I’m gonna let you in on a little secret — I’m not an extraordinary athlete, and I never have been. If I can ride GOBA, so can you. If a paraplegic can ride GOBA (and yes, that happened), so can you. If a five year old, an eighty year old, a man with prosthesis, and I, along with two thousand other imperfect people can do this, so can you. Ordinary people do extraordinary things every day.
So how does that work exactly? When I reflect on my experiences training for, and riding GOBA I realized that a few themes emerge with the amazing technology of twenty-twenty hindsight. As best I can tell, it takes connection, boldness, and laughter.
The most surprising connection was the community of strangers who encouraged me up the nasty hills, and helped me lift my heavy bags after a long day. Gobians are pretty amazing people, and although I feared that I’d embarrass myself with these more experienced cyclists, they just welcomed me into the family with open arms.
Funny thing is, 10, 15, 20 years ago I never would have even entertained the idea of doing something like GOBA. When I was younger I viewed both my personhood and my body in terms of deficits. Compared to others I wasn’t good at sports, so I couldn’t be an athlete. I wasn’t thin enough, or pretty enough, or funny enough or …. you get the idea. I was afraid to expose myself to failure or embarrassment so I limited myself to things that felt safe. And of course by doing so, I missed out on a great deal even if I didn’t realize it at the time.
It took me some time to appreciate my body for what it can do because I wasted a lot of time worrying about what it looked like. It’s interesting that when I told people about GOBA often they’d say things like, “Wow, you’ll burn like a million calories.” Or, “I should do that, I bet I’d lose twenty pounds.” I’d be lying if I told you that I hadn’t hoped I’d lose some weight between the training and the tour. I even imagined that I’d weigh myself at the beginning of my training and after the tour to see just how much weight I lost. As it turns out I haven’t weighed myself yet.
There’s a joke among Gobians that GOBA really stands for “Get Over Being Attractive.” I’m sure the joke is more about the ways that exercise plus camping make it hard to maintain the trappings of commercialized beauty, but at least for me, I really was able to let go of worrying about what others thought of me. I felt strong, and powerful, and learned that I’m capable of things I hadn’t imagined. It doesn’t really matter what I weigh, does it?
What I learned was strikingly similar to what we all learn when we first learn to ride a bike.
When we taught my stepdaughter how to ride her bicycle without training wheels I discovered something surprising. Learning to ride a bike is really hard and it teaches us to be bold and face our fears.
As a kid, training wheels are safe. You don’t know much about what you’re missing on a two-wheeler, but you know one thing–you’re not crashing to the ground. The fear, especially of falling (and failing) is crippling. Teaching a kid to ride a bike is challenging because the logic is hard to sell. “Okay kid, you’re going to fail at this and get hurt approximately 99 times before the 1 time when you succeed. but, I swear, it’s totally worth it, really.” And of course it is, but without a caring coach helping us learn, I bet very few of us would learn to ride a bike. Yet at the end of the day, we had to learn it, it couldn’t be done for us. Only you can find your balance.
Riding GOBA, running a marathon, starting your own business, getting married, moving to a new city, or whatever thing is heavy on the unknowns, and iffy on the payoff is pretty much the same. It’s scary. Not, fall and get hurt scary (okay maybe with GOBA), but fear takes many forms. In the end I’m not sure we can surpass that fear completely on our own, and yet it won’t happen without our individual bravery, we have to be bold.
I think we tend to get hung up on these ridiculous either/or scenarios. The “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” people roll their eyes at the “it takes a village” people, who of course return the criticism in kind. It seems very few stop to consider that maybe it’s both.
That was my experience with GOBA, I couldn’t have done it without the incredible amount of support that surrounded me, but I also had to be brave and bold and take some risks, when the rubber met the road I was the only one who was going to get that bike over the next hill.
For me part of that involved not taking myself too seriously. I was willing to laugh at myself and let the readers laugh along, and that involved a level of vulnerability that was a little scary in itself. The surprising result of that was an outpouring of encouragement and support, connecting in a new way with lots of people.
I wouldn’t have even ridden GOBA without our generous sponsors, Mechanic’s Bank and Y-Not Cycling and Fitness, who made it possible for me to embark on the journey to begin with.
Countless other people contributed to my success, a list of them would no doubt result in an embarrassing omission, but it goes without saying that my family and the team at Richland Source were critical to my success.
Still, I was alone on that bike, and I had to do the work. With every revolution of those pedals, every time I saw a big hill and said (sometimes out loud), “You’ve gotta be kidding me, another one?!” Every time I ignored the voice that said, “What made you think you could do this?” That was me. When I rolled into the fairgrounds on Saturday it almost came as a surprise, but the feeling that immediately followed was great. I felt invincible. If I could do this, I wonder what more I’m really capable of?
I’m thrilled by all the Richland Source readers, friends, and family members who have shared that they are inspired to pull out their bikes and hit the road, that’s great and I’d be thrilled to go for a ride with any of you, I promise not to vomit this time. What I really hope is that people will be inspired to try something that seems impossible or scary, whatever that is for you. You’ll amaze yourself, I promise.
