If I could bike 100 miles..

4 years ago, I embarked on a bike ride around Utah lake with 5 of my good friends. Although it was a terribly long, terribly painful, wanted to kill myself sort of affair, there were good things that came out of it. Like the fact that my brother Josh and his wife Katie basically met on that bike ride (it was their first real date and lasted for well over 24 hours).

This last weekend, I decided to re-create it. Except this time we had maps (help prevent getting so lost), panniers to carry all of our water, good bikes, and only 3 people instead of 6. This time, I was the weakest link and by mile 60 started to get really tired. Thankfully though, it was surprisingly uneventful (no wrecks, no flats, not much rain, not much getting lost, etc). In fact, at the end Daniel was still full of energy and asked if we could do it again next week. I think though I will find some other route that has fewer cars, or at least more of a shoulder.

Louis BEFORE the ride, so fresh and fully of energy.

Look at that intensity

Somehow this was the best picture Louis took of me.

Daniel got to carry the supplies for a while.

Favorite things about the fall

Harvesting

Around the world in 90 days

We bought tickets for India. Well. We got tickets to Singapore and still need to get them from Singapore to India.

I realized though that our trip there takes us from SLC > Chicago> London> Singapore> India. On the way back we go from India> Singapore> Tokyo> Los Angelos> SLC. The trip will go from Sept 24- Dec 18. So in just 85 days we will travel around the entire world.

I think Daniel said it well when conveying our excitement

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Now that deserves a high-five

Work by Daniel Pipkin (written in 10 minutes for English class)

Short Sentences.

I approach the professor's office nervously prepared. Last night I fell asleep studying, so the information is there, but I'm tired. It's also a first time for me. I've never tried to test out of a math class I hadn't taken before. I eagerly turn over the paper, hesitating. First question. Not on the pretest. Sum of? Panic. Let's try. No. I can figure this out. Breathe. Well, next question? Oh no. What the? Must be the wrong test. Ask the professor? No. First page. Right test. Ok. Take it easy. You don't have to pass this. Just do your best.


Long sentences.

The more I learn about the world, the more beautiful it becomes. Here we have a tree, a tree that started from a seed smaller than a grape, encoded with instructions to organize the dirt, water, and air around it to grow into a structure taller than three houses, evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to capture light coming from the sun millions of miles away where gravity forces atoms so close together that they explode like an atomic bomb using the same process that produced the billion year old elements that make up the molecules inside of a seed.