Ritmo

Ritmo: The sensation of physical and mental symmetry between you and the machine denoted by a rhythm or a smooth, fluid and "buttery" motion of the pedals under your feet often accompanied by a high heart rate, feelings of euphoria, wellness, and a fountain of sweat from your face.

Planning

Everyone has planned something at one time or another. Making time for yourself when you have a busy schedule requires that you be more diligent about making plans for anything let it be people, work or time for yourself.

I'm constantly trying to economize the way I spend my time to maximize recovery mentally and physically but also live my life with high standards and room for personal growth; if I were constantly focused on my recovery I would never have time to play my guitar, program software, make healthy food, or socialize.

This consisitant focus on planning my day-to-day schedule can be overwhelming, and actually take away from the time you have to do the things you need. Case-in-point, I started my mid-week long ride yesterday with thoughts about how I am going to plan today. For about the first 10 minutes of the ride I could tell I was not focused on the task at hand: riding my bike. My mental clarity was anything but clear and I wasn't feeling great.

I stepped back and realized that this was due to a lack of present focus; I was in the future mentally but my physical body needed to be present in order to feel right. My trick? A mantra, I'm sure you've heard it before "ride your fucking bike jeff."

Simple.

The same mantra, slightly modified can help on day-to-day stuff, "[insert verb to be done in the present] [insert an explicative that appropriately fits within the current situation] [insert appropriate adjective] [your name here]"

Done. Welcome to the present. That wasn't so hard was it?

Cruising

Sometimes you just have to go out and cruise.

Nothing special, just ride your bike somewhere.

Doesn't have to be about a destination, you're just cruising.

Sometimes, I don't want to think about anything else but my where my front wheel is pointed.

The other day I had a moment riding. It was just a brief moment. It was equivalent to those times when I'm jamming on my guitar trying to learn a new song and all of the sudden I've got a rhythm, I'm doing a set - it's like sex, getting out there you're unsure of yourself but all of the sudden it's synergy with the machine and the road and it's fucking liberating. Nothing describes it.

I rode with a friend who is going through a tough time right now. She is unsure of a current situation and has a lot of other people helping to inform her opinion in a unilateral way. I like to see things in a bilateral fashion but things are never that way, it's more a omnilateral (is that a word?) thing.

The thing is being human. Human ideology, human social contracts, human sexuality, how these things inform one another until you blur the line between all of them and can't tell what is what. I've always told people I'm not attracted to others physically, it's an intellectual attraction - an attraction to personality above all else. Physical attraction has a place, it's just not number one on my list when I meet someone.

This has given me a different way of seeing humans interact, and a different way in which I audit my own human interactions. The long and the short of it is that she needed to know what she was dealing with was not unusual, in fact, it's totally in the norm from my perspective. Her relationship with an ex has explanation in very simple terms where before I could see that it seemed overly complicated to her.

I feel like all human interaction can be simplified to very simple terms - simple yes, but perhaps informed by complicated underpinnings. People get caught up in the underpinnings. The day-to-day actions of an individual towards other individuals. Those actions are combinations of complex day-in and day-out beliefs often misinformed by a broken social contract that was signed at birth, and followed through on by a person as a member of a household. Not just a physical household but the abstract household of common thought that often binds a family or group of people together. It's a household of ideas that are passed from generation to generation, often without second thought, without and audit of their worth or epistimology. It's this unquestioned dogma that runs people astray, they do not understand there are other ways of thinking and they become absorbed until one day they crack and hurt other people.

My friend got hurt by one of those people and that absolutely sucks. It sucks because she does not deserve it and it sucks because the person who hurt her is loosing the only person within his "household" who has inclinations to be there for him and support him in his current struggle. He doesn't realize that right now. He will though. He'll wake up one day and realize his mistake and make amends but for the current moment his struggles with his social contract, his household of ideas and people who believe in those ideas will continue to make lame any type of meaningful relationships and movement forward as a healthy individual.

I understand this type of person because I've been there. I've done that. I saw my grass wasn't green. I knew my sun hadn't risen. I understood that there was another way but had not been experienced to find that way. I sit here today with more experience, but it's not over. This road is long and I ride it everyday. Like any ride you go up, you go down, you have tail winds and you have head winds. Sometimes you've gotta put your head down and grind and other times you're cruising.

Balance

Sometimes I forget that my life is pretty busy, I mean, I get so caught up in the day to day stuff that actually stepping back and realizing that I am in fact a busy guy is rare. Driving back from Boonville last Sunday after a six hour ride in the morning I had one of those moments. I feel like it's important to have a realization every now and then that convey's to you the balance in your life, whether or not the scales are tipped.

Every day we wake up, drink some coffee or tea and get on with our day. The sun rises, the sun sets. In between we work, play, socialize, and do chores. If you're like me you get into rubber band shooting matches with your roommate after dinner (I lost).

I'm trying to make time for everyone including myself, who happens to be demanding as hell. When compared to my family, my friends, it's myself that takes up all the time and I have a propensity of getting down on myself about this. But when I step back and take time to realize the way in which I got to where I am today it becomes clear that this "selfish" way I go about my day-to-day is the same ideology that saved my life almost (six?) 6 years ago.

Trying to appease other people; not letting myself have "me" time; trying to do all these things for other people (read: school, work, social events, et cetera) - this is what drove me to use, using was my back door away from the obligations I made to appease everyone but myself; drugs became my "me" time.

In rehab I learned that being selfish can be good. Letting go of a little empathy can be healthy; not taking on others emotions and letting someone's negativity get into my head was key. Today I use several tactics to keep myself sane. Most of the time it involves being on my bike - this serves a personal sense of wellbeing as well as a way to vent. But I also employ several mental skills honed in over the last five years to keep the negativity out and the positive energy flowing.

I don't let others take up space in my head. If somebody says I made them feel a certain way I take it into consideration, but I don't internalize it. Internalization, also known as taking it personally, can happen whether your words or actions have or don't have ill intent. If I'm stating an opinion and my underlying goal is not to offend and someone says I hurt their feelings I don't internalize their reaction - it's simply that, THEIR reaction. My retort is usually "that sounds like a personal problem..." and I move on. This usually angers people, but again, it's an internalized reaction and I have no control over that and I refuse to accept any type of personal responsibility for their reaction, because it is a personal problem.

Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it. Go through life with good intent. Go through life with positive energy. Expend your empathy wisely, you can only take on so many other emotions that are not your own and there is a time and place for it, but it is not all the time - space in your head is valuable real estate.

Be selfish. Allow yourself time away from everyone else to do your own thing. Explore the world in your own way. Do not let others be the guiding light - allow others to be there on your journey, but the light is yours and yours alone.

The Bike

You know you've got something good when your own mom says to you, "Why do you think you need women in your life when you have your bike? These are the best days of your life and you've given yourself something that no other person can give you."

The best part is, she's right. Sure, I end up at my fair share of 3AM-drive-to-the-fucking-velopromo races. But there is no doubt I ride my bike for myself.

It's not solitude, it's not a work out, it's not to "get fit." It's not about the bike race, but it is definitively about the bike. For me, the bike gives me a confidence I never had. The bike gives me a sense of purpose but without a sense of responsibility. It's an addiction and my drug recovery in one bag of tricks. My best friend once said to me one afternoon before I was set to go out on a blind date, "Jeff, all you have to do is pretend you're on the bike all the time. If you can get that sense of confidence you have out here all the time you're golden, nobody can touch you."

I've always been that odd guy out, you're either intrigued or totally offended. On the bike though, I'm different. Everyone has that clique, that situation, that person they feel totally comfortable with. For me it's a machine.

The Groups

I was out riding last weekend with a friend in Santa Cruz. He went from Campy to a SRAM bike. Before this happened the discussion was always about how terrible SRAM sounded. Typical American ideology went into building that groupset - throw some fancy skin deep graphics on something and it's bound to sell, regardless of how good it may or may not be.

All the groupsets out there have their own peculiarities. I made a genius metaphor to describe the three major ones - inspired by the comment from my riding partner in reference to campy that, "you have to talk nicely to it in order to make it shift."

I replied that, "Yeah, SRAM is like your mexican gardner. You can pick it up at any hardware store, not pay a whole lot for it, and be satisfied but not totally thrilled; Shimano is like a factory of Japanese seamstresses - they work great all the time, every time; and Campy is like an expensive Italian hooker - you gotta show her a good time, buy her a nice dinner, talk nicely to her and maybe she'll work, but at the end of the day you're going to pay a lot of money and you only get fucked."

That pretty much gets to the bottom of it.