Live With Your Eyes On Your Feet--For Chris Koger ("Kroger")

This is a particularly long post so I apologize. I wrote this as a memorial to a dear friend who passed this week. If you have some time, please read it. It has to do with not looking too far ahead of yourself while still not looking behind you too much and is a universal concept for even those not directly affected by this particular death.

Today I'm reminded of what is important. All year I have spent my time thinking about finding adventure from the seat of a bicycle. While I certainly feel that my reasons are good for wanting to do this trip, when I get out on the bike I get to clear my mind and really think about things in a special way, and one of the things I think about most while I'm riding my bike is the future. One of the other riders, Jared, constantly is talking to me about the future and different opportunities, but I think even without these constant reminders I would probably end up using my peaceful rides to contemplate what is next. Last night I was painfully reminded how presumptuous that thought truly is.

Each of us will meet the moment when tomorrow isn't going to come.

That's a harsh reality and for some reason nobody seems to want to talk about death, but why? I can't answer that question for anybody except myself, but for me I believe any time I'm uneasy about talking about death it is because I fear that if I'm really completely honest with myself, I'm not living my present to the fullness I would deem sufficient. If I were to go back and take a look at every couple years of my life I'm sure I would have to admit that I have not always done what I hoped I would do.

What I mean by this statement is that every time I'm on the bike thinking about the future I envision this glorious, almost perfect scenario of how things might come about. The only problem with this dreaming is that a dream is not at all dependent upon a plan being set in place. It's like playing Chutes and Ladders without looking at the steps it takes to get to the end. You see that end of the game and it looks pretty great, but in between there are chutes that can set you back and even if you know they are out there, you don't know if or when you'll hit them.

I hate thinking about death because so long as I have this false promise I have made myself that I will always have tomorrow, I can always squander today away if I so choose. Death is that wild card, that chute that could keep me from ever really getting to where I hoped to go.

The only real obvious solution is to not look ahead too much, to spend a small portion of time investing toward a future, but never doing so while making a deceitful contract with yourself that you will ever get to enjoy the fruits of that investment. You still put money into your retirement fund but you just may reach that moment when tomorrow doesn't come before you get to touch it.

Death's saddest form is found in the one who didn't do enough living in the years preceding it. I am sad to have lost my friend Chris Koger, but he certainly was not an example of this saddest form of death. We grieve because a young man who could have gone on to do exceptional things, to have a family, will no longer have that possibility, but nobody would say that in the days Chris was given he didn't live.

He touched the lives of everyone he knew and made us better for it. In talking to a mutual friend tonight we came to the conclusion that Chris was that weird but cool friend that everyone has in their lifetime. He wasn't the most positive at times, nor the most supportive, but he loved his friends as well as anyone I've ever known. There were times when I could not stand the guy just because he had this innate ability to take something as trivial as a sports debate and use it to get under my skin, but it was this same tenacity and willingness to go for your jugular that made Chris that great friend who would call you out on something that you needed accountability on, even if you didn't ask him to hold you accountable. You could be upset with him for a day, maybe even a week, and as extreme as a couple months, but eventually you would come to your senses and realize that he never called you out unless he was absolutely right and that he did it out of love. He had a unique smile, half mischievous smirk and the rest a golden grin, all Chris. He wore more new baseball hats than anybody I had ever met with the crisp bill and sticker still attached, and when you did or said something ridiculous he would just shake his head in a way that was unique to him.

I've been going to Cleveland Indians games ever since I was a kid and every time my dad would get tickets from work I would try to find someone to take. Chris was the perfect baseball game companion. He was a real fan of the game, understood the subtle things that make it great in the same way I was raised to appreciate the game, and while he was a Yankee fan, he gave credit where it was due. Baseball games were my absolute favorite thing about this life and while I will never be able to share it with him again (I'm writing this in part to try to come to grips with this) I sure am glad I got to attend those games with him.

In my one year at MVNU, I went through a really tough time. Perhaps every college freshman has a little extra drama with the change in lifestyle, but as much as I needed to get out to Oklahoma for a change of scenery after all the tough things that happened my first year, I had Chris nearby at Ohio State Mansfield campus. I would drive to his apartment and we would go out to dinner and for that time we could feel like we did in high school, secure and content with life before returning to our reality in college.

These are the things I will remember about Christopher Koger, one of my best friends through high school and even through my tough years in college. I only wish we had one more ball game to attend so I could have said goodbye.

In honor of my friend Chris or anybody you have ever lost, please don't rely on the hope of tomorrow so much that you don't embrace the day you find yourself in. Live it in a way that would leave you with no regrets if you looked back on it.

Thank you for reading, it means a lot to me on this particular post because I pray everyone will have a Chris in their lives at some point.

Update...It's Cold and That's No Bueno for a Cyclist

It feels like it has been a year since I last got on the bike. In reality it has only been a couple weeks. Way back then Travis and I decided to do a mini trial tour around OKC. We logged close to 50 miles on an overnight trip that ended with us camping within 30 feet of Lake Hefner, one of the large (by Oklahoma standards) lakes in the OKC area. After setting up our tents off the road a bit in a clearing surrounded by tall grass, we made a simple dinner of beanie weenie and mac and cheese with some applesauce. We had dealt with some pretty major headwinds and some decent hills for Oklahoma so we quickly went to bed.

This was short lived as a group of young people stumbled upon our site and walked right up to our tents with flashlights. We suspect they were just looking for a place to drink but we were uneasy about sleeping nonetheless so we packed up everything, in an inefficient manner (thankfully my Carradice Carradry panniers are way bigger than I need) and moved to another site closer to the water down an abandoned path that had become overgrown. We got a good night of sleep until being woken by a steady soaking rain that got us wet, having made the mistake of not attaching the rain fly because of the forecast that said there was a 20% chance of rain...for future reference, anything over 0% will be viewed as 100% by me. Having to start the day off soaking wet and cold is not the best way to have high spirits and letting your sleeping bag and tent lay out to dry is not going to be as easy on the road when we need to use as much sunlight as we can to log miles.

Being only 2 months from the trip it is hard to focus on much else but with the difficulty of earning the funds required to finance the trip I have enough to keep from getting too far ahead of myself. I'm still in training to be a waiter at a restaurant on the lake so I'm really committing this trip to God, trusting that if we're all meant to go together, the money will come through generous tips and as much hard work as I can come to find. No longer having to worry about gear and spending money on the bike is certainly a relief at this point but the actual trip expenses are considerable.

I look forward to sharing this experience with you in a couple months, but in the mean time, I have a favor to ask. We are attempting to bring in sponsorships for this trip, whether through product sponsorship or financial support, but in the business world there is no such thing as a free lunch. What that means in this case is that in order to attract businesses support we need to find a way to help them get their branding out to a large enough audience to justify it. Honestly, I'm fresh out of ideas in that department so that's where you all come in. If you have any suggestions you could offer we're all ears...or I guess eyes given our relationship to you is strictly textual.