Damn, I suck at keeping online promises.
But instead of flagellating myself over it (which I suppose I should be doing), I want to write a post about some thoughts I had yesterday. I'll get back to the Midwest ride eventually... Awhile back, I wrote about how the 4K gives you a certain thirst for adventure that persists with you long after you reach the end of the 70 days and your destination.
Yesterday, my teammate Chelsea Johnson and I were talking on the phone about how we both feel the need to do something crazy and adventurous and amazing again. No need to get into specific details, but let's just say that the phrase, "4K on every continent" came up. Of course, as soon as that phrase was uttered, we expressed frustration at the fact that we both knew just how difficult it would be to pull off an adventure like that. The complexity of all the logistics - time, money, effort it would require - is incredible, and for a moment we both were resigned to accepting that no such adventure could ever be done.
But then I realized that before the first 4K ride in 2002, the idea of a bunch of young, inexperienced, college students riding their bicycles all the way from Baltimore to San Francisco must have seemed so utterly and completely insane. Before Ryan Hanley decided in 2001 that this would be how he would honor the memory of his father who had passed away from cancer, there must have been at least some people who told him not to go, that it was too dangerous, too difficult, too insane. Of course I'm sure he had his supporters, but others, who meant well, must have asked him, where will you sleep? How will you pay for everything? How will you navigate a 4,000 mile coast to coast trip? What will you do when your bicycle breaks down in the middle of nowhere? What will you do when you are too tired to continue and want to come home?
For that matter, when the founders of Adventure Cycling organized a cross-country ride by over 4,000 riders in 1976 to celebrate the American Bicentennial, people must really have told them that they were insane. But here we are in 2015, both Adventure Cycling and 4K for Cancer stronger than ever, because back in 1976 and back in 2002 someone said, hey this thing that some people are calling insane and impossible? Let's go do that thing. Yes, I really mean the insane and impossible one.
The obvious lesson that I'm beating over your head is that such endeavors, seemingly so difficult and complicated, seem so much less difficult and complicated and so much more possible after someone has the guts and will to embark upon them for the very first time. Of course this lesson doesn't apply just to bicycle riding, but also to so many other amazing human feats.
I find that it's so easy for me to know this lesson passively and never put it into practice. Maybe because it's a different way to say, "if you can dream it, you can achieve it," which has become such an obvious and meaningless cliche. But if I may put forth a cliche of my own, sometimes I find that the simplest and most obvious lessons, the ones that just intuitively make sense, are the lessons that we most often fail to heed. We are so entrenched in this lesson that we twist it into something seemingly similar but very different. We twist the lesson into, "if you can dream it, you WILL achieve it," as if the fact that you have dreamed of something is a guarantee that you will achieve it. We replace the word "can" with "will" and deny the fact that actualizing our dreams into achievements requires a lot of effort. We want to experience the high of knowing that our dreams aren't mere fantasy, but not experience the low of recognizing that transforming said dreams into reality requires us to put in work that is often hard and even unpleasant. I know I have spent so much of my life dreaming of amazing things I could do, becoming intoxicated by the possibility of accomplishing these things, only to fail to follow through on them. So maybe the lesson, in its original form, isn't a cliche but rather a good lesson whose reputation has been damaged because we fail to pay enough close attention to what it actually says.
In the end, I know it's probably not likely that Chelsea and my other teammates and I will end up doing a 4K like ride on every single continent, and that's okay by me. But the point I want to make is that I don't want us to not do it because we simply think that such an endeavor is too difficult or even impossible. Instead, I want us to end up not doing it because we decide there are better ways to spend our time or money or effort, that there are new and even more amazing adventures to pursue (possibly adventures aside from biking... but only possibly).
Instead of saying, no, it's too expensive, no it's too time consuming, I want us to say, hey let's embark on this other amazing feat that will also have our family and friends questioning our sanity. I don't think that's too much to ask, do you?
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| Finally I understand comparison line graphs |
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