Posts Tagged ‘momentum’
Watchin’ Football
During halftime of the Orange Bowl college football semifinal playoff game last night, I switched to the weather channel and watched snow images in Little Rock, Arkansas. They were doing a feature listing all the ways people tend to get injured trying to clear snow.
They were telling kids in Memphis to be ready to make snowmen and have snowball fights in the morning. In a blink, they switched to a commercial warning about some moderate to severe affliction for which pharmacology wanted to sell solutions. That was my trigger to switch back to the football channel. There was a concert going on in the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida.
One fascinating feature of live team sports competitions is the aspect of momentum. It can be so easy to discern sometimes, especially when it really starts to roll. Oftentimes, it is the sudden shift in momentum from one team to another that causes it to stand out. The team that is on the wrong side of momentum appears helpless to stop the landslide of energy flowing against them.
As a fan, I feel frustrated when momentum goes against my team, and coaches, players, and fans all seem incapable of doing anything to interrupt it.
In last night’s football game between Notre Dame and Penn State, momentum swung around a couple of times. As one who watches games that don’t involve a team I support, I am inclined to multitask and rely heavily on instant replays to catch interesting action when announcers get riled up. That wasn’t working so well for me last night because the teams were running offensive plays so quickly that there was no time between downs for slow-motion replay.
I needed to start actually paying attention. I’m glad I did. That was one heck of a playoff game. Notre Dame fans enjoyed the ecstasy of victory in the end.
Cyndie received a quote on replacing the spoiler stolen from her car. They couldn’t find one from any of their scrap parts sources (which might explain why spoilers are a target), so they told her it would require painting, take a full day, and cost us almost $1000. It’s just so sad. The clips that held the spoiler in place broke when the thief pulled it off and will need to be replaced as well.
With the significance of the losses occurring for so many people in the California wildfires right now, the criminal damage we suffered is not something I should be whining about.
(In case you wondered, I threw in the picture of a window on the barn that I took yesterday for artistic effect. It doesn’t have anything to do with the football game, momentum, or the stolen CRV spoiler. The framing was just something that caught my eye.)
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Flywheel Effect
When over 200 like-minded adventurous bicyclists converge upon a small community and travel together for an entire week, mystically powerful energy is produced. Collectively overcoming weather extremes, dealing with physical limitations, and coping with equipment failures with nothing but the heroic support of the Tour staff and each other to carry us through to the finish, we grow more connected with each passing minute.
On the very last day of the Tour of Minnesota yesterday, after splashing some water on my face and changing out of my wet cycling attire to put on clean shorts and a shirt I had stashed in the car for just this purpose, I found myself walking beside a fellow cyclist who I had yet to officially greet. We exchanged names and heartfelt pleasantries, wishing each other well on returning to “life after adventure vacations.” There was an instant unmistakable yet unspoken bond evident.
I am blessed with over 200 similar bonds woven together into one inspiring, life-enhancing aspect of my life. It is a very powerful force for good health.
One thing about energy like this is that it doesn’t simply dissipate when we all part ways for our homes at the end of the week. Comparable to the momentum of a flywheel, the emotional thrills of the week continue to spin and energize the more mundane demands of our daily home activities.
No matter what I need to put my effort toward now that my vacation week of biking and camping is over, the people and events of this year’s Tour of Minnesota will continue to spin in my mind and inspire my happy emotions for longer than seems logical. I long ago opened my mind to accepting unexplained phenomena as worthy of our attention and fully embrace the value of my emotional memories of all the personal connections shared with people I meet during these adventure weeks, some of these connections not materializing for me until the trip is over and everyone has gone home.
The flywheel has yet to wind down.
The bag of gear that needed to weigh less than 50 pounds for the sake of the luggage crew hefting so many bags multiple times per day had gained an awful lot of water weight by the time I struggled it out of the car when I got home yesterday. Before I was able to wrestle my soaked tent out of its carrying bag, the skies at home opened up with an attention-getting downpour of rain that interfered with my plan of hanging everything in the sun to dry.
It served to help sustain me in the mental place of the ride, having awoken in a similar downpour in Staples, MN earlier that very same day.
This morning, I am faced with the realities of news that a minority of people in my country are accomplishing steps to force their narrow moral views on all, moving our society backwards fifty years. I like the meme spotted recently that suggests life begins at ejaculation and maybe the burden of unplanned pregnancies and fears about unmarried promiscuity should be placed primarily on MEN in these situations, not so much women.
I’m going to ride the residual spin of wonderful energy from my Tour of Minnesota experience this year for longer than ever.
Somehow, loving all others as much or more than we love ourselves will bring us to better places soon. That’s a flywheel that I strive to get turning to a maximum velocity the whole world will feel.
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Keep Going
I’m on a roll and enjoying the fact that momentum from my recent decluttering success has me suddenly expanding the effort to reach items that have sat untouched for almost six years.
With my closet in the bedroom clean, and the drawers in my dresser unstuffed, I went on to tackle the pile of papers and odd collection of pocket leftovers that get dumped on the inviting flat expanse of the dresser top.
Included in the stack was the form for renewing my passport that I had filled out four months ago. That form was awaiting a headshot photo that met the specific requirements for dimensions and quality. It took a little while for Cyndie and me to find the right background to take the photo ourselves. Once that was done, I needed to print it on photo paper. That provided another easy opportunity for delay.
Friday, that renewal form finally made it to the post office and all that dresser top debris has now been dispatched to logical organized locations.
That accomplishment helped to fuel continued momentum that took me back out into the shop where there is now a glorious new open space where the foosball table top once stood. On the right side of the image above, there is a box against the wall that has been sitting there since we settled in here back in 2012.
We had removed three hanging light fixtures from the basement and I packaged them up to sell or give away. It’s just one of those things I didn’t get around to finishing that the box sat there untouched all this time.
Yesterday, I opened up the box, removed all the mouse-chewed bits of cardboard and packing paper, threw away the stash of acorns the rodents stowed, and laid out the light fixtures to take pictures for an ad.
They’re out there in the Craigslist universe now, hoping to find a new home.
And I am going to keep going.
I think I will finally throw out that old tattered seat I replaced on the lawn tractor that sold last month. I had placed the ripped vinyl seat back into the same box the new had come in. The tractor is gone, but I still have the throw-away seat left over from it. Really?
Boy, I gotta say, this decluttering progress is a real feel-good endeavor.
No wonder I’ve become so inspired to keep going.
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Relative Something 