First week completed!

The first week of cycling has come to a close, and we're now in Kennewick, Washington. Monday, we will head into my home state of Oregon... still passing through the desert though, so not much change in scenery will be expected!
Anyway, our community is really developing quite quickly, and it's great to see so many different people come together and get along so well. I had originally anticipated having more time to read and communicate with friends and family, but it's difficult to pull myself away from the group, as there are so many interesting and unique people on the tour. Speaking of unique individuals, I should mention that each morning we are waking to the sound of our camp 'loud mouth' named Johnny Pierce saying in the loudest most monotone voice possible: 'let's do something beautiful!' (this is a line from our theme song which has now become a running joke, all in good fun of course). Johnny also took it upon himself to announce my presence several times to the whole group, at dinner and at our peloton meetings, still not sure why - but now everyone knows who I am!
The riding has been much easier the past few days with much shorter distances, and not too much climbing. We did experience a few thunderstorms recently, but nothing too serious - and this actually helped to cool things off a little. For the 4th of July we were welcomed by the church in Sunnyside, WA, and we had a wonderful Mexican-style dinner, followed by root beer floats and a firework display put on by the city. (Side note: this was my first 4th of July as a true American, it felt a little more like home, but being surrounded by Canadians it seemed just the same as Canada Day). Yesterday I road with our fellow loud-mouth and a couple other friends, and we stopped for some wine tasting - the Columbia Valley has some great wines! Later that night we went down to the local watering hole and sang karaoke at the top of our lungs – some highlights were ‘Bridge over Troubled Water’, and a version of Amazing Grace sung by Marcus and our head Chaplain, Len.
Today we had another celebration service - it was hosted outdoors at our camp along the Columbia River by the Kennewick CRC. They also provided us lunch and several water activities this afternoon – several people went waterskiing, wakeboarding, although there were a few too many people and I decided to float down the river on an air mattress that I purchased yesterday. I hope to get much more use out of that device as the summer continues!
Tomorrow I might be going out for over 150 miles as I am expecting a package to arrive in a town that we stayed in on Friday night, about 50 miles back from where we are now (it’s a long story!). So I’m hoping everything goes as planned…
Well, it’s almost dinner time, so I’m gonna get going. Until next time...