Monday, December 3, 2012

Noticing the Wind

It’s December and we were able to ride outside this weekend!  We did two short rides, about 20 miles each day.  The warmest part of the day lasts only a few short hours and I am surprised at how low the sun stays in the southern sky.  Of course, it’s always been this way at this time of the year, but I'm noticing it much more this year as we’re trying to get a few rides in before the snow flies.  The slow(er) pace of biking makes me attentive to surprising things, and not just while I'm pedaling.

Yesterday we started out riding straight into the wind.   After the first two miles, I realized I wasn’t enjoying the ride against the wind and was tempted to turn onto a perpendicular road to engage the side-wind, instead of the headwind.  I kept pedaling and the corner passed along with the temptation to take the easy way.  Soon enough, the rhythm found me, and the telephone poles ticked by unoticeably.  I wonder if riding up the Iowa hills against the wind is anything like riding up a mountain.  We eased into some higher gears on the down-hills, but even that seemed slow. 

Slow and steady wins the race; or maybe it just lets you finish the race.  Some days, slow and steady is all that keeps you going, race or no race.  Slow and steady.  Is that what life should be?  Slow and steady?  Whether it should or not, that’s what it is sometimes—deliberate and faithful. 

The return ride was soft, gentle, calm, peaceful, warm (for December), like a hand on my back, urging me up the hills and hanging on for the down-hills.  The wind became a small part of something much, much larger than me; the very hand of God propelling me forward, the breath of God whispering me onward. 

Normally when riding with the wind, it seems there is no wind.  But yesterday I noticed it in both directions.  For once I noticed.  Both directions.  God, equally present. 

Saturday, November 24, 2012

Riding Inside

After nearly 1,500 summer and autumn miles, my riding has moved inside with the purchase of a three-month family pass at the Orange City Area Fitness Center.  Don’t be misled by the word city. 

I choose the Expresso-brand recumbent biking machine in front of a large window.  Beyond the parking lot is Highway 10, the main road running east-west through our town.   To handle all the traffic, the road was widened a few years ago and it now has a left-turn lane for a half mile.  Another street dead-ends perpendicularly to the highway in the view before me, providing the vanishing point for my real-life setting when my eyes wander above the video screen of my biking machine. 

On the street straight ahead, the flashing lights of a city police car move slowly forward, distancing itself from my stationary ride.  A growing number of cars follow it like ants going about the work of the day.  I track the line of cars backward to its source in the parking lot of the Lutheran church.  My cadence wanes as the line lengthens.  It is a family going about the work of their day; the generational work of burying their dead.  It’s been over three years since I’ve journeyed that road.  How long until . . .

The Star Wars theme gathers me back inside.  Padme’ was watching my pre-ride stretch and now the wall-mounted screen in the far corner registers in my ears.  The window and the glaring sun warmly buffer my fake ride from cold reality. 

Or is this cold in here and that out there, (warm) reality?

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Why "Bent on the Road?"

.01 My husband, Rudy, and I bought recumbent bikes this spring (2012).  We weren’t planning to buy them.  It . . just . . . sort of . . . happened.  (Well, not exactly. )  In two months we have ridden over 750 miles in Iowa, South Dakota, Montana and Alberta.  We’ve had wonderful, unexpected conversations with people we would never have met if we weren’t biking.  This blog is about people, places and other stuff associated with riding our ‘bents on the road.

.02 (Cheesy metaphor alert.)  I am bent on journeying the road of life and being attentive to the every-day happenings along the way.  I don’t want to keep my sights on the rear view mirror so much that I miss an upcoming curve or a secret passage.  Neither do I want to focus on the horizon so much that I ignore the daffodils (or tulips) right beside me, or the canyon three feet in front of me.  (Not that there are canyons here in Northwest Iowa.)  This blog is about being bent on the journey, not just the destination.

.03 Life isn’t always a straight path.  It’s full of unpredictable twists and turns.  Let’s face it, we get a little (or a lot) bent up on the road of life.  Pain and disappointments happen.  This blog is about some of those bent-up moments.