The Hardest 200 Miles, laid a good man to rest.

Today I rode a little over 200 miles, spend time with some great friends and had a lot of time to reflect on just what we were doing. I've ridden a good bit in the last 4 years, some of it fun, some of it cold, some hot, most of it because I wanted to get away. Todays ride was not about getting away, but about facing something, honoring someone, and supporting others. Today we rode not for joy or pleasure, although at the end of the ride, there was some of both. Today, we rode for Bear.

Gerald R. Doris Sgt. USMC, those were the words on the pamphlet handed out at his funeral, it's funny that I never knew Gerald R. Doris Sgt. USMC, I only knew Jerry occasionally Wandering Bear, but never Gerald. I didn't know the young man that went so bravely into the breach, that gave away part of his youth and innocence to Uncle Sam in the jungles of Viet Nam. I knew the man that suffered with conditions related to Agent Orange from all those years ago. The man I knew never once complained about his condition, or his health, he took it in the same stride with which he attack the rest of his life, with a vigor and enthusiasm that was inspiring and infectious.

Jerry & I spent a lot of time together, both burning miles on the road, and sitting at a table breaking bread and he always said that I reminded him of himself when he was younger. I always took this as a compliment, but looking back  realize that he meant it as a caution, as words of wisdom passed down from a man with more experience. I took a lot of advise from Jerry over the years that I knew him, I can honestly say that he saved my life, and my marriage. He's the reason that a lot of my biker friends don't see a lot of me, and not at all in a bad way. He taught me that there is nothing more important in life than your family, and no moment more precious than that spent with those you love. This wasn't a lesson that he taught with words, all though he said things like that to me many times, it was his unfaltering devotion to his wife Karen that truly brought truth to his words. Never once did I see him speak a cross word to Karen, never once did he do anything but honor & praise her.

Jerry was a giver, riding to Florida National Cemetery today at Bushnell, I couldn't help but notice the parts on my own bike that were given to me by Jerry, and looking around at the other bikes on the ride, the same was true for everyone. Jerry was the type of guy that wouldn't just give you the shirt off his back, he'd go to his closet and give you a clean one, ironed and ready to go, just to make sure you looked good. His heart and honest desire to give set him apart from other men, and one just one more aspect of the great man that he was.

Today many of his friends showed up to wish him farewell, and many more were thinking of him, and praying for him. The outpouring of love was startling, on www.vtxcafe.com his memorial thread resulted in over 125 posts to date, with more coming I am sure. Bear was a man widely loved by all who's lives he touched.

I had the honor of giving the closing remarks at Bears funeral today, the first time I've been asked to speak at a funeral of a friend. I realized that I didn't say half of what I meant to, nor did a do a fraction of justice to the life that this man led, nor even to the affect that he had on my own life, so I say it here Bear; You were like a father to me, you looked out for me, you guided me in the right direction, and you were always looking out for me, even when I thought that you were just talking, I realize now that you were teaching. I will forever miss you my friend, my brother, my family.

I found this poem that makes me think of Bear, and what he taught to me it's a Pueblo Indian poem:

Hold on to what is good
even if it is a handful of earth.

Hold on to what you believe
even when it is a tree
that stands by itself.

Hold on to what you must do
even when it is a long way from here.

Hold on to life
even when it is easier letting go.

Hold on to my hand
even when I have gone away from you.

RIP Wandering Bear, Semper Fi Marine.

Goals. Or something like them?

Do you have goals?

Do you have goals?

I'll bet the majority of folks reading this would say emphatically "Yes, of course I have goals". My next question would be, does everything that you do in your life reflect those goals? Are you constantly and courageously striving towards them? Are you making waves with your goals? Changing lives? Challenging yourself or others? Are you advancing ever forward toward your goals with every fiber of your being?

Yes?!?! Awesome! You ROCK! You are one of the few, brave, resilient souls that will make a mark on this planet, leave it a better place and in doing so, gain more than you thought possible. You probably don't need this blog, heck you're probably not reading this blog because you're out affecting change in your world. Here's a hearty internet pat on the back for you, keep up the good work.

No? You're floundering? Struggling? Treading water? Maybe you're "in a holding pattern" or a "rebuilding phase". There's all sorts of names that you can assign to times when you're not chasing your goals, but the truth is, if you're not working on it, than it's NOT a goal, it's a dream.

Dreamers are great, god bless them, they dream up imaginative, creative things, some of which get given to doers that go out and create incredible works. Without dreamers our society would not be as enriched, I don't write this to drag down the dreamer, I applaud them. I write this to encourage you to be honest with yourself about which one you are.

Are you a dreamer, or are you working on your goals?

True goals can be birthed from dreams, many are. Many are also birthed from practicality, or a need for something not found in your current existence. Dreams have to turn a corner though, to become goals. It's the action, the effort, the simple fact that forward progress is being made that turns dreams into reality.

Life is full of seasons, I've heard that manny times and you can in your life be both a goal seeker and a dreamer at different times, but pretending that you're seeking a goal when you're simply dreaming is a sure way to set yourself up for frustration. Telling yourself that you are chasing a goal, when not putting in the action is the surest way to ensure that you will quit before you ever get any where close to that goal.

Today I was dreaming, literally laying in bed asleep, my alarm went off at the assigned time to wake me for an early morning cycling session, I made the conscious choice at that moment to go from being a true dreamer to truly seeking my goals. While this is a little bit of "literal hyperbole" it's that same sort of get up, get out of bed, and go sweat action that will take your dreams and make them a reality. Today I didn't reach my goals, my goals truth be told are pretty lofty, but today I made progress, today I advanced, and I know that today I'm one step closer to my goals, and that feels good.

Choose your attitude

I often start my blog post off with a story of how someone, or some encounter that day has inspired me, and sitting down tonight, I realized that I didn't have an anecdote like that today. Nothing that happened today touched me in any special way, nothing inspired me to write, nothing stopped and made me think. My first thought was, wow I surrounded myself with some duds today, I'll have to fix that tomorrow, or maybe I didn't get in enough personal development, bet I actually learned a lot today, just none of it inspired me to write as it often does. I spent a precious few minutes attempting to blame something else, someone else, but then I realized it wasn't anyones fault but my own.

I stepped off plan today, I shrugged off my morning workout, I got up late, slogged through my day, never really waking up. I didn't even enjoy my dinner with a good friend as much as I normally do. I didn't commit to today, I simply marched through it. Living my life with my eyes on my feet instead of my nose to the grindstone didn't accomplish me much today, but I can tell you that I realized tonight fully, and for the first time, that you truly do choose how your day can go.

Today I just choose wrong. Tomorrow I have a good day, tomorrow I don't let the world conquer me, I go out and conquer it!

Ride of Silence 2014

Tonight it wasn't hard to come up with a topic for this Blog. Tonight I knew what I was going to write about, and for a change I've been thinking a lot about exactly what I was going to write. Tonight was the Ride of Silence, a bicycle ride of about 8-12 miles at no more than 12mph, ridden entirely in silence in memory of those killed and injured while cycling by other vehicles, it's also to raise awareness for cyclists rights to be on the road and to be treated fairly in the hopes that a ride to memorialize those that we have lost will not be necessary.

For a few moments tonight, the cycling community came together, as we have all too few yet all too many times. For a few moments we weren't riders out of one of the shops, we were "roadies", "tri friends", or just casual peddlers, we came together, in silence for the memory and for the good of cycling as a whole. We were 66 cyclists riding out of several shops, riding several different kind of bikes, from the roadies that stayed under 12mph but never dropped below 90rpm of cadence, the lone guy in the bike on the tri bike, trying to remember to stay out of his aero bars, the man just back from a motorcycle accident on his first group ride, the passionate about biking entrepreneur on the tandem, the young lady clearly struggling with simply making it around the lake, the older rider taking extra laps at the end to get in his workout, or the big guy on the mountain bike clearly not his size.

Almost 40 years ago my father was hit while cycling home from Lakeland Regional Hospital, hit by a driver and left for dead in a ditch. He lay there, in the darkness not knowing if he would survive, the driver continued on his way. Were it not for a nurse on her way home noticing that the bike laying on the side of the road belonged to my father, he may have died in that ditch. As it was her stopping and finding him there saved his life, while she was there in time to ensure he didn't die, she wasn't there in time to save all of him. That night my father didn't lose his life, but he did lose his leg from above the knee.

I can't say that I know the pain of losing a loved one to a cycling accident, and I don't begin to compare that to the experience I'm about to detail, I lost something that day, my father lost something that day. He lost his love of cycling, he lost the freedom of the road, he lost a hobby, and although he doesn't often speak of it, I know he has mourned that loss every day since. What have I lost you might ask, while I didn't lose my father entirely, a lost a part of him, someone that I never knew, a father that would've woken up early to go for a "century" on the weekend, helped me wrench on my first road bike, maybe even cheered me on at my first bike race. While it's a lot harder to quantify the loss for me, it is still there. As I've, in the past year, gotten into cycling, I find myself looking next to me sometimes on long rides, wondering what it would be like if dad was riding alongside me, pushing me, letting me draft when I get tired, or racing me on that last stretch before we get home. He still rides, only on trails and on a trike now, which isn't quite a match for the riding that I do, crouched over aero bars for hours on end, so we bond over cycling, but all the while I notice the look when I talk about that great stretch along some road, or the flinch if I mention a "close call", make no mistake I lost something that day too.

There were lots of stories on this ride today, and the paragraphs above encapsulate only my own, but one thing that I'm sure of, all 66 of these riders came out for a reason tonight, a purpose, whether it was for a loss like mine, the loss of a close friend, a spouse, someone that that saw once a week at a shop ride, or maybe just someone that they felt a special kinship with because that person ventured out on two wheels as well, no matter what the reason I know that we gathered in that parking lot as 66 cyclists, but left that lot and rode this ride as one.

Thank you to all who came out, not just to this Ride of Silence but to them all, the world over.

Thank you to my friend Jesse Cookson for capturing this short video of the riders tonight. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_fzP3f-pVc

Wait your way to success.

I spent a good time today talking to a good friend about waiting. About waiting in line, waiting with patience, about waiting with hope. Most people would tell you that you can't wait for success, that if you're waiting for success to happen then you don't quite "get it" and you may never realize that success, I however disagree. I think waiting, and waiting well is a stepping stone along the road of success. 

Think about times that you're waiting in your life, waiting in line at the grocery store, waiting for a new movie to come out, waiting on that special someone at home, who never seems to get ready quite as quickly as you think that they should. These are passive kinds of waiting, the waiting where you're checking your watch, the calendar, or tapping your foot. These are the kinds of waiting that you want to avoid on the path to success. Think about the time that you spend waiting over the course of the week whether it's in the pursuit of something mentioned above, or something else, like waiting in traffic during your morning commute, or waiting at the post office, think about those times, and think about how you could change the way that you wait. 

Most people will tell you that they "don't have any time", and while it's true that we live in a fast paced, "always-on-the-go" society, don't let people fool you, but more importantly don't fool yourself with the lie that you don't have any time. The truth is everyone, rich, poor, old, young, black, white, tall, or short, we all have the exact same amount of hours in the day, no matter how much money, power, prestige, or clout you ever gain, you will always and forever only have 24 hours in the day. The difference between those that achieve, and those that don't is how they use that 24 hours, and don't think that the successful don't wait, they simply wait differently than the rest of us. 

Instead of standing in the grocery line, thumbing through the tabloids, checking to see who Prince William is dating now, or how many legs the latest baby found at Roswell has, consider striking up a conversation with the people in line with you, reach out, make contact, make a new friend. You never know what may spring up from a conversation with a stranger, the possibilities are literally endless. If you're in traffic, why not take that time to listen to something that enriches your life, make phone calls that could advance your dream, or spend it in quiet meditation, something other than listening to the inane prattle of talk radio, or pop music.

Change some of these small things in your life and all of a sudden you'll find yourself "waiting" in an entirely different way, you'll be taking charge of your dreams, your goals, and making progress towards them, all the while "waiting" in the certainty that your success will be achieved, and it is that process of "waiting" actively that will help you achieve you success.

So next time your find yourself "in line" waiting on your success, strike up a conversation, reach out, and do something proactive. Wait for your success with a certainty of purpose, with a conviction that you will not be stopped, and console yourself in the fact that it's only through waiting that greatness is achieved. 

Rise above the noise.

Today I focused on a lesson that has been a hard one for me to learn, something that I personally have struggled with for a long time. No matter what you're doing in life, if you are advancing forward towards a goal, you will alway attract detractors, "haters gonna hate" would be the modern social vernacular for this phenomenon. The startling thing is while we expect "haters" to appear, we don't expect the direction they approach us from. We all put up walls to protect ourselves from these haters, but it's often the ones that we've let inside our walls that can be our greatest critics.

We've all experienced it, when taking a new job, getting a promotion, starting a new business, or embarking on any new journey in life, there's those that we run to first, those that we are excited to brag to, because we expect them to be as excited as we are. Then our big reveal happens and they don't react like you expected, instead of jumping up and down, they simply smile and say congrats, or even worse the wellspring of support you expected is replaced by a flood of criticism.

This doesn't have to be a one-time thing, more often then not these "frienemies" as you may come to think of them, are relentless in their assault on you idea, your vision, and your life. This hurts more than the random hater, the person that you can ignore, as these people are the people that you know, trust, and have leaned on in the past.

Sometimes we have to simply focus on rising above the noise, and realize that those that should be our largest support are our biggest critics, not necessarily on purpose, but through a misguided attempt to help.

JUMP.

A wise friend recently told me a fantastic story that I just had to share. Three frogs are sitting on a log, one frog decides to jump off the log, how many frogs are left? Simple math right, this is kindergarden type stuff, I bet you didn't even have to use your toes to answer this one! You answered two, right? Well if you did, you'd be wrong, you see there's still 3 frogs sitting on this faithful log. The key word here is that I said that one frog decided to jump off of the log, the problem is he never actually did.

How many of us in our personal or professional lives have been that one frog, the one that "decides to jump" but finds himself still sitting on the log? The real lesson to be learned here is that you will never get anywhere by simply making a decision. While making the choice to do something is an important step, as there are few truly successful people that ended up there purely on accident without first deciding that they would be great, but the common thread in all great successes is that there is an action that follows the decision.

You see Thomas Edison decided he was going to invent the lightbulb, but it wasn't until after over 1,000 times "failing" to create that lightbulb that he actually came up with a working bulb. The decision to create the lightbulb was integral here, but without the action of creating it, Sir Edison would simply be another one of histories great dreamers, and it is likely that you may never had heard his name.

For every Michael Jordan out there that has put in the hard work, time and effort to become the best in their field, sport, or vocation, how many others "decided" that they were going to be the best, but never jumped off their respective logs?

So the biggest question after realizing this is how do you make the leap, how do you take the action, what is the magic formula to actually getting off that darn log? Well the answer is simple really, so simple that most of us miss it because we, as humans, must endever to complicate things to the point that our productivity simply becomes activity and we never actually get off the log. We love to plan how to get off the log, talk about the different technologies and philosophies surrounding log jumping, even read books from people who have jumped off the log before us, but it is the rare person that actually makes that fateful leap and pursues their dreams.

The answer to how we jump off the log is this; just JUMP!

Not to complicated is it? Here's my question for you to ask yourself, if it's this simple why haven't you jumped?