My bike odometer showed 77.6 miles upon arrival in the small village of Boulder Town where we are in the Pole’s Place Motel. The ride provided a beautiful view of southern Utah as we progressed through a portion of Bryce Canyon National Park and the Escalante Grand Staircase National Monument. The scenery was spectacular and the hills were steep. We climbed one with a 14% grade and two with 12% grades. Needless to say at 73 yrs I walked a good bit of these three and pedaled at 3 to 4 mph on some of the others. I pondered the Pre-Vatican II definition of purgatory during my almost 10 hours in the saddle. “The pains of Hell but only temporary” I also inventoried my “memory cells” to recall all the people in my own childhood poverty and how they assisted me both spiritually and materially from 1930 until 1950 when I left the Kansas farm and went off to the Korean War. It was a beautiful day with twenty-five beautiful people doing the best they can to “Brake the cycle of poverty” in this land of plenty …the USA.

Lyle Langlois…Phoenix, AZ