Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Am I Going to Let It Have My Day?

It was so aggravating. Last time out my bike computer acted up giving me inaccurate information on how far and how fast I had been. After working on the computer, I thought it would be fine. Wrong. Ten miles out and my speed shows zero. Ah ! I just wanted to crush it but settled on just going back to the truck, pack up and just go on home-just skip the rest of the ride.

But a revelation came to me as I neared the truck, as I neared decision time. Am I going to let technology have my day? Am I going to let that little piece of equipment have the joy of riding today? My bike is working fine. My legs feel good. There is no reason I cannot complete this ride except that I am yielded it up to my own frustration. I could estimate the speed and distance. Is pinpoint accuracy so important that I wouldn't ride without it? How silly I have become, I thought.

It was actually fun riding without a working bike computer. Sometimes it would come on and say something like forty three miles per hour when I was cranking up a hill-probably in single digit speed. In fact, there was a freedom in riding without the numbers. It was a great ride, made better in knowing that in pushing on past my own frustration to complete it, I had pushed myself past my usual impatient self, and deliberately gone on to enjoy the road before me.

"Let us spend one day as deliberately as nature, and not be thrown off the track by ever nutshell and mosquito's wing on the rails."

Henry David Thoreau

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