EZ Rider Bodhis

You owe it to everyone (including yourself) to find pockets of tranquility in your busy world. - Georges Bernanos in the Zen Calendar (July 1, 2009).

Day 144. We had a cycling event today. I rode like complete and utter crap. I felt like complete and utter crap. I'm fairly sure I looked like complete and utter crap. What did I expect? The date has two of "that number" in it.

Except for me, the EZ Riders strode out in fine style. Our blue and yellow jerseys blended spectacularly with the summer sky and early morning sun. A color coordinated, symmetrical, single line of 10 led out at the Tour de Cure in Mustang - a fund raiser for diabetes. I registered the exact moment I began to feel ill. When I glanced down at my computer, the timer read 13 minutes and 2 seconds, which was gristly premature for a metric century (62 miles) ride.

My partner was pulling; he pulled and he pulled and he pulled. There was a beastly south wind (duh) and it was simmering hot by eight a.m. Even with the best draft in town and no more than .025 centimeters between his back wheel and my front, I quickly felt exhausted, overheated, and in pain. I hung on for about ten miles until a mild ascent left me feeling like the contractions in my seventh hour of natural child birth. Not a good sensation. I pulled off and watched the EZ Riders disappearing over the hill. It's the most demoralizing feeling imaginable.

As I slowed from 20 mph to around 14, I looked up and saw Ted waiting for me. Hmm? Turns out he had been traveling on temporary duty for three of the past four weeks, had not been riding, and was feeling pretty rotten himself (though I suspect his analogy did not contain memories of child birth). My morale lifted a fraction. He sized up my condition based on monosyllabic replies like, "Crap. Sucks. Hurts. Bonk." Ted's one of the sharper tacks in the cork board. In a heartbeat, he elected to pull. We modified our metric century distance to the humble route of 30 miles.

As we labored up a long hill with a blasting headwind (how can there POSSIBLY be so many occasions of that combination on any given Saturday in Oklahoma?), Ted casually queried, "Do I have a flat?" Reluctantly, I assessed his back wheel and sure enough, it was getting soft. We stopped; he confirmed the inevitable and elected to continue up the hill to a rest stop at the top. I sucked it up and pulled him to the top. Figured it was the least I could do, being as I had nice hard tires and all. When we pulled into the stop, his tire was squishy indeed. Gassho to the Buddha! A mechanical upon which to blame our disappearance.

Ted quickly changed his tire (how is it that the back tire is ALWAYS the flat one? Statistically, shouldn't there be a 50/50 split between the two?) I gulped salt tablets, and we headed for open road, carefully following the directional arrows painted on the asphalt reading "All." Thirty miles. Piece of cake. Piece of chase-it-with-a-gallon-of-PowerAde cake. We were over half way. With properly pressured tires, Ted was more than willing to continue dragging my pathetic ass ever southward. The sun climbed. The temperature climbed. We climbed.

I succumbed to temptation and checked the mileage on my computer. It read just over 25 miles. Rather than jubilation at the nearness of the end of our 30-mile jaunt, however, I felt a gnawing hunch that those arrows saying "All" meant "All of you riding 48 miles or further." Somewhere jumbled amongst the OCD neurons comprising the bulk of my cortex, I also house a pretty durn accurate sense of direction. And that sense told me we had ridden waaaaay further south of the finish line than five miles. I shared my suspicion with Ted, and he confirmed: we had to be on the 48-mile route. Yippee. Sure enough, we came to an intersection with only two directional indicators: straight for the metric; right for the 48-miler. We were a long way from home. I wondered if there was a record for miles ridden while feeling like you're going to puke without actually doing so. If such a prestigious accolade exists, I was in contention.

Ever the optimists, me and Ted immediately acknowledged that we had a heckuva tailwind to push us northward. We also had newly smoothed blacktop beneath our wheels. Clicking along at 28 mph is a terrific morale hefter, even when you are seriously gastrointestinally challenged. I'd felt ill for so long it was starting to fade from my awareness. A beautiful byproduct of sitting zazen for 143 days is that I no longer feel crappy over feeling like crap. It is what it is. This ride bit from the beginning. I pulled. Ted schemed, formulating a way to cheat the 48. The miles fell beneath us. Every one over 30 gouged Ted deeply.

Ted's single-mindedness and my sense of direction combined to get us to the finish line at just over 41 miles. We were elated at avoiding the final three-mile lurch into a straight south wind. We passed Tracy, the other female EZ Rider, sitting in the shade of her open hatch. She had experienced heat problems and rode back alone along the same 41 miles we had traversed. We deemed ourselves "free lancers" and pronounced the ride a success. Ted headed home. I waited in the shade with Tracy for the more robust members of our team.

My partner arrived first and alone. He had a great ride, completing the metric with an average speed I won't mention here because my competitiveness forbids indulging it. Mike, Jackie and Randy also completed the metric with speedy times. As impressive as their riding was today, my gratefulness and appreciation toward these talented teammates has nothing to do with their cycling. It's their Buddha Mind.

We all sat together at the luncheon given on the riders' behalf. Guzzling iced tea and pasta, we analyzed our separate rides in detail. My description was a minimal mumble about how crappy I rode and how miserable I felt. I didn't hide my discouragement and despair over the incontestable remnants of heat illness. It was especially disheartening in lieu of my strong and promising performance on rides before temperatures soared. The EZ Riders just listened. Nodded their heads. Listened some more. No smarmy attempts at making me feel better. No sugar coating the suckiness of a setback. No empty promises of things getting better in the near future. No comparisons, judgment, criticism. Like a bunch of sweaty and sun tanned Bodhisattvas, they just patiently listened, bearing witness to my bad day on the bike. It is what it is. No need to make it anything else.

I love my EZ Riders. Without even sitting zazen, they are terrifically enlightened beings. Find some Bodhisattvas in your life. They are pockets of tranquility in a really busy world.

Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc