Get your heart out of it.

Riding over trails... it sounds easy to romanticize, especially when surrounded by the smell of pine needles and fresh air, with morning rain still damp on the leaves. But let me tell you. You can't romanticize that shit. The minute the brain makes that choice, a large root from one of those pine trees will shamelessly toss you headlong into those slippy leaves as you ride along with little hearts popping out of your head. Keep it up, and they'll be broken hearts.

But when I began pining away for a mountain bike, that's just what I did. I thought it would be all rosy-cheeked, sweet fun. I had no clue that my road-biking skillset would in no way transfer well to the trails. They say that what you don't know can't hurt you, and I guess in a way that's true. In my corollary list of wrecks so far on the trails, I haven't sustained much more than some bruises and scrapes. Nothing to even keep me from sleeping at night.

I'm learning to love the insanity of going quickly down a hillside trail riddled with rocks and roots. The roots, frankly, are the worst part of the whole deal, this business of riding on trails. They slaughter my core and upper body, and leave me exhausted quickly. The strength training seems to be helping a little with that, and I'm staying upright on tougher sections more.

Each time I head to the trails, I find myself apprehensive. This morning, I kept thinking it was obvious I had been on the road more than the trails lately, as I made little mistakes in my maneuvering. But then I had glimmers of hope when I realized I was moving through areas more quickly and with better handling. The last section of trail this morning was one I struggled on a few weeks ago. The trails are full of roots... chock full. Like the washboard I heard the woman play at the Flying Saucer that time so musically, and it sends me bouncing, out of control. I know I need to improve my front wheel lift, but it's so riddled with roots, I'd have to ride the whole way on my rear wheel. And we know that isn't happening. But today, I didn't wreck, didn't drop my chain, kept my gaze ahead instead of just in front of me, and rolled through successfully to the next trail feature.

Look, I won't lie to you. This new riding I'm doing, it beats me senseless, mentally and physically. It's like my own personal Fight Club, except I can tell you about it. And just like you don't fall in love with Fight Club, but you like the way it makes you feel, and you keep going back for more, that's how I feel about the hardness, the ass-kicking I get out of this. It's challenging, and we know I love a challenge.

Go home, Hemingway. You're drunk.

I'm in a mad dash to finish For Whom the Bell Tolls before January expires, as a commitment to my resolution to read one book a month. I don't see anything amazing happening prior to my completion of the book, though, so here comes my January Book Report.

Lemme give ya a little prefacement here: I generally adore Hemingway. His books rank amongst my favorites. I voluntarily devoured The Old Man and the Sea when I was but a youngster in high school. I loved the drifting nature of the book... like the sea. I followed that a few years ago with The Sun Also Rises, a monument to love, lust, alcohol, merriment, gender roles, and bull fighting. Hemingway gives us what I amorously describe as his word soup, paragraph long sentences, full of texture. For a lover of words, it's rapturous. Last year I read A Farewell to Arms, and was once again captivated. Upon finishing the piece, I was left with a literary hangover so severe I couldn't read for a month.

I expected the same from For Whom the Bell Tolls. While the book delivers intermittently, some passages feel like a drudge-fest. The lack of the happy-go-lucky party boy Hemingway is largely apparent. Hemingway steps forward with his literary hallmarks about a third of the way through, just as the reader is drawn down into the depths of despair, as an entire village dehumanizes one group of its inhabitants, just before they kill them. It's heavy stuff. There are startling, sparkling glimmers of light, as the main character (Robert Jordan, who is addressed as such at every excruciating mention of his name...) falls intensely-but-rationally in love, or in short meetings. But generally, reading this book is close akin to trying to ride a road bike in squishy mud.

However, I realized last night that my synopsis doesn't do the devices of Hemingway service. The book is an examination of death, and the unpleasantries of war. It shouldn't be comfortable. It should not feel like his other works. It is imperative that he alternate between a sense of urgency (Jordan's love affair) and a feeling of slow-moving dread (mood of impending doom, constant bombardment with death, fear and loathing of Pablo, constant wait for nothing but the worst) in order to convey the concepts he wishes the reader to digest.

Perhaps my discomfort originates in the similarity of the cadence of the book to the pace of real life. We sit around, waiting for life to start, when death is just ahead, and life is all around us, burgeoning with explosive beauty in the aches.

It isn't sexy, not like The Sun Also Rises. It isn't rosy-come-downhill-plunge-into-depression in the style of A Farewell to Arms. The intent doesn't eliminate my frustration with incoherencies I find (see: The winter fool), but it does sooth my expectations. If you're a fan, read For Whom the Bell Tolls. If you've never read Hemingway, don't make it your first.

Life as Practice

Last night, I finally managed to do a modified headstand in yoga, a position known well as tripod. You place the crown of your head on the mat, followed by the palm of your hands, and prop your knees onto your elbows, balancing on your palms and head. I've never been successful before. But after years... and years... of effort and practice I was finally able to prop up properly. And it felt like levitation. Glorious.

So much of my athletic life feels this way lately. Years of toil and effort are slowly paying off. My yoga practice is becoming more honed and mature. I'm beginning to clumsily attempt much more challenging postures, forms of meditation, and breathing practices. I do my best to go into each class with an awareness of who I am on that day, and practice gently from that place. And I'm growing as a cyclist, getting faster and stronger. But there is no perfect, no jump-off point in either yoga or on the bike where I could say I had attained my best. My best is always just over the edge of the earth, riding on the sun and moon around and around.

In a special session yoga class I attended over the weekend (or maybe in a Yoga Journal email? The source of information is fuzzy...) the instructor reminded us that yoga is, and will always be, a practice. Yoga is more fun when you think about it that way. I didn't wake up one morning able to touch my toes or do backbends. I started doing yoga as home practice in high school as a way to lose weight, much like running. At this point, there's a good chance I've been doing yoga in some form for more than half my life... it's no wonder I'm handy on the mat.

My success last night, and the doors it opens to future success through practice sent my free flowing, meditative mind spinning and gyrating. I always relate life to my singular experiences on the bike and on the mat, but it goes without saying that our day-to-day lives are much like my yoga practice.

We have to wake up each morning and make the choice to be gentle and flexible with ourselves. It's imperative that we get rid of this idea that "Life is not a dress rehearsal" and that perfection exists. Each day is a practiced dress rehearsal for the following twenty four hours. Mistakes will be made. Success will be seen. But the sun and the moon take their turns just the same, and bring with them new opportunities to learn and renew, no matter where you are.

And with that, I'll leave you with this tidbit. I'm still muddling my way through For Whom the Bell Tolls. I'm at the point where Robert Jordan realizes he may have only one or two days to be with the girl he's fallen for, before they die. He mulls over the misfortune, but in so doing finds an indelible truth:

"But in the meantime all the life you have or ever will have is today, tonight, tomorrow, today, tonight, tomorrow, over and over again (I hope), he thought and so you better take what time there is and be very thankful for it." For Whom the Bell Tolls, Hemingway

Feeling Crafty

Amidst the bike riding, strength training, and general life-parenting, winter-movie-watching I do all the time, sometimes I have the urge to do something crafty. The hipster that lies within, and lurks about on Pinterest has been wanting to do something interesting for a while: arm knitting. I see these pictures of lumbersexual fellas with yarn wrapped around their arms, and it's enough to make me swoon. Paul and I have been chatting about lumbersexualism as of late. He was lumbersexual before lumbersexual was cool, and if I sat down and listed the things that attracted me to him when we first started dating, they'd include a list that any guy in plaid flannel and boots would envy: love of the outdoors, ability to survive in said outdoors, beardedness, and general rusticness. No, Paul does not arm knit. He can sew, though, thanks to sewing Boy Scout patches onto his shirt.

But... arm knitting. It's as kooky as it sounds. I felt like a cross between an ancient maker of fishing nets and my grandmother. A primordial matriarch! A sexy one.

It's an amazingly quick method of producing super-chunky infinity scarves. I'm not an excellent knitter with needles, but arm knitting is forgiving enough for me to churn out a scarf of decent quality. In no time. Flat. It only took me about an hour, including the tutorial I watched.

Knitting, and crafting in general, is excellent activity for stress and sense of satisfaction and well-being, by the way. Much like physical activities (biking... yoga... running...) it's a way in which we humans who get very, very hung up on individual problems and issues can let go, and fall into a state known in the psychological community as "flow". I can't cite anything... I just know I've heard that. I learned it by osmosis. Aside from the come-four-year-old jostling for my undivided attention, I found myself forgetting about the nagging thoughts that have followed me (neglected projects, parenting, looming heart rate test time trial), and just sat. And existed. And knitted, like a rough, beautiful, primordial Amazon woman.

Here's the final product, on my decidedly non-amazonian body.