I remembered something you once told me,
And I’ll be damned if it did not come true.
Twenty thousand roads I went down, down, down,
And they all led me straight back home to you.
– Gram Parsons, “Return of the Grievous Angel”
This will likely be my final post of 2023. There’s a remote possibility that the weather will permit me to ride another 105 miles this year, which would put me at 5,000 km, and that would be worth noting. But this blog isn’t supposed to be about me doing the noteworthy. It’s supposed to be about me becoming rideworthy.
I went back and re-read what I posted in early July (“The Other Side of Trying”):
Title credit goes to my dear friend Katherine Eggert, who didn’t coin it—there are other “rideworthy” handles out there—but who used it in a text and got me thinking about what a fitting word it was. As I contemplated my post-career avocations, I knew that I wanted distance cycling to be a significant part of it, and that I would be looking for routes (like Route 66 or the Erie Canal) that were “rideworthy.” But it was a term of personal development, too: it was about ensuring that my own life was rideworthy and fulfilling. If my life’s journey is a route, I want that route to be worthy of my time spent traveling on it; I also want myself to be worthy of the journey, and capable of traveling on the road(s) that lie ahead. [Emphasis added]
This has been a helluva year. Between losing my job at the end of May and then being hospitalized for atrial fibrillation at the end of July, I jokingly dubbed this “The Year of Loss and Vulnerability.” The hits just kept coming: occupational, physical, emotional. It felt sometimes—scratch that, it felt much of the time—that the only thing I could do right, the only thing I could succeed at, was to get on my bike and start pedaling. I gotta do better than that. I gotta be better than that.
Distance cycling is an objective, quantifiable pursuit: if I ride X miles for Y hours to reach Z destination, then I’ve succeeded, but that doesn’t necessarily make me rideworthy. Rideworthiness is subjective and qualitative. But how do I achieve the subjective without simply lapsing into the objective? It’s a quandary I used to encounter at work quite often: how to accomplish a qualitative goal (such as donor engagement) without falling into the trap of assigning a quantitative outcome (such as donor renewal rate) as a surrogate?
While I can’t avoid being evaluated for results, I have to remember that rideworthiness is about the journey, not the destination. I can have purpose and intent without reaching a goal. Not every problem needs to be solved. Do what feels right.
So what’s next? Objectively, I’ll still have my X-Y-Z quantitative goals. I have a shingle for my new consulting work (Escalus Advancement; title credit to Katherine for that one, too), so now I gotta find some clients. At home, I’ll always have a punchlist of things to do. On my bike, I’ve got to finish Route 66 before I turn 66. I’ll pepper each year with 2-3 long regional routes: Katy Trail, Natchez Trace, etc. I’ve also started mapping out a month-long, bespoke solo ride that I’m calling “The Emmylou,” from Boulder to Birmingham. (1600 miles; I may need a SAG driver for this one.)
Subjectively, I’ve been thinking a lot about a trip I made to Colorado in early August, shortly after I got out of the hospital. In retrospect, I erred in not posting about it. I didn’t touch a bicycle for the entire week, but it was all about becoming rideworthy. I flew into Colorado Springs, and went to a tai chi retreat at a camp 9,000 ft up the side of Pike’s Peak. (I’ve been practicing tai chi for a couple of years, and my instructor encouraged me to attend this retreat with him. The camp is a cluster of cabins and a small dorm that Colorado College uses for its environmental education program.) After the retreat, I went up to Boulder, and stayed with Katherine for a few days. I went fly-fishing in Rocky Mountain National Park with the guide that I’ve used since 2016, whenever I’ve visited Katherine. As always, I thoroughly enjoyed being with Katherine. She let me drive her new ID.4; we went to see Amos Lee at Boulder Chautauqua; we strolled Pearl Street and ate good pizza; we stood in her kitchen and I threw my two cents into a home remodeling project; we sat on her patio and talked until bedtime. But if you asked me what I accomplished that week, the answer is, “I dunno. Not much.” I didn’t master the 108 form in tai chi, or catch a lot of fish. I guess I could say that I drove an electric car for the first time.
If I’d still been employed, I would’ve called that week a vacation. Now, in my Year of Loss and Vulnerability, I didn’t hit any targets or meet any deadlines, but my days felt purposeful and intentional, like each day ought to. I felt rideworthy. This is the way.
Rideworthy 