Adventures in Resistance

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In my short but eventful life, I've spent some time doing stuff. I've also spent some quality time trying to avoid doing stuff. As you might expect, in the course of doing things, and avoiding doing things, I've learned something important. Are you ready? Ok, here it is. The path of least resistance often isn't. Water may flow down the most direct path, but water doesn't mind bouncing off of the rocks along the way. You might.

Y'see, what I'm getting at here is something that I think we all know, but maybe need reminding of periodically. Well, I need reminding anyway, so in order to reinforce for myself just how much more trouble the timesaving, labour-reducing, shortcut often is, I figured I'd review a couple of times when I took the easy way, and found out that it wasn't.

Water may flow down the most direct path, but water doesn't mind bouncing off of the rocks along the way.

Take, for instance, the first time I entered the 24 Hours of Adrenaline. In case you didn't read my account of last summer's race, it's a 24 hour long mountain bike race where each rider on a five man team takes turns riding laps of a roughly 18 km course. The team that completes the most laps in 24 hours wins. It's my first time in the race and the night before it I have two tasks to take care of - I need to pick up a sleeping bag from Reece's house, and I need to get myself some food.

I have honourable intentions. I have a shopping list. I also have a sizeable quantity of beer in my fridge, and Reece is over, so I decide to take it easy. No sense getting worn out running errands - I'll relax and then take care of things in the morning on the way out to the mountains. Reece and I proceed to get drunk. You can sort of see where this is going, can't you?

The following morning, Reece and I, sporting long-weekend calibre hangovers, even though it isn't, head for his place to pick up a sleeping bag for me. Only it turns out that Reece doesn't have his keys with him. We spend some quality time stumbling around Reece's house, looking for a way in that is within our hangover-restricted abilities.

"Screw it," I announce, "we've got to get going or we're going to be late. I've got some warm clothes and it's nice out. I can get by without a sleeping bag."

"Really?" Reece looks surprised but accepting.

On the way out of town we pass the grocery store. Reece glances at his watch and winces. "Do you want to stop to get some food?"

"Hmm, we're pretty late aren't we? Well… I don't really feel like shopping right now anyway. Screw it, let's just go, there'll probably be places to buy food there."

I'm going to cut right to the chase here. There wasn't any place to buy food at the race. I managed to get by on a mixture of Gatorade and odds and ends of food that I borrowed off of my better prepared and slightly annoyed teammates. That really wasn't the worst part. The worst part came later that night, when the storm arrived.

When the storm arrived, I was lying on a car seat, which was sitting on the ground under a tarp. This was our central camp for the race. It's somewhere past midnight, Kal is out on the track doing a lap and everyone else is nestled snug in their sleeping bags, in the little tents arrayed around the edges of our camp. I'm lying there, in fleece pants and a fleece jacket, trying to find a comfortable position to sleep in, when the rain starts.