Installment 101 of "The Journey", 220 mile bike ride, below

             

The Journey - Installment One Hundred-One

         When we all got to the San Francisco side of the bridge, we all gathered again and the other riders made me go ahead of them.  I was so unsure of the route and I think I lead them the wrong direction before they got me heading the right way.  We rode into the area called Marina Green which is a large expanse of grass situated between Marina Boulevard and the boat harbor in San Francisco.  It is a little triangle of green which is a favorite area of runners, skaters, dog walkers, etc.  

This aerial view shows the road on which we finished the ride.

 

        About ten feet from the finish line, with me leading the way and about to cross the finish line first, I saw my Mom and Dad and daughter Laurel (holding up a sign made by the grandkids) so I pulled the bike over by them, and got off the bike while the rest of the riders streamed past me and over the finish line.   Someone came up to me and said, “Barbara, you need to cross the finish line.”  I got back on my bike and rode the ten feet or so crossing the finish line,  LAST.  I could have been first, but I was last.  At the end of the second day of the ride, when I commented that I was last again Lisa had replied to me, “Remember what the Lord said, ‘The first shall be last and the last shall be first.’”  She had no idea when she said that how true it was to be for the end of our ride.  I believe that God has a great sense of humor and that He must have been smiling.  He gave me the privilege of crossing the finish line first; me, the most unworthy and the most unlikely.  Did I take advantage of that honor?   People have asked me why I got off my bike so soon.  I think my answer would be that I never thought of the ride as having a finish line – just a finish.  When I got to Marina Green which was the goal all along, I felt I had finished.  What does a stupid little line mean anyway?   

(Don't quit now, there's more.)