Validation

I went for an early bike ride this morning out to the alpacas and back. The air is getting cold — it stung a bit when it hit my lungs; the sting felt good. A while into the ride, my mind starting wandering. 'I should drive this route sometime and see how far it is,' I thought. A few minutes later, the next thought hit. 'Why? Why do I need to know how far it is? Why does the number matter?' Hmmm. It gave me something to distract myself with as I panted my way through the slow incline.

At first, I didn't have an answer, but that was only because I was trying to obfuscate my ambitions from myself. I thought further and admitted that I wanted to know because it would feel good to accomplish a long ride. The distance was like a trophy. Or, in the case of my dinner conversation last night with a maniac biker, a source of potential embarrassment. People here like to bag big elk, big fish, big (32-mile big) bike rides, you get the picture. As it turned out, my biggest trophy of a ride was a warm-up for my dinner companion. But hey, we were eating at a house that had a keg-or-ator, so I was out of my league in so many ways.

As I continued my ride, I pondered at how we teach our kids not to value themselves based on a number, but how those external determinations of value sneak in nonetheless.

I remember learning about how the GDP is actually a very wacky way to judge a country's health. After all, war often leads to a high GDP because it requires so much production. My friend, Han, told me once about a health organization opting to measuring a country's well-being on the number of families with gas-fueled stoves, (a family with a gas stove doesn't need to haul firewood, a terribly time - and calorie - consuming endeavor.)

I decided to make my own metric for my bike ride today. It was long enough to tire me out, long enough to be just a bit more than comfortable, but short enough that happiness overpowered exhaustion. I wasn't biking too deliriously hard to mention how beautiful the day was to an trucker-hat adorned octogenarian farmer I passed, who said in response, 'Yes, this sure is nice country.'

And I definitely wasn't too distracted by my efforts to wonder what the heck the ad was on the van that pulled out in front of me. "Be the decoy.com," it read, and was accompanied by a picture of a goat.

Turns out that BeTheDecoy.com sells animal costumes for hunters. According to their site "you actually become the decoy - allowing you freedom of movement and keeping your hands free to operate your bow, range finder or binoculars as needed."Handy.