Update #17 - June 29th, 2001
Oakland, IA - 3916 miles

The ride across Iowa went okay. I really enjoyed myself even though for the most part it was up and over rolling hills. There were several downhill runs that I got above 30 miles per hour. I'm grateful that I didn't either hit a bump or had a blowout on these coasts.

From Lansing, I cycled to Lawler. This was probably the hardest section since I had to get out of the Mississippi River Valley. After Lawler, I made stops in Hudson, Marshalltown, Ames, and Stuart. Winds and high humidity were hard factors to deal with between Lawler and Marshalltown. Traffic was another concern since the highways here in Iowa normally do not have a paved shoulder to ride along. I had maybe two dozen close calls between Lawler and Waterloo from mostly cars. Semi drivers were really courteous to me.

My places to rest varied from one night to another (in Lawler - I camped out in one of the town's parks; in Hudson - I found myself camping out behind a Baptist church after the evening service; Habitat affiliate offices were my home's for the night in Marshalltown and Ames; I was treated to a motel room in Stuart by one of the area's Assembly of G-D churches after the police balked at me camping out in a local park.)

From Des Moines to Oakland, I followed in reverse the route I took last year. A mile and a half west of the small town of Adair, I passed the spot where Jesse James and his gang did the first robbery of a moving train on July 21, 1873. They were expecting to capture a seventy-five thousand dollar gold shipment but only found two thousand dollars in the baggage car safe. The gold shipment had been delayed. Just beyond Adair, I cycled through an area where there were hundreds of butterflies of various types and colors.

When I got into the town limits of Oakland, I passed the one hundred thousand mile mark. This is from mid-February of 1993 when Adonai called me out on the road after giving me a vision. I'm really amazed at this. Last night, I figuered out that I had cycled this amount in 1579.24 days with an average of 63.32 miles per day.

I am taking the weekend off in Oakland. Tomorrow, the town is celebrating the "Fourth of July". On Sunday, I'll be speaking at the Oakland Christian Church. Monday, July 2nd, I'll be getting back on the road and riding through Council Bluffs, Iowa to Omaha, Nebreska. From Omaha, I'll be cycling to Lincoln before heading south to Topeka, Kansas. After Topeka, I'll be making a ninety degree turn Eastward and heading over to the Chicago, Illinois area. For the past several weeks, I've been having the feeling that I need to ride through the Chicago area. This year will I'll be doing a lot of zig-zagging across the Midwest and South.