Biking Tips For Life

The other day I posted and claimed to have eaten a bushel load of brownies and ice cream. Or was it sherbet. I can't remember, I'm in a sugar fog right now.  Well, I exaggerated. I had one brownie, two at the most. OK, I had three but I absolutely did not eat eight. Unless you include the ones from the night before.

I also claimed I was going to quit riding my bike to work and start driving my pickup. I exaggerated. After writing that, I habitually walked out the door, hopped on my bike and pedaled downhill against a 15 mile an hour headwind for 9 miles. It was long and exhausting. The return trip was twice as easy even though it was uphill. I love the wind at my back.


It usually takes me around an hour and a half total to ride the round trip to the shed and back. This is because I'm often fighting a headwind and then enjoying a tailwind (or vice versa), freighting massive cargo (that would be myself), and negotiating a few terrain gradients that make life easier or harder, depending on which way I'm rolling.

Life is a lot like this biking thing. Sometimes it's fun and easy. Sometimes it's uphill and against the wind. Once in a while, coming from one who has first-hand knowledge in both life and biking, you may end up in a head-on collision.

I am finding this hour and a half of riding quite beneficial. During this time I have no distractions unless I get a call from my wife. I don't really mind her calls unless I'm busy fighting a uphill battle and headwind at the same time. While cruising, I have silence and still time and peaceful surroundings. I get to think about ways to solve my inventing problems and even dream up new ideas. No one talking back at me and I can talk without fear of offending anybody.

However, once in a while I have to kick a dog that chases me.

I'm also able to think about blessings I have which are many. I think of how broke I am which in many ways is a blessing in disguise. I marvel at how things always keep working out for me, especially when I'm living correctly and expending effort for the Lord's kingdom and in service to others. Most importantly while I'm on the bike, I'm able to meditate about the most important aspects of life without the distractions of the tv, internet, phone, paperwork and smashing my finger with a hammer.

Traveling helps me think. For some odd reason, it is much easier for me to meditate with an eternal perspective while biking than driving a car. Perhaps it's because I'm in a more natural environ.

Eternal perspective is so much better than your normal, everyday outlook. It has no worries about the price of gas or the world's political climate. Carnal desires, commandment-breaking actions, loose thoughts and talk are not encountered in this sphere. It carries no financial concerns or distracting excitement of the next big deal. No envy of those who look like they're higher up the ladder of temporal possessions or angst about ongoing world disasters is present while dwelling on eternal principles. When I have eternal perspective, I have peace. I don't care about man-made gods.

Man-made objects and lusts hold no place in the eternities. They will all turn out to be smoke and mirrors, rust and carbon in the very near future. We will exist long after our toys are gone. Eternal perspective answers the age-old question of why life isn't fair in a most satisfactory manner. Birth and death begin to be understood as essential steps in our progression. Eternal perspective is a completely different realm than the common views of the world that most of us pack around daily. Eternal perspective must be sought and once attained, allows seeing life for what really matters. A constant striving for this perspective is necessary to keep it close.

Death holds great sorrow and no hope to those living for today. Death holds no sting but great promise for those living for eternity.

Pedaling along, I get to think about things that really matter. I think about my life and family. I think about death and loved ones who have already passed on. I think about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the ultimate blessings and gifts of forgiveness and living again in the hereafter. I think about my weaknesses, which are many, and what I need to do for course corrections. I can pray and pedal at the same time. I can even bow my head while riding. However, I have found it is not wise to close the eyes for too long.

This phase of my life is the best.

I can clearly see that boatloads of money, lavish homes, fast cars, vast holdings, famous personalities, haughty attitudes, selfish actions, base desires, harmful habits, sin, unrighteous dominion and all the other trappings that most all of us are naturally inclined to gravitate to are actually worth nothing. In fact, a few are usually a negative and most are always a negative.

The obtaining of toys and accolades and accomplishments naturally detracts and often absolutely prohibits the gifts of humility, desire for spirituality and knowledge of things as they really are. Rushing around in the daily grind and then trying to unwind by the world's entertainment systems is not conducive to an eternal perspective. All this coming from a guy who bought a brand new Corvette from the factory without telling his wife or his banker. Who spent decades trying to see how much trouble he could get into and out of. All this from a forgetful one who sometimes forsook the very principles he now strives to remember daily.And still fails at regularly.

I know these things are true. I spent a lot of time chasing the grind and action. Been there. Done that. It's not true happiness.


Now, I just ride my bike and think. I know what is most important. Now I spend a lot of time asking for forgiveness.

I have peace more now. In times past, I often didn't.

Went to a church meeting last night in Pasco. A 60-mile round trip. No, I didn't ride my bike. Once in a while I splurge and treat myself royally by riding in a four-tired vehicle that has doors and a headwind-breaking windshield.

That hour and a half meeting was 1,000 times more uplifting than an average night spent tv watching & internet gazing. It focused on things as, you guessed it, they really are. One of the items briefly mentioned was our church website http://mormon.org/people/  It has some interesting stories from some interesting people.

I came home and checked it out a little more thoroughly than I had in the past. Good stuff in my opinion.

Here's one 3-minute clip from the website that touched me... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYdm-dnDIck   It's about a lady named Jenny Hess.

And since I'm on a preaching kick, permit me to quote a relevant bit I memorized many years ago.

Isn't it strange that princes and kings,
And clowns that caper in sawdust rings
And common folk like you and me
Are builders for eternity.

To each is given a bag of tools,
A shapeless mask and a book of rules
And each must make 'ere life is flown,
A stumbling block or a stepping stone.

I'll get back to humor in the next day or two. You know, the stuff that we all like but has no lasting value. Don't forget to watch the Jenny Hess video clip.

Cultivator Blight

Growing up on a farm, one of the jobs my father gave me was cultivating corn. As I carefully steered the tractor down the rows of corn, it was entertaining to watch the ground move past the rolling tires. Millions of little weeds were bounding out of the soil in anticipation of choking and stunting the valuable corn crop that had been planted just a few weeks before. 

Cultivating requires driving the tractor straight down the rows, always keeping your tires steered in the bottom of the correct rows. Dad taught me steering correctly kept the cultivator knives and shovels in the proper positions, causing major turmoil in all areas except where the corn plants were as the tractor sped along. All the weeds growing in the wide spaces of the furrows were covered with dirt, their roots cut and their days ended. 

If you did a good job, the weeds disappeared and the only thing left was fresh soil and the rows of corn left to grow without competition from the weeds for nutrients, water and sunlight.

However, you had to be on your toes. You could not let the tractor deviate from the precise path required in order to keep the cultivator tools eliminating the weeds. If you drifted one way or the other, the cultivator knives and shovels tore out the valuable rows of corn and left weeds to take over the vital growing space. It was gut- wrenching to be cultivating along, lost in a daydream of inattention, then look behind and see a wide swath of destruction of what used to be young and promising green corn stalks and leaves. An area of the field that suffered this type of driver inattention was jokingly referred to by observing neighboring farmers as “cultivator blight.”

Living correct principles is like cultivating corn, always steering your life in the right rows.

The weeds in the fields are similar to the nasty habits and addictions we deal with in life. We don’t need them. They are not productive. They stifle growth. They ruin crops and lives.

If we get careless, we will veer off the correct rows or path and start tearing out life’s valuable crop while letting the weeds run amok.

Hold to the rod. Stay on the path. Keep in the right rows. Grow the crop, kill the weeds.

Each of us owns a field of corn and a tractor. We have the steering wheel of life in our hands. We do not want to leave a big ugly swath of destruction behind us.

Life is even more unforgiving than a crop of corn. A damaged corn field lasts but one season of a few months. The next year, we can do a better job of cultivating.

However, life is a much longer season. Once we cease traveling in the right direction in life, it is much harder to get back in the right track. 

Turning the steering wheel becomes much harder. Our brain has a constant tendency to quickly become cemented in, following wrong directions and habits if we don’t stay vigilant.

We each are dealing with weeds and corn, forces and influences, good and bad. Advertisements, movies, music, peer pressure, priorities, entertainment, brain cells looking for habits to hook up with, personal weaknesses and traits, the internet with all its good and bad, drugs, alcohol, and chemicals in the brain that can cause wonderful experiences or raise havoc. 

Everything around us influences or moves us one way or the other. Most of these forces are in front of our ever-moving tractor of life and we are constantly steering through the field with our choices. We are always tearing out either weeds or corn. 

The farther we get off our correct rows, the harder it is to get back on. The longer we drive off the row, the less our power-steering works and the harder it is to turn the wheel. Many in this life have quit trying to steer, letting the tires and cultivator knives and shovels tear out the good and leave the bad.

Good habits, constant vigilance, repentance, prayer and scripture studying are essential cultivating tools to keep us from doing permanent damage to our one and only season. 

I have done a lot of tractor driving in my life. I have done a great job at cultivating acres and acres of life’s corn and feeling good about my work. However, I have also torn out many good stretches of the same crop. I have had to stop my tractor, wasting valuable moments of sunshine, backing my tractor up, attempting to stand the corn plants up and push the dirt back around the roots. Many times I’ve had to just move on and wish I had done better, realizing that the damage was done. Each time I got off the row, regret and lost opportunities lessened my yield and jeopardized the promise of a bumper crop. 

Sometimes, I have not been able to undo the damage. Often I have been able to rectify the situation but at a great loss of productivity, time and potential. How much easier it would have been and how much further down the rows of life I would be if I had been more careful at the wheel.

I know people who have always seemed to keep their steering wheel pointed in the right direction. They are always at peace. 

I’ve known others who, for various reasons, have gotten in the habit being sloppy and driving helter-skelter through their field of life. It is never good. They never enjoy solid happiness. The weeds of misery haunt their fields. They allowed their direction to drift off course and are left with the results. The good things of life that bring harvests of happiness are torn out and the encroaching thistles and weeds that bring misery and emptiness are allowed to remain and grow. 

A close and wonderful relative of mine got off the right rows at an early age and before he was 50 he had lost his family, was saddled with crushing addictions and prematurely ended his cultivating life with a bullet. Others I’ve known have not ended that desperate but their lives are still barren in many spots because of improper cultivating.

Thankfully, the Savior has provided a means for us to stop our tractors, back up, get ourselves situated correctly and start again down the right rows.

Wise cultivators always watch and work to make sure their field doesn’t suffer from cultivator blight.

Ben Jr.

BJ and I at Edgar Alan Poe's former abode at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA

BJ is my oldest son. He filled an LDS Church mission to Japan and graduated in electrical engineering at BYU. Toward the end of his schooling, he was trying to decide if he wanted to stay in that field or do something else. On a whim, thinking of my need for patent legal work and how a law school education might broaden his horizons, I suggested he become an attorney. He fasted and prayed about his decision for several months. One night he called and said he was going to go to law school.

As he applied for admission, he submitted the following story for the essay portion that was required for his entrance. I thought it had some good thoughts so this is my Sunday post:

“One summer afternoon I was driving to a football game with two of my younger cousins. Upon cresting a hill, I found that a large truck carrying alfalfa hay was in my lane moving slower than molasses. Assuming that the truck had just pulled onto the road, I moved into the left lane and hit the gas. All of a sudden my cousin looked at me with wide eyes and yelled, “BJ!” The truck was not accelerating, it was turning left. I quickly hit my brakes and swerved out of the way. Unfortunately, a large wooden fence pole aided my stop. I got out of my vehicle and immediately noticed that my car’s front end was ruined.

To teach me a lesson about cautious driving, my father fixed the car up in a comical fashion. The new bumper was constructed of muffler tubing, there was chicken wire in place of a grill, and I recognized that the new right headlight had been stolen from one of our old tractors. My dad was tickled with himself. I was mortified. Due to my conspicuous position on the high school math team, I felt that my stock with the ladies was already low. This would be the final blow. I had to come up with a solution. After racking my brain for a couple of hours, I approached my father with my fingers crossed. I was scheduled to take the ACT in a month. I asked my dad if he would fix the car up in a conventional manner if I earned a score of 35 out of 36. He agreed and I went to work.

I visited a bookstore and bought some preparation guides. After getting my hands on every practice test I could find, I spent my bus rides and weekends cramming through study materials. Test day came and I gave it everything I had. When the results arrived a few weeks later, I anxiously ripped open the envelope. Upon seeing a “35” in the box labeled “composite score,” I filled the house with a triumphant shout. Mission accomplished!

A few years later I found myself facing another challenging situation. I had been a missionary in Japan for about ten months when I was assigned to work with a young man from northern Japan named Hiraku. I soon realized that Hiraku suffered from depression and a lack of motivation. One morning, as we were planning for the upcoming week, Hiraku went into a funk. He slumped over in a chair with a disconsolate look on his face and would not reply to my questions. We had a lot to do and I was frustrated with his lack of responsiveness, but I held my tongue and told him to take some time off. I began thinking about what I could do to help him.

My father is bipolar and I had observed that he responds positively to honest compliments when in a depressed state. After careful contemplation, I wrote down Hiraku’s strengths and talents. I knocked quietly, opened his door, and knelt by his side on our tatami floor. I handed him my findings and he looked at me in disbelief. Shortly thereafter Hiraku cheered up and we resumed planning.

In the ensuing weeks I offered support, allowed him to progress at his own pace, and did my best to be patient and understanding when he was down on himself. A few weeks later I transferred to a new city and did not hear from Hiraku for a while. Six months later I was surprised to learn that Hiraku had been called to a mission leadership position in which he was responsible for the periodic training of about twenty missionaries. I was later informed by the president of our mission that I was the first missionary to work with Hiraku who did not give up on him. I was thrilled to see that my faith in Hiraku had strengthened his confidence and bolstered his morale.

Another experience in Japan showed me that a positive attitude enables one to rise above any demoralizing situation. I spent the last six months of my time in Japan in the city of Hiroshima. While the city has been completely rebuilt, the devastation of the atomic bomb remains in the minds and hearts of those affected by its wave of destruction.

I remember two faces. The first is the hot red face of an older gentleman. I met him in the parking lot of an electronics store. The bomb had caused him a great deal of pain. He seemed intent on forcing me to feel that pain. I made an effort to calm him down, but he remained incensed. Each time I tried to interject or change the subject his voice grew louder. The graciousness that is normally embodied by the Japanese people was nowhere to be found in this man. I finally had to give up and walk away.

The second face I remember was kinder and softer. It was that of an elderly gentleman employed as a guide at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. I asked him what he thought about the bombing. His eyes were sad as he replied that it was very unfortunate. He expressed regret for the events that led to this horrible incident. He told me that he had been in Hiroshima when the bomb went off. After guiding me around the museum, he stopped and looked at me with hope in his eyes. He announced that we must learn from the past, forgive, and move on. I have never forgotten this powerful example of hope and attitude. I am convinced that it was this spirit that rebuilt Hiroshima.

These three experiences have taught me to move forward when adversity strikes and to make the best of every day. As there is a silver lining in every cloud, there is a creative solution hiding in every grim situation. My car wreck, Hiraku, and the gentleman at the museum taught me that patience, hard work, and a positive attitude facilitate the finding of those solutions. I want to solve problems and help others. I am convinced that law school is the best venue for me to learn how to do this. I am excited to learn how those who came before me approached the dilemmas of their time and to see how their solutions affected mankind. I look forward to the challenges, relationships, and experiences that lie ahead.”

BJ went to the University of Virginia Law School and now practices law on the East coast.

Marriage Matterhorn

Happy Valentine's Day!

This lesson works for Michele and I. Over and over.

Born after 1970? Go watch the Sound of Music before you read this. Getting married will also bring some understanding.

Our experience…

A couple of days ago I related a little marital bump-in-the-highway of life that we ran into many years ago. The conflict concerned Valentine’s Day and birthdays and by the end of the story, I’m thinking everyone was convinced that I had performed admirably and my wife was a little unreasonable.

I finished the recount with a firm reassurance to all that things are now hunky dory between us, giving the illusion that we were locked in the arms of each other and enjoying marital perfection everlasting. I really believed it at the time I wrote it.

Isn’t it funny how most marriage participants climb, crawl, scrape and struggle up the incline? They get mud under their fingernails and chinks in the old shins, struggling away and climbing that monster of a mountain I call the Marriage Matterhorn.

Finally, when you both get on top and sit down to rest, you want to relax and enjoy the bliss. You are on top of the world. You both start singing and yodeling. You feel like Captain Von Trapp and are certain the little lady snuggled up next to you is nun other than Maria.

This time is different. This time is unlike the many times in the past when you’ve had to wonder, how do you solve a problem like Maria?

At the moment, there is nothing to solve because she is not a problem.

Not much Matters more than Marriage. When things are sailing smoothly in that department, life is the best. I like to get on the horn and share the good news. We have won! We’ve conquered our own Matterhorn!

If you're on top of the world, you want to share the good news. Both of you pull out your cell phones since it’s a little tough carrying those giant 10-foot bugle horns up the mount. You get on the cellular trumpet to everybody you know and expound on how great it is to really be in love, to have finally worked out the many kinks and snafu’s and climbed all the rocky ridges. Kind of like I was doing the other night. You reassure and convince yourself and everyone else that all is well. Maria starts to sing something about how the hills are alive with the sound of music when…

Pow! All of a sudden, you get rocked. It’s a vaguely familiar pow, one you’ve had before but conveniently forgotten about until the moment of impact. The hills really are alive! You both go flying off the Matterhorn, rolling pretty much straight down, tumbling and smacking into every jagged boulder in your path.

And just when things were looking so good. You look around and little Maria has ended up on the complete opposite side of the ravine you both are now clinging to.

What happened? You look back up and see a big buck of a Billy goat occupying your and Maria’s former love seat. He’s standing on top of your world, looking cross-eyed at his horns and admiring the way they polished up when he blindsided the backsides of the both of you.

Unfortunately, this periodic throw-down occurs in most marriages. At one time or another when this goes down, half the climbing population takes the apparently smoother, beckoning, wide trail off the ravine and look for a different mountain to climb with somebody not named Maria or Von Trapp. One that doesn’t look near as imposing as the one you just got booted off of. One that has more snow on it or greener pastures or lusher meadows or riper tomatoes.

The harder thing to do is crawl down the ragged ravine, hook up once again with your bruised and battered climbing partner and trudge back up that same old rough mountain. Again. The next time you should probably be a little more careful to watch out for the nasty goat that is always lurking at the top. The more you scale your Matterhorn, the better you get to know its ravines and cliffs and the tighter you’ll hang on to Maria. The more you scale the same summit together, the less you’ll see of Billy.

So what does this have to do with the unreasonable expectations of my little Michele, I mean Maria? Well, we were on top of the Matterhorn the other night when I posted the picture of our happy family and today Billy decided to polish his rack again.

Basically, we got in a little spat about my blog posting time. She was adamant that I am on the comp 20 hours a day. I say baloney. I’ve kept meticulous track and I am averaging no more than 17.4 hours per day which I believe is very reasonable. She is at least 13% off! When I informed her of the true numbers and set her straight, she said I could take that info and stick it in File 13. I’ve looked several times through our file cabinet and for the life of me cannot find that file.

Once again, I wonder how do you solve a problem like Maria?

Now, we’ve had bigger disagreements over things more petty than 13%, but not many. To be honest, Billy did his thing, we skidded down the Matterhorn for awhile and it wasn’t accompanied by the sound of music.

The cool point to this story is just a few hours later, we were back climbing the trail. In the old days, it took weeks, months, or years to start climbing the mountain again together. Over time, we’ve found the quicker and more often you both pair up and climb the same mountain together, the more the mountain grows on the pair of you.

The key is both of you have to want to keep climbing the same mountain. We've found if we don't keep climbing together, neither one of us can make it to the top.

When it’s all said and done, there’s no better mountain than our own Matterhorn.


A couple of days after I posted this I ran across the following picture of Michele's dad Karl and his new wife Mary. (Michele's mom passed on several years ago.) They're all set to tackle the Matterhorn.

I'm going to call Billy and tell him to get ready.