Technology Almost Killed My Joy

Haylee forgot her sunglasses in Idaho...

Nowadays we have technology involved in basically everything we do almost every single day. Cool right? Well, maybe not so much if you are the one who got rear-ended by that chatter box on their cellphone. Or maybe you are the one who texts all through class and doesn’t actually get the education you pay for. Or perhaps you are so obsessed with Facebook that you neglect the friends that are actually physically present in your life. While we are all guilty of letting technology creep in on us a little too much I don’t blame us. I mean, they invented it to make life more interesting and exciting. Or maybe it was just to make a whole ton of money off all of us suckers…regardless, we use it. I had an experience that happened over the last year or so that I thought I would share concerning technology. My experience with technology nearly killed one of the joys in my life. Here’s what went down:

About a year ago my brother, Taylor, showed me a new app called Strava. It is used on a smartphone to track distance, elevation gain, average speed, and compare your time on certain segments with other cyclists. Definitely a cool idea and a ton of fun! I decided to try it out late last fall while I was living in. Lewiston. My first segment was the Lewiston grade hill climb. I think I placed 14^th out of 80 on my first ride. What ensued was a battle inside of me that kept longing for a faster time, a higher place on the ranking board. What did I stand to gain? Basically nothing.

A screenshot of what my latest ride felt like

Over the next 10 months I began to ride for time. I rode to try and beat other people, or at least give other people a time to beat. I rode faster and enjoyed riding less. It seemed like every time I headed out with two wheels underfoot it was to out do someone or try and do a ride faster. Yeah, riding was still fun, but it didn’t feel like it was the motivation that got me out the door to ride anymore. Then something happened early in the summer that turned out to be a blessing in disguise, two somethings actually. First, I crashed on my road bike and injured myself to the point that I couldn’t ride for about two months. Second, my smartphone decided to be dumb and died. What this essentially did to me was reset my riding back to square one.

Once I was finally able to get some time in the saddle I didn’t have Strava, because I had a new phone and didn’t download the app yet. I went out riding, because I missed it. I took it slow compared to my previous riding mode. I rediscovered why I loved bicycles. It was as if I had forgotten the reasons I loved to ride bikes before and I was able to experience it for the first time ever, all over again! I hadn’t even noticed that technology had killed the joy I had previously found in riding bikes. I am so glad I found out before it was too late and my joy of bikes was possibly ruined.

The view from one of the lookouts I rode to

Don’t get me wrong, I love technology, I even still use Strava. I do think that we as a society let it run our lives way too much though. I think it is healthy to step back and evaluate my relationship with technology and discovering the places that it doesn’t need to be. It is refreshing to rediscover a sense of freedom that somehow a form of technology was able to rob me of. I plan to continue searching for that stolen freedom. Happy trails!