Whoopi-ty-aye-yay
I go my way
Back in the saddle again
– Gene Autry
[Our story so far: Jon and I finished Stage 2, St. Louis to Tulsa, last September. I kept on riding throughout the fall and reached a by-far personal best of 5,000km (!) for 2023. As we started mapping out the continuation of the trek in ’24, we decided that Oklahoma City was easier for ingress and egress than Tulsa, so tomorrow we begin the 270-give-or-take miles between OKC and Amarillo. My bike (aka, “Lorelei,” as in the siren of German mythology) is all boxed up for her first flight. If all goes well, I’ll get to OKC in the early afternoon, meet Jon at the airport, unpack and reassemble Lorelei, and start riding. We’re aiming to make it as far as El Reno (a short 30 miles) by the end of the day. Daily progress reports begin with tomorrow’s post.]
Way back when, in my college days, I always steered clear of the “self-directed” or “self-study” curriculum because—even at that young age—I was at least mature enough to recognize that signing up for a self-guided course was a straight-line route to failure. I would never be able to allocate my time appropriately; I’d procrastinate and allow myself to be distracted by a plethora of non-academic pursuits.
I’m still easily distracted and I still procrastinate, even though my current status of “self-employed/semi-retired” (or is that “semi-employed/self-retired”?) means that I’m not operating on a consistent timetable or under any meaningful deadline pressure. Nevertheless, I feel an imperative to move forward and get stuff done.
I’m fortunate: if I stay within a not-too-restrictive budget, if I can get some occasional spending cash from spec work, and if the g-d stock market would stop plummeting, there’s enough of a nest egg to last until I’m too old to either know or care about it. The challenge is really nothing more complicated than deciding how I choose to spend my time.
Hitting the road with Lorelei helps, and cycling becomes a nice metaphor for this new self-propelled life of mine. I can choose my destinations (both for short round trips and for longer point-to-point journeys), set out at my own pace, go alone or with friends, adjust to the environment (mostly those damn headwinds), enjoy my surroundings, and feel a sense of emotional and physical satisfaction at the end of each day.
A few months ago, I re-read Tennyson’s “Ulysses” and grasped it in a way that I could not possibly have understood it forty years ago in college. It is, after all, about an aged man who determines that his odyssey ain’t over yet:
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
As I said last year, I named this blog “Rideworthy” as a term of personal development. Bikes are rideworthy; roads and trails are rideworthy; and I want to be rideworthy, too: capable of traveling on the paths, plural, that lie before me. Worthy of the journey, under my own power.
TOMORROW: A new road beckons.
Rideworthy 