principle

life is sort of like one big metaphor right now...I am, not in a holding pattern but more of a gathering moment...I have backed off several pieces I am working on and am letting myself explore the areas that I feel like...I need to know more.

The biking is gradually becoming one big metaphor for all of this.

Currently I am MacGyvering the whole bike. You see, money is tight, but getting better. I am slowly climbing out of the hole, it would be easier if I didn't have to pump what little money I had into projects to keep them alive but its all good. Its a part of pursuing something. Sometimes things get difficult. Sometimes they are easy.

But I have this wild hair about riding the century for my birthday in October.

Which means I have actually taken it upon myself to learn to ride a bicycle. Now, I have always ridden bicycles, alot and far but lo! I have no idea how to ride one like this, 100 miles in the mountains.

So I go online and learn wonderful things.
Like...
I do not have a 10 speed, I have a 12 speed. My low gears occur when the left lever is up (I have been thinking that was the high gears and totally confused). Riding has suddenly gotten a lot easier and faster.

The funny thing is the first guy I talked to, when I asked how I could tell what gear I was in was like "look at the numbers" and I was like, dude I have levers not numbers. The bike is about 20 years old.

Then I read that you could ride a century on a single speed bike if you learned a couple of things.

1) cadence
2) what part of you hurts when you ride a long time

I need a real bike seat, one of those ergonomic split seat wonders (and I will not go into graphic detail as to why those are so damn comfortable but suffice it to say f*** the gel get the seat from out of there). And I need toe cages.

The other thing I found is they said I should be doing 75 miles at a pop by my third week in if the century is two and a half months away.

No problem. I start that tomorrow.
Then I looked at my seat and could only imagine the pain.
I looked at my wallet and could only imagine the cost.

And then...

I got out all my old boxing equipment and leftover car parts and I MacGyvered a split seat touring saddle and toe cages out of battery wire.

My problem is I believe that tinfoil and electrical tape is fashionably presentable.

And as far as cadence et al, shifting too, I have learned from all my reading and trying things out that the prinicple behind riding is steadfastness. Cadence means rhythm and shifting should be done constantly to prevent yourself from straining or tiring out.

Metaphor.

The smoother you go at a lower gear the faster and farther you travel.
The larger the sprocket in the front and the smaller in the back the higher gear you are in.
Stand up when you go up a hill or on the flat if you need to pick up momentum because it is the stronger position. You use your whole body weight and not just the muscles in your legs.

If your butt goes numb when you ride, get another seat.

Simple things. Things that don't seem alike or reversed that actually go together to make things work because each is doing what they should do.

If there are two rules I have begun to live by it is this:

1) All things have more use then what they are intended for.
2) Everything eventually wears out.

The trick is to use things evenly so they do not wear out sooner rather than later, and to look at everything for its potential.

I have a few more days of holding back and then I am going to let myself loose all over things again.

I cannot wait.

And I am not even thinking about that announcement about Iraq. I mean, how stupid do the powers that be think we all are? Or are they just assuming that no one reads past the first paragraph of an article?

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