Ready

When I was racing cars, our club used to encourage members to go to the track when they could and not wait until everything was perfect. If you waited for everything to be perfect, inevitably you'd never end up going. It is just a simple saying but I've found it applies to most things in my life. Take the leap, give it a try, just do it. Nike. Just kidding. Aside from being recklessly unprepared, the knowledge and experience one gains from "giving it a try" is usually far greater than waiting for that perfect moment and more often than not you're surprised by accomplishing something you weren't sure you could do.

Why blather on about all this? Well tomorrow I'm riding the White Rim in a day with some friends, one in particular who I've been encouraging to come along with me on a ride like this for a while now. He's ready, I can see it but up until now I'm not sure if he could. Tomorrow I hope to show him one of my favorite places and give him that nudge to accomplish something big, something I know he can do.
And since my rambling isn't all that exciting, I thought I'd throw a few great pictures of our route up, none of which were taken by me...
Ah the desert, to where I must escape now and then, if only for a day. As Anatoli Boukreev described his mountains "like cathedrals where worship gives you strength and strips off the scale of ordinary life," so too do I feel similarly winding among the pillars, arches, canyons and sand of the Island in the Sky.