A Prairie Lesson

(The story continues from “The Last Mountain Lesson”)

The next day dawned cool and cloudy. We had to be taken by bus to the eastern edge of the city before the cycling would begin. One of the daily tasks was to fill the giant water coolers and to mix the Gatorade we would consume during the day. In the back of the Silver Bullet was a 20-litre cooler of Gatorade. As Iona sped away from the church to the staging area for the day’s ride the Gatorade container danced to a different beat than the van and became the recipient of a winning coach’s victory shower. The back of the van had become a lake of sticky, aromatic Gatorade.

After a few frantic minutes of sopping up the renegade Gatorade most of it had been removed and the day was ready to begin. I had been asked to share a brief devotional and I thought I would share one of the lessons that I had learned thus far.

It’s tough to look ministerial wearing a bicycle helmet and spandex. I am convinced that there should legislation forbidding the public wearing of spandex by people my age. But there I was about to pontificate. I explained that I was on a journey of learning on this trip. That there were lessons that God would have me learn and I wanted to share one of them that morning.

The first lesson was made up of the twin truths of humility and honesty. It’s hard to hide the fact that you are the last person to roll in at the end of the day. There is nobody behind you. You were the slowest. That is humbling if not humiliating.

I started looking for excuses. Well, I was a lot older than the other riders except for (and I began to list the cyclists who already over 60 and of course Chester who was 75) and they were all ahead of me. I could blame my bike but she was a beautiful blue Norco and cost about 5 times as much as my first car. She had an aluminum frame and carbon fibre forks. She could not be my excuse.

HILDEGARD

You may have noticed the use of the feminine pronoun. When I bought my bicycle I decided to give it a name. There seems to be a bit of a tradition in attaching names to vehicles of transportation. The Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary immediately come to mind. But I wanted a tough name. High testosterone but with a feminine touch. I found out later that my cycling companion Kim had named her bike Bella, beautiful. Nothing like that for me. So I named her Hildegard. Now that’s tough but with the scent of roses.

As I thought about potential excuses to explain why I was consistently bringing up the rear I realized that I couldn’t blame Hildegard. The more I thought the more I realized that the reason was not external, it was internal. I was the reason that I was cycling so poorly.

There are some legitimate reasons for that – reasons not excuses. I lost about a month of training time when I injured my back. I just couldn’t cycle. The other reason is this – it’s not easy to train for hill climbing in Saskatchewan. The old joke is that you can watch your dog running away for six days. The province is flat. We do have one mountain. Mount Blackstrap built in the early 70’s by the Canadian government to host the 1971 Winter Games. It was built of garbage and the dirt dug out of basements. But there was a more significant reason – I hadn’t trained properly.

THINKING VS. DOING

Here’s a bit of wisdom you can take to the bank – thinking about training is not the same as training. That actually applies in all areas of life. I am approaching the day when I will retire and looking at my potential retirement income makes me realize that thinking about saving for retirement is not the same as saving for retirement. If you want to lose weight you will soon discover that thinking about diet and exercise is not the same as changing your diet and beginning a training program. If you want to grow spiritually you shouldn’t be shocked to discover that thinking about praying and reading the Bible is not the same as praying and reading the Bible.

I just wasn’t physically ready for the challenge. You could say that my mouth had written a check that my body couldn’t cash. I was forced into an honesty about myself that wasn’t very comfortable.

I was a fan of TV star Red Green and his rather quirky sense of humour. One of the recurring features in his show was a moment of reflection and advice to other middle-aged men. He said that if a middle-aged man was thinking about having an affair there were a couple things he should do before he jumped into the deep end.

He advised that the man should go into the bathroom, lock the door and take off all his clothes and just stare at himself in the mirror. No sucking it up. Just let gravity have its way with you. Now turn and look at yourself from every possible angle without contorting yourself too badly. Let the image sink in. Now ask yourself if you really want to inflict that sight on another woman. Now go back into the living room, kiss your wife, tell her you love her and make her a cup of tea. That’s the kind of honesty that this bike ride was forcing me into.

Now if that’s a little too visceral let me suggest some a little tamer. Do you have a passport? Do you like your picture? The reason most of us don’t like our passport pictures is that they’re just too honest. That’s exactly what we look like. It’s been said that a sure sign that you need a vacation is that you are looking like your passport picture. Honesty and humility coalesced into a lesson I could use on this ride.

In writing to the Romans the apostle Paul said, Romans 12:3 (NRSV)

“For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.”

We pulled out of the gas station and headed east on the TransCanada highway. The Silver Bullet pulled out ahead to lead the way. The back was beginning to dry. It would be days before the smell of Gatorade was eliminated. As it pulled away I saw a banner of toilet paper streaming out from the back gate of the van. Was that a statement?

FLAT TIRE

I was cycling better even though the weather was not as hospitable as the day before. My energy level seems to be connected to my mood and that in turn is affected by the weather. Just a few kilometers out of Calgary I had my first flat tire. Even though I had been in the middle of the pack my flat tire meant that I would soon occupy my usual spot at the back of the pack.

I pulled over to take my wheel off and begin the torturous process of taking off the tire and putting in a new tube. Within minutes I was surrounded by a small group of my fellow cyclists who insisted that they could change the tire a lot faster than I could. And they were right.

I felt like a Formula 1 driver waiting for my pit crew to put me back on the road. In no time at all I was back on the road but again occupying my normal spot near the back of the pack. I could feel every muscle in my body and began to come up with reasons why I should get off my bike and ride in the Meat Wagon. Then Chester slowed down to cycle with me. He asked if I would like the company.

And we began to talk. I was reminded of a lesson that I had learned years before when I volunteered at a downtown soup kitchen in Winnipeg. Everybody has a story. I doubt that anyone has held a baby in their arms and dreamed that one day they would wander the streets of Winnipeg, homeless and abusing drugs. Something had happened that had helped follow the path that led them to where they were. We all have a story.

CHESTER'S STORY

So I listened to Chester’s. His wife was back in St. Catharines, in a care facility suffering from dementia. He called her every day. Some days she knew he was crossing Canada on his bike. On others she thought he was still in St. Catharines. His story was shaded with sorrow and loss.

He had only started cycling a couple years before. On his first ride he had barely gone a few kilometers, now he was cycling across the dominion. What an adventure!

Each day ended with a long drink of chocolate milk to assist us in our recovery from the day’s ride. Every time we drank the cold, brown liquid it did more than restore our bodies, it restored our spirits because we knew that the day was done. The kilometers we had covered that day would not have to be cycled again. The old commercials told us that you spelled relief R-O-L-A-I-D-S. We knew it was spelled C-H-O-C-O-L-A-T-E  M-I-L-K. Chester said he had started this ride for Jesus, now he was riding for the chocolate milk. Chester was teaching me a very valuable lesson – we really do need each other.

I was reminded of a story I had read in the writings of Leo Buscaglia. There is a beautiful older woman who seems to be happier than anyone else. Her family and friends constantly ask her the source of her great happiness. She always enigmatically says that it is a secret told her by a fairy. The answer doesn’t satisfy her questioners but she just smiles and remains silent. Finally she relents and tells them that when she was a young girl she was walking in a meadow and saw a butterfly impaled on a thorn. The butterfly struggles vainly to free itself from its prison. She gently removes the butterfly from the thorn and releases it. Immediately the butterfly turns into a beautiful fairy.

“Because of your kindness” the fairy says, “I will grant you a wish.”

“I want to be happy.” the girl says.

The fairy whispers a secret into the girl’s ear. And it is this secret that has allowed this young girl to experience happiness throughout her life. “No matter how well a person seems to be doing, no matter how much they seem to have their lives together, everyone needs you.” And it was this lesson that Chester had taught me that day on the road out of Calgary. I looked at the group of cyclists that I was sharing this adventure with and I realized that I was able to be of use, to be a blessing to each of them. Conversely everyone in this team also had the ability to bless me. We, everyone one of us was indispensible to the team. Each of us added to the chemistry of the ride and the absence of any one of us would diminish the team. We really do need each other.

(Meet my ‘adopted granddaughters’ in my next blog post, “We Really Do Need Each Other”)