Running in the rain

Tonight was my running night and so, despite a pretty heavy rainfall, I put on my gear and headed out. The run wasn't so great in terms of time or distance, but it was just what I needed. I'm trying to build my rhythm for working out so that I get into the pattern of run one, bike one, lift one, repeat, and like I said, tonight was the run one.

It wasn't a great run, but it was fun. If it had been just a tad warmer (it's about 50F here right now) I would have headed out without the hoodie, just shorts and t-shirt. There's something about heading out into the rain fully intending to get soaked that just makes it fun. The walk home form BART in my work clothes? not so great. Running in the rain, really great.

I think it comes back to the whole "accepting reality as it is" thing which is so key to Zen (and which Texafornia from ZenTri spoke about in a recent podcast from ZenTri camp). My "knowledge" of Zen being pretty basic (by that I mean I haven't studied a lot of writings by masters, I've read accounts of the way they lived and developed my understanding from there) I won't try to pass on some teaching from this. For me it was more a perfect opportunity to experience the difference mind (in a Zen sense) can make. There was no difference in the world between my walk home (~15 min) and my run (~20 min, maybe 10 minutes after I got home) but the way I reacted to it was entirely different, and all because I headed out for the run fully intending to get wet.

The world is what it is, but they way we react to it is entirely up to us. I've now experienced that in a very profound way.

Running > aggravation

Without going into details, by the time I was heading out of work today I was miffed. or peeved. or salty. Take your pick. Personally, I'm going with so aggravated my eyes were bleeding. There are a number of reasons why I felt that way, and none of them matter now.

I was also very keyed up, almost jittery. So I decided to go for a run, something I haven't done for the better part of a month. On that run I ran (ha ha) into my friend Slav and his wife who live somewhat close to me. They were loading their kids into the car to go get dinner and we chatted for a couple of minutes, something else I haven't done for far too long.

A few minutes later I realized that I felt great, at least emotionally. My body was making it very clear that being overweight and taking a month off of running were a bad combo, but the borderline rage I'd been feeling for the last few hours was just gone.

Getting out to run, being able to let my brain switch as close to off as I can (I won't even get into how long it's been since I meditated), and pounding pavement let me subconsciously resolve the battles I'd been fighting in my head. Since there is nothing I can do about any of the things that had me so irked, I let them go. All without actually thinking about it, by just getting into the rhythm of the run.

Like I said in the title - running is greater than aggravation.

Simplicity

When I first started this blog I intended to write not just about cycling, but about Zen (as I see it) and some politics. This is the first of what I hope will be a series of periodic posts on Zen (as I see it). I am adding the modifier to indicate that I have no formal training in Zen, and will be writing about the path as it appears to me, not according to doctrine.

Simplicity of life is one of the tenets at the heart of Zen practice, and one of the things about it that most appeals to me. Interestingly, there is now an active movement, that I encounter mainly through other blogs, on ways to simplify your life. Something I find interesting about much of this movement is that the way towards simplicity expounded is often by adding complexity. The most visible form of this is the Get Things Done way of thinking. At its heart this involves adding small things to your life which enable you to more-effectively use your time, sounds good. However, many of the practitioners I've encountered talk about convoluted systems where there is a specific time to do everything that you can conceive of, which doesn't sound very simple to me.

I am a fan of achieving simplicity by removing the things that make life complex. What got me thinking about all of this was doing yard work. This is the first time in many years that I have lived in a house that had a yard which requires maintenance. I have small front and rear yards, with lawns to mow and plants to trim. As I was working on the yard this weekend I found myself thinking about how much more sensible it would be to have a "native garden" type yard. Simply put this is a yard planted with native vegetation and allowed to grown more naturally. All told it means less work, less water use, better habitat for local wildlife, and an extension of the local wilderness into your yard. Given that my rear yard backs up to a creek, going native would allow me to incorporate some of the creek wildlife into my yard. However, since I'm only renting there is little I can do for now.

Another way I strive towards simplicity is biking and walking rather than driving. I don't imagine that I am rare among car-free commuters to find it more mentally relaxing to walk or ride rather than drive. As I continue working towards a more simple life I will continue to post the little things I find that help. My goal is not to create some artificial zone of emptiness around me, but to have those aspects of my life I have control over to be as stress-free as I can make them.

And that includes not adding stress by overdoing the attempt to simplify.

Bike freedom

When I decided to stop annoying my friends with bike-related nonsense and start a blog I chose "Liberation Cycling" because it captures a number of things about me. I realized that I never really fulfilled a semi-promise from my first post, which was to explain the name, and since I've been thinking about it recently, why not?

This week I've had to drive to work. Yesterday specifically drove home the freedom that you lose driving (when you should/could be riding). I got stuck on a road where a delivery truck for a construction site had blocked off one of the two lanes of a major commute-direction street. This led to a significant back-up stretching through two lights. As I sat there all I could think about was that I could be dodging the whole thing on my bike. The freedom of cycling.

Another aspect of it for me is the clarity of mind that develops, primarily on longer rides, when you can settle into a cadence and ride. No shifting, little effort, just riding. I miss that here, since there aren't easy places to take longer rides that aren't crowded MUPs, and can't wait to get back to CA and have the backroads I know available practically at my door.

The last aspect of liberation that I get from a bike, or at least the last significant one, is the freedom of movement. Not just freedom in commuting, discussed above, but true freedom of movement. Bikes allow you to go anywhere, and with a little preparation (or a high-limit credit card) you can go everywhere. Getting around town is easier on a bike, taking a vacation (touring) isn't necessarily easier, but it is certainly more open to changes of whim. There are very few barriers that can stop a person with a bike.

Those are a few of the ways I see bikes as liberating. There may be others for you, and there are some other, smaller ones for me.

Problems with drivers

Maybe it's everyone getting back into the swing of work and school, but it seems that the bike blogs are a little more crowded than normal with stories of road problems. I saw two recently and they got me thinking.

The first was by Jeff Moser, who posts at Cycling Carson City and also at Commute by Bike. Jeff's post was about riding a little earlier than normal and being crowded almost off the road by a truck. It appears that the crowding was intention since he "could see him looking in his mirrors, making sure he got as close as possible without actually hitting me." Clearly unacceptable behavior, but unfortunately the driver was too far away from Jeff before he was able to react and get a plate number.

The other post was by Dave Moulton, at his blog, and was in response to comments made after he discussed the Matthew Paris apology. The comment was asking what cyclists can and should be doing to improve our standing on the road. Dave's post is a great discussion of how to advocate by riding and how many of the things that aggravate cyclists about the way cars operate on the road are mirrored by the way pedestrians view some cyclists. I highly recommend reading both the post and the comments after it if you do any city biking.

In the comments on Jeff's post there are a few people who mention getting into violent altercations with drivers who have done similar things, and a few of the comments on Dave's post reference the same. This is also a common refrain in the Advocacy & Safety and Commuting pages at BikeForums. If you as a cyclist are crowded, threatened, yelled at or otherwise annoyed by a driver the best thing to do is yell back, key the car, smack the car as you ride by, or any other of a number of more extreme responses. Some riders have posted about following cars until the driver stops and getting into an argument about the law and the way the driver was driving.

Maybe it's the fact that I've never had to deal with an intentional problem like Jeff and many posters at BikeForums, but I just don't see continuing the anger and violence as the right solution. I've been crowded, honked at, shouted at, and have felt threatened by cars. I've been angered by them and said nasty things under my breath and often more loudly. Then I realize that my being angry is doing nothing to the driver and is ruining my time on the bike.

I ride for pleasure primarily and I'll be damned if I'm going to let some anonymous driver ruin that pleasure by making me tense and angry. Holding onto the bad feelings the encounter creates just causes problems for the rest of the day. The best way I found to think of this comes from "The Awakening of Faith" and says "One's mind should become like a mirror, reflecting things but not judging them nor retaining them." In The Compass of Zen, Zen Master Seung Sahn discusses this same idea at great length, with the result being that in order to achieve happiness it is important to develop the capacity to react to the things in front of you (reflecting) but when the thing is gone your mind should let it go in the same way the mirror does, rather than dwelling on it, judging and retaining it.

After all, if I wanted to be tense and angry I'd be driving my commute, like them.