He’s Back in the Saddle Again… Working out Daddy Issues

After almost seven months of up again – down again and finally up again medical issues a treatment stemming from my December 28 motorcycle accident or Involuntary Dismount I have finally been medically released and as “normal” as they can get me.

After a week off the blood thinners I was time to get back on the horse so Saturday I did a helmet buying trip and Sunday took my first ride on my brother-in–law’s bike. I must say the first ten minutes were tense but I was then able to take a deep breath and relax for a very enjoyable ride. As it happens the route I chose took me within a few hundred feet of the site of the accident. So along the way I decided that facing my fear was an imperative. When the time came I took a left turn onto the same freeway onramp that nearly took my life seven months earlier.

So I told both Fear and the Devil that it was true that they were more powerful than me but that anything they had to say to me they would first need to take up with my Father and I was sure He was not intimidated by them at all.

This raises a question of faith in The Father…

For much of my life I had real issues with a God who chose to reveal himself as a father. I didn’t meet my biological father until I was 19 and we have only spent three day together. Let’s leave it at he was not available to father me and even if he were he wasn’t really up to the job. Because of that I have looked with a combination of suspicion and desire at the relationships that friends had with their fathers and felt I had been cheated out of something special and required to bring a boy into manhood. So I did the only thing I could… I faked it! I put on my best “real Man” act and worked the “checklist”

A Real Man can:

· Drive a car… Fast Check I even got a racing license
· Get a woman Check That obsession destroyed a marriage and nearly killed me
· Hold your liquor Check but another addiction and could have died

So in the end my best efforts and flawed list turned me into a middle age boy but not a man.

This whole time I was exposed to teaching that my “Father” in heaven loved me. I accepted that but always ran that through a filter created by my father and other men I knew and concluded that you could keep that kind of love.

Over and over again my life would spin out of control causing countless harm to myself and those I most cared about and I was powerless to avoid the “potholes” that tripped me or come close to ever removing or healing the hurt I caused. Slowly along the way I began to learn about this God who insisted on being Father.

I went through at least four phases:

Are you kidding Me Phase? Mostly I was angry that God got to decide to be Father, who did this God think he was. Didn’t he know that this made the whole “God thing” even harder for me. This phase was also mixed with a lot of pretending it didn’t bother me, in fact while I was a paid member of the professional clergy I was in this phase. I’m not telling you to mistrust you Pastor just give them some slack they are people too. This phase had prayers like “Take this away from me I don’t want to be like this anymore.”

The bones you have crushed cry out for mercy Phase I Psalm 32 David says this to God while he was refusing to repent for his sin. For him and later Me God’s love was to great to allow us to rebel without being forced to deal with Him. For me he accelerated the consequence of my Sin while limiting or removing all my options for healing or peace apart from Him.

I surrender Phase Finally I came to an end of myself and surrendered to the God who wanted to be my Father. I gave up my “rights” and allowed for the possibility that God was God and might actually know what was best for me and could be a father to the fatherless.

My Dad can beat up your dad Finally I was home broken and collapsed in the arms of my Father and it turns out that I needed fathering in a way that only He could Father. It had nothing to do with my absentee father, even if I had the best of all human fathers I would need fathering from God to complete the fathering that I or any man needs to truly live a life that can be used by God for His Glory.

With the deepest respect for A W Tozer… I do not believe God must wound a man deeply to use him deeply. I do believe that we are all wounded deeply by our choices, the choices of others and the consequences of those choices and we have to choose to allow God into those deeply wounded places. Where we choose to keep Him out we are limiting a way He could both heal and use us. So in that way I do agree with Tozer, God must touch and handle with seeming unbearable intimacy our deep wounds before he can use us deeply.

So what does this have to with a motorcycle adventure Blog? Just this, that accident was a wound and helped build my faith in God but is was by far NOT my deepest wound or the deepest place that God needed to touch me. Because I was over time able to allow Him to go deep, trusting Him with this was not a challenge to my faith. One day, possible very soon something is going to happen to you or your family that you could not have been prepared for and that time will go better if you have allowed God to go Deep and father you in ways you couldn’t have imagined.

I am glad to be back in the saddle but I am so much gladder I have a real Father in Heaven.

Involuntary Dismount and a long slow recovery

On December 28, the last day of the regular NFL season I took a leisurely ride before the Denver San Diego game but I didn’t make it home for twenty six days. A few hours into the ride I had an accident, or what I call an Involuntary Dismount and while I would like to give you the details I have complete amnesia from one mile before the accident site until nine days later.
From what I know second hand, the crash took place on a freeway onramp and the bike was destroyed by the guardrail while I was blessed enough to fly over or under it.
After a total of six and a half weeks I have returned to work part time.
As far as riding again, I have not decided yet but have three issues to resolve before I could ride again.
1. The bike and safety equipment were destroyed so I would need to spend lots of $$$ to ride again.
2. I am on blood thinners for about the next six months so riding and knife juggling may not be wise right now.
3. I view riding as a risk management exercise where I need to identify a risk, make a quick mitigation decision and execute it without hesitation. Given my memory lapse of the event, I have no lessons to learn and do not know if I made an error in judgment or execution that caused this injury.
Of the three issues the third is the most troubling for me.

I am still convinced of the need for a man to have adventure and am seeking alternate forms of adventure while riding is not an option.
The one thing I would never want to happen is to hear that my experience led anyone to abandon riding or any adventure because of my story. Men need adventure and more than that any man who lives life with the goal of being careful or to tries to manage life with the goal of avoiding risk is living a shallow life and taking on part of God’s job in providing for them.
Please continue to ride (or whatever) and let God be the one who protects you. He wasn’t done with me and arranged for me to miss the guardrail – He is a Big God and can handle the small stuff.
The picture is what was left of the bike.

If you want to hear more details or see more pictures of my recovery go to my wife's blog at

http://www.robbieiobst.blogspot.com/

Part 4 the rest of the Story

After two nights in South Dakota we said goodbye to the family and headed west to Montana. We passed an area where all the trees were snapped off about five feet above the ground not sure how or why but it was interesting. As we approached the Wyoming state line we passed about 100 bikes going the other way – very cool. After a few hours of very nice roads we arrived at Devils Tower National Monument (think Close Encounters of the Third Kind) it is a spectacular view standing in the middle of a green valley, just amazing. We stopped for lunch about a mile away and then continued went to Hardin, MT near the Little Bighorn battlefield. Shortly after lunch we encountered a problem, Ray was having problems holding speed and line when we checked with him he realized he didn’t take his insulin with lunch and needed to rest so we stopped at the B & J Convenience store located near the edge of nowhere. As Ray rested Scott, Phil and I visited and wrote in our journals. We also learned from the lady running the store that our next few hundred miles were through an Indian reservation with an added warning to not breakdown, stop or eat anything along the way. Phil then shared an Arizona motorcycle store involving stopping uninvited on reservation land he and a friend had – suffice it to say we were motivated to avoid a repeat of that adventure. After Rays rest we were on the road again and found that our route was on a stretch of road that due to construction was dirt and gravel road for about 12 miles. Not knowing the area and seeing that backtracking would add hundreds of miles we pressed on. About 100 yards in we encountered a blind dip that shot Scott’s T-Bag so high in the air it cleared his head. Since no one was hurt it was easy to laugh about it and thankfully the road was much smoother after that. We ended the day in Hardin, MT and a camp ground that spent more on the website than the property – It was a total dive and overrun with Mosquitoes. To round out the sleepless night was the trains that passed through the town blowing a horn at every cross street all night long. We woke the next day tired and cranky and for the first time on the trip needing to ride two days in a row. This leg of the trip should have been our best day… Bear tooth Pass and Yellowstone, but the lack of sleep and miles took a toll and the first 1/3 of the day was boring riding and a hot day. When we stopped before the beginning of Bear Tooth Pass we had a disagreement as to the plan to ride it together at a pace comfortable for the slowest rider or split-up and meet at the entrance of Yellowstone. Frustrations and disagreements aside, Bear Tooth is a spectacular ride and well worth going out of the way if you are ever near north western Wyoming. When we joined up at the entrance to Yellowstone I thought we all had stopped for Gas because I saw Scott pulling out of a station as I pulled in and I saw Phil and Ray stop, turns out Scott stopped for the restroom and didn’t get gas because he had ½ a tank and didn’t know how far the next town was. So our relaxing ride through Yellowstone turned into Scott drafting 6” off the back of my bike while Phil and Ray were trying to figure out why Scott had abandoned the staggered riding formation. We found gas, no body died and at tribal council no one was voted off the trip. By the time we reached Jackson, WY we were tired and it was good that we didn’t need to ride anywhere for the next four days. I was planning to take a side trip the next day and go to Nevada and back because I had never ridden in that state so I skipped dinner and went to bed. The KOA at Jackson was great, the tent sites are separated from the RV sites and we were 20 feet from the Snake River, the lack of sleep and stress of the ride and the soothing sounds of the river conspired and I slept way past the 6:00am planned departure time. So I joined the boys for breakfast only to discover my clutch lever was not engaging the clutch properly. We stopped and found that the master cylinder was almost empty. After topping it off all was well so we all headed off in different directions, my ride was cut short when after about 15 miles the clutch lever want soft again. I checked it and the reservoir was full but the new fluid was very dirty, clearly it had sucked air into the line so I went back to camp. Later that afternoon when it had cooled down Scott and Phil helped me bleed the system and it has been fine since that time. The next day we went on a rafting trip and it was great. The four of us were joined by a family from Poland. On the trip we saw a Bald Eagle and it was amazing, we also had the chance to get out of the boat on a long calm section of the river. I initially didn’t get out because I was concerned about getting my 6”2” 290lb body back in the boat but Phil who jumped in pulled me in from behind. After the initial shock from the cold water it was the best part of the trip. It reminded me of God’s Grace like the River we don’t know where it will take us but we are none the less held safe and can if we choose not to fight for control float peacefully along enjoying the moment. When the time came to get back in the boat it was as ugly as I thought but thankfully we have no photographic evidence of that event. We ended the river trip and relived it all on the bus ride back to camp; we were hungry and exhilarated so we went to Bubba’s BBQ in Jackson for a great meal and then a good night sleep. I took a side ride to Idaho and had a huckleberry shake and enjoyed and mountain road with a 12 percent grade which is as steep and paved road I have ridden, It had one fast left hand corner that had an optical illusion making the road appear to end and having you fly into a valley thousands of feet below (Can you say pucker factor?) Since I am writing this you can rest assured that I survived that corner.

After four nights we were sad to say goodbye to Jackson and the Snake River but it was time to go. The ride south to Utah started beautifully but became a flat boring challenge match to stay awake for mile after mile of sameness. The only distraction came with a traffic stop for road construction where Phil and I each listening to different music on our I-Pods were dancing in the street while we waited for our turn to ride the one lane road to nowhere. Not sure who gave us stranger looks Scott and Ray or the drivers of the cars around us. Let’s face it sometimes you just have to dance!

Quick stop for Fireworks and lunch and Ray told us that this was going to be his last day, he needed to go back to TX because of family issues and was going to get a hotel in UT to get a better night sleep before the two very long days of riding he had coming.

We went through something called the Valley of Fire (Sounds inviting doesn’t it?) and after miles of stark beauty came to a dam and a lake with boats and stopped to get wet and cool off. As it turns out after a very hot day I got wet only to then drive into a storm and a cold front you never know what is around the next corner. Before long we came out of the small storm and arrived at the KOA in Vernal, UT Too much to eat at a buffet and out to a movie before a great night under the stars, no tent needed that night.

From Utah the plan was for two days of riding in the Colorado Rockies but when we woke up we missed home more than we wanted to tour our home state. Part of the planned fun was showing Ray the Rockies but he was gone and the three of ride these mountains all the time (I know we are spoiled) so we cut a day off and headed for Denver. It was a full day ride avoiding the major highways and enjoying riding and views that are not possible anywhere else with the possible exception of the Alps. Climbing and falling thousands of feet and spending a good part of the day above 10,000’ is something every motorcycle rider should experience at least once.

When I ride I get a strange reverse altitude sickness where it doesn’t seem like a ride unless I can get above 10,000’ for a while.

Wrap-up

The riding was great and the memories will last a lifetime. I was put in a position to face my fears about leading and like all human endeavors that was filled with both success and failure. The best part is the failing is I got to feel the fear of not being enough so God could remind me that I was never intended to be enough and to lean on Him.

Last week I asked the company to create a position leading a team and to be responsible for a federally mandated program and told then I wanted that job. This would have never happened if the conflict of the ride hadn’t happened first, and I thought we were just going for a motorcycle ride.

Wrap-up

Part 3 The Good Stuff

Somewhere between the planning, expectations and conflicts was a great ride…

Day one Thursday 7/10 3:00am

I could hardly sleep the night before the ride it was so exciting and I didn’t want to oversleep. Up early to pack the bike and head out to the rally point a Shell gas station sough of Parker, CO. Unfortunately Phil and Ray went to a Conoco station a mile away so we didn’t meet until 3:40 but such is life on the road. We also had our first mechanical issue; Phil’s tail light was burnt out so he could not be seen from behind in the dark. With no way to repair it without parts and nothing open at that time we put phil between Ray and I and off we went to meet Scott for breakfast at Brush, CO – about 140 miles from Parker.

We saw a great sunrise (sorry no pictures, it kept getting better and all of the sudden it was too late) We did experience the strangest weather that morning… The temperature dropped at sunrise as compared to 3:00am to the point that we needed to stop and add a layer of clothing. Scott was waiting in Brush and we had breakfast at a large building with a sigh that read “Hay Auction” (See Above) The building was also home to the Cowboy Church. After breakfast we got gas and hit the road.

At one point rider who will remain nameless took turns leaving the pack and testing the strength on the bungee cords to see if the tent will stay attached at 100+ MPH. After a few minutes of that we rejoined as a group and road at or near the speed limit and crossed into Nebraska. At our next Gas stop we found out that Ray and Phil got very little sleep and needed a nap so we found a park with some shade (it was getting HOT) and they went to sleep as Scott and I found an auto part store to fix Phil’s running light problem, and join them for the last part of the nap. A quick lunch and off to Alliance, NE home of Carhenge http://www.carhenge.com/index.htm a full scale replica of Stonehenge made of Cars. My guess is that Carhenge is a great place to visit if the temperature is in the 70s or 80s but when the day is in the high 90s to low 100s it was just a hot field with a bunch of dead cars.

At this point we were all hot, tired and getting more than a little cranky. The ride out of Nebraska into South Dakota is boring and that is putting it nicely. The Black Hills of South Dakota have some great riding but coming from the south you don’t get to the Black Hills until the last 40 miles or so.

Just as we entered the Black Hills area we passed through the town of Hot Springs where the Bank sign said it was 101 and we are all sure it had cooled down by then, in short it was HOT! The last forty miles to Custer were beautiful and dangerous. The beauty is obvious but the danger was more subtle, it was the combination of several things: 550 miles which are more than most of us ride in a week, heat (Did I mention it was HOT?) and four legged obstacles (Buffalo, Deer and Elk Oh My) On mile 547 of 550 miles with the one traffic light in sight a deer bolted in front of me and I was on the brakes hard and almost got run down by the other guys in the group who didn’t see what had happened. Moments later we entered the KOA with our heart rates returning to normal to see our families were already in the pool. After stripping down and standing under a cold shower for several minutes I began feeling normal again.

What a day!!! Two State Lines, 100+ heat, Car Art, Bike Repair, Midday Naps and a Cold Shower It just doesn’t get any better than that.

We spend two nights in Custer visiting Mt Rushmore and the surrounding area before the families went back to Denver and we pushed to the west but that is another day

More to come.

Get the Bunny 2008 Part 2... Processing the emotions of the ride

This ride had more planning than D-Day; I have been talking, mapping, planning and dreaming about this for more than six months. This is completely contrary to my normal riding approach where I start the ride having no idea where I will end up and only a vague idea of when I will return. This trip not only had maps but reservation for camping every night. As a result the adventure was not to be found in the mystery of the ride but in the mystery of the personalities on the ride.

As the default ride leader it was assumed by everyone that I would make the decisions and on the bike that was fine but when we stopped I was out of my element. My nature is to take things as they come more than direct the outcome and in conflict I am not a “Force of Will” kind of guy. In other words I would make a lousy General.

Our first night camping was only the second time I would setup a tent in my adult life. Given the vast camping experience that Phil had I deferred to him but because that was not clearly communicated it was a surprise to him and how he reacted to that surprise was a surprise to me. Not that Phil is a bad guy; I love him and consider him a friend. Phil is a “Force of Will” kind of leader and after a very long and hot day in the saddle (over 550 miles much in excess of 100 degrees) He was shocked when I didn’t continue to lead when we arrived at the camp. In all the months of planning I never had the division of leadership discussion. So Phil who leads as part of his life, work and ministry was expecting this ride to be a vacation for leadership responsibilities was surprised to be pushed into that role. He took to it but was less than gracious in the transition. He later referred to the event by saying “In the absence of leadership the A-Hole will appear.”

For some time I was thinking that at my age I should move into management at work instead of continuing as a SME (Subject Matter Expert) and Developer. A benefit of this trip was to place that consideration under the microscope of a field trial. I thing I would remain an SME for now and the immediate future.

Scott seems to have a gift for contentment, at least form my prospective he never got caught up in the friction that existed between the three of us. I wish I could learn that contentment but with all the unspoken expectations I had around this trip I set myself up to fail in the area of contentment.

Ray joined the ride at Phil’s invitation so he and I didn’t meet until the morning of day one. He and Phil have had a 30 year history that among other things has seen Ray cycle between being a committed Christian to disappointment and bitterness towards the Church to agnosticism at that point he and Phil will have long and difficult talks to convince him to return to being a committed Christian. At the time of the ride Ray was deep in an agnostic cycle and whiles his stated reason to join the ride was for the ride it seemed to me that his unstated reason was to get time alone with Phil. This caused friction between Ray and Phil in particular and all of us in general. It also seemed to me that Ray is comfortable being a little needy and the point of focus for the group which I would guess contributes to his dissatisfaction with the Church for not meeting his needs. I liked Ray and his sense of humor (The man is a pun machine and is always good for a laugh) but I am not sure I would want to go on another multiple day ride with him.

I started out very angry with Ray and Phil for inviting him but have come to accept the fact that we all brought baggage on the trip (not just the kind you attach to the bike with bungee cords. Ray is a great guy who may never get to know very well.

A large part of my life is spent with men at 12 step meetings who are wounded and want it to be about them but the demands of recovery is you give that attitude up or you don’t recover. I don’t have 30 year relationships with men who don’t change in that time. In recovery if you can’t or won’t change you tend to not stick around the meetings for very long. So I don’t understand Ray and Phil’s relationship. For my part I was also going on vacation from being a 12 step sponsor so encountering a man who reminded me so much of the men who walk into the meetings was not what I was hoping for in a vacation.

So the adventure was not the surprise around the corner it was the surprise around the camp fire. It took me some time to recognize the value in this different type of adventure where the Father called me to walk closer to him in the area of how I see myself and others and to learn how I lack grace for others and myself at times.

Thank You Father for surprises in surprising ways

Get the Bunny 2008 Part 1

Four for the Road!

We just concluded an eight state 2400+ mile motorcycle ride and I am having a hard time writing about it because it was different that I expected.
I remember the moment when the thought first came to me. It was about a year ago, July 2007 near the end of a family road trip / vacation. We had gone from Denver to Albuquerque for a family wedding then on to San Diego for vacation. On the trip home we stopped and visited friends I have known since High School in Temecula, CA. While visiting and reminiscing I was remembering a cross country motorcycle trip I took in 1978 and though about the next summer being the 30th anniversary of that ride. How to commemorate such an event? I hadn’t ridden in 26 years so I tucked the thought away. 30 years older and a bad back from an auto accident I couldn’t ride a bike again, or could I? A few weeks later on a family drive to Estes Park when I brought the possibility up with my wife Robbie who surprised me with her support.
First step was to take a Motorcycle Safety Course and get my license again then my brother-in-law Phil arranges for us to take a day ride and for me to borrow a friend’s 1200 Gold Wing and the ride was great including some beautiful roads in the Rockies, it is good to live in Denver if you ride. So I had fun and my back was fine, now came the near impossible task of finding a comfortable, reliable bike for less than 2000.00 Craigslist to the rescue. I had focused the search on Gold Wings but one day expanded it to include the Yamaha Venture and found and clean 83 model for 1800.00 so I bought it. After several short rides I took an 800 mile one day ride to see how my back would be on a long trip and all was well.
As the planning began I decided to make this trip different than the original where I took the Interstate system to make the best possible time and I took that trip alone. This time no Interstates if possible and the invitation was open for whoever wanted to come along. The first to join was Phil and then Ray and long time friend of his from Texas and a late addition was Scott. The four of us would do eight states in nine days.
The basic plan was to go to Mt Rushmore then north to Canada, southwest to Yellowstone and back to Denver. When we looked closely at the route we saw day after day of flat hot riding and when you are spoiled by the Rocky Mountains in your back yard that is too much to take. So we eliminated Canada and added a stop at Devil’s Tower in WY and a longer stop at Jackson Hole just south of Yellowstone and a white water raft trip. We extended the return trip to include Utah and added a side trip to Idaho while in Jackson Hole. Any excuse for riding in another state.
I guess I should explain the name of the ride “Get the Bunny” It started with our dog Scooby who is obsessed with chasing and rarely catch bunnies. I had to admire his tenacity and single minded pursuit. I adopted his attitude when it came to riding and adventure when on a ride to no place in particular it hit me; I have never ridden in Kansas so I “Got the Bunny” and added another state to my resume. So part of the route planning was to get as many states as possible for the miles ridden. At the end of the trip I am up to 30 with the goal of 49 before I stop riding. I don’t have any desire to fly to Hawaii to rent a bike so 49 will do for me.
There is a rule that the difference between what you expect and what you get is equal to your disappointment and I guess that is where my challenge is for writing about this trip. First disappointment, I had planned a side trip to add Nevada but circumstances conspired to cancel that part of the trip, more on that later. Second, I had an unexpected heart lesson on leadership and what part of my life should be dedicated to leading other men. Third, I do not do well with conflict between other men, I guess I am more of a loner and under estimated to impact that riding, eating and sleeping with others would have on my peace of mind.
So there it is my first installment and a commitment to finish the store about the trip as time, willingness, inspiration and courage allow.

Back from the trip

We are back and I hope to write more later, just can’t find the motivation yet. For now I am up to 30 states (see updated picture to the right) and only 19 to go to hit the goal of riding in every state except Hawaii.

This is the four of us in South Dakota