And this past weekend I’m having lunch at a restaurant and see a commercial for Cinnamon Toast Crunch.  A couple of pieces floating in the milk, then a third piece swims around like a shark fin.  The first piece gets sucked under the surface, then the second piece frantically tries to swim away and gets pulled below.  The third piece surfaces and licks his lips.

I think I get it.  The message is that the cereal is so good it eats itself.  Cute.  Then my imagination kicked in, which never ends well.  I only wish I had the artistic skills to realize my visions.  That really would not end well.

So, cue the eerie music on a scene of a gingerbread house in the woods.  As it slowly pans in, you hear frantic, gasping breaths and some struggling.  Cut to a close scene of a Teddy Grahams bear tied to a decrepit examination table.  Pull back to see another Teddy Graham bear standing aside wearing a dirty, stained smock.  A makeshift nametag crookedly hanging on the smock reads “Dr. Ted”.

Dr. Ted passes his hand over an assortment of sharp and pointy implements and settles on what seems to be a bone saw.  He takes the tool, places it at the wrist of the restrained bear and slowly begins sawing.  The victim screams and struggles in vain.  No blood.  They’re cookies, for god’s sake!  Ok, maybe a close-up scene of some crumbs falling to the floor and the screaming and sawing continues.

The paw has now been separated and Dr. Ted holds it up.  The victim is in shock, staring at his own sawn-off paw.  He (or she.  A female would be so much more dramatic.) musters enough strength to scream “Why are you doing this?”

Dr. Ted pauses for a second and stares blankly - as only Teddy Grahams can do.  Then a distorted smile stretches his face and he replies softly, “Because you taste…so…good.”  At which point he takes a savoring bite of the amputated cookie.  “Mmmm.”

Fade to black, then flip on a weak hanging light, flickering, showing an excessively shadowed box of Teddy Grahams seemingly trapped in a corner.  Maybe the box will shiver a little.  I don’t know. 

I suppose a lot of people wouldn’t appreciate my sense of humor.  Maybe it was because I was in a crappy mood because I got supremely drenched on the bike on the way to lunch.  Nothing catches people attention in a restaurant like a person soaked from head to toe (except I wear a helmet so my head was dry).  Ride bike=get wet.  I wonder if I should be renting myself out to some drought-stricken communities.  As long as I keep my mouth shut, I suppose I’d be fine.

This is the first year I get to show my support for 2-wheeled commuting, and I’m proud.  This is going to be kind of a rough one, because it’s my first ride on a dangerous interstate, the first where I am carrying a load (loaded backpack) and it’s going to be about 200 miles round-trip.  But that’s ok, because on Ride To Work Day, I’m going to be out with bunches of bikes and it’ll be safety in numbers.

So imagine my distress when I roar out onto the interstate at 75 mph and there’s no other bikes out there.  I counted two on the trip out and three on the way back.  That was a real disappointment.  But, I still remained focused on getting to work and back alive.

So first, riding at 75 is nothing like riding at 55.  I had heard stories that as a vehicle approaches 70, the wind resistance increases at an exponential rate.  This, I discovered first-hand.  It was extremely similar to my experience doing indoor skydiving, except instead of 15 minutes in the wind tunnel, it was an hour and a half.  I could not have done it without my CrampBuster.  Although my hand did get a little cramped anyway, the ride would have been impossible without being able to relax my grip occasionally.

So midway through the workday, clouds gather and thunder sounds.  No rain, though.  The storm just passed to the south of work.  I checked the radar before leaving work and saw I would pass between two strong storm cells on my route home.  More good luck.  And my luck continued until I reached the final waypoint.  I had travelled too fast and caught the tail end of the one cell.  Merging into traffic, things suddenly slowed down to about 30.  That either means there’s an accident or a downpour brought traffic to a halt ahead.  Noticing the shoulders of the road changing from wet, to puddles, to pools I guessed which one happened correctly.  I also relegated myself to getting drenched yet again.  And it happened.  A good 20 minutes of steady rain compounded by semi trucks passing by with their excessive road spray.  But still made it home in one piece.

Post-trip evaluation, I was soaked (nothing new there), my hands were numb (that’s new), and I was pretty exhausted.  I cleaned up and went out for dinner in the car.  After riding the bike exclusively for four days, the first thought I had when I pulled out of the driveway in the car was “This car is HUGE!”  And it looked huge.  The far corner of the hood looked like it was a mile away.  It felt huge.  It was like floating in a boat, where the motions I made on the steering wheel were disconnected and delayed.  It is unreal what a perceptional difference there was.

Riding the bike to work every day is completely impractical for me right now, but if I lived closer to work, it would be a easy decision.

There an inherent problem with anything that is claimed to be motivational and that is the cynical counterpoint.  Dilbert has done a pretty good job of poking holes in many motivational mantras.  The de-motivator meme has obviously run its course, but had some very good ideas early on.

Motivational messages are processed differently by different people, not unlike candy.  Some people gorge on motivation books, videos, seminars and have nothing to show for it.  They are useless without another fix of motivation.  Others only need a bit of motivation to keep them going – a quick pick-me-up.  Fortunately, I find myself in the latter camp.  I generally only need a reminder every once in a while of why I do what I do.  That’s not to say I don’t have slumps or have a cynical outlook on “business as usual.”  I try to not let the external influences get me down. 

But anyway, I did a quick Youtube search for motivational videos and watched the first one.  Somehow this was supposed to inspire me.  The video was about some football players that didn’t think they could beat their next game, so the coach tried to demonstrate “giving your all” using a couple players.

The coach made this guy carry another guy across the field.  The subject didn’t initially think he’d be able to make it half-way.  To prevent him from giving up when he met his mental finish-line, the coach blindfolded him.  Then, as he started to falter or complain, the coach encouraged him as only a coach would: by screaming and yelling in his face.  Finally the guy collapsed and the coach said proudly, “You made it to the end zone.”

So if you were to use this video as motivation for your employees, what exactly would you be saying?  My primary take-away: we want you to work yourself to exhaustion.  We don’t care if you are completely useless after that.  There is no sense in saving reserve energy.  If we feel you have any energy left in you, we will harass you until we wring it out.

From a psychological standpoint, I enjoyed the blindfold trick to keep the player from giving up.  But from a practical standpoint, it maps out poorly.  If you set a mental goal, that should be a realistic checkpoint to evaluate what you’ve accomplished and how much more you can do.

The bottom line is, motivation comes from within.  It can’t be fed to you and it can’t be beaten out of you, although many would disagree on that.  I think I’m going to have another read of Gung Ho!, a good example of how people motivate themselves.

Today I thought it would be good to see how far away a beach run would be on the bike.  I mapped out a rough route and took off.  This time I was prepared with GPS in pocket.

The ride out was pleasant and rather uneventful.  The crampbuster did an excellent job maintaining my speed on the long stretches.  I didn’t designate any waypoints, so I stopped whenever I felt I needed to get my bearings or take a break.  Stops included, it took about an hour and a half to get to the coast.  Still didn’t see any public beach access though, So I stopped for lunch.

On the way out, I asked where the beach access was, and was directed to a road not far from where I was.  A short drive over and I came to the “beach”.

That’s actually a pretty flattering shot.  That’s about all there is of the beach.  So, with my curiosity satisfied, I headed back.  I figured with less stops, I should get a more accurate time.  Not surprisingly, things went to crap.

That’s actually a pretty flattering shot too.  You can’t tell how dark it really was ahead.  Sure enough, in the last 15 minutes of the ride, down it came.  Fortunately, I think I missed the worst.  I can tell this by arriving in the aftermath.  Lots of debris in the road and a couple flooded road sections I had to avoid.

Now back home and warming up.  The storm should finish passing sometime soon, then I can get out again.