Mountain Biking High (and Low)


Psalm 55:22

Give your burdens to the LORD, and he will take care of you. He will not permit the godly to slip and fall.

This has not been the best year on record for yours truly. Without getting into the details, take my word for it. I have had better and worse years, but this one is on the more adverse side of the scale. I am reading the Puritans who had a peculiar affinity for eloquence about the redemptive aspect of trials and troubles.

One sunny ray in the clouds has been the usage of my sweet Trek mountain bike. I promised myself that after I finished my decade long slog to earning a Ph.D. that I would buy a quality mountain bike. So I did. I had a hybrid bike before that was half street and half mountain and it wound up being good for neither--a mutt where the cross-breeding created a mutant. Think a hound and a poodle.

So I followed through on my pledge to get a good mountain bike. The promises we break or keep to ourselves are the most profound. Forgiving others is a breeze as compared to forgiving ourselves.

When I was engaged in my studies, I didn't have a lot of extra time to ride. Plus, I didn't want to get tossed from my bike and crush my cranium, losing time and perhaps cognitive capacity for the work. I called it avoiding "a discontinuous event." If you are in a taxing time, watch your expenditures. Don't take a risk where you can't absorb the loss. Or the toss.

Another really cool aspect of the mountain biking is that I am riding with my best friend. He was a missionary in Alaska for several years and we didn't hang out much. He is a much better mountain biker that I am and I am benefiting from his tutelage. He apologizes for schooling me so much but I want to learn without having to take as many hard knocks. Hard knocks are going to happen. Just want to avoid those that can be addressed by prevention.

I have learned a very interesting principle of mountain biking: It is common understanding that going uphill is exhausting through and over rocks. Here is the kicker and interesting twist. It is also quite exhausting to go downhill too. Unlike street biking where downhill is a Sabbath on Wheels where the wind whips through the hair, mountain biking downward is hard. How hard? How about having to stop to catch my wind several time, heaving for oxygen. This is the real deal. Not faux mountain biking. Real mountain, real rocks, real danger, real hurt. Real fun.

Over our post-ride analysis beers last night in the shimmering sun, I made a comment that mountain biking is a lot like life itself. Going uphill is analogous to adversity. Going downhill is like success. Both have dangers. Success can kill a soul. A person starts to get momentum, prosperity, praise, and power, and then he thinks he is a god striding the earth. Most of the awful wrecks in mountain biking is a loss of control and too much speed. Going uphill, about the worse thing that is going to happen is coming to a dead stop. The dangers of the downhill can sling you afar where the rocks are like the teeth in the jaws of the ground.

It comes down to this: burdens can become blessings, blessing can become burdens. Life in a fallen yet beautiful world.  

                   

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