Good Time

Sometimes you got to pull a good time out of a crappy circumstance.  Because in each crappy circumstance there is always a good time trying to surface.  My motorcycle trip was like that this year.  It was a lot of ego induced headaches punctuated by amazing stretches of road.

We generally leave at 4AM to see the sun rise on a stretch of beautiful Wyoming road.  This year we were parked in front of a Motorcycle shop in town until noon, waiting on a repair for a friends new bike.  We all waited because we agreed that it was all or nothing.  All or nothing is almost always going to be a bad idea, even if is done with the best of intentions.  In this case, instead of one guy having a tough day, everyone had a tough day.  In retrospect it would have been so easy to divide and conquer.  When you chose All or Nothing and everyone is going to have a bad day, it is not a good choice....ever.

When we arrived at 8PM on a Friday night and the guy driving plugged in the RV, there was burning smell and a popping sound.  For the duration of the stay, the RV ran on a hour or two of generator.  Food in the refrigerator went bad, AC was sporadic, and none of the electronics worked.   And what did a bunch of type A people do drive the resolution of this?  We walked to town and had a couple of beers and when this did not fix it we sat around in folding chairs giving bad advice to the one guy who did try to do something.  These careful, detailed, concise observations of a problem without anyone taking any kind of tangible action is what I written about before - The Circle of Hope (COH).  One of the problems with the COH is that your observations become more insightful and detailed when you continue to fail to take any kind of action to resolve your issue.  If your observations about a problem in your life are becoming really insightful and powerful, you may be in a COH and not realize it.

There were of course the time when we elected to just enjoy the company we found ourselves in.  Surprizingly, these were the times when were sitting in a uncomfortable folding chairs, with warm beer, eating ears of corn boiled in a pan on a borrowed grill.  A great time despite all our attempts to be miserable.  I love it when that happens.

Today's crisis is tommorrows great story.