proteanme

Late night bike ride last night home from J’s. Amazingly dry, which was awesome, but the kind of cold that makes me shiver. Luckily, I had my glove liners and shoe covers with me. Learning curve lesson learned years ago: the right gear makes a big difference. Not that I want to talk about gear. For me, gear is the means to an end, which is why I like talking with gear heads, because I can glean valuable information on the best “means,” even if ultimately we are not really talking about the same thing. Anyway, I am especially psyched about riding last night because I really didn’t want to do it. So much so, that when I was riding home from work, I was conjuring up a list of all the reasons why I should drive my car to J’s: it was dark; I had some stomach cramps from gas; I had already ridden for the day via my commute to work; I had to go by the liquor store; it would take me at least 40 minutes to get to J’s and 40 to get home and I had a bunch of shit to do, like fill up the compost/yard waste bin and switch the outlet over for my new dryer and lift weights. It was a tempting list and yet, somehow when 6:30 rolled around I was in my saddle and pedaling down my street. I don’t know if that’s because I got all my shit done or it wasn’t raining or I thought of the list I made myself and posted about last month. I’d like to think it was about how I’m willing to experiment with committing to something. And how I want to concretely express my gratitude for things like the weather and my awesome bike and my body on my bike. I don’t think of myself as a bike rider, as much as someone who is willing to ride. So also, maybe I’m experimenting with willingness. Sometimes, I silently chant a mantra to myself when I ride, especially uphill. It goes: lungs, heart, legs, yes. And I try to picture each thing and how grateful I am for it’s ability to endure my on and off poor treatment and neglect. I used to do chant that all the time. Less now, but I pulled it out the other night for a long hill climb and really just loved my legs for a second.

I can see that for me, biking is biking, and also that biking is means to an bigger ends, which is probably not something that should be called an “ends.”