the tao of cycling: messy, continued

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

messy, continued

not finis.
my thoughts are rarely finis.
here's the thing: if you're going to jump in with both feet, fully participate, get muddy and give it your all, this thing we call life is just plain messy.
if you prefer to stay cold, detached, and clinical, I'm sure it can be neat, better contained, more manageable.
but we were plunked down on the gameboard and given thoughts, feelings, desires, wants, needs, a breadth of emotion and a wealth of opportunities to express such things, and it just doesn't tie up all neatly in a little bundle.
those 6 degrees of separation connect us all with threads that range from silken, spidery wisps to mercerized cotton to bungee cords to links of soldered gold chain. and with those threads come thoughts and feelings and intensity and affinity and, ultimately, a great deal of soul work.
we are challenged to make decisions that protect us, enrich us, stretch us, and define us. what we choose to say and do impacts other lives. no man is an island, and none of us live in a vacuum. the repercussions of our words and actions ripple far and wide, jostling small boats and large ships and shorelines.
yet we cannot not move.
we are programmed to resist inertia and stagnation.
we are driven to strive forward and reach out with both arms and embrace our paths. with each step and each touch, with every sentence we utter and feeling we share, we impact the world around us.
and this is how it's meant to be.
messy.
imperfect.

yesterday a friend gave me a small plaque with this quote:
live imperfectly with great delight.

for months of this past year, I have had this tag line at the end of my email signature:
love imperfectly with great delight.

I attributed this latter quote to leigh standley, and I'm not sure where the former came from, and I certainly don't know if I accidentally (or accidentally on purpose) changed "live" to "love."
but what I do know, today, is that it doesn't matter because in the end, one cannot exist without the other.

live well, love well:
be messy, be imperfect, be willing, be brave, be you.

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the Male Ego

The other day I was coming down a canyon in my drop bars (two years ago I would have said, 'what's a drop bar?'), working hard, when I came up on two guys who were also heading downhill but at a more leisurely pace. I passed them, said hello as I did so, and pulled back into the bike lane. a few minutes later they went flying past me, faces looking dead ahead, not a single bit of acknowledgment that I even existed on this planet let alone was involved in and enjoying the same sport they were.
I have to attribute this to the male ego. what else can it be? now I know we all have egos, myself included. and mine even shows its ridiculous little head once in a while, or perhaps more often. but the difference between mine and say, those of certain men on bicycles, is that I KNOW mine exists and I can LAUGH at mine. I know my ego was quite excited to pass those guys, and I could also smile because I knew if the men had really been working like I was, they would have kicked my butt down the hill.
I think I pissed them off.
and I'm sure I will be sharing with you much more of my thoughts about the male ego . . .

a little history

I was married, and I had a mountain bike which I rarely rode. we separated, I moved out, and four months later someone stole my bike. the next spring, 2005, I bought myself a new mountain bike. I rode occasionally, and in april 2006 I rode in my first century, the Cactus Hugger in St. George, Utah. I made it 54 miles on that mountain bike, and it took me about 6 hours. I think that included the rest stops where I prayed that someone would steal my bike again . . .
in june 2006 I started riding my mountain bike five mornings a week, a 45-55 minute loop that was intended to be all about exercise. and what I found was that I loved the quiet, peaceful morning full of bird chatter and barely breaking sunrises. by that fall I was hooked, and began considering the purchase of a road bike. I rode up emigration canyon for the first time that Labor Day of 2006, panting and plowing along on my trusty (heavy) bike, and a month later I was the proud owner of my own road bike: I had become a two-bike girl!
a 17-week-long "power camp" over the winter and a handful of new friends kept bicycling front and center in my life, and when spring of 2007 rolled around I was ready to hit the pavement. I rode my first century the end of april, when I again went to St. George and completed that Cactus Hugger. it took me about 7 hours, but this time I rode the entire 100 miles with about 9300 feet of vertical gain. woo hoo!
I started riding canyons around our area, emigration and millcreek, city creek, big cottonwood, little mountain and big mountain, and once--yes, only once--little cottonwood.
then in september of 2007, I rode from Logan, Utah, to Jackson, Wyoming, in the slightly infamous LOTOJA race. I rode, I did not race. and I completed the thing, crediting my good training buddies, the incredibly perfect weather, my support team, and an amazing convergence of all things positive in the universe.
I put in about 3500 miles last season, and as of today, july 19, 2008, I have about 1700 in, adding to it every day.
I have again signed on to ride the LOTOJA race, and my goal is to have just somewhere near as great a ride as I did last year. oh, and to have someone fun to talk with along the way as I got incredibly bored last year . . . star valley is still a nightmare scene in my biking memories . . .
and here is a picture of the machine that has helped me reclaim my life.