December 1, 2023
Is Bragging A Sin?
A Cyclist Visits the Church of the Great Outdoors Confession Booth
Bless me. It has been three months since my last cycle touring journal. That's a pretty long time for me to abstain from bragging about my amazing cycling exploits. I need to get out there again to ride, show off, and brag.
So yes, I CONFESS! I am a huge braggart. In fact, I'm SUCH a huge braggart that I just bragged about how I like to brag.
When I re-read my bike touring journals (and my cooking blog too), that's how I really do see myself. In my head, the words I see are reduced to things like: "Look at me!" "Look what I did today." "Look what I did after that." "Look at the cool places where I'm riding my bike." "See how well I handle adversity?" "Look at my nice pictures." "Make sure you notice my old-school cycling gear and paper maps." "Check out my smarty-pants observations and opinions." "See how I write about it all?" "See how I maximize jokes and absurdity at the expense of quality, seriousness and honest feelings?"
Unfortunately, it's too late to go back in time and magically scrub the blowhard tough guy images out of all my previous journals and rewrite them to portray something closer to how I'd like to be seen--just a humble bike tourist who does what he does without feeling the need to boast about it.
I Blame the Internet
For decades, I wrote journals of all my automobile, backpacking, canoeing, and bicycling travels. Nobody ever saw them but me, and I was fine with that. I just knew I'd get a kick out of rereading them in the future.
When I retired from working life and started planning my first multi-week bike tour, I learned about something different. People were not only writing journals, but they went a step further. They posted about their travels publicly.
"Hey, I could do that," I thought to myself.
True, I COULD do that, but I wasn't sure if I SHOULD do that. Self-doubt set in. What if my writing isn't as good as I think it is? What if the things I find humorous don't work for the general public? Why should anybody care about what I'm doing? What if the places I go aren't all that interesting to others? What if I put myself out there and I become a colossal failure and the subject of ridicule? What if everything I write looks like bragging?
I managed to overcome all those bad thoughts. That was the beginning of my descent into the self-promotion game. I went ahead and posted my first bike trip on Blogspot. I told a few people about it, and now I curse them for stoking my ego with compliments. But that gave me the confidence to post subsequent journals for the more discerning bike touring crowd on Crazyguyonabike and then Cycleblaze.
Honestly, though, I've come to embrace the bragging for the whole world to see. Bragging has become my schtick, and if you continue to read this thing, you'll be seeing a lot more of it.
Modest Bragging About the Weather I'll Be Facing
My December tour a couple years ago included an 18-inch snowstorm. I'm not going to provide a link to my Cycleblaze journal of that trip because I'm trying to be modest in my self-promotion. (You could look it up yourself, though, if you are interested in that kind of self-promotionality.) The tour was exciting though. I'll just leave it at that.
With the right attitude, snow can be pretty fun to ride in. It's more difficult, however, to find the fun in very cold temperatures. Oh yeah, Minnesota's coldest temperatures are in January. Generally, most of January is below freezing, and it sometimes falls below zero-degrees (F) for more than a week at a time. By the way, below zero Fahrenheit is different than below zero in the Celsius world.
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Minnesota has some pretty cold winter weather, but does it have the absolute WORST weather in the lower 48 states? That's another thing I had to look up on the internet.
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No matter which weather website I looked at, Minnesota always ranked in the top five. Who am I to argue with that?
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11 months ago
11 months ago
11 months ago
You go, Greg! I'll follow vicariously from the comfort of my recliner in Maryland, draped with blankets, fortified with warm beverages, and with a cozy fire going.
11 months ago
I knew Bruce had Minnesota roots, which includes being a St. Olaf alumnus. (GO OLEs!) I should mention, it was his last comment on the "Cycleblaze Stalker" forum topic--the one where he said he kept handwritten journals for 40 years--that got me to thinking about the real reasons for going public with my own journaling.
11 months ago
11 months ago
If one were to read my CycleBlaze profile, my first sentence is, "I emigrated from Minnesota to Portland, Oregon in 1982 to improve upon my winters." I used the word 'emigrated' because Minnesota seems to have a culture all its own - the other reason I left! No one talks. You are obviously not a native Minnesotan but my entire family is still there not talking. It's like their voices are frozen but only for certain topics that can't be talked about. It drove me nuts and to Oregon I went where I can be myself, talk about anything with anyone and brag away. But I do love Minnesota and even miss it for brief moments every year or two. I miss going to the annual lutefisk dinner with my brother at the biggest congregation Lutheran church in the U.S. And canoeing, I really miss that, and speaking my native ojibwa tongue of course. But I would never dream of riding my bike in a Minnesota winter. I can't wait to read all about it while I swelter in SE Asia.
11 months ago
Here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeMTCzKEPPM
It's a little hard to hear the dialogue. The Kodak Playsport was one of the first phone-sized video cameras.
11 months ago
My mom was 100 Swede and Lutheran (not Minnesotan though), so I got to attend quite a few of those church suppers in Upper Michigan and Iowa. Whenever she'd come to the Twin Cities, she always liked to go to St. Olaf Lutheran Church in downtown Minneapolis. I assumed that was the one you were referring to when you mentioned the largest Lutheran congregation in the U.S. I see I was wrong about that.
11 months ago
11 months ago
If you should watch that video again maybe use headphones so you can hear everything being said. Plus, at the very end, after the music stops and the snow if falling, you can hear the faint sounds of geese flying south in the snowstorm. I love how Andrea edited the video footage I came home with. Thanks for watching.
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