Letter from August 26, 2013
All:
Life lessons from my bicycle.
Lesson 1: Focus on what's in front of you
Recently, I bought a rear-view mirror that attaches to my helmet. Although my companion teases me about it, I think it was a great investment. I can look back and see cars coming, see how far behind me E. Blackburn is, and see whatever else is behind me (obviously).
Since buying the mirror I've sometimes become so distracted looking at things behind me that I almost run into something. This has happened a more than once.
The other day, I was looking straight down at my chain. It was making a funky noise or something. Then, to my surprise, I ran over a big branch (with lots of little twigs sticking up everywhere) and almost crashed. I had no warning because I was only paying attention to the exact spot where I was at, and a potential problem that I had. So much so that I missed a much bigger problem ahead.
So, as we ride through the vicissitudes (one of my favorite words) of life We shouldn't focus on the where we've been, nor should we focus on the exact spot we are at right now, even when we are having problems. As we look ahead, we are able to see where we are going, and avoid problems that we may have plowed straight into.
This also relates to faith. Faith is inherently forward looking (there's a better word, but whatever) as we move forward with faith we are able to avoid the problems of sin and self inflicted sorrows. This does not mean that things wont still happen (like flat tires, or chains locking, or people throwing coke cans at you), or that we know exactly where we're going. But as we look ahead with hope in Christ we succeed. "Trust God, and believe in good things to come"
lesson 2: Life is like riding a bike in a hilly area. It's mostly uphill.
As I've been riding my bike around I've been paying attention to my speedometer. On average we ascend a hill at around 4-5mph (talking mostly about the steep ones, which is most of them. The baby hills we go 7-10mph). In contrast, we descend anywhere from 20-40mph. In other words, we descend 2-10 times faster than we ascend.
Some people seem to think that "well, at least it's 50/50 going up and down." When it really isn't. We spend the large majority of our time going up since it is so much slower. I'm too lazy to do the math, but probably around 70%ish uphill.
And I am out of time, so we get to finish that thought next week. Along with some more pictures.
Elder Clark(my trainer) came and visited on Saturday and some other really cool stuff happened which will have to wait.
Thank you so much for everything. Love you!
Elder Bryce Johns
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| The funny thing is that Corona street isn't even in Corona, It's in the unincorporated (county) part of our area. That whole area is odd because it's just a random section of county in the city. Nothing there is standardized, the streets are horrible in comparison to the rest of town, there's a random smattering of streetlights, some people get mail delivered to boxes at their driveway, others have to use community boxes super far away, there are speedbumps wherever the homeowners wanted them (when they paved the streets, they knocked on the doors and would put a speedbump in front of your house for $50) and all the houses are custom. |
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| OH MY GOSH! ELDER BLACKBURN I HAS A KITTEH IN MAH HELMET!!!! |
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| A (slightly) less retarded looking picture of the same incident. When your biking up crazy hills at speed in high temperatures you become all sweaty, nasty, and perhaps a little loopy (more so than usual anyway). Therefore one must take little rays of light (or fur in this case) when you can get them. Also, if you look closely at my glasses, you will notice that they are a light mousey gray. They used to be black a year ago... |
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