And I have to admit, I didn't even feel guilty about it. The past few weeks have been crazy busy and my time in the saddle has not been at all what I hoped it would be when I made my resolution to ride more this year.
So, yesterday, instead of getting up early and going to church, I got up early, loaded up my ipod with a bunch of worship music and headed out into the hills to spend some time enjoying God's creation. And it was awesome!
My fitness level is nowhere near where it should be so every climb was painful and every descent a chance to recover. Unfortunately on the route I had chosen, the easy flat spinning portions were few and far between.
A long painful climb is a perfect opportunity to spend time inside my head thinking about life and how blessed I am. Although I live in the city, I have, within a 10 minute drive, a myriad of opportunities to get out into the surrounding hills and enjoy His creation. The roads that connect the cities of Hayward and Oakland are unlike either place. Where at both ends I have traffic, stoplights, gangs and end to end strip malls that look identical to every other one, the roads in between are populated by hills, narrow roads, redwood trees, eucalyptus groves, and an opportunity to avoid people and imagine I live somewhere idyllic.
Anyone that watches the news has an idea and an opinion of what Oakland is like. And, unfortunately, a lot of those opinions are true for portions of the town. What most people don't know is that the hills above Oakland are some of the more expensive and exclusive neighborhoods in the bay area. The views alone guarantee that.
The weather on Sunday was absolutely perfect. Clear and cool, but not as cold as it has been of late. While the views from the top of Skyline are always good, there was a bit of wind on Saturday which ensured that come Sunday morning you could literally see for miles....Another great reason to live where I do...After taking a few pictures, I put my earbud back in and enjoyed the rewards of the morning climbs. Nice, long, fast downhills with absolutely no traffic....
Eventually, I made it back to the truck and feeling completely spent and blissfully happy enjoyed a Peet's coffee on the ride home while thinking again, how blessed I am to be able to miss church yet still have a morning enjoying God's goodness....
3 comments:
Any particular reason you have remove your earbud to take a photo? Could it be the ladies claim that we men are totally uncapable to multi-tasking - and you had to remove the music to push a button on the camera?
either way... awesome views...
Maybe the word i was looking for was incapable. See typing and thinking... not good.
yeah, the music in my head was confusing me when I tried to push the shutter but....what were we talking about again?
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