Two day ago and 3,578 miles later...
...Heang arrived at Folly Beach, South Carolina!
Here's Heang's account of reaching the finish line for his amazing journey.
Congratulations Heang! You were always uber-kewl in my book, and this accomplishment puts me in awe of you even more bro :-)
The above photo was taken on the coast of Oregon a few days ago by Heang Uy. Heang is a friend from my college days, who has been a bigger inspiration to me than I've ever been able to articulate. He's a true brother in the Lord, a great teacher, and an excellent coach at his school.
And this summer Heang is bicycling across the continental United States! Word has come down the wire that sometime this evening Heang should be entering the Mountain Time Zone, headed toward Idaho. If all goes well he'll be pedaling back into North Carolina in August. In the meantime Heang Uy is out there somewhere: exerting both mind and body in an epic odyssey that will have him living the landscape like few dare to experience.
Pretty neat, aye? :-)
Here's Heang's blog, where he's chronicling his journey (accompanied with photos from the trek). Please keep him in your thoughts and prayers as he perseveres toward the goal!
Sometime between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, someone stole my bicycle. I'd only had it for just less than a year.
That's probably the last I'll ever see of it. When I found that it was missing I called the Reidsville Police Department and they sent an officer over promptly to look into it. He said they'd keep an eye out for it and I don't doubt that they will ... but all the same, by this evening I'm fairly accepting that it's gone for good.
Whatever happened to the thing called "honor"? You know: the concept that you are supposed to do what's right even when there's nobody around to see you doing it. Or does such a thing even matter anymore?
Geez, can you believe how naïve I sound now? I mean, I live in a county where school board members demonstrate to children that it's okay to steal things that don't belong to them. And that's the kind of example that's set all over this country, from small offices to the Oval Office. This sort of thing should not only be expected, it's practically a rule of modern life.
Losing my bicycle bothered me most of this past day. But I realized that there are worse things that could happen. There are people I know who are going through much worse than the loss of a $130 bicycle. A bicycle can always be replaced ... but there are some things in life that can't be.
My friend Johnny helped me remember that tonight on our way to see Transformers: my fourth time seeing it and his very first (he liked it a lot by the way :-).
As for whoever stole the original, I hope that they are happy with it. They probably think themselves as pretty smart for pulling it off, but that is most likely the limit of the satisfaction that they'll ever find in this world. People who steal things from other people like that not only lack honor, they lack conscience. I would even argue that they lack a full and complete soul. They'll probably never demonstrate that they can be fully what God intended them to be.
I'm going to get another bicycle: a better one, even. And I'll be using it as if nothing had happened with the first. I mean, it's just a bicycle: it's not like I'm going to go on some insane cross-country quest to the basement of the Alamo, is it?
