“We must be lovers, and at once the impossible becomes possible.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual,” by Arnold Kunst

30 January

How I learned the difference between “Impossible!” and “I’m Possible!” I always liked to cycle. In fact, back in the day when I had a j-o-b I had chosen both a car and a car-pool partner for just that purpose. My station wagon was merely a glorified bike rack. And I found myself an accommodating car-pool partner who got one of my car’s spare keys. We’d meet 15 or 20 miles from work and go in together in one car. Either I would take the bike out when we got to work if we went in my car, or I would leave the bike at work the previous day if we went in his car. Anyway, I’d typically get in two, maybe even three, days of cycling this way. In November of 2002 I happened to mention my interest in cycling to  another co-worker, and she asked if I had ever considered doing the AIDS ride: raise $2,500 for the privilege of cycling from SF to LA, 585 miles over 7 days in early June. Well, the more she and I talked about it the more excited I became. The physical challenge, meeting interesting, can-do people – she even said the food was to die for!

But I had two problems: I was going to be 61 in June when the event was scheduled, and I was a good 50 pounds overweight. The kicker was, the more I thought and talked about it, the more excited I became.

Then one day in early December while cycling from work to my car, as a complete fluke I met another cyclist. His bike looked really impressive. I said to him, “that’s a beautiful bike you’ve got there; you must have paid a fortune for it!” He said, “I don’t know how much it cost; I got it from the manufacturer for nothing.” He then went on to explain that he was a professional cyclist, so I asked him about my excitement/problem. He said, “How many miles do you do in a week and how fast do you do them?” I said, “I do 19.5 miles twice a week, and with a tail wind I can do it in under an hour.”

Without batting an eye, he said, “you can do it. You’ve got a good six months to train, and with the weather getting better and the days getting longer you could grow your weekly mile count to over 150 in the weeks just before the big event.” “How will I know I’m ready?” I asked. “When you can do 65 miles in a day, then get up the next day and do 65 miles, then get up the next day, you’re ready. If you can’t get up on that third day, you’re not ready.” The whole conversation only lasted about 8 minutes, then we parted company, and I never saw him again. But those 8 minutes changed everything. I learned that all I had to do was make the peddles go around a lot of times.

There’s one downside to this: I can’t ever look at a really hard thing, an impossible thing even, and say, “I couldn’t ever do that!”

“Impossible!” became “I’mPossible!”