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If you follow cycling, you know that the Tour of Ireland wrapped up this weekend. And you might have also noticed Adrien Niyonshuti in the peloton. Hard to miss, Adrien is one of the few people of color in professional cycling, and he’s the only African. Top ranked out of Rwanda, Adrien has been training with Tom Ritchey’s team, and has recently signed a pro deal with a team out of South Africa. Pictured above is Adrien with fellow Tour of Ireland rider Lance Armstrong. Lance’s story is incredible, and well known, but lesser known is Niyonshuti’s. Adriend lost six brothers to the Rwandan genocide. And last year his father passed, along with his cousin and fellow cyclist Godfrey Gahemba, who was struck by a car during a training ride.

I confess I love watching this guys web show. His name is Josh Shipp, and he’s an advice columnist for the digital age. His advice is for teens, and yet I find I learn something every time I watch one of his videos. If you’re a youth group leader, he’s completely clean, in fact, he often speaks to church groups. That between appearing on MTV and so forth. And when you get to know his personal story, you will be floored. I’m featuring one of his videos that I find remarkable. I like it because Josh cares about so many kids who, quite honestly, are hardly being parented. A man after my own heart. When he gets into relationships and self pity and prejudice, grab a box of kleenex. You can learn more at his site. By way of introduction, here’s Josh: Parents Trailer from Dot&Cross on Vimeo.

I get great questions via twitter nearly every day, and I’d love to be able to answer all of them. But that’s hard to do in 140 characters, and even harder walking through an airport or bagging dog poo at the park. So every so often I’ll just fire off an answer on the blog. Here’s the first, and it’s especially applicable today, since I’m writing: Twestion: christopherbmac@donmilleris How smooth is the transition from writing one book to another? Do U ever find yourself wanting to write for the previous book? Answer: About as easy as turning around a train. Some writers can switch gears easily, but I’m not there yet. I’m convinced it’s a skill I can learn, but I’ve not learned it yet. I wrapped up the final pass of Million Miles about two weeks ago, and have since been editing To Own a Dragon for it’s new release (June, 2010) as Rogue Elephants and Real Men. I passed through the book changing some phrasing here and there (I was surprised at how clean the book actually was) and am now attempting to write a couple more important chapters to add to the book. And that isn’t easy. Each [...]

I’ll write till I die, I suppose. Writing got much harder for me after Blue Like Jazz took off, and until this last book I even considered finding other work, mostly because my voice began to feel affected. Million Miles changed that because, for reasons I don’t understand, I stopped caring how the words made me sound, and cared more about how the words sounded. The process reminded me that I could actually love writing the way I did before I got published. I hope whatever book comes next is as much fun. That said, though, there has always been a job I’d rather have than writing. And I recently got that job. I won’t quit my day job, but I’m ecstatic to have the part-time work. I was recently asked to host an interview program that will release as a small-group curriculum and, perhaps, a podcast. The program is called Converge, and the aim of the show is to explore that place where the stuff of faith meets the stuff of life. EMI will be distributing the material, and I’m not certain when it will release, but I owe them and the people at Creative Trust a debt of [...]