Perspective.

I often ride solo, taking relatively short rides out here on rural Oregon roads.  It’s great, and I definitely enjoy the solitude of the experience of just myself, the bike, the scenery, and the more-than-occasional suffering that accompanies the many hills around forest glen road.

Sometimes through this solitary riding, I end up getting an inflated sense of my own skill as a rider.  Looking back toward a challenging hill that I just “crushed” offers the sense that, maybe, with a little more training, I could be a racer, too.  I used to race the bike, albeit in the context of triathlons.  But my last competition was more than 10 years ago, and I haven’t exactly kept myself dedicated to the process and planning that goes with competition.

Today I was granted some perspective (read humility), in the course of a ride with my friend David Pilz, who rides for the local team Gentle Lovers (gotta love that name).  Anyway, let’s just say at one point it probably appeared to a casual observer (and myself) that I was on a tarmac treadmill, while I’m pretty sure DP’s bike sprouted wings and elevated up the hill on Eaden Rd.

Perspective.

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Suffering.

Via SecretForts:

“The greater the suffering, the greater the pleasure. That is nature’s payback to riders for the homage they pay her by suffering. Velvet pillows, safari parks, sunglasses; people have become woolly mice. They still have bodies that can walk for five days and four nights through a desert of snow, without food, but they accept praise for having taken a one-hour bicycle ride. ‘Good for you’. Instead of expressing their gratitude for the rain by getting wet, people walk around with umbrellas. Nature is an old lady with few friends these days, and those who wish to make use of her charms, she rewards passionately.” The ethos of glory through suffering from Tim Krabbe’s seminal book, “The Rider”. Read it then re-read it. Fall asleep it under your pillow. Get up early and go for a ride.

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