2012 Cycling Recap

I wanted to do a quick recap of my cycling efforts in 2012 before I forget about the details.

For those of you who don't know, I decided to take up the hobby/sport of cycling last year.

I did this for a few reasons:

1. I have always liked riding bikes, why not take it up a notch? Also, it sounded fun!
2. My Dad had recently taken up this sport, had a lot of fun doing it, and saw pretty impressive health results from doing it.
3. I wanted to be healthier, but I was terrible at running and I had a bum knee.

Side note about the bum knee. In the fall before I got married, I, like many people, decided I should attempt to get in shape before the wedding/honeymoon. After making very little progress under my own direction, I enrolled in one of those boot camp style group workout programs. One day, our exercise was stair running. Around flight 85 of 100,  I injured (or maybe reinjuried? long story....) my knee. Running on my knee became very unpleasant after that. Outside of that injury, I thoroughly enjoyed the bootcamp program. It was the first time I truly saw myself as being able to be athletic in any sense and is realistically what jump started me to be more physically fit.

First things first, to cycle, one must have a cycle. I used my skills of cheapskatery thriftiness to procure a fantastically orange road bike on craigslist (as seen below).

As I mentioned in this previous blog post, I got a bit obsessive with my orange/white color scheme. Orange Jerseys? Check!, Orange Water bottles? Check!, Orange Socks? Check!, White Tires? Check!, and the list goes on.

Once I had a bike, I decided the best way to get myself to be serious about riding the bike was to sign up for a bunch of races throughout the year. (When I say "races", I mean race in the same sense that runners go to 5k races. Sure, it's a race for somebody, but certainly not for me.) I figured that if forked over the money for the ride that I'd surely train for it. This actually worked out fairly well.

Here are the major rides I ended up doing (in chronological order).

• Real Ale Ride (50 miles) (Didn't have GPS Logging yet)
• Cow Creek Classic (55 Miles) (link 1) (link 2) (Hadn't quite perfected GPS Logging yet)
• Tour de Payne (100 km)
• Tres Burritos (100 km)
• Hotter'n Hell (100 km) (Checkout the video I made of the ride here--> VIDEO!)
• Livestrong (100 Miles)

To train for these rides, I essentially just rode my bike as much as possible. I did a longer ride (30+ miles) nearly every Saturday or Sunday during June through October. During my peak riding season, I was also riding one to two additional rides during the week (during lunch, to/from work, or in the evening.)

Was all this worth it?

Regarding the "fun" aspect of it? Absolutely yes! It was great to (1) be outside in beautiful Texas and (2) strengthen friendships through many hours/miles of riding.

Regarding the health aspect of it? I'll let the stats do the talking. Every year, the company I work for does a health risk awareness screening for all the employees and this is where I got that data. Those screenings were also the first time I had ever seen stats on my health, such as cholesterol.

All in all, it was tons of fun and I hope to continue to have cycling as part of my life moving forward. Now to ramp up the running and swimming and see if I can pull off a triathlon!

Better late than Never

So, I haven't updated this like I envisioned at the beginning of this semester. That is not to say I haven't been learning things worthy of writing down, or that I haven't been writing them down. I just haven't gotten around to collecting them and putting them here. Perhaps that'll be a good Christmas Break project.

For this discipleship class I've been attending I was asked to write a 250-300 word paper on the leadership of Jesus. I'm not so great at the keeping things short and sweet when It comes to writing. I did my best to make a few points, I don't feel I was able to expound on them or explain them at all, but here it is.

Leadership of Jesus

When considering the leadership style of Jesus one main, and irrefutable, fact is that Jesus led through his service to others. This is best said in Mark 10:45. "For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many."

Jesus, being the model servant leader, meet people at their most current and pressing need and helped them through sincere and loving actions. Looking through the New Testament will give you many examples of this. Twice we see Jesus feeding thousands of hungry people who had followed him just to hear him speak, and In John 13 we see Jesus washing his disciple’s feet. We also see Christ drive out evil spirits, heal the sick, make the lame walk, and restore sight to the blind.

We also see Jesus spending a significant portion of his time with people, especially the unloved, the unlovely, the unworthy, the rebels, the sinners, the weak, the scum. He knew them in a personal and intimate way. He knew exactly what they needed to hear, what would shake them, and where they were in life. He knew and loved those others didn’t want to touch.

Everything Christ did was in obedience to the Father, In John 4:34 we see Jesus telling his disciples that “"My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work.”. He lived to serve God.

In the end His ultimate act of service was his death on the cross as a payment for our sins, we can see how this was Him in obedience service to the will of the father in Luke 23:46 “And Jesus, crying out with a loud voice, said, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”

Inversion Table Revelation

I was hanging upside down on my dad’s inversion table when I saw on the wall one of those old 3D posters that you can see a hidden image in if you look at it funny or cross your eyes, or something. Then I remembered how I used to try and see the picture, or rather, I started to remember the technique I used.

If I got up real close to it, crossed my eyes, stared a little bit, crossed my eyes, and then backed away slowly with my eyes crossed. Sometimes, I could make out the hidden 3D layers.

Doesn’t that sound a bit ridiculous?

Then I started thinking.

What other seemingly silly, if not ridiculous, techniques have people told me they used to see the hidden image in those 3D pictures? I often doubted there was even an image there, more than ever if other people claimed to see it and I couldn’t.

Seriously, what proof did I have that they could see the image? It’s just a jumble of colors and shapes. Not to mention the answer is on the bottom of the poster. How do I know their “stand on one foot and tilt your head sideways while blinking as fast as you can” routine really wasn’t just their trick to read the answer on the bottom and tell me they saw the magical hidden image of a happy unicorn dancing on a rainbow.

Then I started thinking.

Do you ever feel like your doing this when you’re reading the bible or trying to understand God?

Squinting? Cross-eyed? Hanging upside down?

Do you ever feel like this especially when you don’t get it and others seem to? Doesn’t that just really make you doubt they actually know what’s going on and that they’re just making stuff up?

God isn’t a magical hidden image of a happy unicorn dancing on a rainbow on some psychedelic “3D” poster, and sure, the bible isn’t the easiest text to read, but so often we wonder just what we’re looking at.

Why is it so hard for us to see Him? Why is it so hard for us to understand the scripture sometimes? Why does it feel like we are just staring at something hidden beyond our capable perception?