PAGE TWO: The Edge Defined

June 30, 2025

I like to have a theme for my bike tours. In this case, my theme is The Edge. I'm not talking about riding my bike to the edge of our flat world and falling off into space. (I don't have enough cycling skills for that yet.) I'm referring to a different edge--the edge of America.

More important than the geographic edge, the other edge I'm writing about is a state of mind. It involves looking at things from a different perspective. Changing things up a bit. Getting back to eating and sleeping in the great outdoors. Getting dirty. Walking and peeing on the earth. Living. Getting out of my comfort zone by writing incomplete sentences. Stuff like that. Even if it's only for three days.

(I hope you cranked up "Losing My Edge" to maximum volume on your high- fidelity Bluetooth loudspeakers.)

I'm sure it's difficult for a musical artist to come to the realization he's losing his edge. It's no less difficult for an aging bike tourist. He can't ride as fast or for as many miles as he once could. The length of his tours get shorter and shorter. He starts planning his trips around the distance between towns and campgrounds rather than the quantity and quality of wild adventures. He starts questioning his relevance in the bike touring world. His journals look bland. He can't keep up with photographic, videographic, and blogographic technology. He stubbornly refuses to call his journals “blogs.” His on-line bragging isn't as exciting as the bragging of the cool kids in the 20-to-65- year age group. And once he thinks he finally caught up with the cool kid lingo, he finds he's actually ten years behind.

My brain goes into action when I need to write some hip lingo in my journal.

At least he can recognize the irony in including 60-year-olds in the “cool kids” category. Back when he really WAS a cool kid, he had different terms for folks of that age—terms like “ancient,” “square,” “out of touch,” and “I hope I never live to be that old.”

Deep down, I'm 60% sure I'm not losing my edge. Of course, 95% of people who ARE losing their edge don't think they're losing their edge, but I'm 20% sure I'm not one of those people. I'm a 67-year-old cool kid. Now I just have to act like one . . . and tour like one.

Bonus Material

No matter how out of context it is to my upcoming bike tour, I feel compelled to post my photo of this beautiful cloud formation.

Actually, I consider myself an expert at creating some sort of context for anything I write in my journals, no matter how specious it may be. Here is the context I just now made up: I took the cloud picture last night after The Feeshko and I attended a Shakespeare in the Park performance of All's Well That Ends Well. The play gave me the idea to go a step further and incorporate some of my own Shakespeare-like jibberty-jabberty into my journal.

'Twas the early eve of the next nigh. Doofus headed, bleary eyed, noble of all nobles, Gregory, he of great fortune, stepped onto his front stoop and his jaw droppeth to his chest. He espied a multi-colored arc in the sky, and, while pointing his decrepit wrinkly witch finger in such direction, declared to The Feeshko, "Behold, my true love, looketh what nature hath bestowed upon us."

"Tis a wondrous sight," agreeth the fair maiden, as she pulled out her magical phone to take some pictures.

Hey ho, the heavenly arc, it leadeth to the pot o' gold.

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Bill ShaneyfeltYeah, I once had an edge... You think losing it at 60 is tough, just wait. At 79 1/2 I don't seem to have much of one. Didn't even try to listen to the sound bite you so laboriously added because my auditory sensors no longer function well enough to figure out what the lyrics are (although even when they did work, most were not intelligible to me) and can only sometimes pick out enough of a melody to figure out what it might be and maybe start an earworm that lasts for a little while.

Never quit!
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1 month ago

Mark BinghamLet's hope All's Well That Ends Well, as it usually does. Looking forward to yet another outstanding journal.
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1 month ago

Gregory GarceauTo Bill ShaneyfeltThanks Bill, but from what I've seen, you haven't lost all of your edge. You still ride your bike, and nobody comes through with plant and animal identifications like you do.
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1 month ago

Gregory GarceauTo Mark BinghamSometimes all is well even if it doesn't end well. Other times, it ends well but it wasn't all well leading up to the end. My hope is that I get wellness from beginning to end. Well, all is well and good as long my bike and I don't fall into a well.
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1 month ago

Mark M.I LOVE that I'm in the same cool kid category as the twenty year olds. My kids will be overwhelmed when I tell them. (Unless they just shrug and say 'meh', which is another yoof term worth mentioning: usually accompanied by a bored rolling of the eyes).

About the Shakespeare, though. You know you need to rework it into iambic pentameter? That should provoke the odd 'zounds, forsooth...' 😁
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1 month ago

Gregory GarceauTo Mark M.Thanks for the critique on my first attempt at Shakespearean poetry. I think I can do iambic pentameter. We'll see.

The most amazing thing I know about The Bard is that he literally INVENTED several hundred words that never existed in the English language before. If I can make up even a dozen words during my little bike trip, I will be freakitymystified. (Aha! Word #1)
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1 month ago