March 17, 2013

Nashville TN to Duck River TN

St. Patrick’s Day!!!

We arose around 6:30 or so and had a breakfast of cereal peanut butter on bagels, and bananas. We attended church and listened to a wonderful sermon about smells – the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, Lazarus having been in the grave so long that he had begun to smell and the story of Mary washing Jesus’ feet and thus preparing him for burial. I didn’t know until today that these two events happened in the same place. Smells are powerful and they can evoke strong emotions. The sermon was about holding nothing back as our savior held nothing back for us we should hold nothing back for others. It was really cool.

A News crew actually showed up to talk to Ryan and catch footage of the cyclists as they departed. Also I mention before that we picked up supplies from Wall Greens for a surprise for St. Patrick’s Day. Check it out

Venus on the left, who talked us into purchasing the glasses, Angela in center and yours truly on the right.

Venus, Melissa Merrill, the new trip leader, myself and Ryan Iafigliola, the trip founder.

Pretty cool right?

We found the green glasses at Wall Greens I actually bought the light up shamrock from Party City the week before the ride began. So I am definitely showing off my green on this St. Patrick’s day as I ride about 47 miles to the next church. Happy St. Patrick’s Day everyone.

It was a nice ride today; there were some nice hills, but nothing too steep or ridiculously high for climbing. The scenery was beautiful and you couldn’t ask for better directions. Usually on these Fuller Center rides you deal with directions that tell you to make twenty different turns and can be very lengthy. Riding the trace it’s as simple as making two turns to get on and two turns to get off. This was of course after we managed to make it out of Nashville, but it didn’t take long to get out of town. I hope the directions remain so easy. Being Blake Smith’s brother I have a track record for getting lost too… actually truth be told I find myself becoming lost much more easily than Blake.

We arrived at Shady Grove United Methodist Church around 2:00pm and the congregation was already busy cooking us a meal. We were actually invited to the individual homes of the congregation for showers. I went to the house of a man named John who has a great sense of humor. John became handicapped recently, but his church family helped make renovations to his house which helped him tremendously. They re-designed his bathroom and shower so he could clean himself without extra help and made other adjustments to make his house more wheel chair friendly. It turns out he did a lot of volunteer work with his church building homes for people before he lost his leg, and just because he’s one foot shorter it doesn’t stop him from continuing to volunteer and help make life better for those less fortunate.

Shady Grove United Methodist provided a wonderful meal of fried chicken, cole slaw, baked beans with bacon, pasta salad, deviled eggs, potato casserole, biscuits, gravy, salad, chicken nuggets and much more. Dessert was banana pudding, cupcakes and at least three different kinds of cookies.

Dinner was fantastic and they have even offered to cook us pancakes in the morning. Shady Grove is a relatively small church in a rural town with a lot of poverty. They are made up of perhaps 3 or 4 regulars and the rest is all family and friends as they describe it. Even so they do all that they can to outreach to the community working on building projects and lots and lots of food drives. There is a lot of need in this community, and Shady Grove UMC has learned that just because they are a small church doesn’t mean they can’t make a difference in their community and abroad. They build not only here in TN, but other states and places as well.

We ended the night with the most intense game of spoons I’ve ever played in my life. It was touch and go there for a  while when I found myself at ‘spoo’ if I had missed another spoon then I would have a a full ‘spoon’ and been out. The game lasted until the participants faded away. I’m glad I was able to last until the end.

Well it sounds like we are most likely going to have rain tomorrow, so I’m going to have to go get my rain gear out and ready to go. It’s been an awesome day and now I’m going to have to go get ready for another one!

Good Night!