Countdown to Triathlon – 208 Days, 29.8 weeks to Race Day (See Installment 45 of "The Journey", 220 mile bike ride, below)

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY -
Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen.

Leonardo Da Vinci

We just got back Monday night from Mendocino with our friends, Shirley and Lynn.  Here are some photos taken this weekend.  I've rested and relaxed (partially) and now am ready to get back to the training.  A funny thing happened though.  On Saturday, I decide to walk toward the ocean (a few blocks away).  If I had returned the way I came, all would have been well.  However, I said to myself, "I wonder where this street goes!"  I had a general idea of the direction I had come, but three hours later I still hadn't found my way back.  Someone asked me if I wanted to use the phone and call someone, but there is no cell phone activity there  so I couldn't call Bob or Shirley and since Shirley made the reservations in this great rental home and I forgot to get the address, I had to wander until I found my way back.  It was three hours of walking and my toes were really beginning to hurt when I found the street.  Bob was just leaving to look for me and as I turned into the street, there he was in the car.  Did I ever get a bawling out for scaring everyone.  I didn't take my cell phone because there is no cell activity.  I didn't consider that I did have a GPS which works off a satellite.  Therefore, lesson learned - I will always find out where I am staying and I'll turn on the GPS.  When I encountered people on the walk who wanted to help me, I told them I was doubly lost - lost because I didn't know where I was and lost because I didn't know where I was supposed to be going.  Can you say, "Stupid!"

Before I got lost.

On the way to Mendocino.  The whole area has trees covered with Spanish Moss.

Friday night we went to a cioppino feed and many of the guests wore a crab hat.  Bob wanted me to buy and wear one, but I declined.  Don't know this lady's name and hopefully she wouldn't mind that I put her picture on this blog.

The love of my life, Bob, eating crab.  The sauce was really excellent.

A wild turkey I encountered on my walk.  When I got close enough to photograph it, it took off running.

The California coast was really rough this weekend.  You can barely see the birds - the white dots on the taller rock.

To get in this surf would be suicide.

If I hadn't been lost, I wouldn't have gotten this great photo.

Old broken fence and gnarly tree roots.








The Journey - Installment Forty-Five

GOD SHOWS ME DEAD BIRDS

One morning as I was riding, with Hollen, a short distance behind me, with tears in my eyes, I was silently muttering to myself and the Lord that I was so miserable.  I looked down and saw a dead bird on the ground to my left.  Normally, I would not notice a dead bird while riding my bike.  But this bird, with its feathers fluffed out, which was of no particular coloring or one that you would normally notice, became very important to me.  As I passed the bird, all of a sudden it was as if I could visualize “ticker tape” crossing through my head from right to left.  On this ticker tape was the Scripture that the Lord knows even when a sparrow falls to the ground (Luke 12:6-7)  and He cares for the birds but how much more he cares for me (Matthew 6:26).  God gave me a dead bird to remind me that He cares for me, even though I was feeling that I was being tortured in doing this training and feeling that God had forsaken me.  So every day for five days, just about the time I would be tired and hot, crying silently and wanting to quit, I would reach the “dead bird” location.  That dead bird became my rallying point each day. As I passed the bird, I would mutter quietly under my breath, “Hi, dead bird!  Yes, I know that the Lord cares for me and loves me.  Thank you for reminding me Lord.”  Lest the reader think I had really lost my mind, perhaps I had.   Later after returning to California, God would continue to show me dead birds to remind me of His love for me and His presence on my journey.  This “dead bird” spot was approximately at the half way mark for our daily ride and just before “The Hill”.

As I have reviewed the above installment to the bike ride story, I just had what Oprah calls an “epiphany” or an “Ah-Ha Moment!”  After reading what I had written about the poor dead bird, I wondered what kind of bird it was. Now remember, the Bible verse that the Lord put in my head on ticker tape was about sparrows falling to the ground.  It has never occurred to me until this moment to wonder what species of bird it was or if  the bird might really have been a sparrow.  I always thought that sparrows were really tiny birds.  The dead bird in my story was larger than tiny, but not as large as a robin.  Of course, it looked bigger because it was all fluffed up.  I went on the Internet and typed in “birds of Hawaii” and that is exactly what it was – a sparrow.  The Hawaiian variety evidently is bigger than the ones we have here in California.  Leave it to the Lord to actually give me a sparrow.  All these years I have just thought of it as a“bird”.   

Here is a picture of a live bird similar to the one I saw dead on the ground.