena spoke for a second time and did an amazing job of not only helping everyone to understand why we are on this trip, but also her story of a young boy named Michael helped us to realize that poverty has a face. She really did an amazing job! It moved many to tears.



Monday was pretty low key. A regular riding day, except one of the new riders for the tour was sporting a different sort of riding equipment...




Jaspar is our Unicylist who bikes 10% of each day's ride on his unicycle, and the remaining 90% on his bicycle. Now, although it's a cool trick, Jaspar doesn't do this to just show off his skills, but because he says that people in poverty have a handicap, and he wants this ride to reflect the experience of poverty as much as possible, so he has given himself this handicap for part of each day. It's pretty neat and gives a lot to think about.

Monday night we stayed in a State Park and set out Tuesday morning we set out for Imlay City, MI - our last overnight stay in the United States before we entered into the Canadian portion of our tour!

Well, Tuesday's ride was another "every-day" ride, 122km to our destination. It was pretty and again, full of corn fields. I decided to spare you all the pictures of corn which all look the same anyways, and instead talk a bit about our afternoon once we arrived at Imlay Christian High School.

Well, arriving at the school brought many surprises. Not only were we provided with indoor sleeping (my favourite), but also Tim Horton's doughnuts! All of us Canadians had been dreaming of getting a Tim Horton's fix the following day in Sarnia, ON, and were so pleasantly surprised to receive it early :) After a quick shower and setting up headquarters in the school a few of us decided to get a bit more Tim Hortons in our systems, so Julia, Matt, Sara, Laura, Zach, and I all head out on our bikes :)








This was a special event not only for us Canadians to have some Tim's back in our systems, but also for Laura (our token American) who had never experienced Tim's. Well... the Iced Capp was amazing. At least for the first few sips :) Laura wasn't that impressed, but what can you expect from an American?

As we head back to the school we passed the local fair that had started up that day. At an intersection we heard children yelling at us to come and buy something. Curious, we head over and found that these kids (there must have been 7 of them under the age of 10) were trying to raise money so they could go to the fair! Their parents had purchased no-name pop as well as water and were selling them for $0.50 each. To help them out we all donated a dollar :) After all, they were so cute!



We found out after that each ticket to the fair cost $15.00. Now, even without doing the math it was pretty easy to see that these kids would have to sell a ridiculous amount of pop to afford tickets for each of them to attend the fair, and no kid should not be able to attend a fair because of something as small as $15.00.  So, when we got back to the school Laura and I went around telling a bunch of people our story, collected some money and people and head back out to their house. The parents and kids were so excited to see us again. In fact, one of the young boys was holding a small dog and was adamant that I come and see the graves of his other dog and bunny... Luckily I was saved by a photo-opp before I was dragged around the back of the house to the pet cemetery.  I'm not sure if they ever did make it to the fair, but I like to think that our contribution made a small difference.




For Wednesday (the day we get into Canada) through the rest of this week, stay tuned! my hope is to post again tomorrow to continue filling you all in on the events of these last few weeks of the Sea to Sea 2013 tour! Blessings!