There are some lessons about life that can be learned from bicycle touring. As a boy I owned a bicycle, a bicycle I used in my business as a paperboy. I had a route, and I knew that route very well, no doubt better than any other part of town. But later, when I used a bicycle to go from town to town, there was no way that I could’ve possibly known that route as well as the area of my hometown where I threw papers. We would miss some things. I would even say we would miss most things. It would come down to basically following one route and seeing whatever happened be along it. It may have been a temple or a masque. But we rarely went out of our way to see something because we neither had the time nor energy to do that. There was just too much to grasp without slowing down even more (such as walking), or by repeating the route over and over as I did with my paper business.
With hills, as impossible as they were to avoid, we had to learn how to approach them. You easily could be defeated before you got to some of the longer and steeper ones. Often we could see them from a long way off. Sometimes it would be for miles. Again, we could anticipate how difficult it was going to be. Then imagine that we’re climbing toward a summit and anticipating coasting down the other side, only to find that it was a false summit, at that moment we would know we had set ourselves up. That realization helped. Even with my limited knowledge of psychology it wasn’t hard for me to see what we were doing. From a distance hills always seemed steeper and longer than they were, but that wasn’t the only problem. The hill would then get the best of us before we reached it. And that would cause us to expend precious energy. I know that after we realized that hills always look steeper and more difficult from a distance that it not only made climbing hills easier, it also became a useful metaphor for living.
Postscript: a perfect day on a bicycle was when all the hills were balanced.
Randy Ford.
if i sense what is going on, Randy, in your blogs, there is a book cooking and brewing; if this is so, a suggestion or so. Move from an interesting, very interesting schematic of event, place and responses to a deepening of it all; i urge you to dig in and prowl beneath the sofa and table, giving more and more; you can always cut out. I know you can see the book forming in your mind. Ever onward.
matt
ps a thorough description of the gibbon, to wit, his or her likes and dislikes, the anthromorphic feelings you may have carried for it, et al would thicken the sauce; add more ford flour to the broth.
Hi Matt,
I appreciate hearing from you again. I’m not sure where I’m going with the travel material. Certainly I will dig deeper and go “beneath the sofa and table.” I just have to keep cooking. I do plan to reuse material in a deeper fashion. However, I must first discover what’s there. Thanks again. Your suggestions are always helpful. Randy Ford