Rained Out

This afternoon Daniel and I were planning on going on a 20+ mile road biking excursion from Crowder's Mountain to King's Mountain State Park and back again.

Anyways, on our way out to the starting point, we made a stop at a local bike shop to look at some bike accessories for me and to also pick up some road tires to replace my mountain biking tires.

We finally made our way to the park about 35 miles west of Charlotte. We began unloading our bikes and getting ready for the ride. We could hear the distant grumble of thunder but decided to suit up anyways, figuring that worst case scenario we cut the trip short when it started raining. Soon we had tires swapped and were on our way. We had pedaled less than a mile when we noticed a bolt of lightening followed shortly by thunder. We don't mess around with lightening, so we turned our bikes around and headed back for the car. The entire way back, the lightening and thunder were getting closer. We reached the car, loaded the bikes and got ourselves inside of the car just in time for the down pour to start. Soon sheets of rain were cascading down around us.

We ended up only riding about 1 mile, which was disappointing. We headed back to Charlotte and decided to stop at On The Border. We requested outdoor dining and hoped to finish the meal before the coming rain. We managed to make it all the way through the meal, pay our bill and sit for a view minutes before the rain began. At least we finished our food first.

The rain was definitely needed but we missed out on a good biking day. I suppose we will have other days to ride, just not today.

Crowder's Mountain

We went hiking at Crowder's Mountain today. We were able to get out of Charlotte around 2:00 and were at the park by 3:00. Sadly this is the first time we have been able to go hiking this year. We hiked a little over 5 miles. The day was beautiful and we were able to see Charlotte from the summit.

I think we were bad examples to some kids. To reach the summit you have to climb a very LONG series of steps. When you get to the top you are generally exhausted (at least we are out of shape and exhausted). We both love heights, so we went and sat on the edge of cliff and hung our legs off to catch our breath. A family was not very far from us and I overheard a 10-year girl say, "Wow, those people are brave to hang their feet off the edge. When I am their age I want to do that." I am sure her mom was thrilled at our excellent example! Most places we go, there are not kids to worry about. We may need to take that into consideration next time we are around children.

Tomorrow we are leaving with some friends for Linville Gorge (about 2.5 hours away) to do an overnight backpacking trip. I am pretty excited about it. Up until last Sunday Daniel and I were going to go by ourselves. And then at LifeGroup, one of the guys asked Daniel if he wanted to go camping this weekend. Daniel said that we were actually already planning on going. So Steve invited himself along. Then Tim and Chris invited themselves along as well. I did not know that this was happening so later during LifeGroup, all three guys came up to me at separate times to tell me how excited they were about our camping trip. This was news to me so later that night I had to get the scoop from Daniel as to how our 2 person camping trip grew to 5.

Anyways, originally we had wanted to leave tonight, but our LifeGroup is volunteering this weekend to do Room at the Inn. This is where homeless people come and stay at our church and we feed them and visit with them. The other guys were signed up to do stuff tonight and we are taking breakfast to serve in the morning. So I guess we have a pretty full weekend.