Well, I'm a bit behind so lets try to fix that!
Day 2- "The J Peterman Reality Tour"
For those Seinfeld fans, you may recall that Kramer sold some of his life stories to J. Peterman. Kramer didn't really like the fact that his stories were not his own anymore so he decided to capitalize on things by organizing the J. Peterman Reality Tours- where he'd take people for bus tours of the places where the stories occurred. As you know from Kramer, his reality isn't anyone else's reality.
How does this relate to day 2 of the Turn it around Tour? You may recall that day 1 was far easier than we expected- it was a treat- but it wasn't exactly reality, or at least the reality that we expected from this tour. Well, on day 2 we actually encountered a new reality- far from what we expected and far different from what we wanted. It was a J.Peterman Reality Tour in spades! We had over 8000 feet of climbing, significant rain and cold, and Wayne experienced mechanical problems with his shifter on his bike, making all of the climbing and descending more difficult than he wanted. ( A special thanks to Double O bike shop in Osoyoos, and Matt, for getting his bike back and ready to go!). So, we were welcomed to a new reality! But we didn't complain, didn't "hurt" ourselves and did quite well for such a difficult day.
In using my analogy from Day 1,  we encountered the challenges in our "walk" but weren't discouraged and looked forward to the challenges of Day 3.

Day 3- Only a couple of big climbs- no biggie!
Perspective is everything! After the climbs of day 2, the couple of climbs we did, together with the general climbs we would do that don't even count as climbs, the approximate 4500 feet of climbing we did didn't even pahse us. Bring on the tough stuff!

Day 4- Tiny Acts
Well, the tough stuff didn't take that long to materialize! Today we had a climb of over 23 k's (that's kilometers!) and total climbs of over 5000 feet right off the bat.
The tiny acts reference is from Mike Yaconelli's book "Messy Spirituality". He says that it's not the big and exceptional acts that God expects from us- most of us are not in the position to do those and likely many of us aren't capable of them. Well, on the very long climb, as I was moving along (very slowly!) a woman said good morning to me as I cycled by. And as I was going up a particularly difficult climb a man in a convertible was driving down the mountain and he waved to me. Now, neither of those things really amount to much in the big scheme of things, but those very simple acts of kindness made a very big difference to me! They distracted me, gave me a pleasant feeling and cheered me up. I think God would have been happy that those people unknown to me had such a wonderful impact on my challenging ride up a long climb. So, don't think that those things don't make a difference- you'll never know how they'll change someone's day. And to that nice woman and man, thank you!!!
Warren