#15 Moments

Another truck comes by.  Damn them.  This was not a motorcycle course; it was a trophy truck course where the motorcycles are human obstacles for them. I can’t see – again.  I go really slow and pick up the pace as the dust gets thinner.  All of a sudden there’s a rain rut perpendicular across my line.  Front wheel goes in, and it draws the front of the bike left to the big daddy rut on the side of the course.  Bam!  The bike is stopped, nearly vertical, headlight in the hard dirt on the opposite side of a 3 1/2 foot deep, 5 foot wide rut.  

This is what happens on slopes.  When it does rain hard the water gets to running fast down the wheel tracks of the roads and gouges them out one particle at at time.  This is how your left with rocks at higher elevations and silt and sand at lower ones and in troughs.  I hit my visor and helmet going down.  This was the highest speed crash I’d had so far, besides the one I got hurt on.  Low visibility was the cause.  

The rut snaked to my right downhill and got deeper until it finally fell off a cliff.  To the left it went uphill, and there was an 18” vertical step to get out.  I had to try to go that way.  I muscled the rear end of the bike down into the rut with the front end pointing up.  The sides of the rut were even with my handlebars.  I started it and walked alongside the bike and pushed.  I got it out.  I’ll call that one lucky.  I could have been there a while.

Up ahead, Tanner knew this was not going to be easy.  He had battled with various Ironman riders, and found they were surprisingly tough.  He thought if he could just finish, that he’d get on the podium – first, second or third.  Historically that was the case.  Jeff, the special forces guy, was out front.  Tanner was in second at one time, but had fallen back as the pain increased.  He took short breaks at his van stops, and marshaled on – like an Ironman.

At mile 505, he told his crew “I don’t know if I can finish.”  From Tanner, those are meaningful words.  He was suffering, like I was.  He had just buried the rear wheel in soft sand when he pulled off the course for a trophy truck.  The sand was 4” ABOVE his swing arm.  60% of his rear wheel was buried.  It took 10 minutes to get out.  He was angry, tired and in pain.  

After seeing his van, he rode away into the dusty night for more.

I tried to be present.  To not think about how far I had to go, how much it hurt, and whether I could finish this way or not.  Lots of people do that.  They live in the past and think about how it is unfair or relive troubles over and over.  And some live in the future, thinking only about how difficult it will be or how overwhelming it is.  They forget to live now – to be here now.

On my gas tank I wrote the words “Be present”.  No matter how far I had to go, the terrain immediately in front of my wheels didn’t care.  I had to ride this 100 feet, before I could get to the next.  And if I did well in this 100 feet, I’d be set up better for the next 100 feet.  If you do well now, this hour, it sets you up for a successful next hour.  If this day is a good one, tomorrow is more likely to be as well.  Lives are built not of years, but of moments.  We cannot live a year, a month, or even a day.  We can only live now.  Now.  Now and it’s gone.  Now, and it’s gone.

Be present to where you are, what you are doing, and who you are with.  A successful jouney starts with a single successful moment.