DAILY BLOG

Although there is no major news here, I thought I’d provide a Saturday update. The three boys and I went out today for a training ride today up Mt. Wachusett, in what has become our new favorite training loop. Jordan took along his new digital camera, so we got some pictures of better quality than when I use the rather lame camera on my cell phone.

Scenic Mt. Wachusett

Rich and Jared prepare for the summit ascent

We are creating a series of free The Expeditionary Man Bike Tour wallpaper images for download. The first style is entitled “Hardwired For Adventure”.

Jared, Justy, and I climbed the largest “mountain” in our area, a 2,003-foot summit named Mt. Wachusett. While it felt good climbing strong today, I was quickly reminded that the ascent is a but molehill compared to what awaits us out West, particularly Colorado. But that’s a battle we’ll tackle later. For now, we’ll enjoy our little victory.

The Wagner team descends quickly

Jared attacks the road

Maybe it’s just me, but I think Jared and Justy are
looking a wee bit tired after their ascent

Justy and Rich head towards home

Ok, I admit this is totally a geeky idea, but I have been trying to figure out a way to have “real-time” tracking of our tour progress on whythebike.com. I envision my dad working away at his computer in Indiana and wondering, “Hey, I wonder if my son and grandsons made it to Julian yet for lunch?” So, he surfs to whythebike.com and looks at a map that automatically charts our current “live” (more or less) location throughout the day. Sure, he could just call us on our cell phone and ask, but doesn’t the real-time tracking idea just sound cooler?

I was checking around the web to see if anyone else had done something similar. I could not find an existing service that provides this. However, I did find one site called dartmaps that provides “real time” train tracking for Dublin, Ireland on top of Google Maps. I am going to see if I can figure out a similar solution.

My geek mission

5/24 UPDATE: I figured it out! I was able to discover a solution using Twitter and Google Maps. More to follow!

Things are taking shape on the support vehicle front. Today, we received the magnetic signs for the sides of the support vehicle. Here’s a snapshot:

The sides may be devoted to letting people know about the tour, but the rear of the vehicle is devoted to safety, since the support vehicle will typically be traveling 15-20mph behind us. As a result, we will have two amber warning lights, an orange slow moving vehicle triangle, and a “CAUTION BICYCLES AHEAD” sign—all of which will be on the back.

I was excited to see Amazon and Christianbook.com now have The Expeditionary Man in stock today. I have had the vision for the book for over four years and actually finished writing the manuscript last September, so it is exciting to see the completed book finally arrive in stores. You can check it out on Amazon by clicking here.

The book behind the tour

Zondervan Blog posted a blog entry on The Expeditionary Man Bike Tour today. You can check it out at
http://zondervan.typepad.com/zondervan/2008/05/the-expeditiona.html

Wow! We are now at 50 days in our countdown to the bike tour! My pulse is racing! After months of planning and training, it is hard to believe we are actually starting to get really close to Day 1. There is still so much to do—and I wonder how I’ll be able to get everything done by June 20, the day we leave home to drive to the west coast for the tour start. But I’m not complaining—this work, both physical and logistical, is a pure joy.

Jared and Justy finishing up the day’s ride together

People have been asking us for weeks when a bike tour t-shirt would be available. We were going back and forth on whether we should do one. The focus of the tour, after all, is communicating the key message of the book The Expeditionary Man, and we don’t want to detract from that objective. In the end, after mulling it over, Kim, the boys, and I decided to take this on as an “unofficial” family side project.

However, we decided that if we were going to do one, the design should be more theme-oriented than tour-oriented. Instead of a typical ride shirt—like something you would get at a bike-a-thon—we wanted it to communicate a message that would remain relevant long after the tour wraps up in July. So, we decided to combine elements of the tour logo (the swooshy riders) with a major theme of both our ride and my book—the importance of a family living and working along side each other towards a common goal in Christ-like unity. That’s quite a mouthful, so we decided to go with something much shorter and symbolic—ad alta simul, which is Latin for “to the summit together.”

Here’s the ad alta simul design up close:

ad alta simul (”to the summit together”)—our family motto for the tour

The symbols underneath convey the idea of climbing to the summit together as one family in Christ:

Justy models the shirt:

To answer a question I just know my mom will ask—
Yes, the text running onto the sleeve was intentional. :-]

And the back:

Here’s all of us:

Justy, my 14-year-old son, reached a significant milestone today—riding his first 50 mile ride. He’s planning on riding about half of the miles daily on the tour, so he has effectively reached his training goal. What was most exciting for me as his dad was seeing how he reached it—he kept up with Jared and I for much of the time, drafting off of us. He’s grown significantly as a rider over the past three months!

Justy, convincing himself that he can make it the last mile of the day

Speaking of milestones, Jared and I have come with our own impromptu competitions during lighter moments of daily rides. I dubbed them “meaningless milestones”. The basic rule is that if we see a hill, no matter how minor, we race to the top. The person who wins then raises his hands in total victory, as if he had just won a stage in the Tour de France. Obviously, we aren’t fooling around like that for much of the ride, but the occasional competition keeps things from getting boring.

Jared somehow beats me and wins a “meaningless milestone”.
I assure you that was his last win of the day!

Seventeen-year-old Jordan has had a busy spring with a variety of church, school, music, and other activities. So, he’s found daily training harder to schedule in as regularly as the other three of us. Since he’s not planning on riding with Jared and I the full distance each day of the tour, that’s not a major concern. However, he too made his own meaningful milestone today—riding over 30 miles for the first time this spring.

Jordan either giving the surfer “hang ten” sign
(or else showing that he can count to “2″ with his fingers).