Mileage, after two days' riding: 110.09. I'm not a century man. Yet. Yesterday morning opened with the showers that follow nighttime thunderstorms and the urgency of a "front" (as they call it) passing through. But the day developed into sweet blue skies and a brisk wind out of the north (now there, to the biker who wants to be going north, is a front and an affront together). Oh, my, how these lake-shattered parts of Wisconsin do frown and wrinkle their grounds! The Kettle Moraine topography drives county roads up and down at wonderful angles. This second day of riding has already put my endurance to some sort of test. Susan found the contact lens I lost on Saturday. It was in my eye, having revolved around the eyeball. "Walt!" her bright, morning greeting: "did you burst a vessel?"

When I called her last evening, Thanne said she would drive from Valparaiso to join me in a week. Next Monday. Ah. That's the 26th. Our 34th anniversary is on the 24th. My bully adventures divide us too often at times too dear to miss. Thanne's good sense and love unite us again. Come, Thanne. The bed is wide enough.

I am astonished, as I ride, at the number of car and pickup drivers who are occupied by cell-phones. Their gesturing arms, their facial expressions, their laughter, grimaces, evident exasperations, their beetled intensities--these all testify that their hearts and minds are elsewhere, in another place with other people, not here, not schussing by at my left shoulder.

But immediately upon writing that last observation, my grumping judgments are drawn from others to myself. It is my sincere hope that, as this trip progresses, I will be more and more consumed by the goodness of this physical activity, by the natural manifestations of the Creator's goodness all around me, unobstructed by glass-and-metal boxes, by the kindness of the people who receive us, host us, and Godspeed us on our way, that I shall cease to be consumed by petty condemnations. Can grand experience drive out complaint? Well, not unless (either) that experience is genuinely transfiguring (or) the one who experiences experiences actively as opposed to passively: in the strength and the promise of the grandeur to examine himself, to confess the attitude that demeans this general existence, to seek and then by grace to obey the God of that grandeur that woke him up in the first place.

Travel will be shorter today: north from Delafield to Holy Hill, where I will be joined by a Bishop and an owner of a radio station and at least one pastor and a host of folk, with whom to cycle the rest of the way into Hartford, Wisconsin, and our second rally tomorrow night. But Dave Peters here in Delafield tells me that that Holy Hill is one ... holy hill!

God's peace, my friends. Peaceful spirits to you all.

Walt