A Bicycle Ride That Yields Perspective

Give up the anger, the hate, the grudges, the pettiness, the bitterness.

Those feelings only take from your life; they never give.

Not only appreciate and enjoy every moment, but celebrate life in everyday things.

Such as riding a bicycle.

On Saturday morning, I was cycling on SR 159 just out of town heading to the first hill in Red Rock Canyon when another bicyclist pedaled next to me.

"Mind if I join you? Would you mind the company,?" the cyclist asked.

Turned out his name was Greg, a retired doctor who moved here in April from New Mexico. He also practiced medicine in Wisconsin and Indiana.

He was a tall, angular-shaped man in his mid-60s, short-cropped gray hair under a green helmet. He was riding a Specialized Roubaix, just like mine but only much bigger.

I asked him how his week went.

"I can hardly get this out," he told me.

"My wife almost died."

His wife suffered a nearly-fatal cardiac aortic problem. But she was resting after several surgeries.

They have three grown daughters, including one who lives near them in Summerlin.

Greg also also shared a fun story. He was a little kid in Bloomington, Indiana where his family lived in a house in 1959 that would later be the house used in the 1979 classic Bloomington-based award-winning bicycle movie, Breaking Away.  The house was used as the movie setting for the home of Dave Stoller -- and I wrote about this movie during a special Interbike reunion in September.

We pedaled together for the next five miles to the Red Rock scenic overlook and I wished him well and his wife a speedy recovery.

Be happy you have health and life.