Enjoying the Ride

Because I have a YouTube Channel and Instagram and TikTok accounts, I am constantly creating content. I'm not complaining as I am trying to grow my channel but sometimes I need to remind myself why I'm doing what I'm doing.....because I love bikes and biking. I've been a bike enthusiast long before I was ever involved in social media. As a kid growing up here on Kaua'i, bikes meant freedom and my friends and I rode everywhere together. We'd be up at the crack of dawn meeting someplace on our bikes and spending the entire day together until we had to go home for dinner. We'd ride to each other's houses or neighborhoods, jumped ramps in backyards or cane fields, or ride down to the harbor to the BMX track. We weren't old enough to drive and our bikes were the next best thing. More than anything else, we just loved being with each other, riding our bikes, working on our bikes, or talking about bikes. Bikes were the common denominator that brought us all together and in many ways it's still like that today.

One of my oldest friends from "elementary kid days" is my friend Bernie. He lived in a neighborhood maybe 10-15 minutes away by bike so we spent a lot of time together. We'd sleep at each other's houses, work on our bikes together, and stay up looking at BMX Plus or BMX Action magazines, dreaming of being pro BMXers with the latest and greatest parts. We even raced each other at the BMX track on weekends! After high school we sort of weaved in and out of each other's lives but a couple of years ago he moved back to Kaua'i and we began riding again. We both re-caught the BMX bug and have been riding and working on bikes ever since. Bernie is sort of like my mechanic in our "Bernie's Garage" videos. He usually does the work while I talk about what he's doing while I film it for the channel. Anyways we've been working on this series of videos upgrading my Monza BC 26" bike and so the last two times we've been able to meet, we've been working on this bike. Our days off do not overlap and so we haven't been able to ride. This past week we managed to get together for a ride and I contemplated bringing the camera along to film it. On one hand, I need to still keep creating content but on the other, I just wanted to enjoy the ride. After thinking about it I decided to ditch the camera and just go for a ride and not worry about it. Sometimes that's just what we need to do. We get so caught up in doing this or that and we forget just why we do it in the first place. So, that's what we did. We left the cameras behind and just enjoyed the ride, talking about bikes and life, catching up and enjoying each other's company. I hope this week you get to do whatever it is you love to do, just because you love to do it.

Bernie and I at the old Nawiliwili BMX track back in the early 80's.