(Originally published, 5th March 2011 for a blog of the same name)

For a personal blog, I was looking for a title that suggested the routine we get into in our life and then an unexpected event throws us ass over elbows.  As a cyclist, I know the transition from frequent road biking to fixed gear can represent just such a change.  The automatic response of a road cyclist into a high-speed corner is to drop the outside foot, coast through the apex and pedal through the exit.  When that is your expectation on a fixed gear bicycle; where there is no coasting, when the wheels are moving so are the pedals, you can quite literally be ass-over-elbows or at least thrown out of the saddle and taking a completely different line through the turn.

Oops!
You try to force the pedal down but the inertia catapults you out of your seat and your response purely determines your fate.  If you have no handbrake, your leg strength is all you have with which to brake.  If you are attempting a sharp corner, your arc is greatly diminished.  Regardless, the force of the pedals will force you out of the saddle because your muscles were expecting “stop” and the momentum dictated “go”.  It’s like the lever being released on a dart gun.  That momentary pause will pend enough energy to send you hurtling either through a wider arc or over the handlebars.

Life often deals similar terms.  You think you’re comfortable with the physics of the current situation and then something somewhat predictable or completely unpredictable happens to change the rhythm of your life.  Like cycling, sometimes we get into bad habits and the fate is more predictable than we first thought.  Sometimes the analysis isn’t simple and what seems an obvious problem to others isn’t so obvious to us.  And as I’ve discovered, sometimes I have to be thrown over the handlebars over and over before I recognize that I must change my response in order to keep rolling in a good direction.

We all arrived where we are through different challenges and circumstances.  We haven’t all arrived at the best possible result, via the most expedient path or with the least effort.  Project Managers tend to think of this as “The Triple Constraint”.  At best, you can only have two of the three.  There is some universal law that prevents any outcome from being great, cheap and easy all at the same time.  Failing to balance these constraints and failing to recognize when the constraints have changed are most often what throw us over the handlebars.

Published by Trekking Cyclist

from Plano, TX. Father, grandfather, cyclist, fan of the Texas Rangers and Texas Longhorns View all posts by Trekking Cyclist