To be honest, this last week I was feeling a bit discouraged.
I found out a delicately balanced trip itinerary with a lot of moving pieces will have to be readjusted because some of my team has to return earlier than expected.
Also, I haven’t been able to train that much and when I did this last week I blew a tire and/or had a flat.
I was feeling undertrained and overwhelmed by all the different tasks I have to get done to get ready for the Finish Well Ride. It starts in 14 days, but 10 of those I’m either traveling or working with a group.
Then I found a slide show presentation from the first ride like this that I ever did.
It was to raise money for the seminary where I work. I look at the photos and just chuckle. We didn’t have cycling gear. We didn’t have money. We had no idea what we were doing and somehow we got from San Jeronimito, Gro. to Wichita, Kansas (about 2,000 miles) in 40 days.
I know it was hard. I’m sure it was. It had to have been. But I don’t remember the hard stuff. I just remember the adventure.
I remember our longest day for that trip was just about 100 miles, from Matehuala, Mexico to the middle of nowhere. It was getting dark and we were looking for a place to stop when we came to a cluster of houses along the highway in the middle of the desert.
That was about it. No restaurants. No stores. No nothing.
We were tired and hungry so we knocked at the first house and made a deal with the woman: you cook us some eggs and tortillas and we’ll pay.
We had bought some homemade cheese along the highway earlier that day and bought a 2 lt bottle of Coke from somewhere. So eggs and homemade flour tortillas, cheese and Coke.
After 100 miles it felt like the best meal I’d ever had in my life.
Then it was bed time. No shower. I think I just washed my face and changed out of my cycling clothes, but that’s about it.
As I lay there in the tent, in the two minutes it took me to go to sleep, I remember thinking: “I’m content. All I really need is food, drink and somewhere to rest my weary head. Everything else is luxury.”
I hope I get to experience something like that again on this trip.
I know the promotional video, the website, the media contacts and planning the speaking engagements has to be done because there’s a $75,000 goal to be reached for a worthy ministry that I’m proud to be a part of, BUT I hope once I’m out there riding, maybe somewhere in the Colorado Rockies, about the time I’m getting in shape, the stress will melt away and contentment will take its place.
1sojourneronearth 