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Yeah … I know it’s been awhile … but I still have to rub it in. Our Assistant Pastor, Marty sent me this and I loved it:

Looking over my past few posts, I realize that it’s been a few since we’ve talked about motorcycles … so, here we go!

Those who’ve followed me for awhile know that I’ve been having issues with my bike. I know exactly what’s going on, but still, it’s taking longer than I had hoped to get her back on the road.

It all started when I drained my tank last fall to send my tins down to Arizona so that my friend, Jason, at HellcatCustoms could paint them. He did an amazing job, and when I got them back, I excitedly put the bike back together and filled it up with gas.

And that was my problem.

What I should have done was clean the tank first. You see, my bike (and tank) are old. I ride a 1994 Dyna WideGlide. It has over 200,000 kms. With the tank empty for five months, rust built up in it. Rust that I should have cleaned out before reinstalling it.

The rust made it through the filter and into my carb.

After trying a whole bunch of things, I finally figured out what was going on. And so, a few weeks ago, I pulled the tank back off, cleaned it out (filling it half full with soap & water, dropping in about a dozen nuts and bolts, and shaking it like mad). After it was cleaned, I “Kreemed” the tank. Basically putting a new coating inside the tank. Rust problem was solved.

Or so I thought. I still had issues with the carb. I was still getting a bit of crap in the gas. Finally, this weekend, I figured it out. The accelerator pump has a diaphragm that was breaking apart.

So, new kit is ordered and should be in tomorrow. Hopefully by this time tomorrow, the bike will be up and running like new.

So, why am I calling this post “The Bond”? Great question. Glad you asked.

During this entire ordeal, many of you have seen my comments about enjoying Heather’s bike. She has been great at letting me take out her 2002 Electra Glide whenever mine was on the fritz. I’ve probably put as many miles on her bike as on mine this year. And, I love her bike. In fact, I have basically converted over to the “couch-side” and am ready to give up the Dyna for a little more comfort.

That is until I get on my Dyna. When she’s running right, I fall in love all over again. There is a connection that I have with this bike. One that is difficult to explain. One that only a few people – those who ride – can understand. We’ve been across the U.S. together. She never let me down once during that long road trip.

As I sit here tonight, in my backyard, with the garage open, I look over at her. She’s sitting there patiently. Her carb is apart. I don’t think she’s enjoying this any more than I am. She wants to run. She wants to roar. She wants me to take her out for a good long ride.

Hopefully this week.

During the month of June, I’m speaking at two churches. Along with my regular duties at Bikers’ Church, I’ve been invited to do a series at Greenbelt Baptist Church. I’m loving the opportunity to share a month of sermon’s with the good folks at Greenbelt.

I’ve been sharing a series called, “When Warriors Dream.” It’s a series about living out your purpose and believing that God has called you to experience a full life with him. Each week, I’ve been offering principles that will help us dream “God-sized” dreams.

The first principle I shared is one that I believe many people struggle with. Basically, the principle says that before you will ever do anything, you need to understand who you are. Actually, that’s the “sanitized” version of it. Really, the principle suggests that before you can do anything for God, you must see yourself the way God sees you.

Let’s face it, we are often our own biggest critic. After I preach, I can be harder on myself than any negative email I might receive. Most of us see ourselves as less than we are. We consider others as more talented, more popular, more gifted. When we are asked to get involved, most of us wonder what on earth we can contribute.

Gideon was a guy who seemed to have nothing to offer. He was a coward. He hid from challenge and conflict. He was one of the least likely warriors in the Bible. And yet, God eventually used him as a great leader. Gideon is seen as an incredible man of faith who was willing to risk everything for the sake of his calling.

What changed for him? What caused him to go from being a coward who hid whenever the enemy showed up to a man who led a small army of 300 into battle?

One thing. He finally saw himself the way God saw him.

How did God see him? The Bible tells us in Judges 6:12. An angel appears to Gideon and calls him a “Mighty Warrior.” A warrior? Gideon?

And yet, that is who he was. It took some time, but soon Gideon began to believe it. He believed that God was right in how he saw him. The rest, as they say, is history.

Look, you might not have an angel speak to you while you’re hiding out from the enemy. You may never have to led 300 men into battle. But God has a calling – a purpose – for your life. He has something special for you to accomplish.

But it begins with seeing yourself as God sees you. You’re not a failure. You’re not worthless. You’re not insignificant. God sees you first and foremost as his child. One he loves deeply. You are his and that is not a small thing.

So begin to dream, mighty warrior. Allow God to work through you and be amazed at what you can accomplish when you simply believe you are who he says you are.

I apologize in advance for my non-techie followers, but this post is all about computer technology – specifically Apple’s iPad. Mind you, even if computers are not of much interest to you, I think you might find this post interesting.

It was almost two weeks ago when I bought my iPad. I picked mine up the day after the international launch. I thought it was time to share my initial thoughts about the device.

Now, I’m going to assume that you’ve heard of the iPad. If you haven’t, then you should jump over to the Apple Website and read up on it a little. It is a device you will be hearing about much more over the next few years.

When Apple released the iPhone, they called it revolutionary. And it was. It still is. Love it or hate it, no one can deny that the iPhone changed the entire industry. The majority of phones being released today have touch screens. Most are compared only against the iPhone. Some measure up, most don’t.

I believe in the next year, the same will happen with the iPad. We will see all kinds of companies come out with tablet computers. In fact, I believe the iPad will kill off the netbook market completely and companies will focus on building full scale laptops and tablet computers.

Is the iPad good? Let’s just say that there are still times, two weeks after getting the device, where I’ll go to do something on it, and will be amazed at how incredible it is. It has changed 80% of my computer habits. Almost everything I do is now done on the iPad. From watching video clips, reading blogs, doing my daily Bible reading, writing sermons, researching data, reading the daily newspapers, all of it is a joy to do on the iPad. In fact, I replaced my MacBook Pro with an iPad and a MacMini and have not regretted the decision for one moment.

Tonight and this weekend, I will preach from the iPad. I’m still needing to figure out the best system for  doing this (it will become obvious once Apple’s iBook APP supports PDF files). For now, I’m trying two different systems. One is an APP called Fast PDF which mimics iBooks, and the other is taking screen shots of each page of my notes and using a photo slide show.

Who is the iPad good for? Well, I think it’s the perfect machine for just about everyone. The only people I think would find it limiting are those who use specialized software, or those who do video editing. The average computer user – the one who primarily uses a computer for email, web surfing, videos, music, blogs, etc., will find the iPad a great system.

One of the blogs I follow showed this video today. It’s a 99 year old woman working on an iPad. It’s her first computer, and she demonstrates just how simple this device is to use.

So, what do you think? iPad users: what apps are you loving?

I saw him about thirty seconds before I passed him. I was cruising down the street on my motorcycle, thinking about all the things I needed to accomplish before the end of the day. I was feeling the pressure. I had procrastinated on a few things, and now I was under the gun. I had no one to blame but myself. I was frustrated.

He looked to be around nine or ten years old. He was straddling a bicycle, his right leg on the pedal, his left on the ground. His eyes stared at the ground about ten feet in front of his bike. He was focused. I could tell that he had tuned out the busy street where cars and motorcycles rushed passed, their drivers focused on all the things that demanded their time and energy.

It was a puddle that had grabbed the boys attention. It was about three feet wide. The rain that fell about an hour before had created it. The same rain that had caused me to grumble as I realized my bike would need a good cleaning when I got home. A rain that I knew was needed in Ottawa, but I wished had fallen during the night rather than when I was trying to cross town on my bike.

The boy wasn’t concerned about the timing of the rain. He wasn’t thinking about deadlines or responsibilities or anything else that was consuming my thoughts. No, the boy had only one thought in his head. I know, because I have no doubt that he was thinking the very same thing I would have been thinking about when I was nine or ten years old.

In his thoughts, he was Evel Knievel. He was staring out over a huge river. He had once chance to cross to the other side without being swept away by the rushing water. He was getting ready, psyching himself up for the world record jump he was about to attempt.

Just as I passed him, I saw a smile cross his face. It was a huge grin. It was the grin of a champion. I saw him lift up on the right foot, the one already on the pedal, as he lifted his left foot off of the ground. It was time, he was going for it.

Did he make it? I don’t know. I tried to watch in my mirror, but the mirrors on my bike are more for show that actual practical use. I couldn’t tell how the daredevil did with his massive jump, but I knew it really didn’t matter. If he made it, he would hear the roar of cheers from the crowd inside his head. If not, he would be imagining his front tire making the other bank, and a miraculous recovery as he managed to get the bike over the other side.

Suddenly, I wasn’t 43 and worried about all I had to do that day. My thoughts went from my dirty bike, the sermon I had to preach the next day, and the yard that still had so much work before it was complete.

I was nine or ten. I flicked the throttle of my WideGlide and heard it roar. I used to put playing cards in my spokes to make noise. Now, I had the real thing. I was a child again, trying to avoid the land mines that had been placed in my path. My adult brain calls them potholes, but at that moment, I was rushing through a maze of bombs in order to save the world.

It didn’t last long, but for a few minutes, I once again enjoyed the wonder of seeing life through the eyes of a child. I have a young Evel Knievel to thank for that.

Why don’t you take time to open your eyes today?

Well, hi there. Yes, I know it’s been a while. While there have been a couple of times when I sat down to begin writing something here, I never did get around to putting my thoughts down. Suddenly, it’s been a few weeks, and I haven’t shared anything.

Now, I have all kinds of thoughts to share with you. However, two of the things I’ve been up to seem to fit together, so let me share them with you and throw out a thought about them. One has to do with my bike, the other is about digging holes.

So, first my bike. I love my 94 Dyna WideGlide. Sure it has over 206,000 KMS on it. Sure, the frame is in need of some paint. But, it’s a beautiful bike. It had a “cool factor” long before my good friend Jason from HellCat Customs painted it this past winter. But that paint job raised the “awesomeness” of the bike more than a few notches.

Still, I think I’m getting old. This may be my last summer on the Dyna. I’m pretty sure I am ready to look into a “Geezer-Glide”. Heather’s complaining that she’s constantly having to clean my drool off of her ’02 Electra-Glide. I wont lie, I love riding her bike. I think I want one.

But, for now, I’m still on my Dyna. When it’s running right. Not that it’s been misbehaving, it just needed a little care. So, a month ago, I pulled out the wiring harness and, with the help of a friend, rewired most of the bike. I was good to go.

Except I wasn’t good to go.

The bike has continued to be finicky. Some mornings, it fights with me to start. In the past, this bike fired up first attempt. This year, there have been days when I wondered if it was going to start at all.

Then, in the past week, it’s started to hesitate, backfire, chug along at low speed. It seemed like it was starving for fuel. Last Thursday, I barely got to church on it. I was frustrated. In the past year, almost every aspect of the electrical had been replaced (stator, regulator, coil, plug wires, etc).

So, on Saturday, I pulled the float bowl. Sure enough, there was dirt. Lots of crap. That meant, pulling the tank and inspecting the inline fuel filter on my Pingle petcock. What I found was incredible. To suggest there was rust in the tank would be … well, an understatement. And so, I spent the weekend cleaning the tank, the carb, and even the fuel lines themselves.

Yesterday, I finally got it all back together and took it for a spin. I was so excited to finally get it out and running right. Except two blocks later, it was back to sputtering. I headed home, checked the bowl again. More dirt. It took three attempts before I cleaned out all of the crap. And then, because the bike had been starving for fuel before, I needed to adjust the settings on my S&S Super E. Finally, around 7:30 last night, I took the bike out and she ran like she was brand new. What a beautiful ride it was.

While I was doing that, my buddy, who happens to own his own home renovation business (and who is currently building this bike), was digging holes in my backyard. Actually, he was digging holes in the backyards of about six of my neighbours. You see, he’s replacing all the fences. At first glance, it looked like the holes were going to be fairly easy to dig. But, a foot or two down, he ran into rock. Lots of rock. An easy job suddenly began a very difficult one.

So, what do these stories have in common? Well, sometimes we let things go and before you know it, the dirt inside begins to affect how we live. It clogs our sense of compassion, our love for family, and our sense of purpose. Often it happens slowly. We can sense something’s just not right, but we struggle with figuring out what that something is.

If we rely only on other people to determine what might be wrong, we could be fooled into a false sense of security. You see, sometimes, all others see is the exterior. To them, everything looks fine, and they may even tell you that. But they don’t see the rock that is beneath the soil. They don’t realize that things are not as good below the surface.

Here’s the thing. God does. God sees the rocks, he knows there is dirt in the tank, he can even let you know when the carb needs a little tuning. The question is: have you asked him? Have you invited God to take inventory of your life and help you see what might be wrong inside?

David, who was once king of Israel, wrote a song that is found in Psalm 139:23-24. In it he wrote these words: Search me, O God and know my heart.

Perhaps those are good words to pray. I know I need to.