Fly & Die: the art of eventually being a good athlete.

"Fly and Die, James. FLY AND DIE!"

We battled the wind for the entire ride. Both James and I pushed, and pushed, and pushed against the roaring wind heading the opposite direction of us.

On August 26th, Les and I rode our bikes from EV Free fullerton to Bolsa Chica State Beach, the meeting place of the college group for the evening. Easy enough, right? He and I both expected the cooler weather and the thought of meeting up with friends at the beach would practically sail us all the way to the beach. All was well until we got on the Santa Ana River trail.

The definition of "wind" is the perceptible natural movement of the air, especially in the form of a current of air blowing from a particular direction. In this case, as I mentioned earlier, that current of air was blowing at us, rather than with us.

The idea of "fly and die" is that you go ride after ride (or run after run, your choice) pushing yourself harder and harder, for longer and longer, until you can complete rides or runs with the "top guys." I had a cross country coach who swore by this philosophy for the younger guys on the team. He believed that if you didn't run with the wind, you'd always be in the dust. So, I started screaming this to Les as we both battled the wind on our way to the beach. Clearly this was the most memorable part of this ride, with the only exception being that I told Les that the wind would not be as fierce when we got to PCH (wrong).

All in all, this was 35.47 miles, and, because of the horrendous wind, took us 2 hours and 25 minutes.