Saturday, June 23, 2007

Haiku and some updates

We spend the morning
Chasing down our shadows.
In the eve, ride away.


The last two nights we spent in Franklin, PA. We arrived on Thursday night and stayed with Pastor Sam at the Presbytarian Church there. He and two buddies came to meet us mid-day to bike in. They were all incredible cyclists; turns out Pastor Gibb has been cycling for 30 some years. He had interesting stories all around and was a perfect fit for our group. Besides being an avid cyclist (and bike mechanic, thank goodness), his church has also invested in a fixer-upper house in town. Instead of biking on to Youngstown, OH on Friday, we decided to stay and trade our day off for a build day with Pastor Sam. It was a relief to all because we hadn't built since Providence, and we have all been excited for that aspect of the trip as well. The enthusiasm was quite visible - Logan and I and others spent a good portion of the day in the attic ripping down walls and ceilings. The soot from the chimney and the dust from the blown-in insulation left us all looking like a crew of coal miners (see the 9th photo in Volume D of the P2S gallery here: http://www.bikeandbuild.org/cms/component/option,com_wrapper/Itemid,68/), prompting one of the volunteer construction workers to ask me at the end of the day, "You grow up on a farm?" I was flattered.

Right now, Bronwyn and I are taking our time getting to our destination. We have about 2 miles to go and have been at this point for almost 2 hours now. We stopped at Walgreen's to get her photos on a CD, and now we're at a little library so I can try to get my photos uploaded. (See http://rlaskey.org/gallery)

Oh, don't want to forget Les and Elaine, two farmers we met today at our lunch stop about 30 miles into the ride. They were a cute and generous older couple with three daughters who had since moved away. Les and Elaine run a 350 acre farm growing corn, wheat, and soybeans. They let Sarah park the trailer in their yard and talked with us all during lunch. Elaine even brought us out fresh cantaloupe and juice. They were both quick as a whip and had both funny and serious stories. They had once gone to Poland for a year for Les' work. I asked what she thought of the people there, she said, "Same as here. Some nice, some not. You realize that when you get older. People are the same everywhere."

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