Don’t Crash into that Huge, Narly Boulder!
I have really come to love mountain biking! There are few sports in life I have liked this much—slalom, G.S. and downhill (snow skiing) and Motocross come to mind, but few others. I think I would have gone ballistic for surfing but even though my family and I moved back to Cali many times we never stayed put in Southern California long enough to really get into it. Therefore, it remains in unconquered territory.
Mountain biking? That’s a different story. I live by a horse trail so I can keep my legs in shape every day if I have time ( I don’t, but it’s a nice theory). Great trails like Sherman Branch and Francis Beatty are a stones throw away. What more can a mountain biker ask for?
How bout a little ‘heads up’ on the front end about the challenges everyone faces (and I mean everyone) who takes up this fast growing sport. Challenges like:
- learning to ride ‘clipless’ without toppling over every 10 seconds
- learning to take curves
- avoiding endos!
- proper stiffness in suspension so you don’t bounce like a pogo stick all the way down the mountain!
- seat height
- bike size
- maintenance
- bike weight
- proper components and the most important thing of all…
- Don’t focus on that HUGE, NARLY BOULDER right in front of you!!!
AAAaaauuuggghhh!!!
It’s too much to remember! I can’t remember it all! Don’t test me on this stuff! I feel like I’m back in school!!
Sorry, I’m better now.
It’s really not that hard a list of things to remember—not that tough to keep focussed. But look again at that last item on the list—the part about the, HUGE, NARLY BOULDERS!!
Now, QUICK, stop looking at it. Those over-sized rocks of death are magical killers! Once you look at them they activate their Medusa like powers and draw you in—closer and closer until you become one with the boulder—in a painful kind of way.
I’m serious! It’s absolutely bizarre! The more you look at them, the more you focus on their deadly potential, the greater the likelihood that potential will be fully realized, again, in a very painful kinda way!
There’s a very important spiritual lesson for us to learn here—a lesson the religious leaders (and many religious people today too) of Jesus day simply couldn’t understand. Here it is…
The more you focus on the sins that’ll trip you up the more likely it will be that those same sins actually TRIP YOU UP—mess up your spiritual journey—bring about, ‘trail fail.’
Tomorrow I’ll give you a sure fire way to avoid this.