The Day Of Our Bike Ride Was Glorious—the sky clear and the surrounding hills bathed in golden afternoon light. The rocky area surrounding us looked as timeless and eternal as God. I felt elated and completely alive.
I've always loved to bike, and somewhere along the trip, my friends and I started having bike races. I finally pulled ahead of everyone in the group and was racing down a hill, flying over huge rocks at top speed. I felt the wind blowing through my hair—as if the wind were part of my very being. Suddenly I went flying off my bike and over the handlebars. I had forgotten that in Australia bike brakes are different, and I had pulled the front-wheel brake instead of the back-wheel brake.
I was 14 and about a six-hour drive from Melbourne in the territory of New South Wales—and on the other side of the world from my home in the United States. There were 12 of us in the group from all over America, and we had already been in Australia for about a week with Discovery Bound, a Christian Science youth group. I had worked hard to get to Australia for my Easter break, having had to pay for the trip myself. We had been having a blast, snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef, hiking in the rainforests, meeting "Aussies," and doing many other amazing things. One day, while staying with a hundred other Christian Scientists at the Australian "Easter Camp," some of us decided to go on a bike ride in the mountain outback. We were in the middle of nowhere when the bike incident occurred. The only building around for miles was an old shepherd's hut we were biking to.
