I am so guilty of getting big, grand ideas and visions in my head. So large and tough they daunt my day to day living and haunt my dreams. I lose sleep, get stomach cramps and hold my face in a grimace all day, as I can’t think of anything else. Sometimes so grandiose that I can’t move forward in making it happen, stuck with the idea burning in my mind. It all tends to make me feel frustrated and stymied.

Last night after work, I slipped out for a quick spin. Just a flat high cadence roll on pavement in the cold dark of night. Might have been a whole 50 minutes on the bike. It just felt so good. Legs spinning, cold fresh air in my face, the whirl of tires on the earth. I am also guilty of having this same reoccurring experience; it amazes me what tiny little things make me happy.

Oh how badly I want to hold onto that feeling, the knowledge that it is the everyday joys that keep us alive, focused, happy. It is the little steps forward that get us closer to our goals. There are so many cliches and sayings that coincide with this, but it is the experience that sends the message home. Life is about living, not planning and worrying.

I say it often, I am so grateful that I keep getting these BIG ideas and dreams to pursue. It keeps me looking forward and reaching for more. I have been lucky enough to make some of these dreams become experiences that have changed my perspective and my life. Yet it is the everyday love, gratitude, and living with eyes open that makes life tolerable and the path to the Big stuff possible and approachable.

The sunsets, sunrises, the phases of the moon, the glow of my dogs eyes when they run, the wonderful warm love of my lady, every single pedal stroke on every single bike ride, all the amazing meals we cook and eat. So much simple joy to behold when we remember to slow down, look, feel and live in our everyday. Now the challenge is to keep this all in my heart even when it isn’t so obvious, that is the path I choose to be on.

Yesterday I wrote a blog post expressing how I felt that moment. I was feeling deeply envious of someone who is living something close to my “dream” or what I think it could be.

I got a lot of very awesome and positive response to this post. So many amazing people gave me wonderful thoughts, advice and encouragement. Pretty freaking beautiful really.

After a good nights sleep and a set of fresh eyes this morning I have a new perspective on all that jazz.

I am so lucky, blessed and humbled by this world and this life. The issue wasn’t my life sucking, as that is not true. The issue was that I was envious of someone else’s path and that it appeared to be easy, straight forward and full of everything I want more of. Yet we do not know the details of everyone else’s struggle and life path, we can only know our own.

So the whining is done and out of the way. Time to move forward, to keep reaching for them stars even if they are out of reach. There are great and grand adventures on the horizon and I will be there with a huge, grateful smile on my face.

Thanks for all the support everyone, I will never be rich, but I have an wonderful group of friends that make me very wealthy indeed!

photo by “dirty”

I really do try and keep a peaceful and even keel with every aspect of my life. Like anybody else, there is some dirty laundry piled in a corner in my head. I am not perfect or pure of thought and I am too often envious of what others seem to be able to pull off.

Thing is, I want more. More bikes, more riding, more training, more racing. Right now there is a clock ticking and all my crazy ideas are getting stale sitting on the back burner. My body is getting older and a bit more tired and I want to get out there before I’m too used up to be competitive. Making it happen is the crux that has frozen me in my tracks.

There are some big races that pull me, always in my head, always reminding me that I haven’t been there and done that. This nagging keeps whispering in my ear at the same time that this balancing act of keeping a roof over my head, food in the fridge and still chasing my dreams is a kicking my ass. In the past with my fanatical obsession leading the way, all else was sacrificed in order to make it to the start line. I almost always return home completely broke and right back to work in order to get by. It has worked for many years, I have raced well and scratched out a meager living. But that bare bones style has taken a toll, I’m starting to feel the effects of burning my candle at both ends…and there is still much to do.

I manage to get my head back on straight and focused on what I can do, and then I see another post on Facebook and I lose my grip. Seems like some folks just live the dream. Riding, training, racing, traveling all over the place, all the time. I try to stay in my zone and not think about what everyone else is doing, yet between social media and my ever curious mind, it becomes impossible to ignore. I keep plugging away, doing my thing, I really do want more.

Hard work will get you there and I continue to work my butt off. Yet with an industry that seems only interested in pushing “Enduro” and if the media does pay attention it is celebrating the few who are already hooked up. It is like a slap in the face. How does one get more support when this is the situation? How does one take weeks, even months off of work without support? How can anyone compete with people who ride, train and race all the time?

When it all boils down and my head stops spinning, I can find peace with this life. I have wonderful friends, awesome bikes, an amazing backyard. I am lucky enough to have dreams that burn so brightly inside me. I am still pretty damn healthy. I will keep racing, adventuring, taking in the sunsets and sunrises, and making friends as long as I can. I have to keep in mind that there will always be a massive pile of laundry that needs a washing, I simply must concentrate on dirt that is mine.

Funny how we humans tend to get so hung up on such little things. Sure they seem so huge once inflated inside our own minds, but really they remain tiny in the grand scheme of things. With the ever segmenting clicks of our modern world making our worlds even smaller, we tend to obsess over even sillier and sillier things. The little world I tend to be in is the world of bikes and bike racing. Fat bikes, mountain bikes, bike packing bikes and all their various appendages spend a lot of time inside my thoughts.

I overthink the benefits or detriments of tire width, rim width, dynamo hubs vs batteries, rigid vs suspension, weight vs comfort, singlespeed vs gears, 2x vs 1x, oh lord it ever seems to end. I weigh everything and can often tell you months later what a #$*& is in grams. I leave piles of good quality gear on the floor, unpacked at the start of many a bike packing race cause I refuse to carry the extra weight.

The past few weeks have been chock full of bikes, cyclists and bike racing. At both fat bike races and mountain bike races; I saw all kinds of bikes and riders, from ultra clean super fast racer types on whittled down race machines, to costumed drunken peeps just having so much damn fun. I got passed in gracious amazing ways and was told to get out of the way cause “we” are still competitive.

What I am getting to is that some of us get our undies in a bunch over how many grams our tires weigh, or that our anodizing matches or that we got out spent and someone else has more blingy and glittery bike part magic. All the while, some just show up on a borrowed bike and seem to have more fun than anyone else.

So, what is more important. Winning? Well most of us know only a handful of folks truly have that in them on any given day. Looking the coolest? Well that is in the eye of the beholder as the blinged out racer boy looks like a fucking geek to anyone other than another racer boy, and the party kids are just a side show for the racer types.  Or is it about having fun? Going fast is fun, drinking beer is fun, hanging out with your friends is fun and being outside is often deep down soul fun.

After the past few weeks of all this bikes, racing and beer too, I have to say that we all need to take a chill pill and relax. All the obsessing I did in preparation for all these events made me crazy, I spent way way too much money and wasted a lot of time better spent riding, stretching or just being outside. Basically I could have used my energy much much more efficiently than worrying about senseless micro details that could and would make no difference. Sure racing is fun and winning a race is fun too, but just being alive, healthy, and happy is fun too, and a lot less stress.