Idle Musings: Is It Possible To Ride Too Much?

[Wheels Rollin']

INTRODUCTION:

Here in the heartland, you’ve probably heard -- we’re in the throes of a real ‘mixed-bag’ Summer, weather-wise, the highly-publicized thunderstorms, tornadoes, torrential rains and subsequent flooding of the past month or so making life a wee bit… well… let’s just say it’s been more challenging than usual… And that, trailing a winter more ‘wintry’ than many could remember… Many in our relatively small part of the country have had their lives upturned and permanently changed by the explosive and seemingly uncontrolled spasms of Mother Nature… Luckily spared of this indiscriminant rage through nothing more than the intervention of simple fate and a home on high ground, I have nonetheless experienced portions of it first hand through my volunteer efforts here in our community and in the Cedar Rapids | Iowa City areas… As you can probably imagine, the visuals making it into the media tell only part of the tale… What really brings it home, I think, is the reckoning forcefulness of the lingering smell -- an oh-so-pungent, fingers-pinching-your-nose-closed concoction of too slowly evaporating liquefied hell… It’s largely indescribable to those absent this moment or without some physical frame of reference, but oh what memories are burned into your brain…

 

This has truly been a period of ebb and flow run amuck -- a moment in time we’ve been overwhelmed by excess in a number of significant and life-altering areas… And that provoked a thought or two…

 

ONE:

My riding season is off to a very slow start this year, partly as a result of our less-than-favorable weather, partly because of my inability to say ‘No’ in most areas of my personal and professional life, and partly… well… getting’ through the last phases of my physical therapy and recovery from rotator cuff surgery last Fall… Yeah -- this was going to be my year of finally creating some time in my too-often-brutal schedule to put some well-deserved and eagerly anticipated miles on my RT… My plans, though, somewhat like life itself, haven’t exactly played out as I wanted them to -- at least so far…

 

That thought was circulating within me for a few miles this past Saturday -- an all-too-rare chance for me to get out for a couple of hours and shake off some cobwebs for only the second time this season since reawakening and re-energizing my bike in mid-March from a slumber begun immediately after last year’s July 4th weekend… The day was truly ideal for what my fragile spirits needed it to be… Sunny… A cloudless sky… A gentle breeze… A full tank of gas and nowhere I needed to be for the better part of the morning… 226 miles later, after getting reacquainted with some favored highways and byways beyond just a finger’s tracing from home on my tank bag-mounted road map, I reluctantly pulled back into my garage, shutdown, and just sat there in the saddle soaking up the wondrous feelings of the moment, the only sound being that of my boxer’s heat-induced cracking, its rhythm both familiar and strangely comforting…

 

Every day of my long recovery period had me craving riding -- the thought of being in the saddle motivated me time after time after time as I single-mindedly worked through my exercises with purposeful and oh-so-determined movements… It was the ever-engaging and always mystical thought of having the ability to ride at will -- to ride for as much time and distance as my body would allow anytime I felt the urge to do so -- that spurred me on to attend every appointment and complete every exercise…

 

TWO:

Entertained by my decidedly relaxed, near-out-of-body thoughts while cooling down myself, questions began to pop into my head like popcorn… Could I actually have a life like that?, I wondered… What would it be like if I could actually ride whenever, wherever, and for as many miles as I wanted? And then, this one came screaming at me -- if all that did come to pass, what would it cost me? I then found myself dead ended at a real mood-breaker… From somewhere within me came what probably is but one of a number of unanswerable questions we often ask ourselves in moments of mental freewheeling…

 

Is it possible to <> ride too much?

 

It was an entertaining question for certain… With my eyes once again closed, I pondered the question and attempted to do some, as Disney would call it, ‘Imagineering’… Would it actually be possible for me to ride too much?, I wondered… Physically? Emotionally? Spiritually? I found myself asking that feeble voice within what ‘too much’ really means and didn’t obtain, at least to the somewhat anal, ‘cross-the-t’s-and dot-the-i’s’ side of me, a satisfactory response… What a questioning fool I can sometimes be, my brain frequently awash in ‘what-if-this?’ and ‘what-if-that?’ volleys…

 

After noodling it for a while longer there in the garage, though, I concluded that… well… maybe, even if given a ‘do-what-you-want-when-you-want-to-do-it’ life, I probably would have a limit (though it might be interesting to see if it could be reached…)…

 

Surprised? You shouldn’t be…

 

For me, it all comes down to a question of balance -- behavior I’m not always very good at modeling in a ‘do-what-I-say-not-what-I-do’ way for others… I have wide and varied interests, as many, many others do, with a real lust for all life has to offer… What likely seals my fate, though, is approaching everything I do with a heightened sense of urgency -- working to get as much from each and every moment as I can… What ultimately works best for me is not doing any one thing for too long, my unapologetically amateur homage to the adage ‘… variety is the spice of life…’… To some, that would be a curse… For others -- myself included -- I think of it as a blessing… So, venturing along that path, I can conclude that what realistically seems to work best for me is to simply ride when the chance presents itself, however long that time may be… From a life’s balance perspective, I want to manage the push and pull of responsibility and the occasional guilt it can cause when engaging in some of life’s simpler pleasures -- like riding… There are times when I’m brilliant at it… There are times when I’m… well… definitely not…

 

Ya’ know, I had a conversation the other day with a motorcycle-riding friend of mine, a conversation that inevitably wound up with us talking about our riding adventures this past year… He regaled me with his journeys’ details and their accumulated miles… Having just seen 15,700 miles come and go on my just-over-four-years-old RT’s odometer and feebly scrambling to come up with ride details to match his, a profound, ah-ha thought came to mind when he chided me for having so few miles on my bike, announcing with glee the fact he’d ridden to the west coast and back in a week and put almost 5,000 miles on his bike in the process of his meanderings…

 

From somewhere deep within, I heard my voice respond, calmly and with real conviction “… Ya’ know what? It’s not how many miles you ride nor how often -- it’s what your miles bring to your life…”

 

An uncharacteristic moment of silence gripped us… We stood there motionless looking at each other, almost in a state of suspended animation… And then, once the words had soaked in, the smiles and nods of acknowledgement came…

 

THREE:

Maybe you’ll find yourself in a similar place as me someday -- and perhaps you’re there now… If so, welcome to the ‘club’ <>… In my somewhat ‘checklisted’ life, I continue to work on getting better at all I do -- I really think it has something to do with the aging process and my recognition of the fact every waking moment is a gift… It is, as I once heard, better to dream than to regret… Part of that ‘getting better’ process for me is about staying in touch with and remaining true to who I am… These are some items on my mental ‘have I ridden enough?’ checklist:

() To keep my skills sharp?

() To receive the personal satisfaction I need to have from riding?

() Was each ride all I could make it?

() It is still fun and exciting?

() Is it worth all the effort to keep it a viable part of my life?

 

Compared to others here and elsewhere, I’m not a high-mileage rider by any s-t-r-e-t-c-h of my already vivid imagination -- and I’m perfectly comfortable with that… One’s ‘too much’ may be someone’s ‘too little’… Never mind the comments… What’s really important is that we ride -- as often and for as many miles as we care to…

 

May we all be comfortable with who we are as riders by expending our energies in pursuing our dreams and avoiding regrets…

 

© 2008 Bill Harris | All rights reserved.

[Francois_Dumas]

YESSSSSSS, he's back !

 

 

 

 

 

 

[notacop]

From the length of your musings and the content, I'd say you don't ride enough. Put down the mouse, step away from the keyboard. Approach your mototcycle and leave on a long trip. Don't come back until you've invested heavily in Exxon products...

[Bob Palin]

I definitely went though a phase where I rode too much, when I first re-obtained my personal freedom (from the Battlaxe) all I wanted to do was ride and I did. After several years I got into the habit of riding just to just put on miles with a goal of 1 million by the age of 70. After a couple of years of that I realized I wasn't enjoying my riding any more, it was just chore to keep up the numbers. I looked for other things to do and started playing soccer and cricket again, I didn't ride much at all for several years. Since then the mileage has been up and down, when I've been couped up in a situation I didn't like I escape and go riding, right now I'm at a low mileage spot again because I'm enjoying my life locally.