Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Monday, March 17, 2003

Lessons from the Bike

Over the last two weekends, the Lord has used the bike to illuminate my life and extend my understanding of the nature of my Christian walk. I'm not generally too surprised when this happens as I decided a couple of years ago to dedicate my cycling to Him. Still though, I am awed when He takes the simplest of things and uses them to help me understand Him better.

The first lesson was two weekends ago. I went down to Pine Mountain to ride the "Wheels o' Fire" century. Now to say that this century was hilly was a bit of an understatement. It wasn't a killer mountain ride like the Six-Gaps ride in Dahlonega or the Cheaha Challenge in Alabama but it was challenging in its own right. We climbed the 600 ft Pine Mountain ridge that runs from Warm Springs to the Alabama state line about seven times and each time was a series of increasingly difficult rolling hills that culminated in a leg searing climb from the bottom to the top of the ridge. The first time I did the climb was two miles into the ride and the last was ten miles from the end. On the third pass onto the ridge I was faced with the steepest "long" section of climbing. The climb started with a mile of about 4% grade. 4% is what your average freeway on/off ramp runs. After that sapped my legs, I got onto the real climb. For a mile I hauled myself and my bike up an ever increasing slope that would culminate at the top of the ridge. I'm not sure what the grade was but I'm willing to bet it hit 10% or more in places (10 feet up for every 100 traveled). I do know that while coming down the ridge-line right after the climb I hit 48 mph coasting. While on this climb I got that wonderful feeling of liquid fire in my right quad about 300 feet from the top. The problem was that there wasn't anything I could do but keep going. If I had stopped I wouldn't have been able to get started again as it was too steep. If I let up or slacked off I would have stopped. So as I climbed and my legs burned and my breathing became ragged and uncontrolled, I had a thought.

My Lord had climbed a hill. On an awful day that followed an awful night he carried a large piece of wood up a hill. He didn't have a fast decent at the end of the climb, just three nails. As I ascended to the top of the ridge I felt like Christ was telling me that I was feeling a little of what He had suffered physically on that day. I was amazed by the clarity of the insight. It lifted a lot of the weight of the climb from me. I found that I was able to smile and wave at the volunteers at the top of the hill before the decent back to the bottom. On the way down I thought about the fact that while He only climbed it once He had been beaten several times leading up to His crucifixion. He had gone without sleep and had only His death to look forward to. What I didn't have to experience was the emotional conflict and turmoil He had. I had wanted to do this ride and to test myself against the climbs. He didn't want to doe but chose to because it was the will of His Father.

The second lesson came yesterday. Yesterday was my first mountain bike race of the year. On a farm up northeast of Athens I took Ares, also known as The Man o' War, out on two laps of a muddy 4.5 mile course. The first part of the course wasn't too bad but as we got out into the woods things got ugly. I didn't have the right tires for course. I had tires for solid, hard-packed dirt, not the slop that made up a lot of the trail. So my traction suffered. The mud was good, Georgia red-clay mud. Slipperier than politician' s opinion on a hot potato topic. And I fell down in it. A lot. At one point I fell three times in the distance of 100 feet. In places it was faster to run the bike than ride it. My frustration was incredible at times. In many places, the things I had hoped would help me do well were nullified by the mud. I had better fitness than most but fitness doesn't help much if you keep flying over the handlebars. I had better endurance than many but I had to use a lot of it manhandling the bike where others with better tires and more skill cruised through muck unscathed or at least less wearied by it. Again, as I rode, I was visited by a realization that made what I was going through much easier to deal with.

Life is a lot like that ride. The mud was sin. It makes life slippery. It dirties us and makes us weary. It pulls us down over and over and over until we just want to quit in frustration and anger and say "To Hell with it, I quit." I think that's why the writer of Hebrews tells us to "Run the race with endurance...". Each time we fall, we have to get up and carry on. The better our equipment, the less energy we have to spend staying upright because it is better suited to helping us through the slippery conditions of life. Our equipment isn't big knobby tires or mud-shedding clipless pedals but prayer, faith, the scriptures, our congregations of fellow believers, the Holy Spirit and the sacraments. But even with the best equipment, we can't make the finish line without endurance. Endurance comes from setting our eyes on the finish line, on Christ Jesus. As I slogged through course, it was an enormous help to think of the joy I would feel when I reached the finish line and had the satisfaction of knowing that I had completed what I had set out to do. In this life, there are times when the only antidote to the dirtiness of sin is the expectation of what we will receive on the last of our days. The joy we will have when we leave all of this behind to be with our Lord in the glory of God the Father.

So, thank you Lord for honoring my commitment of riding for you and your glory. While I didn't win anything in worldly terms, you have blessed me with a deeper understanding of my life in you.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Tuesday, March 11, 2003

The Poetry in a Moment

As I go through life, I try to pay attention. Not just to the big things and the "important" things, but the little things that make life interesting and worth living. I call it looking for the poetry of the moment. Sometimes it can be simple things that are beautiful such as the shape of cloud or the warmth of a breeze or riding past someone's house and smelling the meat on the grill. Sometimes it's turn of a person's words that strikes me or what someone will do; like a child who runs up to a parent and gives them a big hug. Sometimes the moments even involve me as was the case this last weekend.

I was coming back from my first century ride of the year. I had done 100 hilly miles down near Pine Mountian and was driving home. Since the ride was only about an hour away from the house (by car) I hadn't taken anything to change into after the ride. So as I'm coming back I decide I need to stop and get a little more to drink at the local convenience store in Woodbury. Some places like this are real "corporate". Not much local flavor. This was not one of those places. There were signs in the window declaring that hunting and fishing licenses could be purchased, tobacco of various varieties could be found and Budweiser was on sale. Inside were men in plaid shirts, Wrangler jeans and baseball caps. More than one had a big belt buckle and I would bet that it had been a while since any of the men had seen their feet while standing up if you know what I mean. A real good ol' boys kind of place or, more generously, an outdoorsman's convenience store.

So in I go, all clad in tight fitting spandex and lycra. I'm used to the weird looks and strange stares, I get them all the time. A skinny guy with shaven legs wearing cycling shorts and a red, black and white jersey with tribal thorn patterns on it is going to get looked at here in the rural South. I can feel the guys giving me the once look over trying to determine if I'm "OK" or not and if something should be done about me. By the time I get to the soda fridge and have nodded pleasently to another customer, most of it dies down. That's typical too. Once folks realize I'm not freaked out or on drugs or from California they usually pretty much relax. The curious will even strike up a conversation. Not here though.

As I walk back to the register to pay for my "light, crisp, refreshing" diet beverage, the propietor kind of seems to keep glancing at me. I can tells he's distracted by me. He and his wife are having a conversation. Actually, she's pestering him quite a bit about dinner. Apparently, they're going to get take out from one of the local dining establishments and she wants to know what he wants. You can tell he's trying to think about what she's saying but he's having a hard time focusing. It's not just that we're conducting a transaction though, there's more to it than that. People transact all the time and still hold conversations. No, it's something about me. I'm thinking that he's having a hard time coming to terms with the whole cyclist look. But in one clear moment then the issues sort themselves out for me. As he rings up the cash register and takes my money the drawer opens up and hits his belly. As he absent-mindedly hands me my change he says to his wife,

"I guess I'll just have a salad"

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Wednesday, March 05, 2003

ABC:RIP

This has been a long time in coming but it must be said. From this albiet occasional viewer's perspective, ABC has turned the corner and gotten a long ways down the road into insignificance. My apologies to those who occasionally stumble across this site who either work for or enjoy watching what used to be America's greatest network but the truth must be told.

This admission comes at a great price for me. I used to love ABC. I remember when ABC was the best of the networks. Good ratings were OK but the network was defined by it's exceptional news service and groundbreaking sports coverage. Shows like NYPD Blue and before that Hill Street Blues and the like were great but the departments that reported on life, as it was happening, eclipsed today's vapid reality-TV.

I remember when ABC's news department had all the greats. Jennings as anchor fresh off his assignemnts in the Europe and the Middle East. Ted "The Smartest Man Alive and He Knows It" Koppel showing that PBS' idea of a long news segment deveted to a single topic could appeal to Americans. Sam Donalson's dogging President Reagan's every step, striking fear into press secretaries all around Washington. And the icing on the cake was David Brinkley bringing Sam, George Will and various guests to grill the living hell out of anyone brave, smart or stupid enough to step into the ring with them. I can remember getting an a good deal of my world information from ABCNews and not being the worse for it.

Then there was the sports. Wide World of Sports may not have always done the best job of covering a sport but it was always covered. Cycling, Skiing, Sailing, Motorsports, you name it. Football on Monday Nights that was actually entertaining and at a time when most of America could watch it. Great announcers like Keith Jackson were the norm and then there was Howard. Even if you hated him, you had to listen to him because what he said was relevant.

Now, all of that is gone. The great sports presence has moved to ABC's subsidiary, ESPN. The cutting edge news team has stayed together but slowly grown dimmer in many ways. That ABC would even consider getting rid of Nightline was a travesty that showed how far the network has sunk. And who is to blame? The mouse. Or actually the people behind the mouse. Disney is the virus that infected the network and now the network has no soul. It's almost as if they've made Roy Disney the head of ABC programming, news and sports.

So, ABC, thanks for the great memories. Thanks for changing how the Olympics was done. I wish someone (probably not ABC though) had the courage to do it that way again. Thanks, even if only for a short time, for thinking that some of us viewers had brains and would rather use them during late night television than watching Johnny or Jay blather on about some stupid movie with some B-rated actor/hack. As a once loyal viewer, I'll not be tuning in any longer. Your lust for the lowest common denominator has sunk to sub-Fox levels and that's just too low.

The Physicist   Link Me    |