First day on the road!

Currently we are riding through the plains of Oklahoma....boring! We started last night (Wednesday) about 9pm and have driven straight since only stoping for gas, food, etc. As I'm writing this i'm looking at the GPS and it says our estimated arrival time to Las Vegas is 4:38 AM (7:38 EST). We've had the opportunity to hand out some of our cards and talk to a few people, here's the story of one.

This morning we stopped for breakfast in Little Rock, Arkansas at Waffle House. As we were getting ready to pay I noticed a guy pull out a bible and flip to the back and give it to the cook to read. When I saw this I grabbed my card and went up and started talking to him. I told him we were on our way to the West Coast to ride our bikes across the country and share with people our story. His response was something I wasn't expecting, he says..."Got room for one more?". UMM....well....what do you say?!?! I'm thinking, people back home think we are crazy for doing this and now we got people wanting to jump in the car with us!

After he said this, he pointed outside to his "diamondback" bike. At that time I knew he was serious. I told him we would love to have him tag along but we didn't have any room. (reality is I would feel horrible riding through the mountains and leave this man behind with no way back!).

He began to share a little with us about how he had no purpose and he wanted to be part of something that had meaning. He said he was doing odd jobs to try and make ends meat. He was homeless and going from house to house trying to stay afloat. We tried to be an encouragement to him and he wished us luck was we left.

The thing I will take away from that conversation with Ronnie is his statement, " I just want to have purpose". We got back in the car and prayed for him and we all reminded each other that we can't forget our purpose for this trip....Ronnie...thanks for reminding us of our purpose.