- Part 2 in a Study of Contrasts -

For nearly my entire childhood, life felt easy. 

Friendships came easily, good grades came with little effort, even my junior high saxophone days had me playing first chair in the concert band.  I won free stuff in high school (a CD player, a week at Magic Johnson’s basketball camp, even a trip to Europe) and I got in to the colleges I wanted.  I even got a convertible for my 16th birthday.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I had formed a worldview where everything seemed to go my way, and that although “hard work” was required to achieve, my awareness of hard work was quite limited.

And then real life hit.

I failed my first few midterms in college, my best friend died unexpectedly at age 20, career choices became murky, and I learned that being a husband and a father required more of me than I had ever anticipated.

We all have our own personal metaphors for life; mine is cycling.

There are times when I ride and it’s absolutely gorgeous—the temperature is perfect, there aren’t cars on the road, the scenery is fabulous.  And there are other times when things just plain suck—hot weather, bee stings while descending a fast hill, multiple flats on the same ride.

Cycling, like life, has its fair share of ups and downs during the journey.

One such time was a glorious ride through the June Lake Loop in the eastern Sierras.  The road takes you by five lakes, stunning mountain peaks and aspen-lined streets.  It is a small slice of paradise.

As I was riding the loop, I could feel a nice tailwind.  Its evidence was brought even more clear by whitecaps forming on the larger lakes.

What’s nice about riding in a tailwind is that you can maintain your normal pedal stroke and feel like an absolute champion.  I’ve gone 35 mph on the flat before with minimal effort and a good tailwind; throw in a slight downhill and you’re really cruising. 

In fact, it was a good solid year before I confessed to my wife that I had hit 50 mph on that particular ride, the one with a strong tailwind at my back, the one that made me feel like this cycling thing was a snap and that I could conquer just about anything the road threw my way.

Except that the ride is a loop, and so that glorious downhill tailwind I was enjoying was only temporal.  I took a turn on Highway 395, only to find that my whitecap-inducing tailwind was now blowing full-force at my face.  And the 1500 feet I had descended on the loop now had to be reconciled by a good hard climb.  Into the tailwind.

I won’t bore you with the details, but needless to say I wasn’t going 50 mph anymore.  In fact, I struggled to stay above 8 mph out of the saddle.  (For those of us not familiar with cycling jargon, that’s the position of getting off the seat and standing on the pedals while climbing uphill—the one where it’s too difficult to pedal sitting down; the one where the riders’ faces show every bit of agony their bodies are going through.)

The elation of the journey had quickly faded into self-doubt, mild despair, and physical exhaustion.

The glorious journey was not so glorious anymore…

I’ve been finding myself pedaling into a lot of headwinds lately.  It seems as though very little is coming easily, and it feels as though the Elements are set against me.  I look at others who are in a “tailwind” leg of their journey, and I get a bit miffed, if I’m honest.

I don’t like for things to be hard.

If I’m honest with myself, I would rather be on the easy 50 mph descent than on the steep-uphill-wind-in-my-face portion every day of my life.

But the journey isn’t built that way. 

The road is fraught with many ups and downs, headwinds and tailwinds, rain and sunshine.

And I’m confident that the strength built within me during the Headwind Times makes me a better person, if for no other reason than the deep appreciation I have when the road levels out a bit, when the wind attenuates to a gentle breeze, and the views of the mountains can be appreciated with so much more of my being.