Snow and saddles

For the last few days as we have had nice weather, I've been thinking about how nice it is for the plants to get a real spring this year - one where they aren't demolished by a late April or early May snow that makes them burn lots of energy starting over. How nice it is to see healthy plants exploding from the ground in April.

Then, woke up to snow this morning. Not a lot yet, but you never know. If it doesn't pile up too much, and the temp doesn't drop too far into the 20's, most of them should be OK.

It makes me appreciate the resiliency of the plants that survive here, and their ability to face each new spring with fervor, with no idea what will happen. They just keep moving forward, growing, blooming, expanding.

And then my thoughts fall back to the new saddle that I put on my bike last weekend. The old saddle worked OK, though I knew that it wasn't the greatest design around for keeping pressure off of critical nerve areas and certainly lacked comfort after many hours in it. But I never thought about it - just kept riding it because it's what I know.

A saddle is such a personal thing, isn't it? Each year I go through the process of getting the sit-bones broken in to the saddle. There is predictability to the saddle, the pain it causes, and how it fits. It might not be perfect, but I know it, and know how it fits. Recently someone asked me about my saddle, and my response was the same as it always is: "Sure the saddle isn't perfect - it's a pain in the ass after enough hours in it - but I know how it is going to feel and how we react to one another."

But I made the leap last weekend and bought a new one. Now I have to go through the pain of breaking it in to my butt, and breaking my butt in to it.

It's new and unknown. A little scary, a little exciting.

As I begin the journey through the middle years of life, I realize that there are many aspects of my life that are like this. There may be some comfortable things that are not necessarily the healthiest for me - some habits that I need to change, maybe some different perspectives that I need to gain.

But like the plants that grow here on the high plains, I need to have the courage to keep growing and blooming, and not be overly concerned about the weather that might surprise me next week.