"Shoulders are from GOD, and burdens too." - Isaac Bashevis Singer

When talking with my friends and family before embarking on the trip, I was joking with them that what I was doing was simplifying my life to the essentials:
Eat     Sleep     Drink     Pedal    
As true as that description is of our life on the road, there has been a great deal more that has been revealed to me in the last week.

Our ride today was good one. We rose early, and enjoyed a great breakfast courtesy of the very generous parishioners of St. Patrick's parish in Fallon, NV. The ride was mostly flat, through long stretches of stunningly beautiful and desolate country. At times, it seemed as if we were surrounded by mountains on all sides, and that we were the only people on the planet. This part of Highway 50 is known as the loneliest road in America. At times today, it felt like it. Near the end of yesterdays ride, as we entered Fallon in the heat of the day, a couple of us stopped for ice cream. As one might imagine, four hot and tired people in crazy outfits on bikes attracted some attention at the drive-in. We struck up a conversation with a father and son who were checking out our bikes. They were there to celebrate the last day of school. When the father asked where we were going and what we were up to, I told him that we were riding across the US to raise awareness of poverty in the U.S. He laughed and said, "You're looking at the face of poverty." In the course of our conversation, he told us that he has been out of work for almost three years. He and his family had recently relocated from the San Francisco Bay Area to western Nevada because they could no longer afford their home, and that they had moved into a mobile home with his sister and family, and that he hoped he would be able to find work in Nevada. His son was nearly ten years old, and had large ears. He told us that he wanted to have surgery to "fix" his ears, if they "get enough money." When one of the members of the group told him that he thought his ears were fine, he told us that the other kids at school make fun of him, which is why he wants the surgery.

In my little life in San Francisco, I go about my work, and I think of myself as a person who works for justice, and tries to find ways to make the Gospel a reality in the world. And as I have ridden nearly 400 miles in the last week, I have become more and more aware of how small my world is, and how deep the roots of poverty are in the U.S. The poor are not some distant reality, or some uniform block of people, suffering outside of our own reality. The poor are not even "the poor." The poor are human beings, with desires as simple and universal as wanting to have enough money to take their children out for ice cream to celebrate the start of summer, or not wanting the other kids at school to make fun of them.

I have shoulders. I hope that this ride this summer can help me learn how to put them to better use.