Don't do it.
You will trip over her frame bag in the middle of the night as you are walking down the hallway and slip on the 2 oz emergency bivvy she left on the floor beside it. There will be maps coming in the mail and all your lithium batteries will disappear. Your only way of knowing where she is in April, June and August will be the webpage that shows her initials with a pink dot (or sometimes a yellow one). She will rage on like a hurricane, babbling senselessly about new, likely impractical routes, crazy notions and dreams of days spent pedaling from daylight until dark. This will spark ideas within your own heart that you have already put into that "I Dream of Doing but Don't Have Enough Time/Money/Time Off Work" Category. Those ideas are scary. They cause you to rethink what you do everyday and what you could be doing instead. The notion of that is just silly. Its unsafe and unsure. It will distract you at work and you will find yourself thinking about being bold. Being different. The way you have always felt inside, but are scared shitless to defy family and social expectations.
She will be always perusing Craigslist on your laptop looking for shuttle possibilities to the northern and southern borders. She will be on the trainer at 4am and in crow pose by 7:30 only to rush to work not giving a crap what her hair is doing. She will call big, knobby tires by first names like Nate, Larry, Bud and Lou. She will bring her dirty, scratched up bike inside and strap every imaginable type of pack to it. She will lube her chain and change her tires leaving white goo on your garage floor.
She will have $6.38 to her name and then in two months will be buying new bikes. She will sport blisters and swollen feet. When she opens her pack in the evening, empty wrappers, master chanlinks, snot-covered gloves and ziploc bags will litter your driveway. She will not carry a purse or even a wallet like most girls, she will carry her license, phone and debit card in another one of those stupid ziplocs.
You will see the fire in her eyes and hear the passion in her voice as she tells you of the sunsets and sunrises and stories of falling asleep in the middle of the trail underneath her bike. She will tear up as she remembers the red hills of Utah, the silence of Junction Creek and you may find a lump in your throat as you start to remember your triumphs.
She will make you laugh as she tells you horror tales of chamois cream failures and split, bloody lips and one million cactus/overgrowth scratches on her shins from remote and unkept trails. You will begin to think of the mishaps and injuries that taught you lessons and made you feel alive on your adventures.
She will love you like no other. In an intense and passionate way that leaves you feeling exhausted sometimes. It will challenge you and pull you from your comfortable rut. It will get you to thinking that you have never dated anyone even remotely like her and wonder if you ever will again. Part of that scares you, part of that exhilarates you. Absolutely exhilarates you....
She will stare off into space and dream of big climbs, vast mountain ranges and clear, cool nights in a 1-lb sleeping bag when you are at dinner with friends discussing first world problems. Yes, these bore you to tears as well, but can't she just once engage for the sake of making everyone feel like she is paying attention? But, wait, you then find yourself thinking of that race or that mountain traverse you were looking up at work the other day during the next gripe session about how Susie's new Audi is in the shop because the heated seats don't warm up fast enough.
Don't date a girl who bikepacks. Walk the other way. She will believe in (more than you do) the courage you harbor to accomplish what you never even fathomed a possibility just five years ago. She will adjust her life and schedule and ride plans to support those dreams, because she will love you with the same intensity that pedals her bike for days on end.
DO NOT DATE A GIRL WHO BIKEPACKS!
Consider yourself properly warned. If you do not heed this advice and proceed anyway you will wake up one day wondering who you used to be, where all your fear of change, doubt in everything and body fat went. Oh, and that knot in your back? You may have slept on the GPS handlebar mount that she left in her pocket AGAIN when she washed the new sheets with her jersey.....
Don't do it, dude.
Love this. Now I just need you to add a picture to it so I can add it to my bikepacking board on Pinterest. Lol.
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