Change

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Hmmmm where to start with this one??? Big Juan and I were talking today about change. Change in our lives of when we used to live in a 400 square foot apartment together. Him getting DC off the ground every day writing posts. Me eating miles and trying to make it to the “bigs”. Juan used to tell me, “You don’t think, I do the thinking. You eat miles, go and ride.” I was awakened every Tuesday and Thursday to getting hit with the refrigerator door on the cot that I used to sleep on in the kitchen. Yeah that’s right, I used to sleep in the kitchen on a cot, chasing the dream. I rode 600-800 mile weeks eating up the miles like Pac Man as Big Juan used to say. Yeah I got fit, yeah I won some races. But, who cares really in the end? At one point I walked into a hotel room full of drugs and since then have been a bit jaded about the whole process. For the last couple of years it’s been me trying to find out about myself and why. Why do you ride? It’s been a tough change to say the least. The last couple of years haven’t been easy. Lots of change has happened and more change is coming down the pipe. Days have gone by thinking about what could have been and even more sleepless nights of what will be??? Change, it’s in all of our lives whether or not we like it or not. If you’re not changing then what are you doing? Staying the same? Same as what? Every day I wake up and I say to myself, do it like you did yesterday only do it better.

Do it better.

Last week I started to ride again. Like I did back in the day with Big Juan. I didn’t do 600 miles or anything crazy, but I got back to basics. I rode. I felt what it was like to have a sore ass from riding. I got the sore twinge of neck and shoulders that I used to. I felt what it was like to spin a gear. What it was like to feel my feet in the shoes. (I thank Wolfe for teaching me what it was like to pedal a full circle) I can’t describe what it feels like to feel my feet in the shoes. I can tell you that when you do pedal a full circle in the shoes you know it. Then when you do it during the “crunch” time its good.

Real good.

But really it’s good to be back to basics. It’s what draws us all to this common thread. We love to ride bikes. The common denominator. Bikes.

For whatever reason, get on your bike, ride your ass off, yell, scream, cry, moan, bitch, sing, stonewall it, whatever floats your boat. Just do it better than you did the day before. You have a chance, an opportunity to get it “right”.

Don’t do it for me, don’t do it for your loved one, fuck them, fuck everybody. Do it for yourself, do it because you deserve it, you worked for it, do it because you love it. Because at the end of the day the love will come through all the black and the haze. It will come when you least expect it. It will come in the darkest hour and when change is at its greatest.

“You don’t think, I do the thinking. You eat miles, go and ride.”

Change, 2010

Snake

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