 Thanks guys! Ben and Jerry's day of sheer marketing genius - free scoop day! If I can find "Turtle Soup" in a pint, I will buy it. After that half-scoop (ridiculous) I tried a more generous scoop of splenda vanilla with chocolate chunks. Not the same guys! Back to the drawing board. I got into line a third time and got some kinda berry sorbet - very refreshing. Then a little boy said "why does that man keep getting in line?" Kidding - I was there with the team I work with in Providence.
I took the bike out for the first time in a LONG time today. To ride anywhere decent around here you need to travel 40 minutes to South County. So I pulled into Arcadia (YES - ARCADIA..it's a state park in RI - not Acadia  ) and parked the car. I asked a guy what he'd recommend.
"Oh dude it's all pretty good out here." Yeah - later I found out I was surrounded by fire roads (boring) and singletrack that was grass-covered. I've never seen anything like it but it looked like a giant, overgrown field that people cut trails into. I learned that grass is no fun. It takes too much energy to ride through - I guess it absorbs a lot of energy you'd usually be putting into completely solid ground.
I should have brought my map. I listened to some bad advice. It reminded me that I need to continually considering God's map - scripture. It was getting late and there were no signs anywhere. I felt like I was pretty lost and had nothing but miserable dry roads to ride on rather than trails. Yuck!
I think this is why people who claim that "there are many paths to the top of the same mountain" annoy me. They clearly haven't done much outing. My first question to them from now on will be, "where did you hear that?" I've had it with trails that dead-end, dry-out or bring me places I don't want to be. If you tell me that a path leads to the top of the mountain I'm going to ask, "how do you know?"
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Here's something I wrote this morning:
April 25, 2006
Wow, what God wants to say to me if I’d only open His word.
I woke up at 6:40 this morning and blindly panicked. Literally blindly. I guess I didn’t wince hard enough or take the sleepy seeds out of my eyes because the clock appeared “8:40” to my eyes. Eep!
I zipped out of bed and into my bath tub…shower…old-fashioned tub-shower. No cold water this morning. Scalding hot shower 2 minutes long. I don’t think I needed soap, I was pretty much sterilized. Ouch. Got dressed, got assembled and waited outside for Ellen to pick me up. 9:07, Ellen’s late! Oh well, I’ll just sit on the park bench in my yard and just read. Ohhhh&7:07, Jon’s an idiot…
God totally used my weakness, namely, stupidity, to get me outside on a skin-warming morning to read His words. There’s no other way this would have happened. The words I read, the words He said were, “Don’t worry – consider the birds and the flowers. Don’t worry – I love you more than you know and I’ll provide for you.” I like that. “You of little faith.” Truth. “Check out the cool flowers.” Grace.
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Homosexuality, drug-use, the “Christian Right,” fallen leaders and hypocrisy; all hot-button issues. In anticipation of questions from my friends, I’ve been wondering what I actually think about the Haggard story. At first, I didn’t care. “Why does the press think this impacts people like me so much? I hardly know who this guy is.” 
