Somethings I Get Right, Somethings I Get Wrong

My Purpose.

Rounding one block after another, my pockets continue to amass more breathtaking sunsets, more domestic and abroad adventures, more purposeful meanings, and because I have lived to learn and know that sitting placidly is bad for me, very bad, the semblance of this here bird brain is one complicated piece.

Following up on 50 years of hustling, both for breath and breadth, some things occur without regard nor restraint:

1.      This website was pre-planned in my head, then needing to build content, collect photos, and integrate efforts with my grandmaster flash web builder Spencer and god-like editor A. Sweeney. Even facing the unknown and the availability of contributing others, our expectations were met on time, on budget, as well as achieving the correct look and feel. I padded the timeline where I did not know what I did not know, and I pushed the candle’s flame when I knew the project sat solely in my lap. The interesting dynamic of working with someone else in their area of expertise while I sit outside their courtyard was an exciting experience and in the end, all things worked out perfectly.

2.      Making a massive drive halfway across the country December two years last with basically only hours’ notice, needing to put the leave-behind house to sleep, wrap-up life loose ends, and maybe be gone for a year, I pulled things together and arrived perfectly on time. The risk was forgetting something, leaving something turned on, leaving something unpaid or unattended. But most times as played similarly in the last 35 years, rarely ever do I drop a ball when traveling, sometimes, but ultra-rarely.

3.      32years ago, I put all drugs and drug needles away, after 13 years of woeful injurious abuse.

4.      10 years ago, I gave all the bottles away, never to taste alcohol again ever, I’d rather die.

5.      Picture this, Mother Nature is pelting terra firma with a sideways icy mix, 18 MPH winds, slight sun but mostly a cloud cover, 31 degrees, and then some kind of jacked-up wind chill. Calculating such conditions, I know exactly what to wear for a three-hour bike ride which starts with a 30-minute easy pace warm-up, middled with two hours of hill repeats, and finally a 30-minute slow-poke roll home. My hands are perfectly comfortable, as are my footers, from the minute I warm slightly to the moment I return to my driveway. My face is properly protected and weatherized. I carry the correct amounts of nutrition, hydration, and special sauce concoctions like protein foods, salt tablets and sugars, so I accomplish my goals precisely as planned.

Only once in the last 34 years have I screwed up my outdoor athletic wear, and most years I trained 500+ hours, a handful of those were 900 hour years whatever who cares. Such the yucky happening occurred a year and a half ago, during my October 1st, 2020, 24-hour personal roadbike record assault which went boom after about 18 hours. My initial orientation was 350 miles within 24 hours. Starting just before sundown and underdressed, I never warmed and finished early after a hard stop, logging 248 miles in 19 hours and 38 minutes, the last hour and a half or so just crawling home with a resulting biomechanical breakdown in my problematic left foot region.

Uncharacteristically, I was underprepared for that ride in a multitude of other ways, planning it then canceling it, only deciding to start it the day before. Therefore I was also horribly under-hydrated from the get-go, missing the 72-hour necessary hydration period pre-event. Oh well blah-blah-blah, I tried.

6.      And so on.

So although this my boisterous dirty-ego list, all the shit above that I think I’ve got figured out, there is just as much, and even more than all of that, the stuff I suck at.

I am twice-divorced, yup, guilty as charged, responsible for at least 51% of that heartbreaking shit, aka bad husbandry, by my measure.

I carry an Evel-Knievel-esque hospital injury rap sheet of 40+ broken bones, 30+ concussions, 13 surgeries, and counting.

And that’s perfectly ok, I learn shit best when I fuck stuff up. When it goes easy, I don’t learn. The hard stuff leaves a mark, a scar, the easy stuff doesn’t. Everything I learned, I came by way of honestly, making mistake after mistake for years before zeroing in on all the finely-tuned life-operating lessons.

After 33 years of working full-time in the bicycle industry, I quit my global executive director job because someone crossed my perhaps-idealistic truth line in the sand. Additionally, I begged to connect with my three kids before they were soon gone from the nest, and I was desperately trying to save marriage number two, save it by my measure. I connected properly with one kid before college and tried my best fucking try with the other. The marriage ended three years later after I kicked her out and kid number three, hers, left simultaneously. Soon after, my two kids went off to higher learning, and the fourth child, Roubaix the Rhodesian Ridgeback doggie went bye-bye with ex-wife number two.

After five years as a successful independent business consultant, I quit, releasing my clients because I desired to re-engage with corporate commerce in a thrilling and benefits-adorned executive position while fluffing up my 401(k). I hired the fantabulous business coach Sarah and we began the search. Once sitting with Coach Sarah however, she shoved me from behind, into the pool, and off my path. We argued about it, we shouted, well, I was doing the shouting not her, I cursed a bit, and I said no to her vision of the future me, until I didn’t.

On February 1, 2020, almost exactly two years ago, I started writing fulltime a book to my kids, a compromise with the forceful but correct Coach Sarah. I forecasted my book to arrive wrapped under the tree by Christmas that year. After performing a quick initial inventory in my head, I thought sufficient pre-works existed to bang out the book, thus my aggressive timeline.  

Christmas 2020 came and went, no book.

Christmas 2021 came and went, no book.

My new target was Valentine’s Day 2022, eight days from now, and that date will most def come and go as well, no book

Now knowing more than ever in this regard, Christmas 2022 will probably come and go, with no book project being completed, by my measure.

Without blinking excessively, soon I will be two years late.

Do I hate myself for botching the target due dates?

Am I freaking out?

Do I doubt my ability or remaining tenacity to get the thing done at all?

Do I believe I should pause and get back to work somewhere, if even part-time?

Do I feel shitty for not maintaining this blog regularly or cranking out more podcast episodes?

No, hells to the fuck no.

But really, two years late? Boo-fucking-hoo whatever who cares.

Well, somedays I freak out somewhat, like four days ago when I lost 38 hours of writing, but then shuffled the emotional deck and just got right back to it. This was my second major word loss, aka not pretty, aka tears shed.

Sometimes I wonder how long this is really going to take.

But am I backing off, am I pausing, am I doubting?

No, this is my life’s purpose from here on. This is what I am doing. This is what matters. This is all that matters. I do not fricking care how long it takes. All that matters is doing it and doing it my way, telling the story I have to tell, and speaking my voice solely. If I drop dead the day the book gets done, my life will be complete, but until then, well, I think you get it.

Today, Sunday, February 6, 2022, is day number 614 of writing the book to my kids, my kids aka my precious. As of last night, I have logged 3,622 hours, aka I keep score. During the last 37 consecutive days of writing, I have averaged 9.78 hours per day. I do take a day off here and there, not often, and not for the last 37 days. So, as of last night, I have averaged 5.90 hours of writing in the last 613 days. Derailing my average was the overlapping four months of 24/7 caregiving for my uncle in Jackson Hole, winter 2020, who suffered a crippling stroke and needed me, so of course I was there, and so there was that.

The plethora of accumulated knowledge as a result of the writing time is remarkably stirring. My vocabulary has expanded greatly, especially from the low-bar baseline of a 6th-grade reading’ and writin’ edumacation. Barely finishing 10th grade, I then legally removed from the Baltimore City Public School System. After four years of not paying a lick of attention to the adults in the classroom, plus habitually truant, I dropped out and walked, joining in no more humanoid academic games to speak of.

During the last two years, I pushed aside my positive life elements of sleep, nutrition, hydration, athletic training and mental calm, while the conversely-negative life dynamics increased as you might expect. But that’s ok, truly, I am doing what I believe to be correct, this the only way I know how.

I planned to now overview my specific writing lessons learned during this two-year project and counting, but I mistimed this note’s ramble too, and I now need to get back to my writing. So for now, there ya go, this my update.

And.

And I hope this note finds you in a better mood than not, amidst more sunshine than shadow.

I hope you are keeping your shit together, best you can, by your measure.

I hope you know I love you.

I hope you know I am here for you if you need an ear, a shoulder, a hand.

Connect with me if it might help, and even if it won’t, I am not so hard to reach.

For anyone you know who is struggling, can you please try to be present for them?

Can you please be present, a text, a call, a card, because to some of us, it really fucking matters.  

Miss you all, love you all, and I look forward to a hug once I finish the book, whenever the narrative gets around to being done with me. My priority is quality and doing it my way, this the only way I know how.

And now.

And now a shout out to anyone not ok.

And now a shout out to anyone under shadow.

And now a shout out to anyone not keeping your shit together.

And now this shout out to anyone not feeling the love, please know that I love you.

I love you.

I love you J.D.S. 505.

I love you Zak, CO.

I love you Fisher, Madtown.

I love you Lars, MD.

I love you JP, SW WI.

I love you Jake B., CAN.

I love you Charles, Killer.

I love you James, Dairy.

I love you Riley.

I love you R. Berger.  

I love you Morgan, OH.

I love you Christopher M., WI.

I love you Brian, TAT.

I love you TJ, FLA.

I love you Dennis D.

I love you John S., WA.

I love you Maddy, SBX.

I love you Andrew, Cottage Grove.

I love you Maddie, Aidan.

I hope you know I love you.

A super special shout out to J.D.S. 505, who started this here kick…yo, bro, I love you dude, I love you big mobs. Shit sounds bad right now…this hurts me…I wish I were there, or even you here. I can’t punch any strength into you from here and I won’t call you names, because you’re mountains fucking better than that, you are, you really are, I fucking know it for fact. I wish you could see it, the betterment of you that I see squirreled away deep inside. It hasn’t always been hidden, you were the man, you are the man, and you will be the man. It will NOT always be hidden away, it WILL come out, the bigger, stronger, taller, better you, it will, it fucking will. PLEASE know this, pause to feel it, and re-read this, please…it IS possible you’ll be back on top again, it’s fucking possible, I feel it and I see it, I really do. IT IS POSSIBLE to be the man again…one day this down death-clench will be a strength, it will, it can, it is possible my brother, it is possible. The sun is out, fucking somewhere, try to see it, or at least imagine it.

Maybe this will help, and in a comprehensive regard, this might help us all, here is a piece from the book for you all, especially for my brother J.D.S 505 who is currently way-way low-low on the down-down:

Doubt Not in Hope and This Truth

Our journey grand, but alas, no picnic

The clouds, they stalk us.

And yet, the sun she is ever-present, lurking behind the darkness

The black sky dumps tears atop our head, yet she shines still.

The sun, she is there, burning bright, she always there

This no fable, mere no metaphor no riddle, this total truth.

Do not await the trip off the tarmac to see it, to know it as so

Hope we all feel her warm and loving rays, more than not.

Strive to remember, she is there, always there, the sun

She warms us, casts light upon our world, even when dark.

That is, when we choose to feel her, choose to see her

Doubt not in hope and this truth, feel the sun, despite the clouds.