Worth It After All

We're packing up today to head south to the Reno Air Races tomorrow. It'll be the first time that hubby and I are away from the kids for several days (can you believe it?) and we're picking up my dad along the way to take him with us and celebrate his birthday. You see, my dad's been a pilot for over 50 years, and my earliest memories of airplanes come from our trips to the airport together and flying touch-n-goes in a small plane. When I got my pilot's license, he (very bravely I might add) was one of my first passengers. As I recall, it was a windy day as I was trying to land on the runway at Orcas island and I might've bounced the wheels one or two times along the way, but he was still smiling when he got out. So we share a love of airplanes, and most especially warbirds, that goes back a long time. As hubby is a pilot and a plane nut as well, the three of us are bound to have a great time.

But this does mean that with eleven days to go until my last triathlon of the season, I'll be without my bike for the rest of the week. So I just HAD to squeeze in a ride today. It was late, I had to be at work at 7:15, I had a dance team parents' meeting that went until 6:30, so there was precious little time but I set out anyways. The bike path was under construction, now I had a detour to go around, by the time I hit the country road that I was intending to ride on, I had about twelve minutes left in my ride. Racing the clock and the setting sun. Just enough time to go up and over the one hill at the start of the road and that's about it.

Sometimes in a hectic life, it seems like I have almost, but not quite enough time to get something done. This was one of those days. Sometimes it almost seems not worth it to try and fit something in when what I really wanted to accomplish was longer or more focused. Today, when I got to the top of that hill on the road, feeling just a bit frustrated by my lack of time, I was greeted with the sight of the sun setting over a bend in the river. I never bike on that road so late in the day, so I've never seen it look just that way. Suddenly I began noticing all sorts of different things: the way the air smelled like blackberries warmed by the sun, the fact that I could hear the crickets in the hay fields, the sunset turning the water into molten gold. Being in a familiar place at an unfamiliar time made it all seem new and different, and although the ride was short, it was worth it to go.

Sometimes although we may only have a few minutes to do something, we forget that minutes are all we really have anyways. We let them slip by unnoticed, or we get frustrated. I was lucky today to be reminded to appreciate them no matter what.