Acknowledging the Great Big Giant Elephant

Did you know that motivation follows action? It stinks. It should be the other way around, right? High action individuals never need to notice because there’s always action producing endorphins and feeding inspiration. Like the desire to ride a bike. It springs naturally from the endorphins you got last time you rode (unless you didn’t). Endorphins from any action make you want to repeat and receive the love again, a circular pattern that feeds itself until something breaks.

You have to start the cycle though. I think of it like the pull cord on gas powered lawn mower. For strong people, starting is thoughtlessly easy. But, I can’t reliably pull fast and hard enough to make the motor turn over and get things going. Russ mows and now we’ve gone electric. But, before we got the electric mower, I was never going to be a reliable second, unless someone was home to help me start the mower. There are so many ways we are each other’s safety net.

Why it Matters

Difficult starts and interruptions kill momentum, break the inspiration/action feedback loop and lead to rough stretches. Missing targets leads one to avoid the pain of failure. And there are so many things that also need doing. Unlike my example, sometimes someone to help you start isn’t enough.

I’ve literally been trying not to write this post for years now, (Russ read and approved more than one version). It seems important to address the elephant in the room, though.

We’ve been planning the video cycling project since before the pandemic, writing about it here, postponing our deadlines, moving slowly toward promoting it and kicking ourselves over delays for stated and unstated reasons. Still, we haven’t submitted to the funding process. There are a few reasons that go beyond insecurity and fear of the test. There’s stress we’ve been up front about. Then there’s that stress we talk less about, absent some details for privacy (not just our own). Often it feels like the real problem is too many responsibilities.

A meme in my feed recently said “I hope you win the battle that you never tell anyone about.” I liked it for the kind wishes, but I liked it so much more for the acknowledgement that most people have more to deal with than what they let others see.

Russ, the Giant Teddy Bear

Russ is the glue that holds our family together. The problem is that Russ hasn’t been ok. He wants to be. He’s called it a “funk”, but if it was just a funk, we’d be funded and done with the project, and on to something else.

Russ has been down hard and fighting for air. It’s difficult for people who have never suffered depression to understand. I’m down pretty hard right now myself, and I don’t even understand, not as deeply as he feels it. It’s a very lonely place to be.

In the absence of healthcare coverage, we tend to research the most legitimate information available. After Russ discovered that “freeze” had been added to the “fight or flight” scenario he recognized it as his stress response. “Fight, Flight, Freeze or Fawn” is the current full list of threat responses.

It makes so much sense for these more recent threat responses to be recognized. “Freeze” isn’t always such a bad coping device. It’s is the opposite of rash. It prevents every mistake except inaction. Inaction creates its own problems though, and “freeze” may be the hardest stress response for outsiders to recognize as any kind of a response at all.

And then…

Depression and anxiety are more challenging with added stress and the world reached new levels of being turned upside. In middle school, I remember wondering what it was like to have brothers and cousins on opposite sides of a war (like the US Civil War, or when families were divided by the Berlin Wall). People everywhere are reflecting on that again. No one really knows how deep the current rifts and chasms, both near and far will get. Many people are too distracted, busy or stressed to let themselves think about it.

Thinking about these things makes a positive outlook harder, but ignoring them has different risks, and depression happens regardless of how one handles stresses. The kind of widespread pain experienced during the pandemic overloaded the collective psyche while Covid crushed hospitals worldwide.

Our private and inner worlds were challenged and stressed before the world became so “stranger than fiction”. It’s no wonder that we’d come up with a project to help others increase health and deal with stress when there’s little or no money to throw at the broken healthcare system in the US.

Our personal challenges haven’t been at bay during the 20+ years we’ve been together. For a while our outlook was promising. But, the recession hurt, other things happened, and we made some choices that were what we needed to be doing for family, but they involved one of us being under-employed for the last 10 years. That wasn’t helpful for our financial recovery, or financial security moving forward. No regrets. None. But, it did add to the stress load.

Deeply Personal and Different for Everyone

Some people didn’t think the pandemic was even real, and others were confused about what to think. Repeating a history so reminiscent of a pandemic 100 years ago made it even harder to grasp in a modern world. Russ was convinced he was likely to die. Between preexisting conditions, his lack of health care coverage, his essential worker status, his now longer hours, and his exposure through work and living conditions, his known risks were high.

There were so many unknowns, a lot of bad information, a lot of bad acts. Denial and irrational fears were amplified by ugly politics. Extraordinary stress is hell on the immune system. Boom, another risk factor! Russ didn’t die, but his fear was not irrational. It was a recognition that this thing few people knew how to deal with was a bigger risk to him, and that many people who were unconcerned had an uncomfortable level of impact on his risk factors.

It didn’t grip me like it did Russ, but I wouldn’t have said with confidence that I expected to live through it. Our household included exposed “essential employees” and school children, as well as people who were reluctant to follow recommended procedures. I was in a higher risk age group and also without health care coverage.

Some of it was Surreal

Most people had surreal experiences. The most important bit of security anyone gave us during that dark time was when my Aunt met me in Birmingham with a refurbished oxygen accumulator. Meeting her was an eerie trip. The streets were empty. I went to the interstate on an 8 mile, divided 4 lane. It’s normally slow and go, with heavy commuter traffic. But, I wondered for a while if I would see a single car along the stretch. I went through every traffic light,16, I think, and none of them turned red. Under different circumstanced you’d wish for something like that.

There were still very few people on the interstate. I wondered if gas would be available and how strange things might get, especially when I saw a military convoy headed who knows where. We met. My aunt gave me the machine, a package of disinfectant wipes, some laundry sanitizer, and a snack. She was taking care of me while she was taking care of me. Times like these are when people show you who they are.

There was gas. I got home. We were able to order hoses for the oxygen accumulator. Thankfully, no one needed it. But, the peace of mind it provided, knowing that if Russ, or any of the 8 family members who lived in our house before it was all over, went into respiratory distress, they could at least get oxygen as long as there was electricity. That was more priceless than any Visa commercial. Caring stands out when tragedy has become so ordinary for so many. Others not caring left it’s mark at times too.

Russ eventually caught Covid and later caught it again. Thankfully, it was after vaccines were obtained and treatments were developed. He made it through with care that cost hundreds of dollars that we had, instead of hundreds of thousands of dollars we didn’t have.

Mom had her dark experience just this summer while in rehab after a fall. There was an outbreak. Mom had been vaccinated and had good meds. Getting Covid after things were better made all of the difference for her. The quarantine was scary and some people didn’t make it, but Mom did. We recently celebrated her 90th birthday.

Four weeks back, I had my round with Covid. I was the last person in our house to catch it. I wondered if all the cycling gave me micro exposures that boosted my immunity, but never made me really sick. Or, if how often I wash my hands with housework was the reason. But really, who knows?

The pandemic was like life in that everyone is going through it, yet every person’s struggle was/is unique. So, I don’t know what to do, or write, or how to explain it when things aren’t on schedule with the project. Some people adapted, put things out quickly and leveraged all the change (for better or worse).

Some people have bounced back with double energy. Me? I still don’t know if continuing to pursue the project is what I should be doing. Can my dream really make a difference, or should I do something else. I know the project could help us, and others. I know he/we can do the job, but can he/we get the job? (flip on Joe Versus the Volcano intended).

One Step Forward

The risks were real, and some remain. The depression was and is real. We do a lot of DIY. It’s great that we can. Russ fixed a frozen pipe in the house before it became an insurance claim, but we’re not working on the project while he fixes our pop up problems, or someone else’s. It has all been big, real and debilitating, and I’ve had my own stuff to deal with too. Russ has been there for me in so many ways, but in others, I felt alone. He wasn’t present in the moment, or ready to move on. He spent a lot of time ruminating on fears he had no control over. He’s not mental health care averse, but there’s nothing in the budget to cover it.

It was so incredibly important to have income during the pandemic. It was important after too, but Russ lost his employment in January. Just as it seemed like things might settle a bit, boom, again! He went from “essential employee seeing a light at the end of the tunnel” to lost. Russ has made the most of his 6 jobless months in some ways, but in productivity, he froze. If he could retire to stay at home and cook and play with the grandchildren, he’d be in bliss, and he might be faring better if that were possible. Ironies abound. Not needing to pursue anything could loosen the stress and free up the mind space to… pursue anything.

And Then, Again

With all of this, we’ve come to and temporarily past the point of cancelling the project so many times. As much as we want to help anyone who’s interested in our project to get stress relief, escape, fitness and/or entertainment value from the project, there’s also a self-interested aspect. The project will have significant demands and stresses, but it will also do the things that we want to do for others for ourselves as well. It would lessen the impact of not having healthcare coverage (unless one of us has an accident riding).

We could benefit from a year of the heavy duty riding that is part of the project, letting all those demons work themselves out as we peddle. I hiked a lot when I was going through my divorce. I’d head for the woods, and after a day on the trail, whatever was weighing on me when I left had mostly lifted. It would be nice if Russ’s six months of unemployment had given him a head start on that, or progress in any form it might take, but that isn’t how it happened. Russ really does have a freeze response to threats. (And I have attention deficit, but, that’s another story).

I’m enough of an introvert that not being ok through the isolation was a real surprise to me. It piqued my interest in forming relationships and I desperately want to accomplishing things. The project is a two person job, and doing it without him wasn’t a step I was willing to take. I would ride and write to keep the project alive, but I still spend a lot of time feeling like I was alone or in hover mode. Recently, I started just doing things. It took a lot for me to just say I was going to do something and invite him along rather than asking what he wanted to do and make a joint decision. I didn’t expect him to, but Russ came with me. Most of the times I’ve really need him to, Russ has met me at least half way.

Things are getting better. Russ is working. It’s a financial band aid for our personal life and a mixed blessing for the project. I say band-aid because at this point, if both of us were working, that would just be a bigger band-aid. Americans spend twice as much on healthcare as other rich nations and still have a decreasing lifespan with poorer care. My healthcare.gov quote for next year was over 22K per year, even though I’m physically active, and some covered years I never went to a doctor… Seriously, in the last 10 of the years that I was covered, I don’t recall ever meeting a deductible. That’s rate is hard to accept.

Seeking employment that would move me toward having disposable income, or eventual retirement, rather than just paying for insurance for part of a catastrophic health failure requires that I get not just full time work, but demanding employment. Age and sex discrimination is real and my hodgepodge background doesn’t help. If I were lucky enough to get employment that would benefit the family rather than just cover personal health insurance, it would also require abandoning some other responsibilities I have been taking on, but how confident am I that I can get through another year without catastrophic coverage? If I had the coverage, would the cap be below the cost of whatever health failure I had? Riding a bike, even if it were a new high end bike, may well be the biggest healthcare bargain there is.

The T-Shirts

With all these questions and challenges, we’re taking a side step into t-shirts. We have a theme and hope the T-shirts will have at least as much positive impact as we want the video project to create, as well as some needed financial relief. After that we’ll re-visit the trail video project. Hopefully the t-shirt project will produce enough income to make up some of our losses and then, perhaps, to allow me more time to pursue the video project.

We’ll see.

T-Shirts!

The Big Picture for Our Side Step into T-shirts

The trail video project has always been a good idea. We’re so ready to do that. There’s the matter of paying for everything though. We’re not ready for the successful funding campaign that has to come first. Frankly, now with Russ’ job loss, we’re worried about paying for the basics of life.

There Wasn’t a T-shirt Option Before

We’re intentionally making the video project low impact, so when originally considering supporter rewards for the video project, we considered a t-shirt, but decided to go digital for all the rewards. There were several reasons. First, because “no reward” support levels are often close to the same price point as “t-shirt reward level” support options. That can cause a supporter to think “Well, it’s free, I might as well go ahead and get the shirt.” When a person chooses a shirt that way, they aren’t necessarily interested in wearing it. It may go straight to a thrift store, or worse, it might even get round filed before it ever gets worn.

As a frequent thrift store shopper, I see Kickstarter rewards from time to time. Don’t get me wrong. Just because a reward made it to the thrift store shelf doesn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t a worthy item from a good project. But, if a lot of any given item makes it into the mega dumpster out behind the thrift store, that, of course, would be a different story. For a T-Shirt, that would be the worst form of Fast Fashion. Fast Fashion has big environmental and human costs, so we didn’t want to offer clothing that might not be used.

On top of all that, there’s the real dollar cost of production to the project. For every t-shirt reward the project gives away, the price of the project goes up and it needs more supporters to meet the project budget, which produces even more t-shirts that may never be worn. The negatives compound.

What Changed?

Life Changed. When Russ lost his job, he broke the news with the joke that he’d have plenty of time to work on the video project. In truth, the newfound freedom could be a potential stroke of serendipity that would make everything work out for the best, and things may still work out that way, they just haven’t yet.

The job loss blindsided Russ, and we needed to reassess personal threats and potentials to see how much actual freedom we had for the project in stress mode. We went in a few directions all at once without knowing what to prioritize. It doesn’t help that I’m so overdue to be earning something myself. Ongoing family obligations, the pandemic and the project have tacked years on to what would have otherwise been a short break from paid work for me. I don’t have any regrets about choosing family, or pursuing the project, but the financial downside to those choices has been life changing.

As much as I need focus, direction, progress and movement right now, Russ has needed time. It’s just a really good thing that we love each other because we’re not in the same place and it feels like love is all we have right now. We keep recommitting to the project, but the challenge is how to get there from here without having epic failure rock our world even more.

What’s Different About a T-Shirt Now?

The T-Shirt we’re thinking of now IS the point. It’s the product.

When our life changed drastically, we came to the idea of doing a t-shirt as it’s own project, one that people would buy because they wanted to wear it. That makes all the difference. A loved T-shirt that gets worn is worth producing, especially when we’re going to resource it as responsibly as we can.

We’re willing to offer T-shirts as a stand alone project because people wear them. People wear them a lot, and the ones they buy because they want the shirt won’t have the short life cycle that is the trademark of fast fashion. So we’ll do our best to create and offer a t-shirt that people will want to wear and use, responsibly sourced shirts that last well and can be recycled or up cycled.

I can’t wait till we have them ready to show you! They’re going to be great!

Karen Goes, Cycling

I’m not an athlete, but riding a bike has been a part of my life since my sister promised she wouldn’t let go, then I rounded the cul de sac and saw her down the street. When I was in high school, I’d ride up to the nursing home to play checkers with my great-grandmother. It made her smile so big. Then there was the time I rode my bike over to the next town where they had a Pizza Hut back before I knew anyone else who would do something like that.

Later, I rode my bike to campus at the first college I attended. I’ve used cycling to work my way through some of the most demanding stresses of my life, but building up to rides that are more challenging has been relatively recent. We did a century for Russ’ birthday one year. There were sights in the countryside I wanted to photograph during the ride, but I was busy riding, and it was too far to drive back later….too far to drive someplace I just went on my bike. That was a strange new feeling.

City traffic keeps most of my miles on local trails, and I get to see nature that awes me. One day in the Paulding Forest a pileated woodpecker flew beside me for 20 yards while I was riding the Silver Comet Trail, and the turkeys out there… Usually when they’re out, I only see 1 or 2, but one day I saw a rafter so big, I’m not even going to give the number. You won’t believe it.

Before the pandemic I was riding more on Big Creek Greenway, a path in a stream bed north of Atlanta. I didn’t know there were otters at Big Creek until I saw them there. One of the coolest sights was when a Great Blue Heron flew from the stream below to rest on the railing of a bridge I was approaching, and then, just as I made it onto the bridge, it flew on across, about 10 feet from me. It would have been nice to have a picture to share. Deer are often out on many trails and very popular with trail users.

My interest in photography is almost as long-term as my cycling, but personally, I don’t always choose to try for a shot. Sometimes I choose to live it. For Example, one time I took a member tour with my children at the zoo early in the morning. The male lion came right up to the thick plexiglass. He stretched up and put his paws on the glass above their heads. There he was nose to nose with my children. Neither backed away, they just returned his gaze. I had my camera around my neck. I briefly thought about a picture, but I didn’t want to live that moment from behind the camera. I’ve seen some cool things on the trail though, and I want to record the ones I see next for other people to enjoy and the only way I’ll get some of them is if the camera is always going.

Sometimes the interesting things I see are people, all kinds. A person on stilts, on a penny farthing, a unicycle, a guy on a home made stand up bike with no seat, from the near exhibitionist to an introvert walking with his head buried in a textbook. They all come out to enjoy the trail.

One day noticing a woman tethered to her phone (not as in listening to great music and working out in the zone, but, as in, really never letting go of being connected to the device). I wondered, do those people get the same benefits from being out on the trail as people who are attuned to their surroundings, or is it merely cardio benefits and vitamin D for them? And, where do the less obvious benefits of being in nature come from? I listened to Nature Fix by Florence Williams after I heard about it on a radio program, but that was just timing. There are so many other books dating from “When we began to see ourselves as separate from nature”. I read other books too.

I thought; the person who isn’t connected to some of the benefit of being in nature misses out on some of the physical and mental health benefits (and some of the safety in being alert). That’s a choice people make, and they get what they are looking for from the choice. That’s okay. But, I got to thinking about people who are in the opposite situation, people who would be fully in the environment if they were able. Maybe there’s a way for people who are homebound or don’t have the resources to get out in nature regularly to gather some benefits of being outdoors.

Personally, I don’t just manage to get myself back on the bike when the outdoors is part of the picture, I want to (most days) ;). How can people who would attend to nature and their surroundings if they could be there get some of those benefits? What if I video, a large amount of trail time and captured some of the more extraordinary wildlife sightings as well as changing seasons to provide a varied distraction for people to watch while exercising, meditating, or even as background mood while they are working?

Video doesn’t capture the whole outdoor experience and it can’t provide all of the outdoor benefits. But, it can offer sights and sounds. At bare minimum, video with natural audio could help provide a more enjoyable experience for people doing indoor cardio, people who can’t get out, or can’t get out as often as they need or want. Maybe it will help them with the motivation to get back on that stationary bike or other cardio machine. It’s a good option for background noise while meditating, doing anything really, It could even be used for some types of natural or social science with species counts or other observation counts.

I want to collect video that could be used to give a varied seasonal experience for the homebound, or those who don’t get to travel for trails as much as they’d like to, an experience that is closer to the nature happening just outside the window. Whether it is used for the natural aspects, or as just a resource enough different from whatever they are already doing to help with motivation, it could be useful to so many different purposes.

I remember being on the staircase in my last house. My knees made a gravely grinding noise that my daughter heard. I knew I had bad knees, but I didn’t know they were so loud. Since starting to ride longer distances regularly, they don’t make noise, and they only hurt when I’m not riding, or when I’m building up after a break. They were grinding 30 years ago and now they aren’t. That seems like plenty of motivation, but it’s pretty easy to think right now is not the time. I have this other thing to do. If I couldn’t cycle outdoors, I’m not sure I’d have the motivation to keep going. It seems like having better knees would be enough, but people really aren’t going to continue to do things they can’t find a way to enjoy or at least tolerate. If my video helps people who have my problem or some other problem, those who can’t get out there in person to get out there in spirit, that would make me pretty happy. The more people I could help the better.

A base goal is just the start. It would be to film a roughly hour long ride. At the lowest level of funding, the project would provide equipment, subsidize rides that I already take, commit me to filming them and commit me to producing rewards. I would capture video that would provide an experience for people that changes weekly with the seasons. Stretching that single hour to video the full Silver Comet and Chief Ladiga trails is the whole plan though. That is the target I have my sights set on.

I had been building up to my plan, researching successful Kickstarters. There are really so many articles out there and personal stories out there with business advice, personal advice and breakdowns on all the ways running a Kickstarter is different from what many people expect. But, soon after the shelter in place order was official trails closed across the state , or had controlled access due to overcrowding. Big Creek was overcrowded, but not closed. The Silver Comet was closed in the two closest counties. The plan needed to be altered before I even got it out in front of people and I thought my project was on indefinite hold. I settled into sheltering. And, I thought I was doing fine.

I was so wrong.

A friend posted about going out past the two closed counties to ride the Silver Comet (SC) where it was open. She’s someone I’ve worked Support and Gear (SAG) for on overnight rides for the entire length of Silver Comet and Chief Ladiga trails. Together they make the longest paved paved path in the Rails to Trails (RTT) system that’s ridable year ’round. I’ve always tried to limit the amount of gas and transportation expense I was willing to use in order to cycle. It seemed too much to drive that far for a bike ride, and spending more time in the car than I do on the trail is not desirable.

But, after the second time she posted about it, she told me I should go once a week. It would be good for my soul. That sounds dramatic. But, Russ and I went out there for what turned out to be a ride that was both pathetic and necessary. 12 miles was all we had in us. But it was a very important 12 miles. I felt alive again after not having realized how far from that I had drifted. I said to Russ “If I get sick, you need to remind me that there are things I still want to do.” I didn’t know that my voice would to tremble when I said it. I started going out often, and as I did, I realized that my project is more important now than ever, and that I have to build back up to spending more time on the trail than I do in the car, even when I have to drive this far.

So, now I’ve edited and planned. I have tiered goals depending on the level of support we get, and I’ll continue to edit and plan and edit again. Sometimes I edit my writing a lot as I try to be clearer about what I’m saying, sometimes because I learned a little more, sometimes because conditions changed, edit and plan, whether it’s the full Silver Comet project, or some combination of local trails. I’ll stay flexible as conditions change and plan, then edit.

This will be a stretch in many ways. I’ll be happy enough to have the base goal fund, but the big dream since that day has been to make the full project “super stretch” goal. At the highest level of funding, I will film the entire Silver Comet and adjoining Chief Ladiga trail in two directions weekly.

For this, I will have to reach a level of physical output that I have never before sustained in any of my 61 years. And, though the project goal is to get a year’s filmed record of the longest paved RTT trail in the country, I really expect it to consume me for 2 more years. Building up (increases in mileage of 10% per week are recommended) will take time, and I’ll likely suffer setbacks. I won’t be able to stop that level of riding abruptly either. I expect to fill in weather or other unavoidable gaps that may happen by continuing to film as I slow my level of riding gradually.

I’ll be sharing my best film shots with supporters and doing some digital photography stills with different themes. Some of the unbelievable things I see while riding are wild life, and some of them are crazy stupid. I should get plenty good footage for a multi-use trail safety video too.

I do understand that this will be grueling at times and there will be days when I wonder what I was thinking. Be careful what you ask for, right? I’m looking forward to the challenge, and working through it to the other side.

Thanks for reading.