Day 7: Rest day in La Junta

This morning we rode our bike the 5 miles or so to Emmanuel Mennonite Church – with out all our panniers.  Richard and Fannie brought our stuff so that we could bring our bike into church fully loaded.   Our hosts were part of the music team leading singing.

Dave read My Piles and Rows of Coins for the children’s feature and after riding our loaded bike up the aisle, together read “Riding Tandem Through Life” before pastor Steve Schmidt took off on the ideas of trust, communication and respect as applicable for individual and church life as well as tandem bike riding/marriage, calling the sermon “Riding Tandem With Jesus”.   He put the main points and some tandem photos on screen as we talked.  Steve has a very personable way of leading worship, praying for concerns as soon as they are voiced during the sharing time.  Several members stayed for a potluck lunch and some good visiting time.  Steve had taken the news release info we sent and there was an article with photo in the local paper.

   Pastor Steve Schmidt in action

   Alma Kuhns and Esther Heatwole

After lunch we headed straight for the library and I started adding more photos while Dave worked on formatting our website so that everything comes up right.   We’ve not been able to see all of the site in some libraries and visitors haven’t been able to comment for the last several days.  Dave may change the theme in order to improve the presentation.  That explains why our site may look different than the first time you saw it. 

While we were at the library, Gladwin Bartel came in and gave us a whole stack of local postcards, something we wanted to use as thank-you’s for folks who donate to the Generations at Risk Bicycles fund.  Thank you Gladwin and Lois!  They are aunt and uncle to my college roommate Reanette B.

As we were heading back to Swink, it looked like rain.  I slept so well last night, I don’t know if it ever did!   I sorted through our, or should I say, “my” stuff and came up with a couple of pounds we could ditch.  Lois Bartel is coming to Newton in a week or so and will carry it back.  We also picked up the drum brake that Ruth Halliday from Bicycle Pedaler had ordered for us from Precision Tandems in Kansas City.  It had arrived at the church in time.  Dave’s not sure it will work…it looks like the hole was reamed to make it large enough and is not quite centered.  The reason we’re not sure yet is because…

While trying to get the brake put on, he discovered that we had cracked the rim on our back wheel on the rough roads/railroad tracks in eastern Colorado.   Since we’d already ridden quite a few miles like that, we thought it could probably get us to the bike shop in Pueblo. 

Richard is a mechanic for Morelands in Rocky Ford and likes to restore old green (they must be green) tractors.   He has donated several to the MCC Relief Sale, some were given to him to restore for the sale. 

Fannie  has nurtured both wild and garden flowers and her roses were particularly great this year.  She is a nursing home administrator in Rocky Ford.  They are motorcycle enthusiasts and have done enough touring for Fannie to identify with being in the position of powerlessness on the back of the bike that I talke about in our devotional reading. 

We enjoyed our stay with them, they were wonderful hosts!