The Last Night

And so it begins. 

I arrived in San Francisco Tuesday night with my dad, and am currently in the final night of a pre-trip orientation in San Rafael. We push off from the south side of the Golden Gate Bridge tomorrow.

More on that in a moment.

Tuesday morning was somewhat of a whirlwind - in true "Scott" fashion, I saved the bulk of my packing for the few hours before the flight, including the packing of my bike. Helplessly scrambling for a box, I drove to the local bike shop and jumped out back for a little dumpster diving. As I tossed through boxes and debris, I happened upon a few newer ones. I collected my cardboard prize and drove home to disassemble my Felt. If you've ever shipped a bike, you can sympathize when I say that packing a bike is about the closest you can get to Tetris in our physical world. Frustrating doesn't capture the intensity of emotion you feel when you try for the fifth time to fit an entire bike into a box that obviously should be designed three inches wider.

After a final lunch with my Dad, Mom, and my brother Ryan, I finished the last of my packing and jumped in the car with Ryan and my dad to DIA. Recalling an earlier conversation with a woman from the airline, she had specifically asked that I be there an hour before in order to ensure my bike made it on the plane. Sadly, with an hour and a half before flight time, and with a slew of rush-hour traffic up I-225, that deadline was simply impossible. Making that realization, much of the car ride was spent in frantic anticipation. After the hour deadline came and passed, the last 15 minutes to the airport were pretty jovial and upbeat - optimism is really all you have left to fall back on at that point. When we finally made it to the airport and the kiosk decided to fit my bike on the plane anyway, Ryan took the liberty of claiming himself the most important driver in the Martin family, and is now considering a new profession in professional transporting.

We made it to San Fran that evening and took a taxi to my Aunt and Uncle's house in Millbrae, just south of the city. The timing was perfect. My cousin Todd and his girlfriend were still in town, in from NYC for the long weekend, along with his cousins Ross and Kent, who I hadn't seen in years. It was one of those times when family members you don't see as often are a little taken aback by how old you are, and therefore, vicariously, realize how old they are. Once we got over that it was good to finally talk some post-college, big people things - like why I'm biking across the nation for the next three months instead of getting a job. Really big people things.

Once the family left I sat down to assemble my bike with my dad. I found that my back disc had been bent during shipment and made arrangements to get it fixed the following day.

The following day I took the BART early into the city with my bike (sans rear brake) and biked around the city before I made my way to the bike shop. One ambition of mine was to actually touch the Pacific Ocean - in order to truly call the ride a coast to coast. I rode from the Embarcadero to Lands End Lookout, where - hopping a fence - I made my way down to the water below. Wetting my shoes I made my way back to meet my Dad at Fort Point - the southern entrance to the Golden Gate Bridge. From there we made our way together back through Fisherman's Wharf to his office down near Pier 1. We quickly loaded the bikes and headed out to San Rafael to meet the team for the start of orientation.

These last few days have been a whirlwind of information - names, safety procedures, practice rides, photos, and crisis management protocols. A practice ride earlier today around San Rafael and China Camp gave us riders some good time on the bike and gave the crew a trial run of the management operation. As I said above, tomorrow morning is the designated day. After a slew of early mornings (6 AM wake up), we wake up an hour earlier at 5 AM PST, pack up our bags, buckle our shoes, and head to the Golden Gate.

While I'll certainly jump into this in more detail, I'll give a first pass at this now, just to introduce the team. Our group is comprised of 25 cyclists and 10 crew members, which include a project manager, a logistics coordinator, and a crew chief. The crew's job (most generally) is to keep us safe and ensure that we make the stops and meetings we plan for. Beyond the work that was done in the months leading up to the ride to secure locations for meals, lodging, and routes, the crew have been an incredible support these last few days in introducing us to the well oiled machine that is now the Journey of Hope. It has to. We will be making 60 visits in 65 days of riding - most days making two volunteer stops in order to fit them in. More on that later. 

Looking at the whole group of 35, I am proud. I have been happy to hear their intentions and motivations, and have been humbled by their compassion, optimism, and friendliness. Their diversity is one of the strongest aspects - men from Cal State Long Beach, TCU, NJIT, Indiana, Missouri State, USF, ASU, Ohio State, CU Boulder, Colorado State, Bowling Green, Toledo, VA Tech, and several more I can't begin to remember. Rather than dwell on the particulars, I'll just say generally that I couldn't ask for a better group. 

Additionally, we were lucky enough to have our first friendship visit (volunteering visit) to the Janet Pomeroy Center in San Francisco where we scrimmaged the members in a few games of pick-up basketball. You can find more about the center at their website, here. I'll add more on this later.

Looking back, I've been lucky to have my family out here for the last few days. Tonight they attended the kick-off dinner with the team. Chad Coltrane, the CEO of Push America was there to send us off, and will be at the kick-off tomorrow morning. He is a powerful speaker, so powerful his voice even brings some tears to his eyes. The passion and care for this ride is so evident, and a sentiment like that is contagious. He had a few words that stuck.

One I remember in whole, a simple statement: "Everything worth doing in life is hard." This reminded me of a quote I had in the last post - there are no shortcuts to anything worth going to. I feel this one is easy to grasp, but difficult to abide by. Too often the easy route sets itself as the most attractive and the most enticing. But easy decisions come with a price. Rarely do we learn anything from people who veer from their true battles, who never tested their limits, who turned from their passions. We are intrigued by stories of courage and fortitude because trials and tribulations motivate us to confront our own challenges. "Hard" things bring us down to our essence and force us to see life in terms that are less objective in a societal view but are more pure and congruent with the ideas that make us happy as independent, sentient beings. Maybe this is in defending our homeland - Rome maybe? Or maybe this is just taking a difficult class because the subject itself is what makes one happy. Hard things force us to set goals that are tangible and tractable to ourselves, and force us to find happiness in the small victories. Victories that, when accumulated, can ultimately define our lives.

The other is only a word: regret.

Easily one of the most perplexing and powerful emotion a human can experience. I still remember the days I regret, and I will likely carry most of them till the day I die. But regret can lie in two camps. On one hand it can be gnawing, pervasive, and stifling. It can soak up your happiness and leave you bewildered and depressed.

On the other it can be an incredible motivator. It can make you finish those miles, no matter how hard your legs are aching. It can make you ask those questions you had always wanted to ask, or compel you to say something you always wanted to have said. Most importantly, in the times you let the fear of regret motivate you to act, you give yourself the chance to change someone's life. To live impulsively is to live without barriers, to be free of regret, and to be satisfied with being uncool.  

Chad's challenge was simple. Compel yourself to live a summer without regret. Take each day as the most important day of your life. Ride across the Golden Gate tomorrow and soak in every minute of it. Not merely because it is the beginning. But because you'll never get to do it like that again.

I can't wait to get started.

Scott