Birthday

It's my 31st birthday today. Although for some reason the Merle Travis song "sixteen tons" with the line "another day older and deeper in debt" struck me this morning as having a little more truth to it than I'd prefer, all in all I'd say this is a positive affair.

Between people like Devin, Dallas, Craig, and Keith, who hammer it out weekly with me with only signs of speeding up at each of their respective ages, to Matt Joss who's running his best running times of his life as a brief sidetrack to his multisport career, to Pat Doyle who proves that neither age nor number of gears are particularly relevant to cycling results, to Gerry - "the Ger" who's knocking off remote and mountainous Indian stage races while avoiding the temptation to trade his partner for a goat, doing BC Bike Race again, and many other events since a full season last year of doing things like 24 hours of Adrenaline solo on a single speed didn't take too much out of his sails at 50 last year, dad Bill whose riding volumes I may only be starting to approach, to uncle Gary riding down in St. George right now, all the way up to the intrepid Ken Myhre who's going strong by any measure, let alone once his "age" is figured in (plus Ken is proudly displaying an ailment clear to many with Norwegian genes - the obligation to make tracks on as many parts of our sphere as possible). I think I have a pretty reasonable road map in mind of what my cycling career could/might/should look like at various points going forward. Meeting those milestones of model accomplishment along the way will keep me a happy rider.

In contemplating my future, cycling is the "career" I think about most - surprisingly little time is spent thinking about how much paper I can push, retirement savings math, etc. I'm not sure that stuff should burden down my thoughts on living life too much, although yes I admit most of my time is spent doing just those somewhat unimportant things here in 2009.

The sport of cycling, and seeing the activities of these friends, makes me conclude that years since birth is better characterized as "experience level" rather than "age" which infers the perception of decline towards inactivity and incapability.

The younger part of the crew, Shawn, Jon and Tori, have me as an additional point on their respective "experience level" roadmaps.

ps. maybe my birthday present in '09 can be a renovated house... if the wheels of bureaucracy creak forward at a noticeable pace!