Thursday, July 3, 2008

Yakima, as in the bike rack?

Tent city.
Yakima River. Alida and Jess.
Yakima River all day long. View into Selah, WA.
More of the same.

It is so hot in Washington many of us swam in a fishing pond today. After riding beside the Yakima River all day, I was looking forward to an afternoon swim, but the water was threateningly high and the current fast. The fishing pond felt good.

Last night I was woken up first by wind, thunder, and lightening. Then by the sprinkler system going off. It was a good test for our tents.

The ride today was quite easy—42 moderate miles. Most of us took our time. Alida, Jess, and I made several stops, including a “Heritage Marker” aka big rock cemented to a brick post and a coffee bar aka coffee shop/living room/convenience store/corny sign storage.

We have several opportunities along the way to serve in local communities. Tonight 11 of us served dinner at a homeless shelter. We were grossly over-staffed due to our over-zealous crowding of the sign-up sheet, so my only task of the night was to wipe of a table. But overall we were useful. It is a bit ("a bit" is a phrase I think I picked up from the Canadians) tough to do the "one night stand" service projects.

Not long after I made an off-hand comment something like, "We'll show them," refering to US patriotism for the 4th of July compared to the Canadians zeal for their July 1st celebration (which included lots of red and white, and frequent national anthem singing), we were informed that a group of Canadians bought 150 American flags for us all to sport tomorrow as an act of unification of our group. Does this prove that I am a jerk? This is really a great group of people.

1 comment:

Julie said...

Hi Laura Leigh, It is great following your trek on your blog. Keep up the good work. Great pictures,great stories. Thanks for putting peoples names on the pics - everyone looks the same with their helmuts on. :) Enjoy the adventure. MOM