Thursday

This is the first few paragraphs of a subject that I really have strong opinions for. Todays rant is more about our lives as humans rather than as athletes. Below are the "Cliff's Notes"... I could write for days on this subject and I want to after spending the morning with Chuck... he makes me think. So maybe the notes below are "Chucks Notes". Cliff was obviously a lazy guy and I don't think short cuts are the way to go. I think I have always had the sense that I didn't need much in this world. I'm a low maintenance guy. When I met my wife everything I owned fit in to a back pack and a bike box. My life is more complicated now.. but I think I still need less than anyone I know.. except for Chuck. All he needs is a hair cut and good washing from time to time, maybe a scratch behind the ears when he's done something good.
Chuck and I rode our mountain bikes for over 2 hours today and laughed and ranted and admired the coyotes. Because we mostly ranted about how complicated people make their lives I think we both became envious of the coyote we saw and how simple his life was... Chuck mentioned that a human throws out his garbage and the coyote gets a free meal.. simple. I also recollect that of all the people we discussed today neither of us admired them any more than we did the coyote. We both stopped our bikes and watched the coyote for a while and all we kept saying was how cool he/ she was. Not once did we stop and admire a sweet car or even the million dollar mansions that we rode by.
We talked about how people often times lose sight of what they need in their lives. We complicate it so much with trying to buy a nicer house or a nice car or a nice bike that we end up in debt and then need to work more in order to pay off the credit card bill which means we can't train as much.. we become a slave to things we think are improving our lives and it ends up making our lives less full. My son Ben reminds me of this often. We have nice toys for him... one of them is an inch worm that talks and sings and tells you the alphabet and all the numbers and colors and is pretty and soft, it's "educational". But if you lay that next to a wooden spoon and an empty bowl Ben will choose the spoon and bowl EVERY single time. He's not interested in the fancy toy.. he is more interested in making his own noise. Creating his own fun. Which one is more educational now? I really hope Ben stays like that.. or rather I hope Jo and I can lead by example and allow him to see that in this chaotic day and age the simple things are still the best things. "More" really does mean less in terms of quality of my life. If I had a million dollar home and a sweet car I would need to be working 50+ hours a week at a stressful job that would drain my energy... as it is I have a great car that will run for a million years and it's paid for. Do people turn their head to say "cool car, Bro!"? No, and I really don't care about people like that anyway. Do I live in a plush home? No. But Ben has a roof and a warm bed and he has food and he is safe and he is loved more than any other child that I know of. There isn't a job in this world that pays enough to get me to stop spending time with my son. When I am holding Ben and he is hugging me back or he looks up at me and he smiles... I'm not thinking "Man, I wish I had a boat". I'm thinking that I really am the luckiest man in the world.... Simple.