Rich Aucoin bike blog # 5: Elk City to Oklahoma, OK

Remember that it’s all luck; we can only try to give ourselves more chances to obtain those lucky breaks. Anyone claiming to have accomplished something others consider great from their sheer will-power is either in some narcissist delusion or is failing to see all the variables surrounding them and their position. Many people we consider successful start to fail at giving an exact road-map for their success because it was a messy, uncontrolled experiment.
This sentiment is not meant to devalue hope and determination but rather to put it in perspective especially while we reflect on our own failures to meet our expectations. Realizing the factors we cannot control and pressing on is the best we can do in our various quests to achieve our 10,000 hours to master whatever it is we want to master in life. It certainly helps with mental health and to juxtapose the voice that we all entertain which pokes and prods at our failures. Though this voice is necessary, when balanced, to gives a healthy self-consciousness to our newfound ideas and ventures.
I am reminded of this luck continuously on this bike ride as I encounter death every five minutes or so. So many animals in various levels of decay who got unlucky with their forced interacting with humans and their technology. It’s been so much lately that I feel like half my breath is of death.
Being in touch with this really grounds one to the reality of their mortality and also to the precarious nature of being around these vehicles we’ve created which can easily take life.
OKC was the halfway point in this journey. Played two shows and was accompanied by bandmate Neil Fridd aka Terror Pigeon. It was nice to see a familiar face after so much alone time. I crashed hard after the shows too as, if you’ve been to one of my shows before, they take a lot of out me.  This has been a difficult tour with lots of lows which I’m trying to analyze while trying to focus on the highs. Crossing the halfway point brings with it a certain shift that I’m hoping will yield to more of the highs than lows in my mindset crossing the eastern states. Stay tuned!