The day we beat Matty in to camp.

Well this week has been filled with ridiculous heat and too long of days.. yesterday was a toughy the heat was insane-o, but we made it once again. Today Denise and I had a much better day. We got off to an early start.. well not quite as early as some.. but an almost sane hour anyways. We pretty well booked the entire ride, made only the necessary water fill-up stops at the sags and made it in to Minden, Nebraska by 2 pm right before the gear truck. Never thought I'd say I am in Nebraska.. Nebraska is full of nothingness and apparently has a serious infestation of grasshoppers. It is yucky. And, having made it so speedily in to camp, we also beat our fellow competitor, Matthew Zantingh. He claims this tour "is not a race", however, we know better than that, don't we Matt? Don't beat yourself up over it though, it's not like we're actually that much faster than you. : ) Well that adds up to another successful day for the Bentums.

We are half way! Can't believe it! We are being eaten alive by mosquitoes right now so signing off for the night!

Denver, Sweep, and Today!

Wow. We have had quite the past three days! Let me tell you.. Sunday in Denver we had the celebration service at a highschool football field down the street in the morning and we were sweating our faces off in the bleachers! We had a nice lunch there and then headed back to camp. Papa Kalamazoo was so gracious to do our laundry with theirs at a nice church member's house who lived nearby. That was phenomenal and it allowed for us to make the shuttle bus going from the school to downtown Denver! We toured 16th Street Mall for the day - a whole street of shops and restaurants - with a good bunch of people: PEI Brian, Matty Zantingh, Sarah, Zinger (on the bus), Jody, Paul/Doug, Florentine, and our new friend Laura who paid our bill! What a nice woman! We hung out for a bit in a really neat restaurant called the Hard Rock Brewery... they had 9 sample beers for $5 - some were good, some were not. Then we headed down to the Tattered Cover Book Store which was the best place of my life! no jokes Denise was in all her glory. Then we found our way back to the highschool on the train. For the rest of the evening Denise and I blogged like crazy!! We got some pics up! You are welcome mom. We slept in the school for the weekend and did not get sprinklered on. It was quite a slumber party.

Monday was THE most action-packed day of our trip thus far. Okay. So, it was our sweep day and therefore we ended up leaving camp at around 9:30 once all the gear was loaded up and everyone was out of camp. We lost a few dear members of our team this weekend.. Henry, Tyler, Kerri, Sylvan ( but he is coming back some day) and Dave - you will be missed. And so we gained a few stragglers for the day; Theo-the-last-one-to-leave-camp-always-Bandstra, Kaitlyn-my-precious-lamb-Kuipers, Kevin-i'm-a-baby-Pasma, Doug/Paul and our dear I-have-no-expression-ever-Lawrence. We got a late start to the day and made an immediate Starbucks stop on the trail. Kaitlyn had a teeny tumble. We tried to get in to the Bronco's stadium.. unsuccessful. Lawrence had two flats. The sags went on without us. Quick stop for $2 Monday margaritas! Had some Heidi chain issues, which Lawrence was quick to fix. We then thankfully hit Walter (our dear sag man) for a water stop. Then battled a ridiculous cross wind on the interstate with a looming storm on the left. We beat the worst of it. Made it to the free-food cafe (the owner took care of our bill as tithe to the trip : ) We waited out the downpour as well as our full bellies. And then took off for the last 30 k to camp in Fort Morgan under a pretty rainbow. We thought we had finally made it with no more problems.. buuuuut.. once we were in the city Lawrence was trying to be the trusty navigator, looking at his map and somehow a parked car ran right in to him! He was okay and insisted we bike on.. the car took the worst of it i think. Anyways we arrived at camp that night at around 8:00pm and could not quite believe our day. That is a 13 hour day for us, mark that down for the books.

And today is Tuesday. We had another somewhat late start to the day, battled a rough headwind for most of the day and arrived at camp just before sweep. This somewhat tough finish was balanced out by a refreshing swim in the near by pool! Equipped with two wicked awesome waterslides and a springy diving board, it was free and we had the whole pool to ourselves! Very fun for sure. We are now heading in to beddy for an early morning start tomorrow is predicted to be a scorcher of a day. Good nighto. 

Made it to Denver!

Wowzers, what a week! We've had some brutally long days and we've climbed a whole lot of mountains! Yesterday was our one short ride for the week and we all just soaked it in. It was a total of 55 kms from Kremling, Colorado to Winter Park where we stayed at an interesting location.. seems to be that the States don't know what camp sites are.. we find ourselves pitching our tent in a ruckas of shrubery and weeds.. haa.. but we're getting good at this roughing it thing. It's surprising what you can do without around here. I haven't been in a mall in a month!
Today was our last mountain pass for the trip and we are happy about that. Though today's ride was really beautiful and it made for a really enjoyable ride. We arrived in Denver at around 3:30 today and were welcomed by a huge welcoming committee! It was so exciting to ride in to the Christian Highschool here with cheerleaders by the road and music and tons and tons of treats for us! Denver is so delighful! We also were showered with packages and cards from home when we got here, which is always soo refreshing! Thank you so much everyone who sent us cards and whatnot! It is such a treat to hear from home and what goes on outside of our little camp.
Well, it is time for ice cream social, these people are feeding us to the nines : ) Thank yooooou Denver. Love you, miss you byes.

"you'll coast right in to Dinosaur"

It is quite amazing how your perception of "flat ground" changes when you are on a bike. We have conquored a large number of hills these past few days and we are definately feeling it. It is sometimes hard to fully take in God's glorious creation around us as our thighs are burning and our bums are just about numb.. but it does give us the time to appreciate the flats as well as the ride down hill after the climb.
So, we get in to a small town on our ride yesterday and look for the closest location to pee.. it turned out to be Aaron's furniture store. We talked to the woman there about the tour and whatnot, she gave us some ice cold pop which was so refreshing and she had it in her mind that the rest of the road to Dinosaur, Colorado was all down hill and we would just be coasting in to the town. Well, needless to say, our elevation chart spoke differently and it was far from a breezy walk through the park. The last 20 kms proved to be the most enraging kms of my life! It's so strange how you can be working so hard to get somewhere and yet with a headwind and a bit of a hill, you could be walking faster than you are biking. But, we made it! And have now completed one more day!
Today was another looong ride. We had a beautiful cloud cover for most of the day and were also blessed with a little bit of rain this morning! Ever so refreshing. Denise and I biked with a pleasant little group for most of the day, however, sticking in a pace line up hills proved to be rather difficult. However, we made a few much needed stops along the way and are now in Craig, Colorado - finally a town with a real residential neighbourhood and a Walmart! no jokes! So, one more brutal day tomorrow and then we have a bit of a break on Friday. We can not wait for it. And that, is two new posts in two days! We are doing so well : )
Ps. Thank you Aunt Grace for the card and treat in Boise! Totally haven't mentioned that yet. It was so very exciting! Love you a lot!

Dinosaur, Colorado!

Whew! Today was a toughy. In fact, the past few days have been challenging. Since I'm sure most of you reading this have probably already heard from others about past days I will try to keep the update short.

Friday was our day to sweep. It was a very long day for us even though the ride wasn't too bad in itself.  The headwind slowed us down and we also made many stops on the way. Thankfully we had Theo and Eric pulling us along most of the way. It still ended up being about 12 hours from the time Heidi and I woke up to the time we got into camp. So! We were pretty exhausted that night.  Just looking at the map for Saturday was very daunting. 

Saturday was one of the toughest rides of the tour.  After 100 km of riding we still had to conquer 2 mountain summits and a few hills afterwards. We passed through Salt Lake City and moved on to Park City - a small but very beautiful (and wealthy) tourist town that housed some of the Olympic ski runs.  It took us about 12 hours on the road to get to Jordanelle Park where we camped for the weekend - we arrived at 7.  The park was absolutely stunning, although very spacious with a lot of walking to get from place to place. 

Sunday was a much needed day of rest. The service was at night so we got to sleep in! We toured the town most of the day and just relaxed. It was fabulous. 

Monday was another grueling ride. We're convinced Ed didn't provide us with an elevation chart for a reason. However, we made it up over the mountain summit - an elevation of over 9000 feet. A huge plus for us that day was cloud cover which kept the temperature down.  At the top of the mountain we took a small hike off the road up to a patch of snow with all the Stehouwers to have a small snowball fight. The wild flowers at the top were beautiful and the ride down was breathtaking! However, at the bottom of the descent we still had a long ways to go, including a few smaller climbs.  The last portion into camp was a welcomed descent that overlooked Starvation Lake. We made it into camp late in the afternoon again. 

As I mentioned before, today was tiring. The first 2/3 of the ride were fairly enjoyable, although the shoulder of the highway we rode on was a bit tight in places. Dodging glass, gravel, roadkill, and bits of tires while trying to avoid the rumble strip and angry drivers was a bit challenging. However, the last part of the ride got a lot tougher. The last 30 km were uphill and against a strong wind.  About 10 km outside of Dinosaur many people were losing hope quickly. Our destination was so close and yet so very far away. We still made it into camp at around 3:30 where there was delicious watermelon waiting as usual. 

Hopefully we will keep this blog a bit more updated in the future - most of the time we are just so tired coming into camp and internet is always a challenge. I am quite amazed at all those who can blog so faithfully. Hopefully we will get pictures up in the near future as well.

 Thanks for all the support and prayers! We can hardly wait to get into Ontario! 

 

Biking biking biking..

Well, yes i suck at this blog thing. First blog ever and i'm realizing it's hard to keep one of these guys up, but that's also because our internet situation is very off and on, and more often off than on. Anyways, we're in to day ten already! wowers, that's hard to believe actually. I am finally writing at a decent hour of the day having arrived in Baker City, Oregon this afternoon and had a nice little dip in the river here.. the past entries were written in exhaustion in the first few days of the tour and I realize they were a little incompetent at times. So the tour! It's been quite a ride thus far. There have been some really tough days and some really not so tough days, so I guess that balances out, however, the tough days at times never seem to end. Like yesterday, for example, Denise and I were on 'sweep' which is the groups that helps with dinner and breakfast and then are supposed to be the last ones to camp at the end of the day. So this can turn out to be a very veeery long day for some. It was a 92 km day yesterday and it was quite a trek up twisty hills and having to pick up the rear can be exhausting. Making it to the top though is always pretty rewarding cause the view was beautiful and then you have the ride down which was so so so beautiful yesterday! So the pain of the climb can be set aside and you can really enjoy not pedaling on the way down. 

Denise and I are currently flat free which is quite a blessing! A few other tidbits from the past few days aare.. we finished last week with a few easier days which was really nice after the mountains we climbed earlier on. We have played some pretty intense games of spoons, we were welcomed by a church in Sunnyside, Washington with tons and tons of yummy cherries! We ate an awful lot and tried to carry on with the ride for the rest of the day. The weekend was awesome to have a day off. We had a nice service in the morning and went to a pool of one of the members of the church there for the afternoon which was so refreshing. So! We are making it through.. meeting tons of great people and having probably one of the best summers of our lives, eh Neice? yes we are. : ) 

July 1, Tuesday

We were one of the last groups to leave from camp this morning, which was understandable considering a few of our group members. ha ha.. juuuust kidding. Denise and I were not quite prepared for the glorious mountains.. however, we took our time and made it up despite the fact that it kicked our faces. The ride down was a delightful treat. Well, were pretty sore tonight. Just had a delicious dinner and are so ready for small groups! woo woo. anyways, thats the lastest updates here.. it's going to be a bit challenging to keep this up throughout the tour since Denise is ever so helpful. But we're going to do our best. for mom's sake : )

June 30, Monday

Had a bright and early start to the day, got everything loaded in to the huge sea to sea truck and then made the 13 km trek down to the beach for dipping of the tires ceremony and a lovely breakfast provided by some churches. We were sent off in our 'safety groups' for the day which proved to be a test of our patients at times, however, it turned out to be a great start to the tour and, despite a number of crashes, falls, and popped tires, we all made it to Sultan, Home of the Turks. We set up our tents (with a little help) and went for a little swim in the negative degree water. It was refreshing, we had dinner and were once again, ready for a little slumber party in our pretty two man tent. : )

June 29, Sunday

Sunday is a bit of a blur having to be from one place to the next and having not much time for anything else. We got some sweet bike safety instructions, orientation for the tour and had a nice celebration rally on campus that evening for sending us off the next day. We were still feeling the jet leg and were once again ready for bed by 7 pm. ha. 

June 28

Woke up at 3:30 am Saturday morning to what was to become a rather long day. We finished up some last minute packing of the truck and headed off to the Pearson Airport. Right when we hit the 401 we were absolutely dumped on.. the entire way there. Our bike boxes got drenched which led to a somewhat stressful departure. With very little help to get the boxes repaired, we were forced by the tape lady to give up the packing tape and the wet boxes were shipped on to the plane.. left in the hands of the Lord. We had a connecting flight in Chicago before making our way to Seattle, Washington. Met a nice young marine sitting next to us on the flight and he entertained us for most of the trip. We were greeted by some huge sea to sea vans at the airport and were trucked over to U of W. It was beautiful there. We built our bikes (with a little help) and fell asleep like precious little lambs.