Nostalgic Ride

Today, I started the day off with a 50 mile ride from Mom & Dad's place, to my hometown and back (by a different route). I had been wanting to do this the last few years since Mom & Dad moved from Sheldon, IA to a place about 25 miles away but travel schedules, weather conditions and other things have prevented me from doing it. Today looked like the perfect opportunity with a little wind out of the northwest and an empty schedule.

A lot of the roads that I was on today are roads that I'm really familiar with. It struck me that these are actually the roads that birthed my love of cycling. These are the roads where I fought imaginary battles against other racers, inspired by Greg LeMond, Andy Hampsten, Davis Phinney and my other cycling heroes. These are the roads where I began to understand that while the wind was an enemy that preyed on your psyche, it could be turned into an unwitting ally when the road turned. These are the roads where I found solitude and discipline that have been reshaped into experiences with God that leave a marked change on my life.

There were a lot of moments along the way. I rode past the Evenson's fields where I rode beans and took advantage of the sonic cover offered by the steady roar of the tractor while I experimented with the art of scat singing. I rode past Tim B's house where I spent the night as a kid playing his mini pinball game and was transfixed by the first real life wiener dog I had ever come into contact with. I rode past Kim E's house and remembered plays we had done together and our senior year when we both made all-state in music and read scripts all the way to Des Moines to pass the time.

As I rolled west out of Archer I saw a sight I hadn't seen in probably ten years: the town of Sheldon from several miles away as viewed from a bike seat. I've been dealing with so much regarding my future and with my past in being back in the area, but I didn't anticipate the flood of emotion that I felt at that moment. Sheldon is not a big town, it's not an important town, it's not even a place that I would want to consider living again, but it is where my identity began to take shape.

I began to remember more of who I was and what I used to dream about and I began to wonder how it was I found myself a stranger to the person I used to be. Maybe I'm not really all that different, but just have a different sense of awareness of who I am and what my place in the universe is. Regardless, I feel like I'm reclaiming some missing pieces that I will need in order to move ahead with whatever it is God called me back here to do. I feel like today was an awakening, but I'm still too bleary eyed to see things clearly.