KIRKWOOD CA -- I'm Day Four into a 60-day group bike ride across America for the Catholic Church to promote awareness for America's 33 million poor coupled with some self-discovery, and already I've learned something important about myself.

I'm suffering from acute oldness. At 68 I thought I might be senior of our 24 riders. Not so, there is a 73-year-old from Phoenix married to a younger woman of 66. She blows past us on the hills, by the way. In a perverse way I had hoped to be the oldest because I thought it might be a built-in excuse when I straggled in hours behind the pack.

Take today for instance. Up at 5, we broke camp at 7 and started up the Mormon Emmigrant Trail in the California Sierras. We climbed hill after hill on our way to 8000 feet. In terrain like this, a bicyclist quickly learns to take what he is given in the way of downhill freebies, but he is also quickly reminded of the old adage that, "The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away."

As if the hills weren't bad enough we also encountered snow-packed roads. Lots of them! I pushed my bike at least three miles through one and two-foot accumulations although I saw some drifts of maybe six feet. The experience was akin to pushing a wheelbarrow of rocks through a muddy field. Definitely not what I had signed on for. Cyclists don't like to walk. Not good form. But it was impossible to do otherwise. Did I mention the huge Douglas fir that had blown down across both lanes that I had to hoist my bike over?

We've encountered all kinds of weather extremes so far. Days one and two we literally cooked after leaving San Francisco and making our way through California's Sacramento Valley as the temperature reached 99. But that is the physical side, and it can make you feel old.

But there is also a human dimension and spiritual aspect to our 3800-mile odyssey. Take for example, Dr. Roberto Solis, the son of Mexican immigrants from Jalisco, who serves at a free clinic at Point Reyes, and who rode with us a couple of days as a sign of support. He treated my eye infection and not only wrote the prescription but got it filled and refused to take payment. Later, as he looked at another of our riders as we sipped coffee at a sidewalk café in Sacramento he neglected to feed the parking meter and got a ticket. "No good deed goes unpunished," he remarked wryly as he accepted the $18 fine. All joking aside, this young man is a role model for Christianity in action.

Odds and ends: All road kill encountered to date has been reptilian. Lots of dead snakes of all sizes and species. Also on Day One I chalked up two "firsts": My highest single-day mileage of 73, due in part, to missing a turn and riding a few miles out of the way, and my first peanut butter and jelly sandwich in nearly seven decades of existence. But it was the main course of a free sack lunch provided by a San Francisco church, and I gratefully accepted it.

More later from on down the road somewhere in Nevada or Utah.