Friends are a godsend – and I’ve had the opportunity to meet so many incredible people since I decided to liberally say, “Yes!” to opportunities and invites.
It scares the hell out of me most of the time (social anxiety crap!!), but the rewards have been incalculable!!
Today, John, whom I met him in my motorcycle class, asked if I wanted to grab lunch and take a ride. It was shaping up to be a pretty, Tennessee-kinda day… how could I say no to that? John treated me to empanadas and the best cup of espresso ever at a Peruvian restaurant.
Then we made a 57.5 mile end-run out the mountain twisties out along the Ocoee River, took a quickie walk out on the Forest Service Bridge above the 1996 Olympic white-water kayak run.
After we went our separate ways, I took a spin by the Corgi Cottage Farm to try to catch up with friends Shea and Jeff (sadly, no luck ☹ ).
Rolled in the drive after the sunset, with an extra 57.5 (lol – yes, every half mile counts!!) miles under my wheels, a big jump for me, exhausted, feeling permanently bent in a seated position, but…
…euphoric!!! A great day with a new friend!
Stretch: almost doubling my miles ridden from 65 to 115.
Lessons: This was one of the major milestone kind of days, that incorporated so many lessons integral to the Competence-Confidence approach to skill acquisition:
-Make sure the plan is methodical, first things first – I’d built myself up to taking on this sized road trip
– Make sure the plan is incremental – all the previous steps I’d taken were incremental, one after the other
-Make sure the increments are bite-sized – each previous step was a tiny increment – I was ready to tackle this sized step at this point because of all the seat-time I’d already put in
-Make sure the increments only make yourself slightly, comfortably uncomfortable – this one was a stretch, but I was only moderately uncomfortable in making the stretch
Smarter-Not-Harder U 