Me an the Bike or the Bike and I

Just read this post on Facebook:

Have you ever noticed that Rolls Royce and Bentley don't have commercials? REASON: They know the value of their product brings customers to them. LESSON: When you know your value,you don't have to beg people to like you, to be your mate, to spend time with you , or to love you. Be confident in who God made you to be. Everyone can't afford the Luxury of your friendship.

My value at the moment is that I have lost 15-16 lbs since starting to bike on May 5. That may not seem like a lot, and certainly I have a long ways to go, but for me it's a start. Plus I am much stronger. I am now riding my bike at least 50 miles per week and hope to soon bump it to 75 per week. My only real issue is that I ride in the city and can't really get any decent speed up because of stop signs and traffic lights. So my rides take longer than most. I am happy to say that one part of my ride, a one-block uphill section that I've nicknamed "the pipeline" due to it being crammed into a single lane by construction stuff - I got up to 18 mph going through it the other day. I try to go as fast as I can because I don't want the cars behind me to have to wait for me to slog through it. 18 mph is the average speed of the RAAM riders (Race Across America). I only touched it for a few seconds, but I would love to know what it's like to go flat out on an uninterrupted road.

There is someone in my life that I believe to be "the one." That being said, neither of us is really in a place to move forward with each other, perhaps him less so than me because of some past issues he needs to clean up before trying to move forward. I have my issues too, pretty much all financial, but he has old relationship issues that are like a lead weight around his ankle.

He has told me he is not attracted to me - but I think he's not attracted to the weight. Well, I'm not terribly attracted to it either, and it's coming off... in a healthy, althletic way. I'm even starting to figure out longer rides, and I may want to do some century rides before too long.

I've never been terribly athletic, but I've always been at home on a bike, and I want to know how much I can push myself. I carry my weight around my middle, and one thing about biking is that it really only works you from the butt down. The rest is pretty much along for the ride. That's where diet and some initial detoxing are important. I'm not talking about going on a calorie reduced diet per se because when you're biking 200-300 miles per month, your body's needs change. My body isn't tapping the outer layers of fat for fuel.... yet. It's still tackling the inner layers around the organs. My legs are firming up nicely, and I'm starting to see some muscle definition below the knee and can feel definition in my thighs.

The last two days I logged 25 miles on the bike... but each day I was already drained when I started and I slogged through the rides. So today I listened to my body and decided to take a rest day to give my body a chance to recover.

I'm looking forward to riding my bike to Venice beach via Venice Blvd which has a wonderful bike lane. So very excited to do it. Perhaps if I'm lucky my new odometer will be here by then...

Father's Day

Some people are cuddly close with their fathers. Their fathers are encouragers, and they feel loved.

My father is a good man. He always worked hard and supported his family. He put his six children through college, retired at the right age, built his dream house and now at age 81 is in those retirement years of life.

But my father and I are not close. There's no cuddly love, no encouragement. Rather, it is discouragement and the feeling that he has stamped a big "L" on my forehead for "loser." He even said today that he saw me living in a cardboard box under a bridge. That was his vision for me. The job I have isn't good enough to him because it has no benefits. It doesn't matter that it keeps the bills paid and a roof over my head and food on the table. It doesn't matter that I've covered my own medical expenses out of pocket for the last 10 years.

When times were hard for me and my cookie business, he and my mother made several loans to me to keep me afloat, and I haven't been able to pay them back yet. Just asking them for any loan at all was hard on me because it just seemed like that "L" got burned deeper into my skin.

But old wounds go deeper than that. Wounds of years of him being there but also being emotionally absent. The 9-minute phone call today was torturous. Part of me feels like if I never see him again, it really won't matter that much because I just don't measure up to whatever he thinks I should be.

But at age 50, I don't have to measure up to his "standards." I don't live under his roof and I never will again. Part of me doesn't ever even want to visit the state he lives in again.

Nevertheless, he is my dad and I did my duty and sent him a Father's Day card and called him today. But that's as much of a relationship as we have.

When I was about 10 years old, I went through some emotional issues and my school grades plummeted, and he and my mother took me to a psychiatrist to have some tests done to find out if I was just plain stupid. I didn't find out until years later that apparently the tests said that I was a genius.... well, at least according to the shrink's interpretations of the tests. So he held me to this unrealistic standard that I should be a genius and be acing every subject.... when in fact I struggled to concentrate, struggled to read out loud, struggled to see hidden meanings in things or to problem solve. I wasn't stupid by any means... just bored and unengaged by it all. It really wasn't until middle school (then called Jr. High) that some things started to make more sense to me. It wasn't until university, however, that I felt the freedom to actually study things of interest to me. The higher in learning I got, the better I did academically.

Satan would like to whisper in my ear that I really am a loser, but I know my Heavenly Father does not see me that way. Jesus is there for me to heal my wounded heart.

I have followed my interests and feel in some respects I've had a very varied life with lovely experiences. In some ways, a full life.

I'm struggling now to find that self again, to know what my next pursuit is. But in the meantime I will stay with the job that I have and press forward.