Choosing a Ride

Like many things in my life, the Fuller Center Bike Adventure was chosen partly by accident and partly by design.  Over the years, I have learned to thank God for many of the happy accidents of my life!  About a year ago I decided that I wanted to do a cross-country bike trip.  It is a long term dream, but last year I decided that if I was going to do it at all, I needed to do it soon, in the next year or two.  So I started looking into different ways that I could accomplish that.

I was not interested in going by myself, nor in trying to plan out all the details on my own.  I wanted some companions along the way, and some support in case I needed it.  I checked into the options for guided trips through Adventure Cycling, America by Bike, and Trek Travel.  I also looked into various ways that I could raise funds for a worthy cause while riding my bicycle across the country.  I had heard of Bike and Build–when I looked them up, they were focused more on participants under the age of thirty.  And then across my Facebook feed came the Fuller Center Bike Adventure!  (There are at least some good things about that targeted advertising.)  In 2016 they went from Seattle to Washington, DC.  That sounded perfect!  I contacted the leader just to get on the mailing list for 2017.

Around Thanksgiving it was time to decide whether or not I was going and what kind of trip I wanted to take.  I have always considered this trip a spiritual pilgrimage.  For several months, during my morning devotions, the idea would pop into my head, “I need to take a pilgrimage!”  Seeing how divided our country was, leading up to and after the 2016 elections, made the pilgrimage even more pressing to me.  I had already begun to train for the ride as far back as May.

Going with the Fuller Center Bike Adventure would give me the opportunity to meet people all across the country.  It’s not that I don’t have that opportunity with another sort of trip–it’s that I know myself and I would not take advantage of that opportunity.   With the Fuller Center for Housing, we raise funds, making us part of the solution to poverty housing.  We also stay in host churches along the way and work on some building projects along the way.  I want to be part of pulling our country together, and this is how God is calling me to be part of that work.

I checked out the Fuller Center for Housing using guidelines from Charity Navigator to make sure I was asking people to donate to something I could really get behind and support and it met my requirements!  I have raised nearly $2000 dollars of my goal of $5000, and am still training with a trainer.  The weather is good for outdoor bike rides now, too.

Support the effort to end poverty housing!