Ride And Abide

"A man's gotta know his limitations..."   Clint Eastwood as Harry Callahan. Today turned out to be fairly amazing.. Starting out with a pretty great ride around Los Alamos but the highlight was conquering obstacles outside of my comfort zone. On the ride returning to the AirBnb, we happened upon a rock that had obviously been ridden before.  However, it did look fairly menacing.  Parker rode it without much fanfare.. but each time I would look at it.. or start an attempt, I would "chicken out".  Finally... one of the attempts just sort of "happened" as I was past the point of no return and fortunately my mind turned off the fear response and just let it happen. @angryparker got me out of my comfort zone and it all worked out. A post shared by James Radtke (@rideandabide) on Dec 25, 2017 at 9:00pm PST

My friend Parker Roenfanz , who lives in Colorado and works for Rocky Mountain Bicycles, graciously offered bikes from his demo fleet for us to ride on our 4-day adventure.  I opted for a large carbon Rocky Mountain Altitude. For comparison, I should mention my current (personal) fleet: 2016 Pivot Mach 429 Trail (currently a 29'er) 2017 Ibis Mojo 3 (currently 27.5 x 2.80) I also should mention I typically ride Minnesota trails (well managed/maintained) and trails around Washington DC (some maintained and some are fairly rugged).  The riding out here in Albuquerque and Los Alamos is quite a departure from what I have grown accustomed to.  First, elevation... we're over a mile high here... and the cactus and thorny shit growing in to the trails ;-) At first I was not in love with the Altitude.  It felt like the front-end was super heavy, and the turn-in was much quicker than I was expecting a bike focused on downhill activity would be.  At this point I s...

Life begins at the end of your comfort zone. --  Neale Donald Walsch The journey on the bike today was fairly crazy.  It started at the bottom of a fairly decent hill... and ended there.. 5 hours and 49 minutes later.  After traversing 27 miles and climbing 3800 feet. Mountain biking...in mountains. Uau A post shared by James Radtke (@rideandabide) on Dec 23, 2017 at 10:37am PST Note to self:  You should start/end at the TOP of a hill.  If you spend a few hours climbing, by the time you're ready for the downhill I am too wiped out to really enjoy it. Unfortunately I had run out of steam about 2-1/2 hours in to the adventure.  I was just on the verge of cramping and really had very little "pep" left in my legs.  But, we pressed on.  A short while later we encountered a highway that the trail system seemed to straddle and I tried to "bow out" gracefully.  It was getting dark and I was pretty much shot.  My co...

“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche Today I found myself pondering mindfulness.. Regarding the quote above:  A tough line to straddle, to be certain.  I think it's tough to be objectively critical of the world around us, while not being angry and want justice (or vengeance is likely more apt). I'm not sure I believe in an "Illuminati" or some secret organization that is controlling the masses.  But, I do believe in Plutocracy and Oligarchy and that we are being played.  Not always for "evil" however.  Example:  look at the lines for a newly released Apple product, or for Black Friday (which seems to have toned down).  The control of our desires and "needs" (I say needs because they are really "wants"... but we're convinced otherwise). The media has seemingly been playing us: http://www...