Needles of South Dakota (Image: Training Wheels Not Included)
I have no patience.
I guess I’m not that unusual from most other folks. Immediate gratification is the disease of modern society. But I still look at my lack of patience as a character flaw, because too often it keeps me from enjoying the moment.
Nowhere is this more apparent in my life than when things go wrong. If my plans go astray or I have a relationship in turmoil, I end up obsessing on how to fix the situation. So as I waste my time trying to figure out how to control the uncontrollable things in my life, I end up not fully appreciating what’s often right in front of me. And worse yet, sometimes I short-circuit blessings that I never could have anticipated.
Several years ago I was in South Dakota’s Black Hills on vacation. For those of you who have never been, the Black Hills are a stunning mix of western rock formations and dense pine stands. The landscape is awe-inspiring. And as a cyclist, I wanted nothing more than to take a long ride through the winding hills.
This ride had been my goal for the entire trip. I strapped my bike on the back of my truck back in North Carolina with the sole purpose of achieving this goal and nothing was going to get in my way.
So finally the day came. The ride I had chosen was a good intermediate one, with some serious, but not technically difficult, hill climbing. The ascent went from 5,000 feet of elevation to about 6,500 feet up to the Needles Highway, through the amazing rock formations at the summit, then offered a gentle winding descent into Custer State Park. All in all, about a 30 mile ride, so I figured with the climb and sightseeing it might take me about two hours. I had my plan down to a science.
As I started, the sky was overcast. I was a bit concerned about weather, but the area had been in drought conditions for months so I didn’t expect rain. And considering that the first part of the ride was 10 miles of 3% to 5% grades, I was grateful for the cooling cloud cover.
So I began and let me tell you, this was a cyclist’s dream ride — not a car on the road, winding turns through fields peppered with patches of fog and that eerie western silence. And the climb was amazing. Many cyclists think of the climb as only a means of getting to the thrill of a fast descent on the other side. But I’m strangely the opposite. For me, pitting myself against the hill is the whole thrill of the experience. Every stroke of the pedals and every inch earned forward gives me a powerful sense of accomplishment. When I say this was the best experience I’ve ever had on a bike, I’m not exaggerating.
But as I approached Sylvan Lake near the summit the clouds darkened, and just 2 miles short of the descent the heavens opened up.
If you know anything about road bikes, these machines don’t do very well in the rain. The thin tires can barely grip the road, the brakes begin to fail and it’s just damn cold and miserable to be on one. So just a mile from the top, reality set in. I had a tricky, winding descent a mile ahead and I could barely control my bike. I had no choice. I had to stop.
This was a really difficult decision for me to make. I had thought of nothing but this ride for months. And now I hadn’t even finished the climb before the ride was over. I was livid.
I can’t remember my exact curses, but you can probably fill in the blanks of what I said as I turned around and carefully navigated the mile descent back to the gift shop I had passed at Sylvan Lake. Every time my back wheel would slip out behind me I would will it back to a straight line with an expletive and adrenaline, until finally I managed to safely park my bike and waddle my grumpy self into the store in my dripping spandex.
Now to understand what happened next, you have to have some concept of what people in the upper Midwest are like. There is a quiet patience to most of the folks you meet there. I guess is comes from a pioneer heritage. Maybe it comes from wide open spaces and a lot of time to spend alone with ones thoughts. But I’ve never encountered elsewhere such a concentrated population of people so able to quietly accept situations and still persevere with a smile. I know this romanticizes things a bit, but there still is some truth to it. And certainly when I walked into that gift shop, I came face-to-face with exactly this type of demeanor.
With smiles and good-natured laughter about my situation, I was offered coffee, warmth and friendship. And even though I walked into the shop with the clear intent of trying to figure out how I could get picked up and just abandon my ride, instead I gained an experience I would have ridden right by had I stubbornly tried to continue on through the storm.
But then the real magic happened. Because after an hour, the storm passed and I was able to get back on the bike and continue the ride I had almost given up on completing. And as I rode that last two miles to the summit and through the amazing needles, I was greeted to an amazing sight. Because while throughout the previous few days the horizon had been obscured by that thick, Midwest humid haze that is so typical of this time of year, now with the rain just passed the air was clear and the views went on forever.
I think of this ride often when things don’t go my way. My desire is to fix. My desire is to force. But my wisdom now tells me, “Be patient. Something better is waiting.” And I remember that if I had forced things to go as I had planned, I would have missed so many of the things that made this ride the most memorable of my life.
Robert Knorpp is host of The BeanCast Marketing Podcast at thebeancast.com and is President of The Cool Beans Group, a marketing strategy consultancy based in New York City. He likes laughing even more than breathing. You can follow the madness on Twitter at twitter.com/BobKnorpp.
