Rollin down the trail with my friend; we were noticing the way that a skilled rider can work their way through the rock gardens without hardly a hesitation. As we looked closer at this phenomenon and rode along through more and more rocks while we giggled and played on the ribbon of singletrack. I started to ponder as I often do the correlation between the way we ride and the life we live. I know pretty clearly that this is why I am in the Over the Edge business; because I want to share in the edge of peoples lives. As I looked at the way we ride; it became even more clear as to why we love our time on the bike so much and how it reveals to us the beauty in life as it whisks us away from the stresses and thoughts of the cosmetic world we dwell in.
It’s a beautiful process how we ride mountain bikes in such a way that we are absolutely removed form the other thoughts of work and life hassles and the fears of whats ahead and whatever haunts our life this week or month or year. As we ride these bikes down these ribbons of trail we are absolutely consumed with the placement of the bike right here and now through the obstacle at hand. whats even more amazing is that as we are navigating the current section almost absent mindedly we are also plotting and setting up for the section just ahead; a little lean this way and a little gas and make sure the pedals are up as you pass that rock… On and On we go as we commit that thought to memory and roll on, we notice that we are running a dozen of these mental processes at any given moment. Scanning ahead and plotting the line and setting up that corner and planning which side of that rock to roll and how about the option to just jump the whole thing and… wow, did you see that deer run across up ahead? No wonder its such an escape; we cannot be stressed about the pending doom of our job or love or health or loved one or… while we roll along on the singletrack we are all about the process of living our life in this moment and making the most of the opportunities and challenges just ahead.
As Ephram and I talked of this great feeling and the lesson it offers us in life. I knew right there I wanted to share it with you all. In life; the way we ride singletrack is a lesson for the only way to live life in a "move forward" style of living. As we can only process the next dozen challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. I we tried to ride a trail where we were all consumed about the obstacle we knew was 3 miles ahead we will usually cause ourselves to be so tense that we cannot even ride the simple stuff at hand. Life is lived best bu the same example we see from the mountain bike. Relax and focus on the tasks ahead and just the ones that are within the realm of your ability to process, control and manage right now. You don’t need to look to far ahead; you don’t need to worry about the rocks that you cannot see. Often when I relax and round a corner and see an obstacle that I might fear if I had known? I find that I can roll right on through because the relaxed focus allows my abilities to ride up to their maximum and let me do things I might otherwise doubt about myself. Contrarily when we are tense and slow down and over focus and get all rigid and afraid, we are so clumsy that we ride or live well below our ability and potential. It is a great life truth; relax, manage whats ahead but just whats really ahead right now. Dont try to hold on to or control everything, you cannot. Relax and roll along, assess whats before you and make a plan for what you see coming up but do NOT get distracted by that thing that might happen or might be lurking around the bend.
Sometimes; we are faced with some huge obstacles and some painful consequences… I can talk about that first hand right now. But more than ever its time to try to relax and try to settle your frantic nerves and your fears and your feelings of self defeat… relax, be in the right position and look at what you really have ahead and what you really have to work with. See a line and don’t let yourself second and third guess your decisions. You just gotta ride and you gotta do the best you can with what you got to work with. Once you let yourself become obsessed by how big that move is and how bad its gonna hurt when you fail and maybe even the memory of how bad the last one did hurt… you got to get up, relax and remember this thought. Just roll whats ahead of you, relax… look around… just ride it…
Move Forward…
See you soon; don’t be surprised if I’m a little bloodied and beaten, but I’m still rollin’ on