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Stacy and I finally rolled into Aurora, IL last night around 6:30p.m. Thanks to everyone who was able to make it out to welcome our arrival at the Planned Parenthood. Good luck to Team Wisconsin which begins their trek today, leaving St. George’s in Aurora and making their way out to Moline.

Yesterday’s ride, on my part, was one of the toughest. Extremely strong winds of 20 something mile per hour head winds made it very slow going from the Newman Center at Bradley in Peoria to Planned Parenthood in Aurora. Stacy and I were able to maintain pretty good pace along the Great River Road where we were able to hide from the wind behind John Paul’s car and the Illinois River bluffs. Her brother Brian Hague, who joined us starting in Champaign rode the second half of yesterday’s ride with us–his presence was a great boost to morale!

Traffic entering the outer suburbs definitely got a bit crazy compared to the mostly un-trafficked country roads or secondary highways that we’d been traveling on the majority of the trip. Speaking for myself, it’s always a bit of a rush though–dodging cars with the excitement of your final destination!

While riding along somewhere in the middle of the trip it was a huge surprise to have my buddy Joe Puhr coincidentally drive right past us on his way back to U of  I! Crazy, small world.

Once again, thanks to everyone who made the ride possible for Team Illinois–Stacy and her brother, John Paul for driving and other admin jobs, Rose Schmallen for some really good videos she made (please check those out!) and putting up with moving at a snail’s pace in the car for many parts, the Brummers, my parents, the Daystar Community Center in Cairo, and the Newman Center at Bradley for housing and feeding us, and also the Newman Center at EIU for feeding us; and great thanks to those who prayed and supported the pro-life movement financially! You can still donate and keep Team Wisconsin in your prayers this week as they’ll be finishing in Champaign on Friday!

Finished up day 3 of riding here in Champaign this afternoon. I think I may be speaking for Stacy too when I say that mustering up the motivation to get on the bike this morning was more than a challenge after being forced to cut yesterday’s ride short due to “unfavorable” conditions. Just to recap–yesterday we only got in 77 of the 114 miles due to 30+mph headwinds, driving rain, and temperatures dipping into the low 40s. Veteran cyclist Frank Brummer, at whose house we stayed at called the day “the most miserable he’s ever experienced riding”. Well, I guess it will work. The pro-life students at the Newman Center at EIU put together a great lunch of spaghetti for us–thank you to them. We experienced some nasty headwinds again this morning until lunch which made relatively slow-going–about 15 or 16 mph for the first 40 miles. The head wind turned into a moderate cross wind in the afternoon which allowed us to ride around 19-21 mph for most of the afternoon back up here to Champaign. Special thanks to our driver John Paul for blocking the wind for us in his car.

Highlights to mention from day 3: great breakfast by Cathy Brummer in Teutopolis/T-Town, sunny day, below freezing temps for first couple hours of riding, great lunch at EIU, nice weather and good riding speed from EIU to Champaign, supper with donors Hank and Tess Wilkinson, a few positive signs of encouragement from passing drivers, and a few negative ones along with that.

Tomorrow, we’re riding to Bradley University in Peoria. Stacy’s brother will be joining us for the last two days. 40 Days for Life ends at the end of this week so keep that in your prayers as well!

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

We finished up our first day of riding today, covering the 132 miles or so between Cairo, Illinois’ southernmost city, and my house in Freeburg. Stacy was pressing hard all day on the pedals, dragging me along it seemed, especially on the uphill sections–which there were a lot of for a good portion of the ride.

Highlights to mention: A dead beaver the size of a platypus south of Cairo (we took a 3 mile detour to truly begin at the state line of Illinois and Kentucky), maxed out at somewhere between 45 and 50 miles per hour on a couple of separate occasions, great driving by John Paul and very great video making by Rose, 3 hecklers, a couple of signs of positive encouragement (special thanks to Rose for her great B4B sign we tacked onto the back of the car), great tailwind for a large portion of the day, my buddy Tim for joining us for the last 20 miles, great weather with a high in the upper 60s, sunny, and a great supper put on by my mom and dad when we arrived at home.

Tomorrow we start off with a mass and special blessing by my parish priest, Father Mark Reyling, then we roll out of Freeburg headed for Teutopolis, just east of Effingham where we’ll be met by the wonderful Brummer family. Weather is looking to be on the sour side with headwinds and rain. We’ll have to see!

Thanks again to everyone who has contributed in any way so far! Keep us in your prayers and check out Rose’s great video covering Day 1!

So, the other day while I was running, I feel like I had one of those things where you finally realize something that you’ve always known, but never really internalized.

I was just doing some meditations before my prayer while running, on the pro-life cause. Then, I thought about something an acquaintance once told me, about how “the pro-life/pro-choice debate is never going to be anything more than a talking point for politics and how nothing is going to change”. What I realized while running (internally, I’ve been aware of this fact for awhile) that there was a point in time when abortion was illegal. But, someone wanted abortion enough, that it was their “right” that they made it legal (although now she fights against abortion). Since then, there have been literally millions of people who dedicate their lives working against the pro-life cause.

Granted, biking for babies, has a very small place within the pro-life movement. I just hope that we can just do one small part to help out a couple of organizations who do the real dirty work and make the biggest difference fighting for our cause with some financial aid and bringing more attention to the work that they do.

All of what the pro-life movement does isn’t just about “proving” that the fetus within the mother is truly a human life, but that we all care enough about the babies and the mothers to give huge sacrifices because the cost is huge if what we seek to do continues to be lost on over a million children each year just in the U.S. Of course, everything would be worth it if just one life could be saved, but what could I really say to those children who don’t survive–that I didn’t care enough to fully respond to God’s call in protecting the dignity of their lives? I know that I won’t ever be able to respond as completely as I should. But, with events like this, it’s undoubtedly difficult to maintain focus on our mission. But, the answer isn’t to just ignore the physical aspect of the ride. What I hope people realize when they hear what me and my friends are giving up for spring break isn’t that we’re doing this for ourselves, but that there are a lot of more people than just us who are willing to answer the call for life in the way we feel we were called. We’re all called to make the sacrifice in different ways.

So, that’s part of my resolution this Lent–to more actively defend life from the depths of my physical effort. Because, while more pain or more distance is not going to directly save any lives, I hope it does show someone that me and my friends are willing to show the pro-choice movement that “pro-life” is more than an opinion, but something that we all live out as often as we can, in every way that we can in every point we can fight, whether it be from our bicycles, from our prayer, or from the voting booths “protecting the dignity of life everywhere”.

Well,  reporting here from cold, snowy, and windy Champaign–brrr! Champaign is sitting under about 7” of snow I guess between yesterday and this past weekend’s snowfalls. It’s been making for some tricky running, but believe me when I say that the cause has definitely motivated me to get out the door and run when I otherwise wouldn’t have. Today I was able to get in 11 or 12 miles–about 3 or 4 of which being through some thick snow and yesterday a bit over 8 was through about 7” of snow through U of I’s Arboretum cross country course. This past weekend, Stacy and I tried spreading the word about the cause and the ride here at St. John’s. The weekend after this it’s back home to Freeburg for the masses at St. Joe’s. Can’t think of a whole lot else about updates regarding the ride. 40 days for life starts next wednesday, so b4b will certainly be trying to send up as many prayers as we can for that. Try to check out Living Alternatives’ website, www.hopeforafuture.com, to take a look at the awesome things that they do there. Signing off.