Mile by mile

Short post today.  Internet is harder to come by in southern Iowa.  I haven’t seen a McDonald’s for days and have had to steal wifi for the last two.  Thank you default router settings.  This going less miles seems to be good so far and my route for the next couple days is broken into 50-60 mile chunks.  Despite that a quote from Bruce Weber, reporter for the NY Times and currently doing a west to east cross-country tour, rang very true with me.

A word or two about perseverance, which is an essential — maybe the essential — carry-on for a cross-country cyclist. If I didn’t have it, it would be worth trading my rain gear for it, and I say this having ridden much of the past two days in the rain. The truth is that just about anyone can make a trip like this — you don’t have to be in great shape or own a top-flight bike — as long as you’re willing to keep pedaling. If you can’t muster the desire to keep your legs going day after day, your physical condition won’t matter, and whatever you pack in your saddlebags won’t either.

Even doing 50 miles a day it’s still hard getting up every morning knowing I’ll have to be back on my bike in an hour or two, dealing with wind, or hills, or boredom, or whatever else the road will throw at me.  But you keep going as Mr. Weber explains more eloquently than I can. Why? I don’t really have a good answer, but I’m working on it, mile by mile.

Check out more of Bruce Weber’s entries at http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/w/bruce_weber/index.html