Love, Life and Puppy Dog Tales

"This route is defeating."   I was talking on my ride this morning.  The route that I do 'regularly' was the subject of the conversation. As I ride it, it is hard.  At least it is hard for me.  I just get going and then I have to adjust.  I am either riding up a hill or turning down a street.  Sometimes turning down a street and going up a hill.  I have no way to get into a steady pace or rhythm.   At least that's what I said. And that's partly true. The bigger truth is that each of those hills makes me want to stop.  It gets so hard to make it up and when I am at the top, I just want to stop.I want to stop because I feel like I should make it up the hill and then just go.  Really go.  Why not?  I am past the thing that was slowing me down.  The road isn't going up any more.   But I can't just go.  I am spent.  I am unable to make my legs go round and round faster.   It takes me what feels ...

Let me share a little secret with you. I am using you.    You read that right.   I am pretty sure at least one person reads what I write here.  Maybe even two. You are my accountability.  Having you here makes me want to be honest.  To honestly share the good and the ugly.  I don't promise to have answers for anyone.  I do promise to be honest here however. I come here to share my emotions, my experiences, my journey.   It is all mine.  In my mind however, I imagine there's someone out there waiting for me to share one more time.   One more thing.  And so I come here and give this to you.  Give me to you.   When I first started riding, I shared with an amazing friend that doing this was hard.  Not just the physical part, but the emotional, mental part.  I was afraid to do this because I couldn't  ride as much, as fast or as far as she does and has .  I was shaking as I said ...

"Nothing holds you back more than your own insecurities." I saw this today and it really hit home.   Recently,  I have heard some very hurtful things... "Hey fatty..." "Get off the road fat ass." "Make room for REAL bike riders." "Hey fatso, you're gonna break that bike" I realized  I have been waiting for this, expecting it, dreading it.  Someone yelling something hurtful at me as I ride.    I heard it so very clearly. I heard it so very loudly. I almost turned around and went home. Ten more pedal strokes and I realized something more. No one else had said those things to me.   It was the voices in my head.   My demons, as my wife defined it. The voices that have been around for most of my entire life.  The voices that always crop up and tell me I can't do it.  Whatever the "it" is.   Twenty more pedal strokes and I pushed past it.  The voices tried to crop up ...

I am working a plan to be able to ride.  Working myself into longer time on the bike, but not diving in so fast that I burn out, hurt myself, or become too sore to actually ride - I think it's called getting saddle time.  Yikes, a new language to learn. Somewhere in my head I thought biking would be easy.  I didn't define easy, but I felt biking was something I could do.  People everywhere do it.  It wouldn't make me pound pavement or bounce along a road and cause knees and hips and oh my to hurt.  I didn't know that at 47 I would be learning to ride a bike again.  Get on and pedal.  Brake to slow down. Pedal to go faster.  Simple enough when I was growing up.   Even after I crashed my bike and went headlong over the handle bars (no helmet either!) and broke my collar bone, I got on again and rode.  I was a kid. I am well an adult now.  Boy have bicycles changed.  It's harder than I thought.  I am surpr...

Lessons Learned this morning on my second 'official' bike ride. a) I can't ride a bike like I drive a car - I have to look directly IN FRONT of the bike, not only down the road a distance b) the trash thrown from cars lands in bike lanes (like water bottles, still full of water) (see a above) c)speaking of water, don't discount having water with you on a bike ride, even on a short trip. (my cages and water bottles arrive today) d) REALLY glad I practiced clipping in/out (esp ecially out) at home, in the safety of soft cushy things (thank you my wonderful wife  Ni Kki  !) or I might be laying on my side in the street in front of a stranger's house (see a and b above) finally.... e) you never really know how many hills your town has until you have to ride up them on a bike. (FYI - Temecula has A LOT of hills. ) Here's to new adventures...!

There's a man I admire greatly that I see nearly every day and I don't even know his name.  I doubt I ever will.   Every morning as I drive to work, I see a variety of people out exercising.  Most in pairs, wearing fancy get ups.  Some solo, iPOD in, Nike's on, trucking right along.  I almost never give those people a second glance.  Aside from the dancing jogger who fascinates me to no end - but she's a subject for a different post.... This man, however, is different.  Sunny and warm.... windy and rainy.... overcast and gloomy, aside from a jacket, he wears the same thing. A button up shirt. A pair of khaki pants. A pair of what appear to be black loafers - though to be honest, they could be all black running shoes. And he is jogging.  He has no iPOD.  He isn't 'appropriately' dressed.  And yet, he is out there every day, jogging. At first he struck me as a person who must have woken up and decided that today was the day ...

3/22/91-1/24/02 How do you properly express the intense love... the immense respect... the deepest of emotions about a companion that came into your life for, comparatively speaking, such a short time, yet impacted your entire life, from then and long beyond? I often struggle with words that are adequate.  It has been since 2002 that I said goodbye to this fantastic dog.  Thumper was a throw away dog. He was a puppy that no one wanted, dumped at the shelter in my tiny town. The shelter staff thought he may have a problem with his sight because of his blue eyes. No one even thought about deafness. I didn't discover he was deaf until 2 weeks later. By then he was well entrenched in my heart. Thumper lived his life with joyful abandon, tail always wagging. He never knew a stranger. In his visits to elderly care facilities, he was always kind and gentle. He had a particular soft spot for one woman who loved candy spice drops. He would seek out her room first, get his sweet ...