About a year ago I pulled the plug on riding the Divide again. I wanted it, but that desire was not strong enough to make it happen. That decision tore me up. I almost didn’t race at all the rest of the season and it was disappointing for me to not chase my dreams.

Since then, the idea of lining up in Banff this June has been in my head. I really want one more shot at it. Maybe I can go faster,( I’d love to break 16 days!!!) Mostly I want to go out there and be happy. 2014 I was stuck with numbers clicking like a clock in my head. I wanted the record, I wanted 14 days, I wanted to win. The race very much got in the way of the experience.

I really do want another run.

Thing is the Divide is an all or nothing sort of beast. I have not been out getting in the miles every weekend like I know I should. I have not been heading out into the rain, like tonight, to get in some spinning. Maybe I’m smarter, have less to prove, but I feel like I am softer, weaker…less driven. That really makes me question another TD. I just don’t know if I have “IT”???

It crushes me that I don’t even know.

So as I sit inside while it rains and rains, I am at a loss. I just don’t know. The big picture, in my head anyways, is that it doesn’t matter. Stay home, ride bikes, go bike packing with the girlfriend, play with the dogs, maybe race something close to home. All is good, right? The nitty gritty inside picture is that this maybe my last chance to dance down the spine. (there is more to life that living paycheck to paycheck….) I want one more blast down the continent, I want to see that expanse of land roll under my wheels from mountain range to mountain range.

But how bad do I want it, that is the question upon which this decision is weighing…..

I’ve been battling with the big “D” for most of my life. From a time before I understood what that terrible blob of darkness was, to this very moment. I’ve cried my eyes out helplessly, I’ve drunk myself stupid, I’ve spent perfect sunny days in bed unable to get my feet on the ground and moving forward. I’ve felt sorry for myself, I’ve hated myself and doubted every thing I ever did and ever dreamed of doing.

One thing that has lifted me up has been the bicycle. That simple machine gave me wings. Being outside has always improved my attitude, given me hope, and a glimpse of light. The bike gave me vehicle to get out there and keep going and seeing, breathing, looking for what is around the next corner, over the next hill.

Funny thing is the bike became everything and I eventually got pretty good at riding bikes long distances. Then I got on a bike team and got a bike sponsor, hot damn, pretty rad eh? It is rad to get recognition and support for what you love to do. Only thing is you don’t get that support and recognition for just being you and riding your bike. There comes a list of requests to go along with riding, racing and smiling. Blogging, Facebook, Instagram, Strava all become a part of your life. All of a sudden an introvert like myself is puking themselves up all over the place trying to get more likes, more press, more interest in whatever it is we are promoting.

Lately it has weighed heavy on me. I struggle everyday to find the self confidence needed to get out of bed, to get dressed and be the adult I have to be. I am not the always super positive, ultra energized bunny I put forth on social media. I don’t always get out there and ride as I am saddled with internal battles that leave me pacing around the house or laying in bed staring at the ceiling.  All the while there is pressure to get “content” out there.

Well I am caving in. I am withdrawing from the social media limelight.

I need to focus on being me. That is difficult enough most days and it gets very much confused by the whole public image thing. I need to ride my bike for fun, not for a workout or for the pictures to post up later. I need to inspire myself to ride and spend some quiet time when not on the bike.

I might be done racing, and I might race my brains out. Right now I have to make being happy a priority and that means letting all that go, so I can settle on what is important and that is living the best I can.

All day today the wind ripped through town. Tossing garbage cans, tumbleweeds, plastic bags and just about everything else about.

Regardless I headed out for an afterwork ride. Just for a spin, even with that raging spring wind as a backdrop, just a nice easy spin.

The wind railed, pushing me all over and dominated my ride until I made it past the base area where the landscape managed to spare me.

Up the draw I climb, snow swirling around me. The wind, temporally pushing me makes the miles roll by. My bubble of relative warmth is intact.

…and always keep the rubber side down….

I halt my progress, turn back home into the wind and blowing snow.

Reality shifts and I’m suddenly out in the sage with just my headlamp bringing tunnels of dark to life. It is snowing so hard that I simply can not see the road I’m descending. I am very quickly getting soaked from the wet heavy snow and the road spray. With more speed on pavement, I feel my fingers go cold, my frozen face pumps with blood. 

Oh how real and also remote it feels. Like so many days in the past and like so many more in the future. A flashback to now. This day, Everyday is our chance to live! A chance to go forth into the mountains and get an ass kicking that will make one glad to be alive. Live, Love and gORide!

So much of living is just plain old work. Success, or even simply making something happen in your life takes time, energy and effort. We forget sometimes how much work others might be putting into such efforts and how much we need to focus on our own. Big things,(even crazy big things) start with just plugging away.

Lately there has been no racing, no big grand rides, no travel and adventure. Just the everyday of work, dogs, love, bikes and living. No great jumps in fitness, or personal bests, just lots of little rides after work in the darkening twilight or in the freezing cold of pre-dawn morning. Lots of spinning on lonely and windy pavement. Plenty of boogger blowing intervals in the cold crisp dark air of quiet night. Many a morning of getting up an hour early to stretch and work my core, hips, legs. Basic, simple, quiet and not so glorious, and yet all steps forward towards my goals.

All little steps, everyday. Then there are days, like today, that feel like magic. Legs spinning and feeling strong. Clear fresh air rushing through me. Wondrous love smiling a few feet away from me. Nothing to rush home to, no agenda to pursue, no schedule to follow, no ego to feed.

Freedom. Mountains. Bikes.

Paths to travel. Birds Singing. Sun Glowing and Warming.

The perfection of everyday is seeing the path that takes you forward. The needs, goals and drive push the ideas, make it move, grow, evolve. Seeking the path makes it come alive and makes it real. Dream. And make it Live!

Got out for a great ride with my sweets today.

Was really great to ride up close to the mountains.

Some dirt, good bits of pavement and lots of sunshine.

gORide!!!

Bikes and Mountains. All Good.

Spring has been warming and melting things up here in the mountains. The warm temps have found me out spinning on the road getting in some miles. With the day off I decided to get out for a longer ride and make it a practice in self supported style riding. I started off the ride with no food from home, everything I wanted to eat needed to come from our closest convenience store, thus a “Loves Ride”.

$13+ in food

First bought some classics, sure these are familiar to many. Then I packed em all up in my frame bag and top tube bag.

Batteries are charged, tires are good, chain is lubed, time to gORide!

Up and over the top of 9 Mile. Was gorgeous looking south at the La Garitas.

Good dry dirt was out there and felt so good to roll along on. Cows, crows and heelers were amuck in the thawing fields.

My legs felt good, the bike felt right, the time outside was so wonderfully amazing.

Here is a herd of elk near the top of 9 Mile, I also so countless deer, a blue bird and flocks of Sand Hill Cranes. The world felt alive and reborn.

So many mountains. Love this world.

Clocked 66 miles and hit 46.5MPH.

More importantly it was simply fantastic to spend so much of the day riding my bike. There is nothing in the world that can make me feel like this, other than just being out there in the world, moving forward, feeling the air, riding my bike.

So damn good.

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.