A Week of Firsts

Man, it's been a while since I've been on a computer!

So where did I leave you guys. Ah yes, we were at the church in Michigan. And we had a build day there in Edwardsburg.

The work we did was on a full house. All 30 of us did various jobs, ranging from insulation to building the garage (me!). There I am cutting something to put in the spaces between the roof and the walls of said garage. It was a super hot day, but the progress we made during our work was very apparent and quite satisfying.


There's Laura, Eileen, and Jason working on the house front, which, might I add, looks fabulous now.


There was a lunch break in there somewhere, and the organization we were working with provided some great food.


Afterwards, a few of us had the brilliant idea to go swim in the lake. For some reason, only three of us ended up going. Jeremy talked with one of the guys who was interested in what we were do ing, and he ended up offering each of us a ride on his jet ski! My first time! There's video of this, and I'll post it up sometime.


The lake was just beautiful. It was lined with waterfront houses and there were some people out just lounging, swimming, or boating. There was a patch of waterlilies (?) out there. I've never swam (or is it swum) in a lake so pretty!


We later headed to dinner, where Alicia, Jason, and Angel were deep in thought. Well, they were trying to tie cherry stems.


Even later that day, there were a couple guitars lying around (one of which was a twelve-string!) and so we got to do some songs and listen to each other sing and play. Perhaps my favorite time this week.

When we set out to go to Chicago, I was just so excited to get back to my city (Frank you better be reading my blog now). Early on, there were some golden fields lining our way.


As it was a long day (112 miles?) we had two lunches, each of which were generously provided by two families. Here we are at our first lunch stop, enjoying some sandwiches at a museum park.


There's Jeremy riding towards a cooling tower. I've never seen one of these before, so I was particularly thrilled to ride up by it.


And here we are in Chicago! On the lakefront path, to be exact. When the skyline came into view, it was quite exciting. As we pedaled down the lakefront path I know so well...

...this was not the icy-cold Chicago I knew. She had changed so much! Haha, there were people packing the beaches and even SWIMMING in Lake Michigan. Who knew Chicago had it in her all along. Not me.

The next day, on our way to Wildwood (Grayslake, if you look at the website), we decided to go back into the city a bit. There's video of this, too. We had a great view. My favorite part of this was hearing a jogger say to her running partner "Oh! I saw these bikers on Michiana!" Michiana is a road (a beautiful beachfront road) we biked along earlier the day before.


We paid the Bean in Millenium Park a visit, and took about a bajillion pictures.


So, on our way to Janesville, we took this picture at the Wisconsin border.


In Janesville, I got to meet Ali's parents, among others. (Hello! and thanks for everything.) Janesville has a very successful waterskiing team, and we ate dinner at the riverside park, so we got to see them practice for their show. Wow, it looked awesome, and I wanted to try.


Well guess what! Ali's father took a bunch of us out on his boat and we all got the chance to try! There's Will doing some wakeboarding. He's really good. Me, not so much (at waterskiing). There's a video of my attempt out there somewhere, perhaps I'll get it posted one day.


The next day, we all woke up and went to Mocha Moment, where the owners provided a fantastic breakfast for all of us. A great coffeeshop.


That day was a build day in Janesville, and I did some work at the House of Mercy. Later, we went on to work with Community Action in demolishing a house. (Is that Kelsey and Wade?)


More demolishing.


Later that day, we went to the Boys and Girls Club to give a short bike clinic.


It just so happens that I was in charge of writing the trip journal for this day, so I feel like this would be a great time to plug our journal. Just click on that pencil. Specific to me, I put some more detail about this particular day on that journal.

This morning, the paper had an article mentioning us.


This is a couple of us on a ride in Madison.

Met some cool people in Madison, including Marcus (hey Marcus! Hope you consider joining up some time).

Well, I gotta go. We have a build day tomorrow here in Madison, and I'm pretty excited to look around the city!