What Was I Thinking?

We went out to eat the other night at Los Tulipanes, our restaurant-of-choice in Sioux Center.  The strip-mall setting has parking spaces perpendicular to the front sidewalk where cars pull into their spots with headlights and hoods facing the restaurant head-on, as if waiting for the hostess to seat them and the waiters to poor food in their engines.  The less-fortunate cars park in the aisles of the attached parking lot. 

I drive down a lane of the half-full parking lot. Tail-lights appear in the coveted front row.  I drive slowly looking for an angled spot for my car.  There are no spots in my lane, but the tail-lights straight ahead are still shining brightly.  Are they coming or going?  The reverse lights come on.  They’re leaving!  Something within kicks in.

I’m now near the front of the parking lot and the coast is clear for this one-and-only, front-row spot.  But the reverse lights don't move.  They just sit there.  I wait patiently until a warning signal goes off in my peripheral vision.  Headlights approaching.  Oh-oh.  Competition.  Hah!  The car in my spot is finally backing up.  I gauge the distance between the competitor and my spot and I instinctively inch forward.  I saw the spot first.  I did.

The vacating car moves slower than . . . slower than honey in an ice-fishing hut.  (What can I say, it's still winter here.)   I continue inching forward.  The competition gets closer.  The slow car is half-way out of the spot.  They stop.  What is the problem?  There’s plenty of room!  Who is that driver anyway, someone with a learner’s permit? 

By now the cars’ positions are awkward and the other driver seems frozen in their (tire) tracks.  From my perspective, there is ample room to exit the spot.  I see what is happening and I (not-so-gently) put my car in reverse and back up a few feet to provide more room for the timid driver to clear my spot.  By now I’ve stopped eyeing the competition in my mirror.  At least there are no horns honking.  I pull into my front-row spot. 

I . . . gingerly . . . pull into my front-row spot and pause before removing the keys from the ignition.  What did I just do?  What was I thinking?  What triggered my instant obsession with this front-row parking spot?  . . . as if I (or my car) hadn’t eaten in days. 

I fight for a parking spot to eat in a restaurant. 

 

I . fight . for . a . parking . spot . to . eat . in . a . restaurant.

In a little over four months, we’ll be starting Sea to Sea, a nine-week cross-country bike ride to raise awareness and money to end the cycle of poverty at home and around the world. 

I have much to learn.  So much. 

 

Welcome to my journey.

 

 

(Find out more about Sea to Sea by clicking the tabs at the top of this page.)

 

 

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. 

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?