Bike Minded

Jasper. What you have to contend with if you deal with dogs.

Lab Minded
We once had two Labrador Retrievers. Very friendly, very fun, very easy to mess with their minds. One day at the animal hospital, in for their yearly shots, the vet distracted Jasper, the yellow lab, with some fancy finger work, flipping his one hand around as he poked the needle into the dog's butt with the other. Jasper was mesmerized by those wiggling fingers and didn't even know he'd been stabbed.

"Amazing," I said.

"Naw," said the vet. "He's a Lab. Simple minds. Easily distracted. That's all."

That's all, I thought, as a worried realization crossed my mind. They say you get a dog that matches your personality. I can't say I was ever as bone headed or goofy as Jasper--I don't sleep with my face in a box--but the simple mind thing hit a little closer to the mark than I cared to admit at the time.

I'm resolved to it now. I think. I've decided it has its advantages. I'm awful at so called multi-tasking. I like to focus on one thing at a time. I don't always finish it (I do try), but while I'm on task that's where my focus is. My mind strays, sure. It's easily distracted (after I wrote this line I went to the kitchen, brewed a cup of tea and checked the weather for the day), but for set periods of time I zero in and work.

Begin to Beguile
But when it comes to play, I like to let things wander a bit. I use distraction as a map with lines that are allowed to run all over the place. It's a free range thing.

Untrained veggies and grains in their raw state. They haven't done interval training yet today.

Raw Meets Mr. Cook
When I cook, which I think of as a form of play, my favorite thing to do is look into the refrigerator to see what's available. Then it's a matter of taking those component parts and creating something for dinner, putting flavors together that become enjoyable to toss around the mouth and swallow. Sometimes it's strange, sometimes downright unappetizing, but often it's pretty good. After hundreds of screwups I'm getting better at it.

There's one flaw, of course. I can never repeat something that comes out extremely well because it was a process of a little here, a little there, a tweak of this, a toss of that. That's okay, though. Those moments can be great and it's sometimes hard to repeat something even if you have the exact same ingredients and proportions next time you try. (At that moment you were in just the right mood for that kind of food.)

Mind-messing bike photo. Or is it?

Two Wandering Wheels
Biking (you knew this was coming, didn't you?) is the same thing for me. I usually have a set time available each day for a ride, but within that time frame the route is often very flexible. I'll pick the bike of the day, let's say the cross bike this time, and head out of town with the intent to do a route I map out in my thoughts. But after a couple of turns, I notice the wind is coming from a direction that will make my return difficult, or I think about a dirt road that I haven't been on for a while that would be fun to hit, I decide to do part of the local loop, or I think hey I could do a few hills today, or for no apparent reason at all my mind wanders (there's that Lab thing) and I turn right instead of the intended left.

A short while later, I'm north of Dixboro rather than west of Dexter. And somehow the ride is the right ride for that day. I'll usually find something new that makes me glad I went that way. The sunny afternoon I saw a flock of friendly nuns, in habits, jogging on Warren Road was one of those pleasant surprises. Or a deer steps into the road and stops and I stop and we have a stare down. It happens sometimes.

The same happens when I "train." I often go out with the best of intentions to "do interval training." But once out, the breeze feels good, the legs feel sore, and instead of intensity I'm just riding tempo, easing up the hills and loving every minute of it. The dreaded intervals will have to happen another day. And on that day I'll usually do something sneaky to fool my inner Lab, like find a beautiful hilly area and blast around for a while, unaware that I'm doing intervals.

This is about re-creation. It's breathing the air and feeling my body go free for a short while. We spend a lot of our day tied to specific responsibilities. My bike time needs to be a release from those responsibilities rather than a continuation of another set of agenda items. Happy is what I aspire to on a bike, whether I'm riding hard or settling in to a slow cruise and chatting with friends. I let the Lab in me go out and romp. With spring coming on, it looks like romp season is underway.

© Clay House Publications 2010