Category: Uncategorized
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Reflections on a Summer of Biking America
by Justin Marquis You can see pictures from the tour here. In May 2020, less than two months into the COVID-19 pandemic, my companion and I did our first bike tour together, a 300 mile ride across Ohio from Cincinnati to Cleveland. We were told to avoid physical contact with others to avoid spreading the…
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The Trails are Empty. Where is everyone?
by Justin Marquis I am beyond grateful that my companion Zyzzy is out here on the bike trail with me. If she weren’t here by my side, this bike tour would be a lonely experience. Long distance biking is such a joy and brings so much healing and beauty to my life, I always expect…
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Raspberries and the Gifts of the Trail
by Justin Marquis It’s our first rest day on the bike odyssey after 5 straight days of biking 50 to 70 miles a day and a 9-day visit to our old stomping grounds in and around Cincinnati. I know why I chose to go on the bike tour, but I had no idea what to…
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Work is not the Answer
by Justin Marquis I reject the dichotomy between work and play. If an activity is intrinsically worthwhile to do while being paid, then it is intrinsically worthwhile to do without pay. Literally the only difference between work and play in late capitalism is that one is paid and the other is unpaid. This comes up…
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Maundy Thursday Reflection
by Justin Marquis [Given at Maundy Thursday Worship at Irving Park Lutheran Church on 4/17/20250] Maundy Thursday is a special day for me. When I started working and worshiping here at Irving Park Lutheran Church, it was Holy Communion that drew me back to the church community. Food brings people together, and it is with…
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The Bike Odyssey 2025 – A Protest and a Pilgrimage
Why I ride by Justin Marquis Starting sometime around June 1, 2025, I, along with my partner, am embarking on a year-plus long bike tour of North America, starting in Cincinnati, Ohio, the city where I first fell in love with long-distance bike exploration. This ride is born out of a love of bicycles and…
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Returning to the Church. Why? What does it mean?
by Justin Marquis I would believe only in a god who could dance….Now I am light, now I fly, now I see myself beneath myself, now a god dances through me. –Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, I, “On Reading and Writing.” I keep starting to begin a blog post explaining my return to the church beginning…
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Get up, this train is out of service. Don’t be left behind
by Justin Marquis There have been turning points in my life that seem so small and trivial that I barely know what to do with them at the time, but as they linger for months and years, fermenting and aging, they become guidepost memories that orient everything that comes after them and reinterpret everything that…
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The Death of God and the Open Sea
The morning of September 11, 2001 when planes were flown into the Pentagon and the Twin Towers, Psalm 20 was on my lips “Some trust in chariots…, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.” I was in the process of pulling away from the Evangelical church, but the last straw was…
Dionysus on a Bike 