Day 35 Valparaiso (Day Off)

Day 35 Valparaiso (Day Off)

Essence - Recovering

One of the best thing about day’s off is the chance to sleep in. In this case it was lonly till 7:30 but it was luxurious. I met Bob Bumke, Iron Mike, The Dimmitts and Jo and we all went to early service over at the Valparaiso school chapel. The Stanied glass int he main sanctuary was amazing - and it gave me an instant feeling of old church. The use and styling of the images and colors seemed to be very much of classic old church.

Our service was actually down stairs in another little chapel room. The had a very formal feel to it. Although it was Lutheran and celebretory of the resurrection of Christ, the machinations of the service made it seem similar tot he old Cahtolic mass format with kneeling to pray and a somber singing out of the Hymnalls and just very structured. While I liked the ultimate message, the delviery mechanism was not my style and I can see why as a kid it was hard to understand what they were talking about in chruch when I would go with friends or whatever. I enjoyed seeing a different style of church service, but in the end it really made me miss my non-denominational home church.

The service was quite nice though and seeing the beauty of the church was fantastic.




On our way out we found the baptisery fountain and I just like the perspective of circular stair.



After serviceI fetched my computer and headed into old downtown Valpo to find breakfast and get a chance to upload the blog.

After a really nice morning walk through most of old town Valpo, I found breakfast. Breakfast was the ever popular 2 eggs scarmbled hard and pancakes at Jimmy’s Cafe. Now the funny thing about Jimmy’s is that it was run by a Greek family with no one named Jimmy.

It was nice for the young single waitress to be my waitress and to get a biggger than usual smile out of her. Hey every single guy likes a little flirting and a littl attention from a girl. Another greek family came in who obviously knew the owners and brought their little girl who might as well have been family. Withteh conversation mingling back and forth between Grreka nd english, it was nice to see such a blend of culture in the middle of Indiana.

After breakfast I headed over to the local coffee shop and spent several hours uploading text and a few pics. Finally the connection was so slow I abonded the picutres and headed back to the dorm. I saw Lisa G on the street and she clued me into the local ice cream shop. Ummm yummy. A double waffle cone scoop of Raspberry and double chocolate. Walking back with my ice cream in hand, I chatted with some ladies who were having a “Dog wash” to raise funds for their Chicago 3-day Breast Cancer walk. We shared our experiences of fundraisnig challenges and bigger goals. I donated some cash to them just as strangers had donated to my campaign and wished them well.

Back at the dorm and not ready to face laundy and bike cleaning, I went off to school library where I actually got all my pics uploaded in a heartbeat. I stayed later than I wanted to as I was getting hungry, but I was compulsive to get the week’s blogs uploaded and back up to date.

I found many of the riders also blogging in the computer room. If you can’t find a rider on rest day, go to the nearest internet access point.

See....



heading home I was hungry and trying to decide what to do for dinner, when Kelly and her mom Carol invited me to eat wth them as they were grilling outside.



Dinner with them was so so wonderful. Kelly and I had a chance to share stories about how the ride was so much more to us than pedalling. Kelly’s stories about overcoming and challenges were really encouraging to me and really helped me reset my mind to enjoy the next 2 weeks and not wish them away.

Finally I did do my laundry and chores and got ready for another week of riding.

By the time I went to bed, I was looking forward to riding again. Larry’s words and Kelly’s stories and my own blogs had moved me to change how I would ride the next 2 weeks and what my attitude would be. I fell aslepp looking forward to it and to take it all in again.

Recovering.



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