I just watched this movie:

It was really well done and the ride looked amazing. Amazingly pretty and amazingly hard. Out of the 16 or so riders that started only 6 or so finished.

One of the common threads was how boring and monotonous the ride was. just spinning your pedals for 2711 miles following a dirt road all the way from Canada to Mexico, climbing an astronomical amount of hills.

It made my legs hurt. Then it made me feel bad. I’ve been, well, not complaining, but maybe mentally suffering and bragging about how tough I’ve been this week. A 26 mile ride on Saturday killed my legs, then all this week I’ve been riding to work and back. A whole mile trip, one way. On these legs that are so dead and haven’t had any rest at all.

These guys have put more mileage on their legs in half a day then I have all this year.

Sometimes, I just get shoved back into my place.

On Sunday, my car broke. Luckily I was just in my apartment complex’s parking lot when it decided to die and subsequently refused to start. I pushed it back to its spot and tried unsuccessfully to fix it.

I was without a car. I was carless. And I have learned something about carlessness. It’s a treat.

I once heard a quote that went something like this: being sick is a luxury. I get to walk places. While everyone else just drives to the supermarket, I get to go on an adventure, gather as much supplies as I can hold, and carry it all back to my man cave.

My self-imposed de-evolution of mobility is something I can relish at this point in my life. I have no kids to carry. My work is a mile away. The store is half that distance. I have two bikes. I have friends to bring me places. I have the luxury to be carless.

Today, as I was sitting in my car waiting for it to warm up, I started thinking. I though, Man, I’d really like to have a surround sound system for my house. Yeah, I think that’s the next big purchase that I want to get. I wonder how married people make these decisions. Do they make a list and take turn saving up and buying things off of it? Then my car was warm enough to defrost and I went on my day.

I worked a half day.

After my work, I went to the H. E. B. and picked up some stuff I needed for my race tomorrow and got some gas. While I was waiting for pump, this guy in a truck rolls up. He says hey, I say hey back, and he ask me if I want a free wireless surround sound system. I looked at him crazy, like he offered me a stolen sound system. He’s says he’s delivering it from Austin and his boss just said he could just keep it. He wanted to know if I wanted it.

I said no, thanks. And he left.

Three minutes later, I put it all together…

So, here’s where I’m at: hopeful, yet not going anywhere fast.

It’s like traveling. Yes, I did recently travel, and a few of my posts have been using that experience in stories and such. Anyway, when you travel, there’s always the act of traveling. Gotta pack, gotta get to the airport, gotta go through security, etc. There’s a lot of actions that get done quickly and in a matter of a day, you’re now 1,700 miles away at your destination.

First few days, you’re pretty ecstatic. You’ve made it! You’re at your destination! Things are different, new and wonderful. Everyday things become exciting and an adventure.

After those first few days, you just seem to lose the momentum that you had. What was exciting is now just blah… This is where you have to just work. To just do what needs to be done. This is where the next breakthrough comes from.

Maybe it’s something like a windup toy. The fast explosion of movement is a result of the steady and hard work put into the winding of the toy and not going anywhere. It all averages out.

So here I am, winding my toy.