I’m gearing up for a big car camping trip across the west right now and thought I’d break this one up into a few updates since the trip will be roughly three weeks give or take. The plan is to hit glacier, visit some family and friends in Washington and LA, then the national parks in Utah. Roughly. I consider this my first “legit trip” because I actually built a bed, a little kitchen, and a shower into my Odyssey.
Well everything was going swimmingly until I encountered the single handed most frustrating thing that can happen before big trips: sickness or injury. Some of my biggest adventures have been foiled or nearly foiled by this. Last summer my first two racing blocks got off to a rough start when I unexpectedly lost about 15 pounds (165 down to 150) right before I left. This oddity resulted in a…bad time…till it got squared away later in the race season. It just so happened to strike again though. A handful of days before my proposed departure date I whacked the absolute living daylights out of my shin. It occurred to me instantly that it was cracked but I mostly walked in off. Fast forward to T-3 days to departure and the shin has become problematic. It now hurts to put weight on for extended periods of time which could indicate something more than just bruising
This dealt a huge blow to me psychologically. Compound that with a few others little jokes from the big guy upstairs and this adventure was starting to turn out a disaster before I even left the state. Honestly I was a little unsure about the trip so during one of my holy hours in the chapel I had requested God either make the trip go smooth or shatter my plans if I wasn’t supposed to do it. I didn’t think he’d take it quite literally. That ones on me haha.
The list of really wild occurrences and things that went sideways can always stack up. The number of trips I’ve gone on that went absolutely perfectly smoothly and easy has been 0. It comes with the territory. As Bilbo Baggins would say “ It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door.” So what to do about it?
It seems to me that I have arrived at a theory: going on solo adventures are the most psychologically challenging for me. I have no one to fall back on because it’s a one man show. That’s why I always preferred, and performed better, when racing bikes for a team versus lone wolf. I had people to work for and rely on. A great friend and teammate, Deks, once yelled at me in a race when I was about to quit, “Not yet bro, you got more to give, push yourself” and I made it to the end of a really hard race and set a personal best. Scripture supports this: “it’s not good for man to be alone”, Jesus sent the first wave out in pairs, the first Saint died next to Jesus on a cross. Making the jump though from knowledge to understanding is bloody difficult though. I’m psyching myself out of the trip because the potential of crippling my leg due to a stress fracture exasperated by climbing mountains is not a good story to tell.
I don’t know what the solution is in the mean time. It’s a miracle I’ve even made it on the last few adventures going solo because being honest: it actually kinda sucks. Like really sucks sometimes. I’ve only known one friend in my entire life that upon recounting of a “grand adventure” cut straight to the bone and asked “are you lonely yet?” I will note there is reason for optimism here. Pushing through these challenges in the past have yielded a seldom found feeling of self satisfaction and confidence. Like the time I ground out a 24 mile ruck on the last day of solo backpacking trip or biked 140 miles for Mac and cheese. The key is not to give up, but in the face of a serious injury I’ll have a call to make that isn’t purely straight forward. Jocko Willink would most likely just say “Good”. So looks like I just gotta roll with these punches for now.
Update: The day after writing this I slammed my mountain bike on the roof rack into a steel cross bar that was low hanging. Big dum move. Bent the head tube pretty bad, trashed the rear wheel, trashed the rack, trashed the cross bars, broke a runner, and sliced all my bikes hydro lines. So. Yeah.
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