Ben Tshin

God,
I’m haven’t been caught up in you. I’m caught up in all the temporary things of today. I’ve lost sight of eternity and your plan. I’m not sure if I’ve just lost focus of you or perhaps I’ve been distracted. But I know that I need to be reminded of the abundance of love, joy and peace that you promise. Maybe I need to see evidence of your greatness and power. Also, I need to see evidence again of your personal connection to me. Life seems fine on my own: so show me how much better life is with you.

We finished! Unbelievably, 9 hours and 20 minutes after we had started the ARC Haliburton Enduro we crossed the finish line. Almost as amazing was the fact that we didn’t get disqualified and we didn’t finish last. Actually, we finished second last.

The race started pleasantly in nice weather but it almost ended in a death trap. We began with a short 2km jog to the first checkpoint where we picked up our canoes. (Funny note: our team name should have been “Team Keepafloat” after our identical life jackets) The next 2.5 hours were canoeing 7km and portaging 1km. Everything seemed fine until we jumped onto our bikes.

The bike section was supposed to be our strongest suit, but we encountered too many obstacles, mud pits, misplaced checkpoints and broken chains. We lost 30 minutes repairing a broken chain twice and 1 hour looking for a checkpoint that was moved the night before by race officials. Too bad they didn’t tell us.

In the middle of the bike section we had to do a bit of orienteering (ie: bushwacking). Evidence of this is my battered legs as can be seen if you ask me. We were good for the first beaver pond checkpoint (which required my graceful swimming skills) but we got a bit lost finding the next one. As we got back to our bikes we barely made it out under the cut-off time of 6.5 hours (around 4:30).

The next 4 checkpoints took us the remaining 3 hours as members of the team began to cramp up, forcing us to walk instead of bike. It didn’t help that we were also out of water, getting extremely tired and encountering more mud than we had ever seen in our lives — combined.

The three members of Team Fatboyslim (Gordon, Ani and myself) would like to especially thank our two water saviours at checkpoints 12 and 13 who saved our lives with “living water”. We wouldn’t have finished without their help.

After effects? Muscles so sore we couldn’t move. Mosquito bites counting upto 100 (on myself only). Memories of one of the worst physical days of our lives. Determination for next time.

Memories of being lost in the rocks and trees.

Ready, Set, GO!
(or more like: Ready, Set, DIE!)

Putting my thoughts to digital paper feels like a resurrection for my mind and soul. Here is the correlation: there isn’t anything to reflect on so I don’t blog. OR I don’t have time to blog so I don’t reflect on life.

No self reparations nor any self analyses. Something just doesn’t jive. I’ll figure it out sooner or later. I have time, right? I hope I do. It feels that I’m caught doing everything BUT spending time and thinking and reflecting on the big picture. Gear down, big trucker!!

Since I’ve been spending so much time on the bike I might as well do some personal psycho-analysis. I’ll be my own psychiatrist.

Food for chewing: “All scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, correcting, training in righteousness.” 2 Timothy 3:16

AHH!!!! Well I played a big joke and it WAS really funny too. In preparation for my upcoming update of OpenBSD 3.0 to 3.3 I decided to clean out the source tree. Bad decision. I ended up wiping out my /usr/bin directory…. OUCH!

Happy April Fool’s Day, Ben