Saturday, April 4, 2009

Inspiration from the Sun

A week after being on the White Rim trail, I'm still reminiscing of the sun on my face and the dirt in my teeth. While at times grueling and quite often cold, I would jump at the chance to hop on my bike and do the trip all over again (and again, and again).

I am inspired when I'm in the mountains, but this trip was exceptional. My riding pace often put me in position far behind the rest of my fellow riders, but far enough ahead of the support vehicles, that I was alone to take in the beauty of my surroundings and merge my body and mind into the ride. With skies as far as I could see and snowy mountain tops in the distance, I whispered to myself, "It's good to be alive."

Joy and excitement were accompanied with muscle fatigue and the worst case of ass pain I have ever had to negotiate, but it was all part of the experience. By coaxing myself through the tough stuff, I was able to mark my milestones of accomplishment....Riding a majority of the trip, climbing big hills and weathering the cold.

After four days of being surrounded by amazing friends and making new ones along the way, Matt, Arikka, Jared, Jason and I were all riding in the truck back to our car. We climbed, then coasted the rolling hills with big smiles on our faces while Eddie Vetter sang to us about the "Hard Sun."

At that moment that Jason said, "There are credits rolling behind us right now."

It was perfect. The perfect ending to the perfect trip...which provided me inspiration for this.





Photos Courtesy: Jared Hargrave, Jared Anderton, Adam Tolman, Arikka Fullmer, Matt Walker, Dave Hert.
Music Credit: Into the Wild Soundtrack

6 comments:

Jared said...

Sweet video and blog post, Dani! Thanks for sharing, the pictures along with the music was perfect.

Shlee said...

Love the kneesocks! =)
That looks like so much fun!

SEDG said...

Dani, how beautiful. It shows the talent you were developing as a child with my boys. I am jazzed. How wonderful that you met the challenge and could express the beauty of it in a video. Hugs

Sheila said...

DANI!!! It brought warm fuzzies to my tummy and tears to my eyes! I wish we could go back in time and pause the moment. This was awesome, everything about it was perfect. Thank you!!! "A grab-bag of beauty!" LOL!

vertical inhibitor said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
vertical inhibitor said...

Glad you all enjoyed it!

Shlee - It's all about the socks :)

Sheila - HA!!! It's going to take some time for me to live that 'grab bag' comment down. One of the guys I work with recognized me & had to razz me about it a bit....Good times