To continue

Theoretically this shouldn't take much longer:) Its been raining/windy/gross quite frequently so I'm not increasing my miles as quickly as I'd like, but sometimes things don't go exactly as we'd like and that's part of life...but that doesn't mean we give up or stop trying. Instances of hypothermia have taught me, the hard way, how to layer better and that what we think we know to be correct, in this instance, about proper layering (or in life) may not be correct.

And so sometimes we learn the hard way (in life and in cycling) that the advice in the driver's manual, that water freezes on a bridge before regular roadways, is indeed true. And sometimes it means you completely wipe out on the ice on the pedestrian bridge and get snazzy green, yellow, and purplish blue bruises to prove your newly gained knowledge.


Goal: 2,200 miles by 9.24.10
Miles ridden to date: 1,812
Miles left to goal: 388
Days left: +50 over

Expectations

Sometimes things go as expected and sometimes they don't. As far as bicycling goes its easy to think this:

You never have the wind with you - either it is against you or you're having a good day. ~Daniel Behrman, The Man Who Loved Bicycles

Although in this case more with expectations than wind...

At the beginning of this adventure, when I did some of the math (read as approximations:) it appeared, if everything went swimmingly that I would reach the half way point in mileage (~1,100mi) sometime in August. August has obviously come and gone, and it did not include nearly enough biking. First was vacation in the mountains of Vermont, much needed- I will admit, but without Charlie. Next was returning home to deal with the flat tire mystery. During which we learned many wonderful things.

We also learned, don't wait to deal with things; it may take longer than you think, so get started now and then no matter how long it takes you're on the road to the goal, as it were. (Read as: Charlie could have been fixed while I was away and not after I got back. Hello this is procrastination calling...do you have a minute? We can wait until tomorrow if you'd like...) So instead of going a week without bicycle as he waited in the maintenance queue of the shop I could have been riding.

After that of course was the week of rain, and as stubborn as I am, and as frequently, foolishly ready as I am to challenge the weather, when it comes down to the bicycle and keeping Charlie in tiptop shape I will bear the burden of the bus to keep him out of the rain for prolonged periods.

So what now? As it goes, if I am to finish on Sept 24th I would be needing to ride ~59 miles a day. This is not impossible and real Tour de France riders usually do this entire distance of several thousand miles in 21 days, with only a few rest days between. But alas, I am not a professional cyclist and I think my legs might give out if I rode four and a half hours every day (how much time I estimate it would take to ride the required mileage at my average speed).... but I may yet surprise myself.

Don't let your doubting mind set the tone when things get rough. But do realize you still have to go to work, sleep, eat, and talk to other human beings once and while(... although I know several people who may argue some of those points). Point being that I knew I would be away for 2 weeks but I have had ~2 weeks worth of obstacles. So do I push myself beyond to complete by the deadline or do I extend the deadline (in this rare instance of a deadline being within my control)? Charlie is also going to be due for a tuneup in about 200 miles or so...

Fall arrives and it will rain, that's what Boston autumns like to do, handy hurricanes and all (Hello Earl, how are you?). And right now once I've ridden about 80 miles in a week and continue above that I get very tired, of course more training will expand my effective range...

So for now I ride as much as I can as often as I can and ride even when I'm not trying to get to any particular destination. If the overall average of ~25 miles per day continues I will be at 1,426 miles on the goal date and then will not finish the entire distance until another month has elapsed.

Sometimes our expectations are not met in exactly the way we want them to be. We do not complete or achieve what we set out to do in the way we imagined it. But we can still win as long as we persevere and continue without giving up. And then we can be delightfully surprised when we open up the possibility in our hearts and minds for the unexpected to arise. For sometimes it is better than you ever could have imagined or expected, all because you never gave up. That's victory in life, never giving up- even when things don't always go according to plan.

"Happiness doesn't exist on the far side of distant mountains. It is within you, yourself. Not you, however, sitting in idle passivity. It is to be found in the vibrant dynamism of your own life as you struggle to challenge and overcome one obstacle after another, as you clamber up a perilous ridge in pursuit of that which lies beyond." -Daisaku Ikeda

So this is me, not giving up, even though things haven't gone exactly as calculated. And it has been a great benefit for all these sunny days....

"Life is something that happens while you're busy making other plans." -John Lennon, "Beautiful Boy"


Goal: 2,200 miles by 9.24.10
Miles ridden to date: 851
Miles left to goal: 1,349
Days left: 23

Aside: I appear to have a completely defunct way of calculating days... for me Sept 24th on the countdown is day 1 not 0 and I imagine that's all kinds of crazy incompetent...but it made sense at the time. Can I put it down to artistic sentiment?

Bicycle quotes on life

Goal: 2,200 miles by 9.24.10
Miles ridden to date: 721
Miles left to goal: 1,479
Days left: 31

Consider a man riding a bicycle. Whoever he is, we can say three things about him. We know he got on the bicycle and started to move. We know that at some point he will stop and get off. Most important of all, we know that if at any point between the beginning and the end of his journey he stops moving and does not get off the bicycle he will fall off it. That is a metaphor for the journey through life of any living thing, and I think of any society of living things. ~William Golding

Life is like riding a bicycle - in order to keep your balance, you must keep moving. ~Albert Einstein

"I believe that it's our duty to reach as far as we can reach, to extend the edge of our capabilities in some way no matter the cost." -Dodge Morgan

"I believe that it's our duty to reach as far as we can reach, to extend the edge of our capabilities in some way no matter the cost." -Dodge Morgan

Dodge Morgan, as I hear it, was just a 53 year old businessman... but he was more than that. He quit his job and decided to sail around the world, alone... and apparently without stopping.

He did it. He set a new record with 150 days at sea.

They made his video footage into a film called Around Alone.

I haven't seen it yet but we'll be showing it at work on the week of my birthday. Here's someone who has shown tremendous actual proof of what a determined individual can accomplish. I'm hoping that this bicycle business will push me on to extend my capacity far beyond what I am presently capable of doing and far beyond what I think I am capable of doing.

This business of cost though, I'm still trying to figure out what that means... the difference between cost and worth?

Past 600!

Goal: 2,200 miles by 9.24.10
Miles ridden to date: 613
Miles left to goal: 1,587
Days left: 65

You sand wood to ground down the rough edges, to completely manifest the intent of the construction, the sculpting, the building. With the rough edges one can not only get hurt, but the true beauty beneath is still waiting for something. We weed the garden to bring the focus back to the reason we planted in the first place; the vegetables or the flowers, what have you. The process of sanding off the excess; pulling out the weeds; deleting old spam mail; cleaning your room; doing the laundry; and of course the ubiquitous: cleaning out the garage… (Although growing up we never had a garage, just several sheds and a barn which ultimately served the same purpose.)

…something we undertake to get back to the reason we began in the first place, to the prime point, to remove the distractions. To free ourselves to take a new direction, a new perspective, a reawakening. You could call it hosshaku kempon- aka casting off the transient and revealing the true.

In a lot of ways this whole bicycling thing for me has been a step in that direction. I had done some collecting of my own, being stuck in front of a computer all day at work, and after Gus (my old bicycle) went decrepit, often just making excuses for not getting any exercise. And those somehow became excuses for not dealing with a lot of other things. And so the karma built up in the corners, covered with cobwebs but sulking with nightmare intentions.

This bicycle goal isn’t just so much about shedding some unnecessary padding I have acquired but its also about shedding some other things; like mistaken perspectives, old coping mechanisms that do nothing productive, cleaning up that sulking karma so that old things weighing me (or my life?) down can be laid to rest, brought to completion, and generally expiated. Its almost like a kind of purification.

Taking the “yuck” and using it to become more of who we really are. That’s casting off the transient and revealing the true. Shucking the corn to reveal the corn? (Didn't we know it was going to be corn even when we started the shucking, its not much of a surprise...) After spending all this time flailing, (metaphorically and actually, I suppose), grabbing at what we’re supposed to be; what we thought we were going to be; what those we love would like to see us be (which isn’t always the determiner of that “supposed to be”); reaching for when it was good; or getting rose-tinted visions of what looks so good after the fact- well after that there is just that, what is.

All that we ever needed to be, we were born with (the teaching from the Lotus Sutra goes). Each of our lives is perfectly endowed with the most beautiful and profound of treasures, that is the true waiting under the transient. Waiting with complete patience and truth. The four aspects of the Buddha are eternity, purity, true self, and happiness. And no they’re not on sale as a 2 for 1 deal at the nearest chain megastore, they were part of you from the very beginning. All they ever needed to be was revealed.

Once we finish looking for, ignoring, denying, attacking, begrudging this most precious thing of our lives (made profound and inherently complete as they are) outside of us, we can realize its been in there all along. When we can put all that disillusionment and delusion aside we cast off the transient. (Delusion isn’t always so obvious as the mistaking the world for flat or thinking that there is spontaneous generation; although in their time and given the evidence those might have once been convincing arguments; sometimes delusion is thinking that always, always no matter how hard you try you’re never good enough, or that no one will ever love you for who you really are.)

Underneath the transient is the true, who we really are. Sometimes it may seem as though I’m living on the edge of what I can tolerate but I know I’ve been through worse. The hard times teach us what we’re made of, getting pushed into a corner makes us show our true selves. By constantly challenging ourselves in places where this isn’t a necessarily uncomfortable thing to do we prepare ourselves to be able to remain true to ourselves even when the big things in life happen. We get to learn to be larger than our circumstances as it were, so that the world around us doesn’t tell us how its going to be, that’s a decision we make for ourselves.

Perspective and Perseverance

Some things are a manner of perspective, as in: "Hmm, I ride my bike a lot, I will be needing extra protein in my diet to keep my muscles happy and keep them from disintegrating. I am a vegetarian so this will take some creativity...."
Useful perspective on this: finding foods with more protein.
Useless perspective: "Well, by the time I get home in the evening I am usually draped in dead insects, insects are made of protein, therefore I will be all set, I will absorb the protein from my skin!"
Although I doubt anyone who would think this way, this same sort of ridiculous kind of reasoning seems to follow us into everyday life where we least expect it to be.

It's very easy to go around doubting ourselves. XYZQ hasn't worked out the way we planned, the way we wanted and so that makes me a less capable person. Maybe if I finally get one more advanced degree I will be smart enough. This person, W, so attractive I can never be as beautiful, handsome, smart, capable, desirable, special, etc....as this person, and so I am less of a person. My value comes from some arbitrary comparison outside my life and therefore I am less. This is about as correct and useful as expecting to be able to absorb insect protein from your skin (assuming one is a homo sapiens)...

So what do we do about? Where do we get the perspective? I imagine some people are born with it. We find it in many ways and in many forms, for a lot of people it comes from faith. I won't go on about the power that gives at the moment, but perhaps you've found a source of perspective...

Ok now what? What about my protein? How does the perspective empower the perseverance? It's a source, a fuel source, if you will, for making the impossible possible, for making the meek strong, allowing the oppressed to stand up for justice, making you able to call out that bully on the playground...




Goal: 2,200 miles by 9.24.10
Miles ridden to date: 446
Miles left to goal: 1,754
Days left: 76

Getting Lost...

Coming home one night last week I detoured from my regular route, taking residential streets in lieu of the river path, although I am bedecked in lights and reflectors, certain parts of the trail require a certain devoted, precise observation in order to navigate them successfully. Things immediately apparent in daylight take on a different depth in the partial illumination of a front bicycle light, lending them to appear less deadly than by the light of day. Sometimes this is surprising and one finds herself half thrown from her saddle... made worse by the blur of fatigue...

This being one of my first trips back in the night and being new to Waltham- deciding to depart from the known route was a necessary decision- it meant biking into the unknown, which sounds far more dramatic than it really is. However then Edgar Allan Poe decided to show up. Around a corner I come and there we have a cemetery. Cemeteries are all well and good, and having lost some of those I hold so dear in this life I am well acquainted with them. However, when one is already lost (although pretty sure that I am going in the right direction), it is night, the cemetery is dark and hard to cross- one cannot see to the other side, the roads within it are misleading in their vectors and here and there, full of holes. Oh Mr Poe, why do you do this to me? Actually what was going through my mind was H.P. Lovecraft (The Tomb).... “Men of broader intellect know that there is no sharp distinction betwixt the real and the unreal...” of course as rational beings we know that there is nothing to fear there in the night but as feeling beings we know this is no place for the living once the sun has set. Always with my nose stuck in a book, “I have dwelt ever in realms apart from the visible world; spending my youth and adolescence in ancient and little-known books, and in roaming the fields and groves of the region near my ancestral home. I do not think that what I read in these books or saw in these fields and groves was exactly what other boys read and saw there...” having always been in possession of (or perhaps by?) an active imagination and it's at moments like this that I wish it did not run so fast.

But there is something wonderful about getting lost- even in this gothic night journey... When we get lost we have to face the parts of ourselves that mundane, everyday existence lets us (forces us?) to keep hidden, forgotten, and/or unexplored.... so when I entered that cemetery in the middle of the night, small flickers of light by the tombstones in my peripheral vision, heart pounding once I turned a corner that I expected to provide me a way out but instead brought me into the woods, denied the light from the periphery of the necropolis. H.P. Lovecraft whispering in my ear. It was just me and being lost.

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves. ~Henry David Thoreau

Remove your coping mechanisms, remove what makes you comfortable. Some people take being lost in stride, some of us have to turn down the car radio (as if that impeded our ability to see the street sign?), some of us can never ask for directions, and well some of us hear echoes of H.P. Lovecraft, some of us seek to get lost just to explore the way back...

Getting lost creates space for something new, in between what you were expecting to find and where you find yourself is a place to create the next step...part 1 end

Goal: 2,200 miles by 9.24.10
Miles ridden to date: 204
Miles left to goal: 1,996
Days left: 93

Pilot

So the first episode of a tv show is called a pilot and here is mine....

I am undertaking this endeavor in order to document this somewhat silly thing I have decided to do, what is that? Ride the "equivalent distance" of the Tour de France, which according to its wiki (and yes I realize wiki is not known for its scientific rigor...) averages 2,200 miles (yes also as I am American I will be using the inelegant imperial system of measure)... before my 27th birthday (Sept 24th).

Somewhat inclined by the animated French film, Les Triplettes de Belleville; also somewhat inspired by the scene in Amelie where the horse watches the Tour de France cyclists going by its pasture- gallops leaping over the fence to run with them; also by Daisaku Ikeda's going through 3 bicycles in the Osaka campaign of 1951, and of course to have a goal of an odd nature and post it by the Julia/Julie project blog & film...

Speaking about what I do know: there are people who like horses and then there are equestrians, myself generally identifying with the later I can say- there are people who ride bicycles and their are cyclists, in this instance I am definitely the former.

The story so far, I moved to Cambridge in 2007 and found myself in the bicycling Mecca of Massachusetts, not wanting to be left behind I started biking to work on an old hybrid I bought off my room mate for $25. I named him (the bicycle, and yes I name things), Gus. Gus and I spend 3 lovely years together until the winter of 2010. I left him outside for one too many snow storms and the last bits of Gus' innards (if bicycles have innards) went into their final death throws. Despite biking all this time the ignorance of a "person who bicycles" is still quite apparent. Gus was going to cost more to fix than a new bike....and having not the fiscal means for such a purpose I become well acquainted with the bus for the ensuing months.

But, things change, as they do, and I moved to Waltham on Memorial Day weekend, now I had a proper commute, which my sister deftly negotiates daily via the commuter rail. And I like trains, not perhaps with the same childlike zest that she does, but I do; however trains most decidedly do not like me. The commuter rail schedule is not designed for someone who works 10-6:30 on most weekdays... and so the part of me that yearned for a bicycle learned to speak with a louder and more incessant voice.

Long story short- I have come into possession of a used, blue, Steyr-Puch Bergmeister single speed bicycle, I have named him Charlie. I bike almost daily along the Charles River Reservation to work and other exploits. The usual daily round trip distance is 25 miles. I will be posting my distances as I advance toward my goal of 2,200 miles by Sept 24th. Now I imagine anyone who is a proper cyclist could say that this isn't that impressive- but for me it's the next step in proving I can do what I set my mind to:)

Details in short:

Bicycle, aka Charlie, obtained on Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010.

Goal: 2,200 miles by 9.24.10
Miles ridden to date (including the ride to work this morning): 136
Miles left to goal: 2,064
Days left: 97