Ride And Abide

Today I blog to Radiohead...  Everything In It's Right Place Yesterday was interesting.  I met a guy who opened a Coffee Roasting Business after losing interest in the rat race near San Diego while living there with his wife and child.  I believe he still exploits his US connection for income (consulting of some sort) but has now lived in Tamarindo, CR for 2 years now and as he put it "[he] doesn't see returning to the states any time soon". When in Rome... A post shared by James Radtke (@rideandabide) on Jan 22, 2018 at 2:34pm PST I then met some folks at dinner.  Interestingly they engaged *me* in conversation, as I have been pretty low-key this trip.  Somehow the topic got fairly deep and the patriarch of the wacky pair kind of called out my situation fairly accurately... "just got out of a long relationship... wasn't married though...  and everyone told him to take this trip to find himself".  So... nobody told me to take this...

Listening to a favorite tune while I am blogging this morning. Film School - Two Kinds Muy Cansado despues surfear una hora - Very tired from surfing for an hour (my Spanish still sucks, even after 2 days). It turns out surfing is like riding a bike.  Albeit, I was riding the equivalent of a tandem, by myself and the waves were analogous of a flat parking lot.  But... First set, first wave... Up. I really need to get my life figured out.  Destressing myself out of my normal routine is almost painful and uncomfortable.  And as I consider this, I am unable to rationalize why Americans live the stressful and overwhelming way we do.  To be clear, there are some folks here that also chase the same dream (nice cars and the idea of presenting an image.)  There is just so much life to experience and we seem to fret over the dumbest shit.  While it might seem ironic that I am documenting/complaining about the exact thing I seem to be doing - and tha...

I had visited Santiago, Chile in 2000 for work... and that trip solidified my feeling that I had a "thing" for the countries south of the US border.  Trips to Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, Ensenada... all left me with fond memories and very deep emotions about the place. This trip to Costa Rica so far has been over-the-top amazing.  The people have all been so nice and friendly and accommodating.  The landscape is unimaginably beautiful.  I really had no idea.  And the food... they seem to have a flair for making amazing dishes here. So far I have not done anything particularly exciting... unless you count getting lost because there are no street addresses here and GPS does not work on "guesses" ;-) Saturday - drove to a Walmart to get sunscreen and Off (I had forgotten about the whole "Zika" thing).  That was a cool experience.  Some folks spoke English fairly well.  Other folks.. not so much (no mucho).  My trivial amount of Spanish see...

Nunc est tempus - Now Is the Time We're all dying.  We were born dying.  So, although I have no terminal illness (that I am aware of) I still have some arbitrary deadlines looming.  Age... you cannot escape it.  I feel as good as I have ever have in my entire life, I KNOW that things will slow down and limit what I can do.. or what I can comfortably do.. and therefore *want* to do. One of my rather objective goals has become - ride my Mountain Bike in every state in the Continental US - and have it show up in my heatmap in Strava. January 2018 Arkansas Delaware Maryland Michigan Minnesota New Mexico Pennsylvania South Dakota Virginia Wisconsin Spreadsheet - States I have ridden in... https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wenma297BfArT0imqHQCrRSBAnEAdOsNXr0D04vFCDA/edit?usp=sharing

Realistically... this movie is much more than simply a movie about surfing in Iceland... I believe I was flying from MN (home) to CO in December to go mountain biking near Los Alamos, NM and I had loaded up a few movies from Netflix to watch on the flight. One of which was  Under An Arctic Sky  (http://www.underanarcticsky.com/) Seriously.... So, I do not want to ruin any of the enjoyment of experiencing the film for the first time but... A few guys who I found it very engaging as they started a quest that was seemingly hell-bent on chasing obscure goals involving surfing. "The key to anything that's worth doing is that there has to be some level of uncertainty"  -- Chris Burka  That particular quote really captures the spirit of the particular objective they were filming.   Even simply *thinking* about surfing on the north coast of Iceland seems daunting.  Actually *doing so* is simply something I can not wrap my head around. ...

I'm glad a place like REI exists.  I imagine I could get my outdoor/adventure gear just about anywhere... and possibly for less money.  But, REI just seems to get it "right".   I like their stores, the "membership program", the dividends, return policy, environmental advocacy, humanitarian advocacy, etc... Anyhow, the "What's your but?" campaign struck a chord today and as a result I just finalized and booked my solo trip to Costa Rica.  (Mostly finalized anyhow..) I have had a few buts recently... and most of them have simply not come to fruition, generally been a huge disappointment, and effectively a waste of time/energy and in hindsight; regrettable.  Oh well though.  Onwards and such! I'll spend the next few weeks piecing together an itinerary.  With the Flight, Car, and hotel reservations out of the way, I'll piece together some idea of things I "must see".  Otherwise, I don't really care what happens for th...

"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...

So..  Journey  to the  West : Conquering the Demons happens to be the title of a 2013 Fantasy Comedy Film But it turns out that it's fairly challenging to come up with click-baity type post titles that are not already representing something else.  So... I'm going with it. The Long Way Round After watching that series numerous times, I was motivated to acquire an "Adventure Motorcycle" in hopes that I my life would somehow become more adventurous.  An occasional weekend here-and-there actually  was  just that.  As I evangelized the benefits of having such an amazing machine, my friend Nate also decided it was something he wanted to try.  We spent a summer doing day trips on our quest for glory.  Bruised (or broken) fingers, muscles and motorcycle parts had both of us smiling uncontrollably, occasionally yelling out loud at our accomplishments of tackling some terrain we thought was impossible.  And much like in The Long Way Ro...

"It" began a while ago... but I finally felt compelled to begin documenting "It". It... is a journey.  The journey is everything... and it is nothing.  It is unlearning all the "truths" and learning all the "untruths".  OK - enough with my nonsense.  Why am I doing this? I would like to document one of the most significant transformations of my adult life.  It started with a break-up... and who knows where it will end.  I want to transcribe my journey as I learn about spirituality, mindfullness, meditation, introspection, different therapy models and approaches. Unfortunately a portion of this will be post-event documentation and probably a bit skewed as such... but there are a few very important points I have learned: Life is only as shitty as you let it be, within reason(tm). You can do anything you put your mind to, within reason(tm). Wherever you go, there you are.  -- Confucius?  Or possibly Jon Kabat-Zinn  Music - whatever t...