1 New Member, $4,500 Donation, 3 Slaves, and 0 Rides

Not a ride report. More of a non-ride report. Consider this a life report from a rider who has been deprived of proper 2-wheeled time. Everyday is 3 miles on surface streets to work, then another 3 miles back home. Sundays I ride the usual Santiago Canyon or Ortega Highway routes, have breakfast, then return home. Garage time is minimal at best and outside of a quick 172 mile round trip and down the 5 freeway to San Diego where I got a massive sunburn, riding has been kept below 50mph 90% of the time.

Quite sad.

Moving on....

Welcome to Steh-Fan to 3R (www.3Rmotorsports.com). Thanks for dropping by and joining our little community. I hope we'll catch you on a ride through Palomar some time.

In other news (of which there isn't much), work has begun and we are in full swing. We are currently in Week 5 and of the past month and some odd days, it's been an endless cycle of 12-14 hour days with weekends filled with paper grading, lesson prepping, and sanity saving. I feel that my Sunday morning rides have become requisite rather than recreation and my energy which was usually invested in entertaining thoughts of wander lust have been allotted to focusing on rectifying broken English. It's been difficult and I feel the straps getting tighter and tighter and I ain't no Houdini.

Luckily, I have acquired three people to help me grade essays - 2 UCI students (1 international education student and 1 TESOL student) and 1 retired (and very accomplished) English teacher. This is a tremendous help to both myself and my students. Not only will they receive more in depth and detailed corrections in their work, but I will be able to focus on teaching more supplemental materials as well as assign more homework which I normally would do in class (and waste time).

Many things have added themselves to the list of life-responsibilities since my last update. Many of them tedious (re-writing lease agreements, taxes, traffic school, etc.) and one of them entirely unpleasant (writing my parents' Living Trust). Most of all of that is done, but traffic school still needs to be tended to and new bills from new medical insurance need to be paid.

Joy.

But all is not lost. The past two weeks have come with urgent emails and prayer requests for a dear woman who was in need. She (Fern) is one of the two women responsible for bringing me to Christianity, and the second woman (Barbara) sent me a troubling email. Fern and her husband had moved to Dansville, NY just six weeks ago into a historic 154 year old house. They sit on 2 acres of land in the middle of nowhere out in the country and the town's population is estimated at 50 (or less). The house cost them all they had ($55,000) and they didn't except to face losing the home so soon....but the insurance company had other ideas.

"Paint the home by May 15th or you will lose your insurance policy and in effect, lose your home."

Fern and her husband at 62 and 65 years old. She has macular degeneration and he has degenerative arthritis. They had very limited funds and didn't know what to do. The cheapest painter they could find demanded $4,500 up front before lifting a finger. They were lost and I was scared.

After receiving news of this tragedy in American citizenship, I sent out a few prayer requests and two days later (Sunday 4/22), set up a lunch which, after an hour and a half, resulted in a one time $4,500 donation.

The painter will begin work this Friday.

So all in all, amidst the long hours and stressful days and blurry weekends, I can smile because I know that there is still good in this world. I'll take my long hours and stressful days because after all in said and done, I can go to bed knowing that I can still hold on to faith in mankind. We're not completely lost. Not yet.

Other good news includes riding buddy's continued improvement to regain his health. He's continuing to gain weight and just broke 140lbs last week. We now weigh about the same. haha. His strength is returning and yesterday he was able to press the 65lb dumbbells for the first time since November 2010. I'm proud of him and am encouraged to see him looking more and more like himself every day. His appetite is growing and his energy levels are rising. One month ago he went in for a follow-up and the doctor said everything looked good and that his throat was healing nicely.

In the face of my little struggles, I'm reminded that life is so much bigger than our day-to-day challenges, and I'm grateful.

But still.......I have my fingers crossed for a ride through Angeles Crest this Sunday.

Hopefully, there will be a proper ride report posted sooner than later.

Until then, ride safe.

As always, thanks for reading.

R

www.3Rmotorsports.com