my trip to Greenland

Greenland Open Space, that is. Twice this week, I have had the chance to go riding in this beautiful place near Palmer Lake. It is such an idyllic landscape. On my ride today, you could see the wildflowers starting to bloom. I'll have to post some more pictures someday, but here is a little taste!

The evening sun on the rolling hills. The shadows and light each evening are awesome.

Kipps Loop is my favorite. It passes the prettiest little pond, with a great bench next to it.

Carrie rides ahead of me on the smooth single track.

The tracks run next to the open space, and actually just make it more picturesque.

This sign cracks me up. Apparently the citizens and pets of Palmer Lake qualify as wildlife.

simple joys

These are a little outdated, but I wanted to go ahead and post some of the pictures from a great bike ride. It was a little cool for diving into the mud, but I found other ways to entertain myself.

I mean, really...the company of Pedro and one of my dearest friends, a nice sloppy mud puddle, and a stick for digging around in it...it doesn't get a whole lot better than that!

fodder for dreamin'

I took a bike ride today in a place I've never explored before. After driving up into a canyon, we parked and hit a dirt road (with sections of trail). The terrain was a little skree-esque, so it was slow pedaling at points, but the views were awesome. Other than doing a face-plant while attempting to cross a stream (I know that at least one of you is laughing now), the day was perfect.

And that dreamin'? Well, apparently the road goes all the way to Cripple Creek. Good long ride, ice cream from the general store... Yep, pretty sure I'm a-goin' to have to do that sometime before winter comes 'round again.


Chris forgot his shoes. You can't tell, but he's navigating this sweet stuff in loafers.

Man, I love where I live. I biked last summer when I was in Oklahoma, and believe me, it did NOT look like this.

See the rock in the middle of the stream on the right side? I have a beautiful impression of it on my shin now. I'll be honest...that really really didn't feel good. But it was a great fall otherwise!

Pedro the Wise

(For any who aren't regular readers here, Pedro the Spikey Bikey is, well...my bikey)

God has funny ways of teaching us, myriad methods of revealing who he is and what life is about. Last week, my teacher was Pedro the Wise.

I learn a lot from my time biking. I have gleaned tremendous lessons about perseverance, and about how we can do far more than we think we can sometimes. Attacking a killer hill has taught me a lot about what it means to refuse to quit. This time around, on a rather rocky stretch of single track, Pedro offered a lesson on perspective.

Now, I still have a lot to learn about navigating rocky trails. Sometimes I hit them at awkward angles. Sometimes I brake at the wrong time. Sometimes I chicken out (errr...make a wise decision?) and walk over them. But one thing I do know about navigating obstacles on a bike: where your gaze is fixed, there your front tire will go.

It isn't natural, that principle. We want to place our focus on the rock or rut we are avoiding, as if keeping our eyes on it will help us make sure we don't end up there. Stare at the obstacle, however, and you are guaranteed to feel your front tire slamming up against granite or slipping into a crevice. The trick is to not look at where you don't want to go, but to fix your gaze squarely on the one safe passage, on that narrow stretch of trail that doesn't cry disaster. It feels unnatural, like I said, but it works. Even if the back tire does it own thing, you have pretty good odds of gaining control at that point.

Nasty terrain isn't unique to mountain biking, however. Sometimes I get stressed out by the rough stretches of everyday life. I get obsessed with looking out for the million ways I could fail, all those obstacles on the way to walking the narrow road of discipleship. I want to keep my eye on them just to make sure I'm not meandering that way, but it often backfires. Like with biking, most of the time our actions follow our gaze; we act on the things we give our attention to, even if the whole point of giving them attention was for the sake of avoidance. It's like trying to clean up my thought life only by keeping an eye out for the thoughts I don't want to have. Talk about tripping over rocks; it just keeps those very things lingering in the back of my mind.

I'm not saying we shouldn't keep an eye out for stumbling blocks. We need to be aware of stretches of rough terrain in our lives. But I imagine that sometimes Jesus is standing there saying, "I want you to look toward me, not all those potential failures. Keep your eyes fixed on me, set my love always before you, and your feet will begin to follow."

fancy meeting ewe here

Today I took a bike ride up "the scar", a Bighorn Sheep preserve, with a friend. Renell is one of my oldest friends, and we hadn't seen each other for far too long, so it was a perfect way to catch up and embrace a beautiful day. Twice in the journey, we crossed paths with a large group of ewes (I would have taken a picture, but I didn't want to stop halfway up a killer hill). And we had a view of the whole city from the top.

I love where I live. I'm pretty sure Pedro the Spikey Bikey doesn't mind it either.

(a statue at the Bighorn Sheep reserve)

fun in the mud

I felt like being alone today, so I passed up offers for hiking (wanted more speed than that), climbing (don't actually know how), and polo (just kidding). Instead, it was me and Pedro the Spikey Bikey (aka, my bike). Now any mud lover knows that God made the earth and waters, and when he mixed them together, he called it good--a lesser known and rather loose translation of Genesis. But today I learned that I sometimes need to be careful what I ask for...

Ah yes, I love mud when it splatters. It is less fun when it completely clogs your wheel. Still, I got a good laugh and made it home after cleaning out the muck and getting back to the more solid section of the trail.

But seriously, it doesn't get much better than a ride through the mud on a sunny Colorado day.

E.I.N.T.K.I.L.F.M.M.B.

Stands for: everthing I need to know I learned from my mountain bike. Which is proving to be true. Lesson ala bike for the day: the Bible.

After months of pedaling away in the balcony of World Gym, it was finally warm enough (and reasonably dry enough) for a bike ride today. I decided to try a loop starting from my house that I figured would provide a good dose of exercise. It ended up being a great ride; I discovered a pedestrian bridge over the interstate (one less nasty intersection to navigate), and though I had expected the Santa Fe trail to be pretty dry, I got a good dose of my favorite kind of terrain--mud. Mud which I didn't make an effort to brush off before coming in the house, and which I imagine is getting all over everything as I type this.

The difference between riding a bike at the gym and riding outside is beyond compare. In the gym, it is all about checklists. Made it to the gym for the day, check. Cardio for a certain length of time, check. Burned a certain number of calories, check. Set the level pretty high, check. Working out inside is just plain discouraging and boring most of the time.

Outside, however, checklists have nothing to do with it. Out on the trail it is about the burn in my muscles as I push myself up a hill, and the wind in my face when I go down one. It is about navigating terrain, getting dirty, and going just a little father simply for the sake of exploration. It's about pushing hard so that I can push farther the next time, about knowing my metabolism is kicking, about the fact that my body will be ready for rest tonight--about feeling healthy, but only as a byproduct of enjoyment. Even if there was a checklist, it would probably look something like this: Didn't waste a warm day, check. Did not quit on a single hill, check. Got as muddy as possible, check. Found a new trail, check. Laughed out loud as I rode, check.

But the Bible...yes, back to my point. We've all heard it said before, but reading the Word can become a bit like a checklist. It can be like an indoor workout. Read my Bible today, check. Covered at least one chapter, check. Underlined a few things, check. Even if we don't mean to do it this way, even if we really want to grow with Jesus, we sometimes let ourselves end up there. Just trying to stay in decent shape and fit into our image.

The Bible should be about so much more than that! It should be about the challenge of pushing our ways through trial, knowing we are building muscle, and the sweet wind of relief when God opens the floodgates of blessing. It should be about enjoying the journey, getting a little dirty, laughing as we go. Scripture should be alive in us, getting our metabolism kicking, causing us to grow in perseverance and Christlikeness. Reading the Word of God should be the most thrilling ride we will ever take.

And I mean really, even if there was a checklist, it should probably look something like this:

Allowed the Spirit room to radically change my life today, and fell a little more in love with Jesus, check.

my therapist is a mountain bike

There is something about exhausting the body that is good for the frustrated soul. When life gets a little too big to handle on the inside, I just need to get dirty and worn out. Mud, sweat, dust, blood...whatever reeks of adventure and challenge.

Ergo, my bike ride today (the pic is actually from a different ride). I did not go out there for a little mundane exercise, a lap around the park. I wanted to be sucking wind like a hoover on some impossible incline, dodging branches and sliding in the dirt. This is a frustration ride, folks. It has nothing to do with fitness and everything to do with exertion.

I immediately chose a trail I had never tried before (those I have sampled have not been worthy of a frustration ride), and it turned out to be a gem. Up and up and up and up...the sucking wind part was taken care of pretty quickly. As it turned out, the trail also provided a wonderful opportunity to employ the This-Is-Nuts-O-Meter. With the sucking of the wind came the "What am I Doing?" reading, followed by a "This Might Not be a Good Idea" when the ruts got really big. When the rocks began, the meter eased into "Nope, Definitely not a Good Idea." Finally, when the rocks got bigger, were situated on a steep slope, and the trail was a bit loose, things topped out at a reading of, "Maybe I Should Have Written a Will Before Leaving the House." That was where frustration encountered reason, and I finally turned back.

On the way back down that glorious trail, I stopped and sat on one of the huge rock formations surrounding me. Perched high on a sandstone ridge, looking out at a snow-capped Pike's Peak, I read my Bible in the fall sun. The exhaustion had done the trick. For the first time in a while, I was tired enough to rest, worn out enough to just sit and listen. And that's what the Father wants from me: "In repentance and rest is your salvation; in quietness and trust is your strength."

Right now, I need to sit before him in restful repentance, and in quiet trust. I need to make that the posture of my heart and life. Sometimes it just a takes a mountain bike and little wind-sucking to get me there.