enjoy the ride...

Yesterday I was on the phone with my mom, she and my dad and the two dogs live in the South of France. She told me about groups of bikers who never stop, even when it is her right to drive first on a crossing. She thinks that is dangerous. Maybe she tried to warn me to be careful around cars. She is right, sometimes cars can be very dangerous. I told my mom that if she sees a group of bikers, to just stop, even when she has the right to go first. I explained to her that these bikers go with an enormous speed and that they are a group and that their feet are attached to the pedals and making them stop is more dangerous than to just let them go. CLICK HERE

This made me think about biking in such a group, or just biking with more that 3 people, there is something to it. What I told my mom, to just stop as it is safer, also sometimes goes for being in a group of bikers. Like the other day Mira and I were biking with a bunch of guys, from the first second on the speed was high and the ride was chaotic. I am known for my control-freakish-tendencies so I tried to ride on front all the time. Only the tempo was not mine so I could not keep up. That made that I not only became part of the chaos, I actually contributed to it. I had to simply stop that and let the flow of events be, to just go along.

That is difficult for me, I like to ride on front, I want to be the biggest, the baddest and the whatever...

Let's face it, men bike faster than women, fighting to ride on front all ride will not get me far, I am not strong enought to do that... yet.

The body of women works different than the body of men, that makes that women get tired faster and that they cannot reach as high a speed as men do. My head was telling me that I was a loser with the big L if I couldn't compeed with these men.

My understanding of the human body told me it was okay. I choose to stop fighting, to simply surrender to the fact that I was not going to ride on front, I had to accept that I am a woman.

So that is what I did and I had a fun ride. Very intence, as in the middle of such a group of bikers a lot happens, it takes high concentration and strong perserverance and willingness to finish that ride and to let others be, to allow me to battle my mind and my body in silence among other riders. For me it takes courage to let others take the lead and allow them to take care of me. Once I let go, I was sucked into the ride and given the strenght of others riders. There always is a bonus in leting go of control.

Stopping, surrendering and letting go of control is maybe the best thing that I have ever done in my life. I can come across as a strong woman who has no fear and who keeps on going forward.

I have an enormous drive to go forward. To stop, for me, is scary. I know that when I go forward I will have complete control over where I go, I will have complete control over when I get there and with the paste that I choose to go forward, I have complete control over who is with me when I get there. Only often I find myself in the grip of my "going-forward-paste" and in fear to stop, in fear to fail.

I can have all sorts of so called reasons not to stop, such as, it will be boring if I am not going forward in my high speed paste, now if I look at the bikeride, it was everything but boring, it was pretty exciting and safe at the same time. I found me and another limit in that ride.

Another one is that if I stop now, everything will fall apart... really, did the roads disappear when I was no longer riding in the front? Did my fellowbikers lack the strenght to finish the ride with me in the middle? No, everything was okay.

I will be a failure if I take it easy, well, I am the only one thinking that, maybe a wise idea would be to trust others and to see that finishing a ride on itself is already something very good. And I can be proud at myself.

Where do I try to go with this and what does it have to do with my mom and the phonecall and the groups of bikers in her area?

I am learning to let life be the way it is, to just do my best and to allow me to stop sometimes, to look around and see the life that I live. To let others take care of me so I can be with them till the end. To let others carry me when I cannot carry myself. I am learning that life isn't a battle and that my drive to go forward and to be strong all the time will bite me in the ass, one way or the other. And that is my experience and I stick to it.

When I am in the group of bikers passing my mom, my flow of events is one of a fast forward paste, when I am in the car with my mom, stopping for a group of bikers, my flow is one of stopping and taking it easy. Being in the group of bikers sometimes does not say that I will never be the one in the car, both are possibilities in my life. Without that high speed I cannot be aware of stopping, without stopping I cannot be aware of the high speed. Both are essential ingridients for a dynamic, rich and fully lived life.

Carpe Diem