Today makes 3 years since I was waylaid by a car that ran a red light. I never imagined how much it would change my life. As I get ready for bed tonight (taking Aleve because my titanium femur aches when I spend all day walking at my job) I can’t help but be thankful that I’m physically as well as I am, and mentally adjusted to deal with what my new “normal” is.
The question is, if I knew I was going to end up in the hospital when I started riding my bike, would I still have done it? How much risk is acceptable… especially considering the massively potential benefits? How do we go through life mitigating risk? Should we live in fear, cowering in the dark every day of our lives?
No. Life is meant to be lived. Pain is a part of life, in varying amounts. Joy, love, exhilaration, and happiness are also part of life, also in varying amounts. We can’t only expect comfort and pleasant sailing when we’re accomplishing difficult things. It makes me even more thankful for the happiness I do have, and the good things that have happened. A lot of people would be bitter. I am thankful. Not thankful for the pain, but thankful that I lived to tell about it, and realize how much I had taken for granted. Thankful that God allowed me to recover, and through it, brought me closer to Him.
Don’t live life afraid. Embrace it fully, experience it deeply, and put forth your best, warts and all. Sometimes it will hurt. You just get up, get back on the bike, and keep riding.Continue reading “Three Years: Looking Back”
The folks at the Bike Commuter Cabal were kind enough to let me write up some stuff for you to read about why I decided to start Bike Commuting, and how it changed my life.
Have you ever been at a point where you know you need to change, but you just don’t know where to start? Four years ago, I was at that point.
This would have been around 2010. I had recently moved back to my home town, had a beautiful family, and was pretty much happy. Except that I wasn’t happy. I was pretty miserable in fact, but I wasn’t letting on. Why? Some of the reasons (a lot of them) were related to my job, but a lot of it had to do with me being 40 pounds overweight. I was weighing in at 5′ 11″ and 215 pounds.
“That’s not so bad,” you’re probably thinking. Well, no, relatively speaking, there are a lot of people that are a lot heavier than I was. But the reality was that I knew my life, and my weight, were spiraling out of control. I was always tired, having digestion issues, sinus problems, sleep apnea, and I plowed through it, being miserable and pretty much always exhausted.
But I knew there was a better way. Thanks to my friend Mike, I got interested in whole foods (which I knew practically nothing about) and realized how much garbage I was putting into my body. Somewhere in that time, my job started getting very frustrating. I was hating going to work, and I’m ashamed to say it carried over into my home life. I was not being the husband and father my family deserved. I knew I needed a change, but I didn’t know where to start.
So I bought a bike.
Check it out here! Bike Commuter Cabal Blog (EDIT: Fixed the link. I’m an idiot. But it’s fixed now.)
I don’t rant very often, and most people who know me would say I’m a very laid-back guy (some people say if I were any more laid back, I wouldn’t have a pulse). But sometimes, my cynical side thinks bad things about expensive bikes, and snobbish cyclists… and I have to take a long, hard look at what I really enjoy about riding a bike.
I like real casual group rides, the kind where they might stop for donuts and coffee. I’m not interested in Snagging a Strava KOM. I like hanging with my buds, getting lost and finding new trails and roads. I’m the guy who shows up to group rides in baggy shorts and a 35 year old Raleigh, and proceeds to ride whenever, wherever. My jersey pockets aren’t stuffed with Blok Shots, probably just bananas, PB&J and some trail mix in my panniers.
I’ll admit it, I’m tempted to over-think cycling, and so are a lot of other people. But at the end of the day, I don’t need a bunch of stuff to enjoy cycling. That’s part of why I started riding to work. I didn’t want to just ride as a hobby. I wanted it to be a normal part of my life, like breathing, or eating. I wanted to make a difference in the world, and a change in my life.
And I think, overall, I’ve accomplished that. I’ll admit it, my bikes are heavy, mostly cheap, and cobbled together from spare parts. Even if I were concerned about weight, I couldn’t spend serious coin on a bicycle. And I’m here to tell you you don’t have to. I’ve been around long enough to know what you ride isn’t as important as how much you ride. And even that pales in comparison to how much you love to ride. I will always have respect for someone who puts down big miles, especially if they do it on a cheap/heavy bike. Bonus points if you built the bike yourself. Don’t think that you have to have to lay out a lot of money to have a decent commuter bike. Usually, you can use what you have already, and just add to it as you go.
You know that moment, when you’re standing in the open door of an airplane, toes hanging over the edge, and you’re waiting to jump?
So, I went skydiving once. It was the most exhilarating/terrifying feeling I think I’ve ever experienced. You see, I’m what’s called an adrenaline junkie. I admit it… and admitting you have a problem is the first step… but it’s true. I did it because I could, and I would do it again if I had the chance.
And honestly, I was mortified. I knew it was going to be exciting, I knew it was going to be scary, I knew it was relatively safe, I totally wanted to do it. In the plane, there were probably twenty other people, all grinning and slapping each other on the back and psyching each other up. They were shouting, they were nervously bouncing, they were stoked.
I think somewhere about 13,000 feet up it hit me. When the door rolled open, and people started pouring out, and I realized holy freaking cow, I’m jumping out of an airplane.
My heart was pounding, my nerves were screaming, every survival instinct in my body was telling me “Sit down, you have no business jumping out of a perfectly good airplane.” (The running gag with skydivers is, if you think this, you obviously haven’t seen the state of disrepair most skydiving planes are in… they can abandon it at any point and be none the worse.)
Okay, I’ll admit it… every time I hear stories about bike commuters in the city, it fills me with pangs of jealousy, and some days I’ll even descend into a mild (non-medical-grade) depression about the non-attainability of city commuting in the country.
The truth is, commuting in rural areas is a completely different affair than city commuting. It requires different equipment, different tactics, and a different mindset. Now, I haven’t been commuting for decades, but as a native resident of one of the more culturally backwards areas on Earth, I’ve been witness to more than my share of rural miles. And as jealous as I am of the city, I think commuting in the country has its own appeal.
For those of you who brave the back roads and highways, I salute you. You can safely tune back into your routine of picking beer bottle glass from your tires, charging your headlight batteries, wiping roadkill off your downtube, and taking a stout swig of whatever it is that gives you the courage to ride the next day.
Those of you readers who live in the city* and commute there, I’ve decided to give you a brief glimpse into the life of a rural commuter. This is strictly anecdotal, but please remember, this is as accurate as I could make it without scaring the kids. Continue reading “Rural Bike Commuting: It’s Not The City”
I can’t believe it’s been two years. It seems like much longer, considering.
Two years since what?
Two years since I had my life turned upside down, through no fault of my own, and ended up laid out in a hospital room with my femur shattered in about 8 pieces, indebted to the hospital for $100,000.
It’s kind of a bittersweet remembrance. Of course, there are parts of it I wish I could forget, like the feeling of being slammed into a car’s windshield. I wish I could forget when they installed a traction pin through my knee with a cordless drill. I wish I could forget screaming at the top of my lungs when they moved me from table to table to table in order to get MRI scans. I wish I could remember everything that happened in the hospitals, the people who visited me, the things people told me about when I wasn’t strung out on painkillers.
But it’s not just about what I do and don’t remember. If life were just a series of random events, then all we’d have to do is wait for it to be over. Instead, I’ve chosen to look and actively see what God is trying to show me. Sometimes it’s obvious, and sometimes it’s not.
It’s not about what I do and don’t remember from the last two years that gets me. When I look back and try to remember the things I learned about myself, and about God, it reminds me that there is so much more to life than just waiting out your time.
I learned that God is extremely patient- to a point. Eventually He will get your attention.
I learned that no matter how strong you are, there are always situations that can and will break you.
No matter how broken you are, God still loves you, and He will bring you through it if you let Him.
It’s easier to hear God when you’re immobilized in a hospital bed with nowhere to go and nothing else to do but listen.
Sometimes listening to God is hard. Sometimes it’s painful, but necessary (like surgery). Sometimes it’s like a breath of fresh air. It always puts me at peace.
I learned that nothing in life is more important than spending time with God. Nothing. Without that, everything else kind of falls apart.
I learned that I could speak honestly with people, and more often, if I shared my hardships with them. People don’t want to listen to advice from someone who’s never been through hardship.
Hardships are well, hard. Sometimes unbearably hard. That’s okay, sometimes. You just have to lean on God.
There are many other things I learned while I healed, and I’m trying every day to remember them and live them out. Once your life has been turned around by God, you begin to understand how He works, and how He works through the rough times. He’s there.
Some days I wish I didn’t have a messed up leg. Every time it rains, my whole leg aches. It itches. It twinges and aches when I exercise, it hurts even more when I don’t. It’s a constant reminder of how I could have died… but didn’t. It reminds me that God is with me, every day, in every circumstance.
Have you ever been at a point where you know you need to change, but you just don’t know where to start? Four years ago, I was at that point.
I had recently moved back to my home town, had a beautiful family, and was pretty much happy. Except that I wasn’t happy. I was pretty miserable in fact, but I wasn’t letting on. Why? Some of the reasons were related to my job, but a lot of it had to do with me being 40+ pounds overweight. I was weighing in at 5′ 11″ and 215 pounds.
“That’s not so bad,” you’re probably thinking. Well, no, relatively speaking, there are a lot of people that are a lot heavier than I was. But the reality was that I knew my life, and my weight, were spiraling out of control. I was always tired, having digestion issues, sinus problems, sleep apnea, and I plowed through it, being miserable and pretty much always exhausted.
But I knew there was a better way. Thanks to my friend Mike, I got interested in whole foods (which I knew practically nothing about) and realized how much garbage I was putting into my body. Somewhere in that time, my job started getting very frustrating. I was hating going to work, and I’m ashamed to say it carried over into my home life. I knew I needed a change, but I didn’t know where to start.
I’ve spent a lot of time over the last year thinking about what I’m going to do about cycling. For those who don’t know, I was hit by a car and had a full femur rod and hip pin put in last July. I’m as normal as I’m going to get, but I can no longer ride my bike 100+ miles a week like I was, for several reasons.
So this leaves me with a predicament. How do I stay in shape if I can’t ride every day? I hit the indoor bike trainer. Now, for someone who loves to ride, the indoor trainer is the equivalent to being punished in the corner. On your knees.
To keep from being bored to death riding in your living room, you need something to watch or make it interesting. Up until now, I’ve been watching cycling videos on Vimeo, or maybe catch a cycling documentary on Netflix.
Then I discovered TheSufferfest. Would you think of something called “Sufferfest” to be fun? Well, it kind of is, and kind of isn’t. It’s fun, in that I get something interesting to watch while I ride, along with training intervals and some pretty good music. It’s not fun, in that if you do it right, you will end up with your lungs on the floor, next to your lunch.
I downloaded the video called Local Hero, which puts you in the role of the Sufferlandrian cyclist trying to win the UCI Road Cycling World Championships in Geelong, Australia. You start off with a relatively easy Cyclocross race to warm up. Then you go into interval training, which is basically 6-minute bursts of intense effort broken up with shorter rest periods.
The video is an hour and twenty-five minutes. You get a 5-minute warm up, 3 minutes of gradually increasing effort (then a rest), 25 minutes of pyramid intervals, 25 minutes of gradually increasing steady intervals, 4 minutes of all-out sprint practices, and a 5-minute cool down. The rest of the time is credits and funny/snide commentary.
The Lowdown:
Part of my reason for getting this video was because I can no longer ride to work. I have been forced to maximize my time on the trainer, as I can’t get in the miles I used to. So, the question is, is it worth it?
Well, I’m here to say that it does indeed work. Granted, you can only get out of a workout what you put into it. But it is interesting enough to watch many times, and the actual workout is hard enough that you will definitely benefit from it.
Music: Mostly alt rock, with some really catchy tunes. I didn’t like how the sound effects interrupt, but it’s not too bad.
Video: Really good quality footage. It works well, and is well edited. Some of the taunts are a little cheesy, but hey, it’s all the Sufferlandrian Embassy could afford.
Production: Well, I have to be honest. It could be better- it lacks a little polish- but it’s not bad, either. Probably better than I could have done.
Complaints: It’s kind of hard to judge the difference between “7” effort and “7.5” effort. Since it’s all relative, it makes it tough to really be consistent. However, it depends on your trainer stand, the gearing on your bike, and so on.
Likes: If you do the workout, it’s hard… really hard. Doing intervals and sprints for close to 90 minutes is brutal, any way you look at it. The scenery and footage is excellent, and the workout is fun (in a sadistic kind of way).
Overall, it’s a fun video, and I’m looking forward to more from The Sufferfest!
