“To achieve goals you never achieved before, you may need to rise in levels and participate with new people on a new playing field.”  –Joe Vitale, Attractor Factor
On Sunday morning I rode the Sandia Crest road race course starting from my home in Albuquerque.  The Crest race is coming up in three weeks.   These roads are some of my favorite riding anywhere and I have access from the doorstep of my home.  Love it here.

I overlapped with the Sante Fe Century riders as I went over Heartbreak Hill and through the San Pedro mountains.  The riders were all smiles and they have volunteers and aid stations everywhere.  I’d like to do that sometime but this year preferred to keep it simple.  When I turned up the Crest road snow was still melting off.  At 3,000 meters I had to turn around.

Riding a bicycle up the Sandia Crest quiet like, I was drawn into the tapestry of the landscape like melting snow.   It was a beautiful day in the calm after the stormy weather.  I appreciate being able to cycle out into the open spaces east of Albuquerque and up into the mountains.

I talked with Mai this morning.  She is on an international education recruiting trip in Japan.  She met a professor nearing retirement who is moonlighting on creating a cycling network in his hometown of Kanazawa, Japan.  Mai showed me some of the brochures and maps he’s made to promote cycling activities (we were talking on Apple’s video program FaceTime).  The cycling movement is intergenerational, democratically based, and reaches out in a strategic direction to assist with all the problems of our time–energy, transportation, environment.  People all over the world are using cycling to galvanize public purpose and invest in common good.  It takes focusing the public will on visualizing what we can become to create more free choices in the transportation system.  Riding up the Crest helps me tune in to the kind of environment we want to be operating in.  Exercising the free will to ride, and learning about what others are doing, is inspiring.  I’m grateful for this Sunday’s ride on the Crest to lift my spirits.

Mai’s photo.  Japanese trains have huge legroom (adding length in trains is easy) and riding one is like flying on rails.