Tag: running with the pack

Cyclists Changing The World Two Wheels At A Time

A friend (Ross Del Duca over at JustAnotherCyclist.com) sent me this link to a story about some courageous Afghan women who are breaking boundaries down on their bicycles. I’m not sure how this works, but they were one of a handful of folks who were nominated to be the National Geographic People’s Choice 2016 Adventurer of the Year.

“In Afghanistan, a woman riding a bicycle is culturally taboo. But in 2012, a group of brave Afghan women began working toward a goal: to compete internationally as the Afghan Women’s Cycling Team. Their passion for cycling has sparked a cultural debate about women’s rights as additional women’s cycling clubs have begun to pop up around the country.” See photos from the adventure.

As-if that’s not enough, they’ve also been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize!

Changing the world, two wheels at a time. Next time I’m doing something that feels like adventure, I’ll remember these women, and put my little escapade into perspective. 🙂

And I do have another little escapade coming up, albeit small in comparison to this story. My next book will release in Q2. A date hasn’t been set, but I’m currently targeting sometime in May. It’s the second half of the journey story behind my bicycle sojourn across America.

More to come in the next few weeks as a schedule crystalizes. Thanks in advance to those who will be reading advanced copies – I hope to have those available soon.

 

Speaking of Spokes

Pilgrim Spokes Moving Down The Path Toward Release

I’m learning a lot about myself as an author with each book I publish. Right now, in this place and at this time, I’m having more fun at it than I ever have.

I’ve learned to separate the author in me from the publisher in me, and it keeping them separate, I get to find more joy in each.

The author in me is taking a break right now.

  • A couple people have gone through the manuscript and provided a beta read and edit, suggesting several excellent changes and enhancements. Readers have them to thank for an improved manuscript.
  • I’ve finally landed on a title, which is the hardest part of the whole danged thing for me. (The title is Pilgrim Spokes btw.)
  • I’ve handed the manuscript off to Erin for her to boil the thing up in her special cauldron of editing magic. As usual, I’m positive she’ll deliver outstanding edits of my rough storytelling in a way that will sooth my fragile ego while correcting my clumsy mistakes.
  • Now I wait. I really want to continue to make changes, but I need to wait for Erin’s edits or I’ll have a versioning nightmare. While I wait, I’ve begun a little outlining for the next book. This one may title itself, something like Pilgriming The Trace, following the journey of Dave, Ian and me up the Natchez Trace a year or so ago. (A theme is developing in these titles…)

On the other hand, the publisher in me is gearing up and having fun in the publishing business.

  • I’m exploring improvements to my distribution model and partners.
  • I’m reaching out to a few folks who have offered to read advanced copies of the next book. Those advanced reviews are critical to early sales on Amazon. (I need to devote a whole post to the “Amazon Review Phenom.”)
  • I’m putting together a marketing plan that’s a heap better than the last one, which was a heap better than the one before that.
  • Ann begins cover design work this week, and Kristen will start interior design when I recover from Erin’s edits.
  • Last but not least, I’m looking forward to helping at least one new author break into the publishing world in 2016. I figure I’m learning this business, and doing okay at it, and I want to share that with other folks.

More to come on the ETA for Pilgrim Spokes, but my preliminary guess is around May 1.

 

Stealing Into The Dawn

Day 8 – Twentynine Palms, CA to Parker, AZ - The Mojave

Day eight, 3:59 a.m. I’m lying awake in bed, looking at the clock, waiting for the wake-up call.

I’m not sure why I ever ask for a wake-up call or set an alarm. It’s only if I want to make sure I wake before 4:30 or 5:00 that I use any sort of alarm. When I do, invariably, I’ll wake a minute or two before the alarm, and wait for it to go off.

This inner alarm clock started when I was about 11 years old. We were spending a week in a cabin on a lake. I’d forgotten my wind-up alarm clock, but wanted more than anything in the world to get up at 5:00 a.m. to go fishing. My folks let me take the old rowboat out into the cove by myself to fish, and the independence of taking a real boat out onto the water by myself was intoxication to an 11-year-old boy who loved to fish.

When I realized I had no way to wake at 5:00, I went to bed early with the hope that I’d wake early. However, the harder I tried, the less able I was to fall asleep. It was past midnight when my folks finally turned in, the cabin went dark, and I finally found sleep.

The next thing I knew, I was wide awake. It was dark, and I could hear the sounds of the pre-dawn woods around me. I sat up and shone the flashlight on my watch. Lo and behold, it was straight-up 5:00! I quietly gathered my stuff, and made my way through the woods down to the boat as the sky above the trees began to gather a little light. I slipped the boat out onto the glassy surface of the water, and fished.

Later, at the breakfast table, nobody else seemed as amazed as I was that I woke up at exactly 5:00. It was a momentous discovery for me – the fact that I could will myself to wake at an exact time. To this day, if I fall asleep with a particular time I want to wake, I’ll wake nearly to the minute of that time. Sadly, most mornings I’m waking up long before there’s any real “reason” to wake up.

Like that morning all those years ago, the pre-dawn darkness sees me quietly stealing out into the wilderness, away from people, toward solitude. Rather than stealing through the woods down to the quiet mist rolling across a glassy lake, I roll down the road through a sleeping town toward the vast empty expanse of the Mojave Desert. Rather than the soft sound of water against the side of my tiny rowboat as I push it onto the surface of the water, I’m hearing the sweet sound of my freshly oiled chain reflected from the buildings in town as I push my bicycle out onto the surface of a vast desert wilderness.

Once I leave town, the next services are 90 miles east, the longest crossing I’ve ever made. My cache of water at the 70 mile mark is my insurance policy should the wind turn bad on me. In addition, I have two full water bottles, two liters of Gatorade, and another half-liter of water in a bladder stowed away in my bag.

This crossing brings me to within shouting distance of the threshold of mortality. If the wind blows the wrong direction, or the heat gets particularly high, I’ll have a pretty tough day. If both happen, I could be in serious trouble — the kind of serious trouble that can be life-threatening.

Not to over-dramatize the risk. I am, after all, on a public highway. In most cases, if I end up in serious trouble, there’s at least some chance that I can flag down help. Nonetheless, I’m alone on a bicycle crossing a desert wilderness in the summer. Things can turn ugly in a hurry.

So why on earth am I doing this? These next few days really are the “heart of the truth” for me, crossing first this Mojave, then the Sonoran. Crossing the heart of truth, out on the edge of comfort and safety.

Edge: A rim or a brink, or, a place where something is likely to begin. A penetrating and incisive quality, or, the degree of sharpness of an instrument designed to cut. Keenness, as of desire or enjoyment; zest: The brisk walk gave an edge to my appetite. (Compilation from several sources.)

Life happens on the edges. We can’t find the next place on our journey until we discover the edge between the place we are and the place we need to go. Something ends and something else can begin only along an edge. Along these edges we find and feel the penetrating and incisive qualities that give definition to our life. Our interface with life is sharpened at the edge. We discover our greatest zest and our most keen desires at the edge.

I feel alive in a way we rarely get to feel alive in our safe and coddled culture today. Dawn spreads a beautiful pastel palette of color across the eastern horizon in front of me, adding fuel to my wonder and excitement.

Twenty miles out of town, I stop along the side of the road to take in a few calories and some liquid. The sun has crept above the horizon, a bright furnace of nuclear fusion, beginning the morning ascent into his throne in the sky. Mountains rim the horizon around me. The air is crystal clear. I’m a tiny dot in a vast petri dish of sand and desert plants.

And the silence…

The silence of the open desert again, that lack of stuff to create sound as the wind moves through it. A great metaphor for our time here in this life. While we’re here, we might as well be invisible were it not for the impact we have on the world around us. The things we move through make the music that becomes our life.

Once we leave, the only thing we leave behind is the sound we made while moving through the obstacles we find. The only thing we take with us is the silence we’ve nurtured in our heart. We’re like an invisible wind, only apparent to the universe around us through the deeds we do, the songs we sing, and the harmonies we create in the world as we move through it.

The hypnotic silence wraps itself around me. The early morning magic soaks into me as surely as the heat from the rising morning sun burns into my cheeks. I’ve always enjoyed the quiet, but am discovering a new dimension to silence here in the still desert morning. No cricket chirps, no bird sings, no leaves rustle with the movement of air. A truck drives by. I hear it coming from miles away, and hear it for miles as it moves down the highway after it passes. With every 50 or 60 seconds, it puts another mile between itself and me, and drops the sound even further.

Deep silence is something so rare that it’s both conspicuous and remarkable when it confronts us. As I reflect into the depths of the silence around me, the desert itself becomes both more surreal and more personal. Quiet so deep and so broad that it becomes one of the prominent defining dimensions of the world around me. It’s hypnotic. Mesmerizing. Sensual. I know I should get moving down the highway, but the silence holds me. I wallow in it.

Prairie Dog

US 160 through downtown Trinidad is deserted at 5:30 a.m. Pedaling east in the chilly pre-dawn air, the quiet metallic purr of my bicycle chain softly serenades me as the work warms my muscles. A hundred yards in front of me, Dave looks like a shadow in the darkness as he pedals, lit now and then by a passing car, silhouetted by the faint light building along the early dawn horizon.

Our ride today will traverse a beautiful high prairie, where the high desert of eastern Colorado rolls down toward the sweeping prairie of western Kansas. A land with great open stretches inhabited very sparsely by desert grasses, pronghorn antelope, and people steeped in toughness. I find it easy to love a place like this.

I’m not the only person who’s been smitten by the beauty of the high prairie. Many readers will smile and nod as I talk about the magic of the open land and expansive skies. Those who are smiling and nodding probably grew up on the prairie, or spent formative years there. Their journey through life took them to the prairie at some point, and held them there long enough for the endless sea of grass, the big sky, and the restless wind to weave enchantment deep into their souls.

The open prairie emerges in front of us, deep crimson dawn dripping across it. Ghost-like forms of old deserted homesteads take shape now and then along the horizon to our north and south. The magic of early dawn draws us down the ribbon of highway, the open prairie I call home singing me into its heart, tickling my wanderlust, caressing my thirst for adventure.

About 40 miles east of Trinidad, we hit an intersection with SH 389. From behind a deserted building, a big black dog comes galloping toward us, indicating that someone must live close by. Unlike the desert dogs back in the Mojave — the ones for whom I represented blood sport — this guy is clearly curious about us rather than threatening. Dave is 50 yards ahead of me, and I watch the dog watch Dave pass, then stand in the middle of the road staring after him. I make a little sound so he hears me coming, and he turns to watch as I approach. I have some friendly words for him, and he wags his tail. As I pedal past him, he casually turns in my direction, and begins to lope along beside me as I ride.

It’s wide-open and lonely out here on the high-prairie where this guy lives. I expect he’s pretty happy to have visitors come by at a pace he enjoys. It could be that he’s a ranch dog who’s used to riding with horses, and our bikes seem like odd horses to him. Whatever the reason, he decides we’re a good pack to run with for a while. I expect him to drop off after a few hundred yards, but the further we go, the more comfortable he seems to feel beside us. The little headwind has us rolling along at an easy 12 miles per hour or so, which must be a comfortable pace for him, allowing him to fall into an easy galloping rhythm.

I’m delighted and fascinated with our new friend, and at the same time worried. He floats back and forth from one side of the road to the other, sometimes running along on the pavement right beside me, and sometimes dipping down into the ditch beside the road to run down there. While the traffic is extremely light, there is a pickup now and then that comes along one way or the other.

I feel the joy emanating from our friend as he runs with us. While I don’t know the factual story of this dog, I make up a story as we sojourn together. I figure he lives on a ranch nearby, and he knows the lay of this land pretty well. Had we been cycling past his yard, he probably would have had to chase us off with a bit of growling, barking, and snapping, but since we were out in neutral territory, he’s just trying to figure out who we are and what we’re up to.

We look a little like a pack he might run with. Maybe it’s been a while since he got to be part of a pack, to run with a pack, and scrounge with a pack, and hunt with a pack. He loves his job on the ranch, but misses the community of the pack. My friendly words as I pedal past push him over the edge. Yearning for that community, and without thinking about it, he drops into an easy gait alongside me.

Part of the pack.

The fulfillment of the community of the pack overwhelms him, and he’s happy to take flank duty as we range our way down the highway. The day’s not particularly hot this early in the morning, so he figures we’ll be able to keep this pace up all day. A nice breeze blows in his face, and he smiles broadly as we make our way down the road.

The Pack. The joy of The Pack. The synergy of The Pack. Life is good.

A couple miles down the road, we curve off to the north a little bit, putting the wind slightly behind us, and our speed picks up a few miles an hour. Our friend drops back with our increase in speed, eventually pulling up to a stop at the side of the road, watching us disappear down the road in front of him. I look back several times as we continue to move down the road, and feel some sadness as he grows smaller and smaller along the side of the highway stretching out behind us.

We’re all designed to fit within some sort of fabric. Wild dogs exist all over the world, and evolved to have a strong need to be a thread within the fabric of a pack. Different sorts of wild dogs, from wolves to coyotes to hyenas, have each evolved their own pack texture. As scientists have studied wolves, and come to understand the dynamics of the pack, they’ve been surprised to learn just how complex the fabric can be, and how much the survival and health of the animals within the pack depend on the weave and texture of the pack they live in.

In the last few thousand years, dogs have adapted to humans as humans have adapted to dogs. The “design” of the domestic dog has evolved, and domestic dogs attach themselves to their human family as a sort of pack in many ways. Dogs have learned to survive and thrive as a part of a human tribe or family. A pack.

What’s the result on the well-being of the dog, I wonder? How much survives of that deep instinct to weave themselves into the fabric of a pack? Is this a strong drive deep inside the wiring of a dog? Do they feel a gap in their lives every day, an emptiness they can’t understand well?

What about us, people in our culture? Are there threads that our deep wiring needs us to weave into a fabric someplace, and our inability, failure, or lack of opportunity to weave those threads into a fabric has created the same sort of gap in our lives?

It’s easy to look around and see folks in our culture today, and guess that we’ve probably lost touch with some of those sorts of threads. I watch people around me willing to give themselves to a job for ten or twelve hours a day, shoveling their kids off to the nanny or the babysitter for 90 percent of the child’s early life, knowing in their heart this is wrong, but somehow not able to find a way to re-prioritize their life and put things back in the right balance.

When the President of the United States shows this kind of dedication to his job, I’m grateful. That’s important work, and lots of folks depend on him getting it right. When a talented surgeon spends 12 or 14 hours a day saving the lives of people in need, I admire that. Many dedicated folks do important work upon which people’s lives depend.

However, most of us aren’t protecting the free world, or saving lives with our talented hands. Most of us are simply delighted to spend hours in meetings that aren’t well-run and don’t need us there anyway. We’re happy to spend days on internal presentations to explain things to other folks within our own company, most of whom really don’t need to be involved with the issue anyway. We’ve created ways to make a lot of jobs seem important enough to sacrifice ourselves for. But if we really look at the value the world derives from the work, it’s a bit shameful.

For this, we sacrifice what we say is most dear to us.

I’m not pointing fingers from afar; I’m as guilty as the next guy. I gave way too much of myself to my “job” in the early days, and not enough of myself to those closest to me. I get it. It’s the same missing fabric issue I’m projecting onto the story I’ve made up about our furry friend this morning.

I could probably pick out a dozen ways to see this same disconnect between what we say is important, and how we live our lives. I’m just picking on one I understand well.

Dangling around us in life are threads we’re wired to weave into a particular sort of fabric. We’re living lives that either keep us from seeing the threads, or keep us from understanding how to weave them into the kind of fabric we need. We end up doing certain things, or living certain ways, and missing the important threads in life. Our disconnected lives are a symptom of that dissonance. Most of us feel the dissonance in our lives and in our culture, but what are the real root causes?

Around each one of us are tiny threads that need us to take hold of them. The fingers of our hearts long every day to feel those threads, and the eyes of our souls long to see the pattern that is revealed as we weave those threads into a the fabric of our lives. It’s the thread and the fabric I wish I could understand better.

I’m pedaling along, doing something I love to do, long-distance bicycling. When I’m doing this thing, I nearly always feel a great sense of satisfaction. There’s surely a certain amount of “drug effect” from the endorphins that saturate my body when I’m riding long and hard days, but I think it’s more than that. Something about this activity I love so much feels like those threads. The road and the journey feel a little like the fabric.

Christopher McDougall was a writer and a runner who wrote a book called Born to Run. He believed that our evolution as a species was driven, in large part, by our unique development as an endurance machine. He provides a good deal of evidence that characterizes the modern human as a species bred to run ultra-long distances.

If there’s some shred of truth in the ideas that McDougall and others put forth about humans being “born to run,” it explains some of the joy I get from long-distance cycling that requires a lot of endurance. This might be one of the threads I’m looking for, though I suspect it’s only one of many.

Our dark-furred friend seems to have found a thread this morning. Dave and I must feel like a pack he can run with, and running with our pack weaves a thread into a fabric that feels good to him. It seems to be scratching an itch that’s deep inside. Sure I’m anthropomorphizing here, but the joy in his gallop and the smile on his face are unmistakable.