Tear it down

Blogging is a hard thing to do. I’ve found looking at a good blog is like viewing the smoothest pros at the end of a long stage race effortlessly turning over their Sidis, snaking up the last turns of that climb seemingly free and easy. Oh but the suffering that went on inside! A good blogger doesn’t encumber the reader with any crap. That’s not to say good blogs are never disturbing. Artists will disturb you, because they work with truth, and truth can be disturbing. But they remain fun nonetheless, and clear. Hang up a little post, or several hundred of them, and other writers, fumbling for words, still find a few diggers to direct at yours. oV put up with that stuff day to day, and he was fair enough to allow anonymous comments. At least he attracted those sociopathic attitudes out of the closet and into the open. Just as when Rush Limbaugh actually writes something down and you hold it next to reasoned arguments created by people with dreams that go beyond trapping someone else’s thought in a corner, you can tell a showy, righteous grudge from what’s gutsy and real. When everybody has a voice, as is the case with the internet, the issue becomes more finding those who desire to make positive contributions, and editing out those who awkwardly peddle mean spiritedness to fill in the gaps.

I’ve done everything I could the last 24 hours to avoid writing the next post. First I hung up a youtube video (Erik Mongrain deserves it), then went out and did base intervals in freezing Flagstaff air (inspired by some oV cyclosophy regarding quality time on the bike vs. unstructured plain ole time), then volunteered to get up at 3am this morning to personally shuttle my friend down to Sky Harbor airport. But I couldn’t even find lasting comfort hiding in the shadow of a Saguaro. The only thing left to do is work on my resume, something I bounced off of with more aversion to than the effort it takes to work on this blog! For those of us that really enjoy blogging and want to be good, let’s remember that oV has been working to relate the cycling thing by the writing thing for maybe close to ten years? Something like that. And we know his subconscious has been recording stories since his legs itched and twitched. Most importantly, he has as much verbal water in his well as the Ogallala aquifer. Stuff to say. Pump it out. He’s a category 1 blogger with master’s wisdom and still no gray hairs? Damn you, jealousy…hmm, in consolation I know if your blogs are true at least my x-rays are cleaner. Plus I saw what was in that one feed bottle you took back in Copperopolis in 2004. Whoa. Hernando, don’t! But you were already attacking up the hill…(at this writing my own addiction to cycling has overcome any such consequences).

Why in the hell would anybody crack at someone for trying to write a blog? Reminds me of yokels sticking their heads out truck windows, leaning down with gravity to counteract that six inch lift, to call cyclists dorks. Yup. So what I’m a dork? We get used to it and don’t let it get in the way of what we’re trying to accomplish. Best effort is all we are looking for. Improvements, SURELY, will come. We and those around us will find good reasons to cheer. --lg