Jason's December Adventure: A 40-mile bike race around Lake Atitlan

Jason's fun activity this month was joining about 300 Guatemalans for a bike race around Lake Atitlan.  Of course, Jason had only ridden a bike ONCE in the past 2 1/2 years.  I love that he wasn't discouraged by that fact (or that he didn't even have a bike--he rented one at 6 the night before) and that in spite of this, he could actually finish 40 very hilly miles at over 5000 feet altitude in one day.

A map of the race course -- it involved two boat rides since roads don't actually circumnavigate the lake:

Here he is at about 5:30 on the morning of the race -- ready to go!

I didn't see him again until after 5 pm when all of the bikes toured down the main street of Pana.  The timing was amazing.  Our church service was just finishing and a friend noticed bikes coming down the street, so we went to watch and sure enough, there was Jason -- looking pretty weary, but happy :)

Images from the road ... ahhh the hills!

Some of the rest stops.

 Boating back across --

Lining up to parade through downtown Pana.

This man had traveled from Mexico to complete the race, he befriended Jason and kindly helped translate some of the instructions for him since everything was of course in Spanish :)