Wednesday, July 2, 2008

day 10: next time im going east to west!

Everybody I told about this trip told me it was the way to go. "oh don't go east to west, you'll have headwind the entire way!" boy were they wrong. These past few days have been headwind the entire way. But this isn't any headwind, this is a damn stiff one. The fact that we had a century today wasn't helped by The fact that the headwind was relentless.

I've been looking back at some of my other posts and have noticed one common theme: every day sounds grueling and not very fun. I can't tell you how far from the truth that is. The sights combined with the pure challenge of this ride make it worth it. Not to say that I really dislike parts of my day on the road.

Part way through the day today I stopped to take a picture. While I was looking out across the plains, the magnitude of what I'm doing hit me. All of the sudden I started getting anxious and jittery. "40 more ducking days of this!" I thougt to myslef. And then just like that I realized, "wait, 40 more days of this!" I can't tell you how humbling cycling is. One moment you want nothing more than to quit, and the next second you want nothing more than...more! Its realizations like these that make me get back on my bike. I can't even begin to imagine how much stronger this will make me: ohysically and mentaly.

Well I hope those words of wisdom are what you all were hoping for. Its certainly what I was hoping for.

Until then,
-ride hard

2 comments:

Unknown said...

RUEBEN, dearest, it's so good to hear about your ride! It sounds damn beautiful... The land here is amazing as well--rolling hills that span for ages. Walking down the roads here, sometimes it's shocking how rural this is-- being the only human in eyesight makes me feel both small and strong. Ben and I have been doing lots of weeding (getting very friendly with stinging nettles), and eating amazing homecooked meals, making carrot cake fresh from the garden... and practicing our british accents (though we're in Ireland our hosts are actually British). We do not want to kill each other yet, and we are learning interesting things about each other... For instance, Ben cleans his bellybutton with a cue-tip.
Mad mad love,
Emily

_goodcitizen said...

ditto what emily said.

i miss riding my bike, but there are bikes here for us to use. I've discovered that i'm completely useless when it comes to milking goats, and I enjoy bottling beer.

Emily and I have been getting along well, and I've learned that she hates having her nose touched, has a very hard time chopping wood, and needs to do push-ups, jumping jacks, and listen to loud brazillian hip hop in order to wake up in the mornings....

cheers.