Well, I'm sure you can understand how thrilled I am to be home after setting out this summer on the high adventure of a solo bicycle race across America and back. It's even hard for me to believe how, at age 43, I made it 3,204 miles to the East Coast in just 24 days and went another 3,800 miles to the West Coast in just 33 days, climbing to the highest road in North America, 14,260 feet, at Mt Evans in Colorado on my way home.
But I'm here and still shaking my head and thinking, "God is incredible." I know I was not alone. You were praying for me. People across America were praying for me. And there was a girl up in heaven who I believe was smiling down on this whole adventure because it was done for her, to carry on the adventure she began when she wrote,
"Now I have given up on everything else. I have found it to be the only way to really know Christ and to experience the mighty power that brought him back to life again, and to find out what it really means to suffer and to die with him.
So whatever it takes I will be one who lives in the fresh newness of life of those who are alive from the dead."
As you may know, just two days later, this girl, named Cassie Bernall, a junior at Columbine High in Littleton, Colorado, was a typical teenager having a typical day when a couple of classmates stormed the school, planning to blow it up. They found her in the library, trained a gun on her and asked her if she believed in God. With courage that gripped the heart of a nation she said, "Yes," in the face of death. She died, defending the faith.
So I vowed that she would never be forgotten. I vowed that the raging guns would never silence the message she died for. I vowed to do something to carry on the impact of her life. That's how I became part of her adventure.
Today, my prayer is for everyone who hears my voice to hear not just my voice and not just Cassie's voice but to realize that it is the very voice of God calling all of us to join the greatest adventure on earth; the adventure of total commitment to Jesus Christ.
Does it seem strange to anybody to hear me describe a religious commitment as an adventure? Why is it that our modern Christianity comes across as a dull routine that fails to attract teenagers? Is God really the great cosmic kill joy our sinful little minds make him out to be or could he possibly know a thing or two about real adventure? Maybe God even went on an adventure, before. Imagine that! Almighty God, taking a vacation, going on a fishing trip, or skateboarding through my little town!
I found a book my father had given me, called, The Edge of Adventure: An Experiment in Faith, by Keith Miller and Bruce Larson. In this book Keith Miller states, "I believe life is meant to be an adventure." He quotes Thomas Carlyle who said about someone, "He was born a man but died a grocer." Everyone, perhaps questions whether they were born for a greater purpose than they currently know. Could it be that we were born in the image of God for adventure because adventure is at the very heart of God?
What is real adventure anyway? A simple definition from the dictionary states that adventure is, "an undertaking of a hazardous nature." Certainly a solo bicycle race across America and back qualifies. When you consider the vulnerability factor you immediately know a lightweight bicycle offers little protection from tons of steel vehicles flying past at 60-70 miles per hour. All it takes is one drunk driver or one sleepy bicyclist and it will be bye-bye to the bicyclist.
Here is personal evidence of the dangers involved in bicycling. I am holding my shattered rim that blew up two weeks before my departure this summer. It exploded from air pressure in the tires, simply caused by wear and tear on the rim. Next I am holding the devastated fork of my old bicycle that was totaled when a car hit me one week before the coast-to-coast trek I had planned for 1997. I survived the accident with four broken ribs, a shoulder separation, a broken finger on one hand and a big hole on the other hand; however, the journey I had planned was wiped out in a matter of seconds.
So this year, after my rim blew up I was really nervous at the start of the journey. I bought a whole new front wheel and was able to rebuild the rear one with just a new rim. I had to undo all the spokes and get them all back in the right order and tension. That put me behind a day in getting ready to go.
I was already short on time. Originally I had only planned to bicycle one way to the East Coast and then catch a bus home. My plans changed, shortly before Memorial Day weekend when God spoke to my heart to dedicate my trek in memory of Cassie Bernall after I heard about her on a radio program. God also made it clear that I should go to Littleton. Since Littleton was far south of my usual route I decided the best plan would be to try a double-transcontinental trek. It would be a daunting challenge since I only had 58 days available to go over 7,000 miles after subtracting the days off I needed: five days for visiting families I knew along the way and three days on the East Coast. I also needed four days for mountain climbing to fly a banner, proclaiming, "Jesus, King of Kings," from the peak of Three Eagles Mountain in the Rockies to continue heralding the return of Christ. Preparing the way for the return of Christ has been the focus of my life and bicycle journeys across America for the last fifteen years. My nickname, Brother Mac, stands for Mission Awaiting Christ.
The last day of school was Tuesday, June 22. I finished my bus driving job and hurried home. I still had 17 boxes of supplies to pack. John and Karen Stricklin had donated a huge amount of my food supply. Kim and Warren Bayne donated the bulk of my replacement bicycle parts. Sandra would ship these to me by general delivery to post offices where I had planned mail stops. If I got off schedule I would have trouble getting my supplies.
I wanted to be all ready to go by Wednesday at noon. My departure was scheduled for Thursday at the first stroke of midnight. I had planned to get off with a flying start, riding straight through for 24 hours, knocking off 195 miles to Coulee City the first day, riding over Steven's Pass, down to Wenatchee, up another ten miles out of the Columbia River Canyon and on another 40 miles to end up 2/3 of the way to Spokane. Not too many people knew what I planned to do. I barely had time to finish my itinerary. A few who found out said it was an insane schedule. But I knew if everything went well I could do it. Of course it is only on a rare occasion that everything goes well.
The first problem I had was that I did not finish packing up by noon on Wednesday. I had planned to sleep all afternoon and evening. In fact I did not finish packing until 11:30 p.m. So I only got to sleep for 20 minutes. But I had worked so hard trying to get ready to go on time that when midnight came it was a relief to get on my bicycle with my guitar in tow on the lightweight trailer I had designed and begin the journey on schedule. I only had 20 minutes to catch the last ferry leaving Kingston, five miles away so my trek was an adventure right from the start.
When I raced into Kingston with a few minutes to spare I was overjoyed to see the ferry still at the loading dock. Then I saw another sight that gave me a great boost. There on the dock at that late hour were Kim, Warren and Danny Bayne with a big banner to cheer me on my way. They also saved my journey by steering me on to the right dock after I started charging down the wrong one to a ferry that had already shut down for the night.
Well, to make a long story shorter I made it 194 miles that day. I was only 1 mile from Coulee City when my rear tire went flat in a rainstorm. I could see the lights of the city so close and yet so far away. "No problem," I thought. "I'll just put in my new spare inner tube." The problem was my spare inner tube only fit the front rim. So, then I had to take off both my tires, switch inner tubes, and try to keep track of everything I was doing while the rain and wind taunted me without mercy. But I'll be honest with you. I was so overjoyed to have the longest day of my journey already under my belt that I did not really care about the trouble with the flat tire. I fixed it, reached my destination, and finally got to sleep.
As I trekked through the northern Rockies I continued to stay on schedule inspite of being struck with diarrhea. Now that can be very tricky on a bicycle. I was lucky there were enough gas stations most of the time. I don't think you want to hear about the other times. I was very concerned about the danger of dehydrating. Then I met a woman at a gas station near Bigfork, Montana who needed help getting the air nozzle to work. She was trying to put air in four bicycles so her family could go on a little jaunt together. After I helped her I asked her if she knew of any remedy for diarrhea. I was very embarrassed to ask her this but she turned out to be a great help. She said that she had recently been struck with diarrhea, too. She told me about an over the counter drug called Imodium that would cure my ailment in quick time. In fact, she said she was going to buy me some right there at the little C-store in the gas station. And she did. I was very grateful. She saved my journey.
As each day passed I continued to stay on schedule. But I knew it would only take one bad storm, or one little accident to knock me off. Yet every day the Lord sent people across my path to assist me and others to whom I ministered. Right away my prayer to somehow get in touch with Cassie's parents was answered when I met a couple of computer buffs who jumped on the Internet and somehow got their names, address and phone number. I was overjoyed and sent them a bereavement card as well as information about the journey I was doing in memory of their daughter. I continued to send them post cards as I crossed the country and promised to call when I reached the East Coast.
The next day I was meditating on a verse from Psalms that states, "By day the Lord directs his love, at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life." Then a man pulled off the road to talk. He said he had been listening to the Moody Bible Broadcast when he saw me with the sign on my trailer, stating, "Jesus is Lord." He said it had a double impact on him. I shared my memory verse with him and said he had been one of God's messengers to me that day. About an hour later I saw him again. He had chased me down because he had a message for me. As it turns out, after he first left me he had gone to help his pastor with something. He discovered his pastor was busy studying an article about Cassie on the Internet. He immediately told his pastor about me and asked for an extra copy of the article so he could share it with me. It was the first article I had ever read about her and it also had her picture. I cried when I read about her and I realized I loved a girl I would never meet until I reached heaven. It was a pure love and it was good. And the verse I had been meditating on that day came true; "By day the Lord directs his love, at night his song is with me; a prayer to the God of my life."
On the 7th day of my journey I reached Roundup, Montana, having gone 944 miles. The next day was an off day on my schedule so I could visit a Christian couple who had given me hospitality on my journeys ever since we had met in 1995 at their church. At a Bible Study that evening the Lord spoke to me again. The message was on "Running the race with our eyes fixed on Jesus." The teacher made the point that we need to "see more of Jesus in this race." She said that we need to be aware of the mini-goals that the Holy Spirit is working to produce in our lives, the characteristics of Christ that are produced through sufferings and trials. This was an awesome preparation for the next 1,352 mile stretch across the Mid-West that I feared the most. I was afraid because of past experience with terrifying thunderstorms, having seen storms that tore metal roofs off big buildings and blew them for over two miles like a terrible plane crash. I had a long way to go in only 10 days. It would only take one day of bad headwinds to sink me. I'll never forget the song the teacher played at the end of the study. It was called, "Heaven is counting on you," by Ray Boltz. I quickly jotted down the words and hummed them over and over for the rest of the journey.
Heaven is counting on you. Run with a heart that is true. Carry the cross, reaching the lost. Heaven is counting on you.
And I couldn't help thinking of my father who had gone home to heaven in January and now Cassie and somehow I knew that heaven was counting on me. Heaven was confident that God would fulfill His mission through me
I got another big boost near the end of this hard stretch at my mail stop in Mellen, Wisconsin. I had just pulled through a setback the night before when I ran into road construction. When I opened my mail in Mellen, there was a letter from a Christian radio station in Chicago. There was also a fax from Mike Trout's office from Focus on the Family. The letter and the fax was an invitation from Mike to be on his show when he would be filling in for a couple weeks in Chicago for this radio station.
As I crossed the country I met other people who shared articles about Cassie they had printed off the Internet or copied from magazines. I also passed out hundreds of copies of a handout I had written about Cassies's last words, including her declaration of total commitment to Christ. I was continually amazed by how many people had already been touched by her courageous stand for God. Since I don't own a TV I had no idea how much her story had been broadcast worldwide. The more I found out about Cassie, the more I began to realize what an honor it was for me to try and ride in honor of Christ in her.