A Tale of 3 Young Men

It's been a long time since my last post. I didn't realize how long until the first thing I wanted to blog about was our visit from three fine young men who came to visit us a week ago! about three weeks ago an old friend (Maralee hates it when I say that....well, she IS an old friend as I've known her since I was 3 and she was 2 1/2. She always points out that I am the OLDER one!). Maralee called to ask if I'd house her son and two of his friends when they made their way to our house on a long distance bicycling trip from Spokane, WA to San Diego, CA. Of course we could give these guys a bed and feed them well....it was the least we could do.

Little did I know how much fun it would be! We got the call from Doug Meyer on Sunday, July 5, that they were in Crescent City and would be spending the night at Prairie Creek State Park and make it to our house on Monday. Monday I got the call from Mr. Scottie Dog that they were at the bike shop just blocks from our store and I should stop by and see them before I drove home.

I drove to Henderson Center Bikes and here's what I saw:

That's Doug, in yellow eating the cracker, Wade in the safety vest and Josh fixing his tire. What an adventure they were having. The started out in Spokane, WA June 25 and cycled to Portland, OR and to the coast. Then down the coast of Oregon and CA to Eureka. They had met a lot of nice people along the way, rode up some gnarly mountains and dodged traffic on windy roads.

Here's a shot of their rigs...pretty snazzy bikes with little trailers holding food, camping gear, 1 change of clothes and anything else they may need.

They finished fixing their tubes, picked up a new wheel for one of the bikes and made it out to our house. I don't know what made them happiest......the thought of a nice bed, a hot shower or a washing machine!

These guys are all students at California Poly San Luis Obispo. Josh just graduated with a degree in Landscape Engineering, Wade has one more year working on his degree in Construction Management and Doug will be a Junior with an emphasis on graphic design. With more kids like them, we'll do fine in the future.

They took their showers and we hit the Buffet, the only place we thought could feed them...and eat they did! Plates upon plates of food. These are not huge guys; I think the largest weighed in at 150 lbs. But they ate more than football players on game night! Off to bed early and up for the morning...they had 60 miles to ride the next day. I sent them off after a breakfast for 12 normal people and lunch for more. They took as much food as they had room for. I prayed for their safety and hoped they enjoyed their visit with us as much as we did.