Embracing Change

Sandwiched between our trip to Dallas for grandma Fern’s birthday and our visit to Disney Land with Cynthia last April Rebecca and I visited Adam for three days in the San Francisco Bay area, going mountain biking every day. 

Day 1 was at Water Dog, which is Adam’s back yard. He showed us where he crashed into the poison oak. Day 2 Adam and I went to Tamarancho in Marin County while mom stayed home doing schoolwork (but we went out on a ‘gravel’ ride in the evening with her). Day 3 we made the trek to the Soquel Demonstration Forest near Santa Cruz to ride the six sections of the Flow trail. Bay area riding can seem like a combination of North Carolina’s deep woods and Colorado’s Front Range, with its exposed rock and mountains.

We were fortunate that Adam keeps an ample supply of bicycles on hand, and provided mom a Trek hardtail, while he offered me his Transition Smuggler. I did my best to set it up the way I am used to, raising the seat, putting on a longer stem, and using my own pedals and shoes.

Adam wasn’t impressed. In particular, he wondered why I keep my seat so high and after I crashed a couple of times on slow technical terrain, he wanted me to try flat pedals instead of clipping into my SPDs. I think I remember him saying “Now I’m the master” or something. I thought a lot about Adam’s suggestions (and taunts). But as hard as it is to admit that there might be value in another way of doing things, its another thing entirely to undo 40 years of habit. And it may not always go well at first.

In any case, here’s a formula that might be helpful in approaching change:

1. Open the door – open the door for a change that will help you do something better, do something new; introduce something that will make you happier; consider an idea you have been resisting; accept some advice someone offers you; consider what might be holding you back. The essence of this step is humility. Ask others what they see. 
2. Ask – ask someone you trust for input and advice; study the topic to see what has worked for others; listen to what people might be telling you; look for clues that might constitute unsolicited feedback. 
3. Test – begin to put something into action based on what you have learned. Know what the expected outcome is supposed to be, what the criteria are for a valid test, and make sure to give it a good faith effort. Pay attention to how it plays out. Be honest in your assessment and continue in humility. 
4. Consolidate – adopt what works; make a new habit of it; integrate what you have learned into your broader framework for thinking and living.

So how did this work out for me on the Mountain biking front? Something like this:

Trying my seat a little lower – this was easy. Even though I still believe I get maximum efficiency with the seat a little higher, mountain biking is different than the smooth, continuous high cadence of road biking. The ground is moving around underneath you and it’s easy to get bucked around the more your legs are extended – especially on rough terrain with rocks or roots. I’m now riding with my seat a centimeter or so lower than before on my mountain bike.

Flat pedals – this was more complicated. At the end of our gravel ride I rode Adam’s hardtail with flats. I tried a slight lift over a little mound and my feet left the pedals. When I landed one foot made contact but the other didn’t, and the free pedal slammed around and hit me in the shin (seems like I repeated that painful experience a half a dozen times over the next couple of months). I tried flat pedals a couple more times when I got home with pretty unsatisfying results. I switched back to SPDs and went out to the trails by the airport and came across a guy who said he had switched – he told me to get some new shoes and claimed it would take me three rides to get used to it (but I noticed that he never got his bike off the ground much).

After more reading, I finally decided to buy some real flat pedal shoes – I ordered some Five Ten Freerider Pros. That’s pretty much when I started to see improvement, partly because of the shoes, and partly because of the accumulated practice. But it was a little disappointing riding my trails and skipping all the jumps (they never ended well). After a few weeks I did a technical trail and found that I had more confidence on steep up-hills over roots (knowing if the bike came to a stop I could easily put my foot down). By the time we made the trip to Utah and I rode Vertigo on flats I was starting to get the hang of catching air on small rollers without coming off the pedals. I’m still not confident doing drops and ramps except on my SPDs, but I feel a sense of freedom riding flats – not freedom from being attached to the pedals, but freedom from feeling like I can only enjoy riding if I’m attached. And I think it’s making a me a better mountain biker. I’m cooler too.

Update: after a couple of focused practice sessions, I'm doing the first level of ramp-jumps at the Cisco trails.

Excerpts from a letter about truth

A while back I wrote a letter to one of my children about truth, but I never sent it. Looking back, its clear that I used too many words. But I still feel strongly about the benefits of the pursuit of truth. So here are some of those thoughts, with some of the words changed and many of them removed. I would be interested to know, in the end, who it was written for.

Dear [one of my children],

I was thinking about you this morning and felt I should share with you some thoughts that I have been having. It seems to me that you are at a crossroads in your life. You’ve been thinking a lot, you’ve begun to recognize patterns of behavior that lead to happiness, joy and satisfaction, as well as those that lead to discontent and unwanted consequences. It looks to me like you have identified some things in life that are important for the future, and you are trying to incorporate those elements into your life…

[As you do this,] I want you to consider an … approach… It is that you seek out and truly embrace reliable sources of truth and happiness that extend beyond your own experience, reason, intellect, and passion. This will require…effort and…humility… 

[Y]ou are free and have the power to choose your course and the influences that you invite and permit to remain in your life. You are not free, however, to choose the impact of your course and of the influences you invite into your life, any more than you can choose the destination to which a particular road leads.

I believe that as you put forth the effort to humbly and actively seek out and embrace reliable sources of truth to guide [you], that you will move rapidly toward a fuller and more satisfying life experience, with supportive and rewarding relationships, meaningful endeavor, exhilarating recreation, and a significant contribution to the world around you. I believe in your capacity to carefully consider and identify the value of this counsel for yourself.

I want to conclude with an expression of my firm conviction that the restored gospel of Jesus Christ is the most complete repository of the most valuable elements of truth and counsel for a happy and rewarding life, both now and in the future, both in this life and in a life to come. Sometimes it requires faith to see how gospel teachings can bring happiness. Sacrifice…, for instance,  may seem contrary to personal pleasure. But the God of our spirits knows more about our natures and the things that will bring [lasting] happiness than we do, and humbly following his counsel in faith can bring joy that cannot be imagined by those who have never [done] it. This has been my experience.

Love, Dad

Tools for smoothing out life's rough spots

A conversation with Adam last night reminded me of a ride that Rebecca and I did last summer. We went camping at Hanging Rock State Park in Central North Carolina. We took our mountain bikes and headed over to "Moores Springs" trailhead. I later recorded the following in my Journal for June 23, 2018:

...I got a recommendation from a guy who just finished the trail – he said counter clockwise was a good direction, and that we could do all three trails ["Original Loop", "Land of the Lost", and "Major Tom"], and then reverse direction and do them all clockwise, depending on how long we wanted to go. He also mentioned that there were some good technical sections. We launched and found the trail to be like many in North Carolina, with roots and hills and gullies, but quite a few more rocks than in the Raleigh area. There were a number of places where rocks had been placed, either as “features” or as crossings over historically muddy spots. These were a bit challenging to ride. In some cases the flow of the trail was pretty nice and it was possible to use momentum and lift cleanly over obstacles. I was concerned about how Rebecca was doing – because of her broken toe, her knee injury and her previous crash at RTP, which undermined her confidence. She walked over the majority of the rock sections and slowed her speed significantly on the fast downhill sections, which then required more time and effort on the subsequent uphill portions. I mostly waited for her at the top, where the trail crested after a down-up segment, and sometimes waited at technical sections to make sure she got through all right, or to offer encouragement. But she clearly lacked confidence to push through the technical sections or maintain enough speed to make it easier.

We did all three loops, with a fun, fast set of downhill switchbacks that ended up taking a while for Rebecca to complete. When we finally finished and I got back to the car, I noted that the ride took about an hour and 40 minutes, but my moving time was just an hour (meaning I spent a total of 40 minutes waiting along the way).

As Rebecca re-joined me at the car she had a pained look on her face – partly from the rigor of the long ride, partly from the pain in her neck, but mostly from the realization that just like on a previous trip down the Rush trail in Corner Canyon, she had completed the whole ride with her front and rear suspension locked out.

We discussed how often there are challenges in life, as well as tools and aids to smooth out the rough spots and make the journey more enjoyable. But if we forget, neglect, or reject those aids, we may find that we’re taking a beating in life instead of enjoying the challenge. The aids that come to mind for me are:

• Daily study, prayer and communion with God; 
• Sabbath day observance; 
• Hearing and responding to the Holy Ghost; 
• Eating healthy and avoiding bad stuff; 
• Enjoying the company and fellowship of good friends;
• Looking for good in others; 
• Forgiving others

Be of Good Cheer

“...be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.” Matthew 9:2 

On a regular basis I look back and see things in my daily actions that I might have done better, where I have not been thoughtful of another, or I haven’t worked as hard as I could have, didn’t prepare for a meeting, was selfish in some way, thought unkindly of another, said things that didn’t need to be said, or just wasn’t perceptive enough (perhaps because I hadn’t paid the price to understand). While I may term these actions and behaviors mistakes, shortcomings, failings, or sins, the result is generally the same – I feel regret about bad things that happen or good things that will not be.

When I look to the Savior and seek for healing and forgiveness, I hope for relief from pain and regret – both the resolution of the consequences, as well as comfort to my soul. He can provide that relief by sending the Holy Ghost to speak peace to my soul, by blessing others and recovering that which has been lost to them, by strengthening me to do better, and sometimes by giving me both opportunity and capacity to restore what was damaged.

The key to activating his invitation to “be of good cheer” is to ask in faith – with intent to act in response to promptings. Even when deeply discouraged, when I ask in faith, with no more than a desire to act better, he can work with my request and my desire and move me in the direction of hope and action.

Life lessons

We learn lots of lessons in life, and this is where we want to share them, mostly with our children, but also with others who might be interested. We spend lots of time riding bikes, so some of our lessons come from that experience, and that inspired the title for our blog.

Provo Canyon, South Fork Rd past Vivian Park