Penny Winners

A couple of months ago, I had a crazy idea. I would give away 200 pennies to celebrate the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth year. 100 pennies to a commenter on my original post and 100 pennies to a follower of my blog. The contest was supposed to end on 9/23/09 I picked winners and emailed them to get their addresses so I could send the pennies and now a fortnight later I have still not heard from either of them.

I have decided to change course a little. I have picked new winners will announce they're names now as well as e-mail them. I also picked a third winner from all my post comments from the original announcement to 9/23/09. Confused? So am I.

Without any more hoopla here are the winners. The first winner is Georgie. The winner from my commenter's is Lizze and the third winner is Jennayouknow that blog. Hopefully they will all contact me so I can give these pennies away. Otherwise my life seems so incomplete.

Next Time: What to do with half a bagel

Cycling Update

On Saturday, I participated in International Teams ride for refugees. I wrote last week about my preparations here. Riding 30 miles was actually much easier than I had anticipated. Easy and worthwhile as I raised a total of $325.00 towards refugee work around the globe. I rode past many beautiful sights of Lake County, IL, including seeing some gorgeous horses. Incidentally I biked past a llama farm without noticing (we drove by them on Sunday, when I did notice.)

I was hoping to post some pictures of my trip, but in my hurry to bring my family, my bike, my helmet and my pledges to the starting point in time for registration at 8:00 am, I neglected to bring my camera.

On the way there I was reading to Charlie and the rest of the family a story about an inquisitive boy who constantly peppered his parents with loads of questions. This boy so reminded me of Charlie that I am interested to hear whatever became of him. The boy's name was Thomas Edison.

I was reading about how Thomas Edison had a job selling newspapers on a train. Since we were on the way to a bike ride, the story reminded me of my first bike trip almost 30 years ago.

It was Memorial Day Weekend 1980. My youth group along with several other local youth groups boarded a train headed for Wisconsin. Our bikes were packed in special boxes and handled as luggage. I think it may have actually been my first time ever riding a train. Once we arrived we stayed at a local church and biked 60 miles each day until we arrived back in the NW suburbs of Chicago on Monday.

I realized while I was riding that I was biking on some of the same roads as I had back in 1980. Some of the area has changed in 30 years but much of the countryside remained the same. Biking next to a teenager for some of my early miles, I realized the same could not be said of me.

I was glad that my family accompanied me on the ride. They're cheered really pumped me up as I embarked upon my journey. At the post ride lunch I saw several kids, my kids age who participated in the ride. While I feel I could have easily completed the 60 mile course this year and would like to do so next year, I think we will instead ride the 5 mile trek as a family.

After we got home I was not at all tired. Emma and I decided to go cycling on the bike trail before it started storming. We biked about 6 miles through Dundee and parts of Elgin. This is my favorite section of the trail as there is an underground bridge over the fox river as well as a castle. This time I remembered my camera and snapped some good shots of Emma.

The only disappointing part of the day was when I read on facebook shortly after returning home with Emma that a friend from my high school bike trip days who I haven't seen since Reagan was president had stopped by at the ride location at noon to see me. By noon we were already on our way back home. So, Joel and any more of my old bike riding buddies: let's all get together same next year and do the ride for refugees next year. We can even train together. I know this great spot with a bridge and a castle.

Next Time: Penny Winners

Differences

Martians are from Mars; Venusians, Venus.

Women are different than men, no duh! But men are different than men and women are different than women. So if I want to understand Amy, I don't need to understand all women and then branch out to Amy. I need to understand Amy, her needs, strengths, and intricacies.

Not sure exactly where I am going with this, except to say that interpersonal relationships are best explored individually rather than holistically. I think I have observed this more keenly because both Amy and I are more atypical than typical representatives of our respective genders.

Example: 12 years ago I bought Amy her engagement ring. I had been friends with Amy for about 7 years and we had discussed rings as friends. I knew she liked Emeralds and wanted an emerald engagement ring rather than a diamond. So I brought her an emerald engagement ring. I then went about telling friends and co-workers of my purchase. They were all sure that I had made a dreadful mistake in not buying her a diamond, or in just not letting her choose the ring she wanted. The only dreadful mistake was bringing the subject up with any of them. It turns out that while Amy's taste in engagement rings was atypical, my knowledge of her preferences was accurate. She loves that ring and I am confident that if I would have succumbed to pressure and purchased a diamond ring for her rather than an emerald all I would have communicated to her is that I did not "get" her as much as I thought I did.

So those are my Six words for this Saturday. To see what other word sextets are sweeping the cybernation head over to Show My Face dot com.

Next Time: Cycling Update

Three Things This Thursday

Hi! Welcome to another edition of 3 Things This Thursday. I'm Dave I'll be your host.
Welcome also to October. Which brings me to my first item which I have titled
#1 (catchy huh?)

Our family does not celebrate Halloween. Other families do and that's just fine with us. What really bothers me is that there have been Halloween displays up since late August early September. I mean early September. The kids and I were shopping for Amy's birthday (which is 9/10) and Walgreen's already had a full display of Halloween candy up. That was at least 52 days before Halloween! I mean how in the world are you going to keep Halloween candy around 52 days without indulging? Or perhaps that is the point of putting it out so early. I think that October first should be the first official day for Halloween displays. 30 days to sell costumes, candy and other finery should be enough!

2. Glee
I watched the premiere of Glee this week (The premiere was about 3 weeks ago, but I've been busy.) Glee is a new show on Fox this year about a high school show choir. It is supposed to have biting humor and good musical numbers. I liked the first episode although I am not sure I liked it enough to watch a second. It did not surprise me that the meanest and nastiest of the high school girls was portrayed as a hypocritical Christian girl. The musical numbers were good but unlike Fame I'm not sure that this show will live forever.

3. This year has been cycling intensive at our house and we have had some difficulty getting our oldest on the bicycle bandwagon. Emma was never that much into biking when she had training wheels. It was always like pulling teeth to get her on her bike. This year however she showed a little more interest especially when Charlie's training wheels came off before hers did. Within a week she was biking training wheel on free on Charlie's bike.

Emma has grown a lot in the past year and the bike she's had since she was 6 just wasn't cutting it. So we bought her a new bike that was just a tad too big for her. It was possible for her to ride it but she was so scared of falling off that it was becoming too difficult to coax her to ride it and put up with all the angst. So we tried this: we let her use her take turns using Charlie's bike and she took a real shine to it. She has been riding it almost everyday for the last two weeks.

So today with about 20 minutes left of daylight, I told her it was time to give her bike a try. She was far less than thrilled. What I expected to happen, happened. Over the past few weeks she has been learning how to balance herself, and when she tried her bike today, she was mastering it within seconds. Before we started biking, she insisted that she only have to ride once around the parking lot. We biked until dusk and even then she wanted to stay longer. On the way home she actually thanked me for insisting that she try her bike again.

As parents we often have a plan for the well being of our child. This plan is not always embraced by the child at the time. It is very rewarding when occasionally the child can get a glimpse that the parent has a pretty good grasp on what's best.

Those are my Three Things for This Thursday. Now it's your turn just link up below.

Next Time: Penny Winners Revealed

I'm biking on purpose, for a purpose.

I love bicycling. Ever since I was a kid I have spent most of my free time bicycling. Our town's library was right across from our house and I used to spend hours biking around in it when the library was closed. When the library was open I would bike around town.


When I got into high school I became an even more avid cyclist. My youth group went on two cycling trips a year. We would bike 3-5 days riding 60 miles a day. In addition to that I would often bike 10-25 miles (one way) to visit various friends. Once I was there we would often go cycling.

When I graduated high school I volunteered for 3 years at my youth group and continued my biking frenzy. But in the past 22 years I have mostly rested on my biking laurels. I would occasionally go on a 30-40 mile trek but those treks became few and far between. When I moved to South Carolina in 1995 I went through great pains to bring my bike with me and then rode it a grand total of twice in 2 years. When I got married in 1998, I made great pains to make sure my bike fit into our apartments and rode it a grand total of zero times in three years.


Last year when I lost my job in July I started cycling again with some regularity. This year we made sure the whole family had working bikes. While the rest of the family has been doing most of their biking in a church parking lot on our block, I have been hitting the roads and bike trails of Kane and McHenry county. 10-15 miles at a time is now a grand accomplishment but I am finding that I still enjoy cycling as much as I did in those days of youth.


A little more than a month ago I was told by a facebook friend of mine about a bike ride that International Teams (IT) was putting together. IT is a missions organization that I was somewhat involved with back in the eighties. I say somewhat because my involvement was to train 3 months for a two year missions trip that I ended up not going on. My facebook friend trained with me and went on the missions trip. IT is very involved in sharing the Gospel in refugee camps throughout the world. They are really in the forefront of refugee ministry.


Their annual bike ride benefits refugees and refugee ministry and is aptly titled the RIDE FOR REFUGEES. The ride is being held in 3 countries over 2 continents. Bikers will ride 5-60 miles and will raise funds as well. The day I heard about the ride I had just completed my goal of biking over 100 miles this summer. Back in the day I would do that in the week, but 100 miles in 2 months is much better than zero miles in three years.




I decided I would do the ride this year. On October 3rd I am going to bike 30 miles which is 10 more than I've bike at one time in a decade. To prepare for the ride I've put on 100 more miles and have raised $260.00. My goal is $300 and anyone wanting to donate can contact me or donate on line by clicking HERE.


So to sum up, biking again after many long years away works, but making that biking count for others really works for me. To see what else is working head on over to WE ARE THAT FAMILY.





Next Time: Three Things Thursday.