More than two months after my first bike tour I think I’ve learned something.

I learned a lot, actually, but this one thing goes beyond touring, yet can come back around to touring again to make it better next time. This thing is living in the moment.

I’m a great analyzer, a terrific planner, and I can give dog-on-bone attention to detail while wading through a long project. I’m just not good at living in the moment, even sometimes when those moments are the sweetest. To do it well I’ll have to unlearn many years’ worth of practice doing just the opposite.

To distract myself from losing my mom at 15, I dove into every activity I could to keep my mind off the present, wearing myself down to the point of getting mononucleosis and losing 25 pounds. This constant busyness naturally continued through the next few years while I also became a focused planner. I tried to build my own feeling of security by planning and planning, whether it was in my job, planning my financial goals and budgets, or planning my workouts, running mileage or weight-lifting goals. Everything was on a spreadsheet, projected out many weeks/months/years ahead.

Meanwhile I was missing so much of every day. I have entire blocks of time with virtually no memory beyond the generalities of relationship status, work projects, athletic efforts, or financial state. This is not good.

I’ve realized for some time I need to live in the moment more. It hit home after my last relationship dissolved in the span of 45 minutes and my world fell apart for the umpteenth time. I practiced it in those dark days afterward, stopping and feeling when it hurt. Then life got better and time sped back up to normal speed. It hit home again when I met the most beautiful, thoughtful, kind and amazing person–Dave–and realized I didn’t want to miss a minute. But eventually human nature tends to take over when we lose focus.

I’ve been going back through my daily journal entries for the Great Divide and it really puts me back in those moments. And the thing I notice most is what I didn’t write, but what I clearly feel when I put myself back in that time.

I held back, wasn’t in the presence of my own experience a good portion of that time. I was worried about all the unknowns, the things I couldn’t plan for, couldn’t control, didn’t have the experience to expect. Simply put, I was thinking more about what was around the next bend than what I was experiencing at the moment. I realize I’m talking about a vacation, a ride purely for the fun of it, a tour, after all. But sometimes the hardest thing to do is simply enjoy something for what it is.

There were days on the tour that I was successful at living in the present, but it wasn’t nearly enough. Looking back now I can see that. So, it’s hit home once again that I have some personal evolving to do. I want to put it into practice on the next tour, because I don’t want to miss a minute.

I have been mostly a Brooks saddle user for several years, with one on my mountain bike and another on my commuter, and I’ve been very happy with them. But as I wrote in my Brooks saddle review, I think for the mileage and time in the saddle experienced on tour I need something else. I think I’ve finally decided on a Selle An-Atomica Titanico (a very testosterone-packed name, in my opinion), the same saddle Dave bought just before the Divide. I’ve read a lot of reviews and studied the Selle An-Atomica website and think this design is likely to work pretty well. It’s similar to the Brooks B17 shape and size, but with the center cutout it should move a bit more with me while still supporting my sit bones solidly.

I had a few emails back and forth with the owner and designer of the saddle, Tom Milton, because I thought I might have them convert my old B17 with the cutout–a service they offer on their website. But because of the wear on the saddle it sounds like it will be better to start with a new An-Atomica Titanico. Tom also wrote that he got on our site and read Dave’s review of the An-Atomica and said the stretching Dave experienced is more than normal and that he would warranty Dave’s saddle by replacing it with a new one. That’s excellent service, especially since we didn’t even ask about Dave’s saddle!

So we’ll order a new Selle An-Atomica Titanico saddle for me and have it sent with Dave’s new one.

I’ve been keeping my fitness up partly by riding stationary bikes at the gym, first on the recumbent bikes and more recently on the upright ones. But yesterday, Dave and I went out for a bike ride on the urban trails around the area. There are a lot of them, and we ended up being out more than two hours. I wanted to wait until riding wouldn’t hurt, from the pressure of resting my upper-body weight on my arms to the jolt of bumps and turning. It was a total success! I’m now quite sure that by January I’ll at least be able to ride a few hours a day on a loaded touring bike. After all, we’re not talking about the steep and bumpy Great Divide–we’ll be in Southeast Asia where, at least to begin with, it will be flat and hopefully fairly smooth on the pavement. Once we get into the northern parts we’ll tackle some hills and mountainous areas, but by then I’m sure my shoulder will be strong enough.

So, now it’s time to start looking for plane tickets to SE Asia!

We’ve been working on the website lately, and we’ve added some gear reviews, our packing list for the Great Divide Trail, and brief info on our Southeast Asia bike tour plans.

We’ve both been enjoying the unusually warm weather here in Golden these last few weeks. Dave goes for mountain bike rides in the foothills right near the house here, cranking out a solid two hours of sweaty happy goodness just about every day. I’ve been running up and around Table Mountain, accessible right from the house. It’s beautiful open space that’s wide open and usually sunny. We’ve also done some great hikes on the weekends, and Dave even went rock climbing on Sunday with Jesse in the Flat Irons near Boulder while I hiked around there. What fun! But alas, every unusually warm fall must come to an end, and tonight it is supposed to snow. And the rest of the week looks to be thirty degrees colder than it’s been. I had been running in shorts and a t-shirt, or long-sleeve t-shirt up until a couple days ago. Today we both wore tights and fleece during our outdoor playtime. Darn! I guess we’ll be extra ready for the humid heat of Southeast Asia in January.

We’re preparing for a very fun gathering on Thanksgiving with Dave’s three college friends and their families and his brother and his family. There will be massive yummy food. I start baking pies tomorrow! And the TurkeyDay festivities will start with us all gathered around the TV to watch the Packers Rool (after I drag Dave out for a run on the mesa!).

Happy Thanksgiving week everyone!

We’re nailing down details for the Southeast Asia bike tour and I’m getting excited. But I’ve got to be ready, so I’m working hard to keep and build on my fitness as well as rehab my shoulder. It’s going well.

For overall strength and fitness, I’m doing the best thing possible – high intensity interval training. This is what you do when you want to accomplish a lot in a little time, when you want to build both strength and endurance, or when you want to trim down. Loads of research has been done in this area in the last few decades, and it all adds up to the best workout you can possible do for your body.

So. Three times a week I head into the gym where I can sit on the stationary bike (still can’t ride hard on a real bike, so this has got to do for now) and do an hour of sweating. I worked up to this, of course, and I wouldn’t recommend starting at an hour. Twenty to thirty minutes is the norm. Warm up first, doing whatever activity you enjoy or want to get better at. Then start the intervals. The latest research I read says you should do a high intensity interval (80-90% effort) for 30-60 seconds, followed by a 4-minute active recovery at about 60%. Repeat a few times, lasting up to one hour including warm up and cool down. That’s it. You’ll be surprised how quickly your body snaps to attention and adapts. It doesn’t have to be as exact as this, but those who know me well understand my OCD tendencies when it comes to exercise. I love it!

I’m also motivated to strengthen my shoulder with the intention of getting back to 100% strength and usability. I don’t know how long that will take. I had a pretty bad rotator cuff tear about five years ago that supposedly needed surgery. I worked hard at PT and then in the gym and felt fully back to 100% after about a year. This injury is more complicated, but I feel I can get there again. I’m working my shoulder with free weights and multiple exercises on the cable machine. I even started weight-assisted dips today! I’ll be back on the bike in January, but will keep working on my shoulder as long as it takes to fully recover. I’ll really need it next summer for our sea kayak expedition to circumnavigate Baranof Island in Alaska. More on that later.

Here we are at week five from the crash, and I can now put my own hair into a ponytail. Oh my, how exciting! My shoulder has been painfully grumpy the last couple of days, but overall I’m really pleased with the speed in which it’s progressing. I have probably 85% of normal range of motion now, mostly without pain. I think I’ll be able to start working it on the cable machines at the gym next week, starting out really light of course. I can’t tell you how hard it is to be within view of a pull-up bar and not hop up to do a few.

Must.

Be.

Patient.

So, what am I doing with myself while Dave and I “house sit” at his parents’ lovely Colorado house? Well, I’m working on this website, for one: back-end stuff that will make updating while traveling much easier, a few design and wording changes to make navigating easier for readers, adding a bit of content here and there. You’ll also notice there have been ads popping up on the pages around here. I’m hoping that over time, with enough readers finding us and following our adventures, we’ll be able to pay for the website through affiliate income. When people click on an ad on our website and buy something, we get a wee percentage of the sale for the ad referral. Over time that could add up. It might be enough to pay for web hosting, our internet access fees on the road, maybe even someday a sat-phone internet connection so we can update whenever we want when we’re in the middle of nowhere–a place we hope to be quite often!

Also, there’s fun! We’re going to a show at the Boulder Theater tonight featuring Tuareg (North African) and West African musicians. Tomorrow we’re going to explore Mount Galbraith Park for some outside time. And tomorrow evening we’re going to a dinner fund raiser for the CU-Boulder chapter of Engineers Without Borders. Dave has joined that chapter and hopes to volunteer on a project when we bike tour in West Africa next fall. Dave’s brother and his family get back on Sunday from Hawaii, where he competed in the Xterra World Championships off-road triathlon. After fetching them from the airport we’ll eat pizza and watch the Packers game together. That all adds up to a pretty fun weekend.

It’s been four weeks today since the crash and my shoulder is making real progress. I am spending most of my time out of the sling, even slept last night without it on. I’m no longer taking any pain medication and I’m sleeping fairly well now.

I can lift my arm to the side up to the level of my shoulder without pain, and not quite that far to the front. I’m still getting used to the big bump on top where my collar bone sticks up. Even with surgery I would still have this bump.

I have to confess, I’m pretty upset to have my shoulder disfigured. I’ve been a weightlifter for about 16 years now (yikes!) and have lifted some damn heavy weights to get these shoulders to be strong. They’re going to be strong again, but the right one is always going to look whacked. Oh well, at least I have a good story!

What am I doing to stay in shape so Dave doesn’t whup-up on me on our next tour? I’m hiking every other day or so, and on the days I don’t I head to the gym to do an hour of hard intervals on the stationary bike, a couple rounds on the indoor track of walking lunges, and such things as I can do without using my bad shoulder. That’s pretty darn limiting. I can see the free weight area from where I sit on the bike. I see all the things I can’t do right now: pull ups, bench press, military press, squats and such. All require two working shoulders. But I’ll have both back in action soon, though when they are it’s time to take off on a new adventure.

Dave and I think it’s best to save Africa for next fall through the following spring so we have plenty of time for the whole route we initially intended. As I wrote earlier, it’s looking like we may be doing a sea kayak tour next summer. We just need to fill in a plan for January through spring, assuming I can ride a loaded touring bike starting in mid-January, which I think is reasonable.

The latest idea taking shape is a bike tour through Southeast Asia, heading South to North to work with the heat in the best way possible. That area has definitely been on my wish list for a bike tour, and I think the heat is better than cold for a shoulder still in the healing process. (I hope to be strong enough to ride, but also know that full recovery can take many months.) Also, we can plan a route that would leave plenty of spare time for hiking and laying on warm beaches so I don’t overdo it with my shoulder.

It’s sounding great to me right now, as Golden is covered in a thin blanket of snow and we’re expecting the coldest night so far.

I felt great yesterday, and since it has been just over three weeks since the injury it seemed about time to start doing a bit more. I’ve already been taking off the sling for a couple hours a day to let my muscles stretch and relax a bit. Yesterday was warm and sunny, and since today was supposed to be snowy, I thought I should get outside. I hiked for two and a half hours. Three times I hugged my arm (in the sling) close and jogged a bit. It felt fine. The rest of the day I walked around without the sling. In the evening it felt so good I tested how far I could lift it in each direction. I did a few other things throughout the day, like putting my hair up for the first time on my own. I felt great going to bed. But I woke up this morning in pain and realized it was all too much, too soon.

I’m anxious to do more, to feel better, and to get this arm back in action so I can ride. But I have to pace myself and not get too hasty. I know what I need to do, but it’s so hard to be patient–especially when it feels so good all day.

Baby steps. That’s what I need.

So tonight I’ll take a pain pill and try to sleep well, and tomorrow I get to start over. I’ll wear the sling most of the day, and each day I’ll take it off a little longer. Next week I’ll start the real stretching and basic rehab exercises.

We’ve settled in at Dave’s parents’ house in Golden. His parents drove down from their Wisconsin home with Dave’s grandmother and we’re all here enjoying watching autumn blow in. I’ve had my right arm in a sling for two and a half weeks, so I’ve got a couple more weeks to go. Typing takes quite a bit longer with just my left hand, but I’ve gotten some work done on the back end of the website and have more in the works.

While Dave heads out for bike rides in the foothills surrounding the development, I’ve been on some good little hikes, though after a couple of hours my shoulder hurts pretty good from the jostling. I’ve also found a real gem in the Golden community center in town, as they’ve recently added on a huge new gym with all the fixins for a good workout as well as machines for rehabbing my shoulder. For now I’m doing intervals on the recumbent bike, but I look forward to doing more once I get out of this sling.

Current ideas in the works for upcoming adventures include a shortened version of our West Africa bike tour starting after the first of the year, though we’d have to give up some of the route we had wanted to do since we’ll have less time to ride before the heat of summer sends us packing. There’s some talk of an early January hut-to-hut cross country ski trip with some of Dave’s friends if I’m ready. And we’re already looking ahead to next summer and the possibility of joining two friends for a kayak tour around Baranof Island in Alaska. We may also delay our Africa trip to early next fall so we could start in France and bike down through Spain to take a ferry to Morocco and do the entire West Africa route we had planned to be doing now.

So, lots to think about and plan while we’re waiting on my recovery. Anyone have any other ideas for us to consider?