Drug laced Pasta

Jun 6, 2011 
Dear Jared,

Here's the word on the street. Robert Thompson got his call. He leaves for the Omaha Nebraska Mission on September 7th. His family is pretty excited for him.

Lindsay came into Spanky's the other day. She asked how you were doing. She said to tell you hello and she needs to write you a letter.

This has been kind of a crazy week. The last day of school was on Friday. I went over to the school to take pictures of Hallie and her teacher and as I was leaving, I actually got a little melancholy. I felt a lump form in my throat and I got all choked up. This is an end of an era for me. No more kids in elementary school. No more class parties, no more Halloween parades, no more PTA book fairs, no more kids in school until 3:30. Gone are my days of volunteering at Boulton Elementary.

After school got out, we had a party her class mates. She invited a bunch of friends from school and they had a big water fight in our circle. We set up a big pool right in the middle. It was pretty chilly to swim, 69 degrees, but the kids didn't seem to mind. At least it wasn't raining for a change. The party ended at five o'clock and then we packed up and headed up to the family cabin.

We caravanned with the De Vries and the Burts. All of us spent the night in the cabin. At 3:55 a.m., there was a horrible noise. It jolted me awake and I realized that someone had fallen down the stairs. It was Kiara. She had a dream that she needed to brush her teeth and tried to find the bathroom in the pitch dark. She cut up the side of her face and got a pretty good bruise, but otherwise survived. What a scary thing! I was glad it wasn't Craig or Laura who fell, because kids heal so much faster than adults. We finally all got back to sleep and settled down, then it was time to get up. It was time for our big ride.

We headed to Lewiston for our 100 mile bike ride; Little Red Riding Hood. We started our ride at 7:30. It was so cold, I was worried about getting hypothermia for the first 10 or 15 miles. When the sun got a little higher in the sky, it started to warm up. We were at mile 52 and feeling great when the unthinkable happened. Sherisse was in the lead, I was  two inches behind her and Laura was a few feet behind me.  A girl who was riding in front of us, and off to the left, clipped the tire of the girl in front of her. I saw her swerving and coming our direction. She lost total control, crashed, and slid face down directly in front of Sherisse. Because we were riding fast and so close, there was no reaction time. I watched as Sherisse ran right OVER HER HEAD! I swerved right and missed the girl by an inch and landed on top of Sherisse. Laura missed both of us, and wiped out on her own. Stacy, (the girl from the other group) was bleeding from her head and appeared to be in serious condition. Medical help came quickly and the paramedics were working to get her taken care of. Meanwhile, we assessed our own wounds, which, miraculously, were minimal. My wounds were purely emotional, perhaps post traumatic stress from a recent incident of my own. Seeing her lying there on the ground, bleeding, not knowing if she would live or have permanent damage was extremely disturbing. After the ambulance pulled away, we did a quick check of our bikes. (Some good Samaritan had put the chain back on mine) and we found that there was no damage to any of the bikes (another miracle). We decided to ride three miles to the lunch stop and reevaluate if we wanted to finish riding or call it a day. We ate lunch, and decided that it wasn't our day to die, so we rode on and finished the last 45 miles.

I got contact information from Stacy's family so I could get an update on her condition. When we got home Saturday night, I called to check on her. She has a concussion and a plastic surgeon did some work on her face, including 150 stitches, but aside from her abrasions, and mere flesh wounds, no permanent damage. What a miracle. By the way she looked, I was pretty sure she had some neck or head injury that was pretty serious. All of us feel that there was some divine intervention there. I remember vividly watching it all happen, but no recollection of me crashing or getting up. Sherisse and Laura said the same thing. I feel amazing today, I guess my guardian angel took the impact for me.

All of us got back on our bikes this morning and rode to the pool to swim laps. The Lord works in mysterious ways. I truly believe that He was watching over us and protecting us.

I took Mikayla to the airport yesterday morning before church. She's on her way to Costa Rica. She called me at 8 o'clock last night and still hadn't left the Salt Lake airport. Her flight had been delayed by almost 12 hours. Poor thing! But she was positive about it and said that it was all part of the adventure. I hope she's there by now.

Did you get the GPS we sent? Hope it helps.

We love you and pray for you every night.

Enjoy the journey

Mom



Hello,

Thanks for sending the GPS. It's really going to help next week when we have the car. It's not doing any good right now, because it's our week on bikes. I hope you're enjoying that nice 70 degree weather because it's in the 90s (with humidity) here, so biking kind of sucks. At the end of the day our shirts are soaking wet with sweat. 

We've had some pretty funny things happen this week. First of all, on Wednesday I went on an exchange with one of the elders in Indianapolis. We were having dinner with a family in the ward. Before we went in, Elder Ketch told me not to do anything stupid because this lady is kind of crazy. She's got Schizophrenia and multiple personalities. She gets offended really easily. So naturally, the whole dinner was awkward. She had her 97 year old mother with her, and we were having pasta for dinner. This lady ground up her mother's pills and sprinkled them on her pasta and mixed them in...using the serving spoon...We didn't want to say anything to offend her so we just had to smile and serve ourselves some pasta with that spoon. I hope I don't die. After that, the doorbell rang, and the family's rottweiler ran to the door. Elder Ketch had his legs stretched out under the table and this dog wanted through. So it ran under his legs causing him to almost kick the table over and fall backwards off his chair. We got a pretty good laugh out of it.

I hope you guys are doing good, and it's not all doom and gloom like your letter sounds.

Tell Lindsay to she needs to write me. I still need to hear about how Sasquatch Music Festival was. I hardly ever get letters.

Love,

Jared