Memory

I had a great bike ride today. I thought I was going 20 miles, using a route that Gina and I rode last spring, before we realized that they only way home was on the detour caused by the Whately bridge being out. Well, it reopened this week. Here's a picture of it--it's about a basic as it can be, but it's beautiful to me because we have a lot of new routes open to us:





Anyway, my memory was that it was a 20 mile route, but about halfway through it, I realized there was no way it could be 20 miles because it starts by going into the middle of Conway, which is a 10 mile ride in and of itself. Here's the route I took:





My next memory issue was when I took a right in the middle of Conway, heading east toward Interstate 91. My memory was that once I made that turn, I had a long, steep downhill until I turned off of 116. I completely forgot that it started with a long uphill for probably 1/2 a mile. I had only biked it that one time before, and the downhill section is so sweet--nearly 5 miles long--that I forgot about what came before it.

I wasn't looking forward to the section of the route when I headed west again in Whately--my memory was that it was all uphill until I rejoined the section that I headed out on. Wrong again! It started with a long uphill, followed by an equally long downhill to the new bridge, and then another long uphill. I was thinking about why I forgot that downhill section. I know it was because I was completely focused on having to take the detour. I was already tired, and I had taken the detour the prior week so I knew it was long and uphill. I was in that place in my mind where I was thinking about how much easier it would have been if the bridge wasn't out--it would have been about 4 miles shorter and we wouldn't have had the climb on the detour on the dirt road.

I was so busy thinking about about I wished was going on that I wasn't paying any attention to what was actually going on--not a good way to live. I'm sure that ride would have been much more fun if I had just stayed present to the ride I was on. After all, even though I was tired, we made it. It was just much less pleasant because I spent so much time thinking about what I wished was happening, rather than enjoying what was actually happening. The detour is hard, but it's also beautiful, through the woods with a fast running creek next to the road.

I want to spend less time in my head when I bike, and more time enjoying climbing hills, flying downhills, and enjoying the beautiful world I get to bike in.

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