What a Wonderful World

Church signs are the haikus of the western world. They boil down the essence of the message to as many words as will fit on the sign and the letters that you have in the box ("Who the hell took all the L's -- you can't make HELL without L's!").

My two favorite church signs this year? Last week, I saw this one:

Come inside to talk to Jesus. Text message him now if you can't wait.

But my favorite, and one that actually struck a chord with me, is this one:

Grumbly hateful, or humbly grateful.

Sometimes I am grumbly hateful. I don't know many people that aren't from time to time, but now is when we are supposed to think of how really good we have it, and how much worse things could potentially suck, and be humbly grateful. This is not easy, however, for those of us for whom being humble -- due to our obvious superiority -- is difficult.

Nonetheless, one of the benefits of being a superhero with a far-above-average intelligence is that I can imagine what it would be like to not be so superior. Thanks to those ruminations, I was able to put together a list of what I'm grateful for:

1. RandoGirl and the RandoDaughter. They are still the two people with whom I most usually like to hang out. They keep me sane ... or close enough to it.
2. My other cycling friends. They make it much more fun -- and sometimes harder -- to be on a bike. But when they make it difficult, it's for my own good.
3. The rest of my family, who have managed to maintain reasonably good health this year.
4. Being lucky enough to ride (more or less) away from all of my crashes this year without permanent debilitating injury.
5. Being lucky enough to have won both of the races I entered this year, mostly thanks to being on teams with great riders.
6. Being lucky enough to be born into a good family in what I still consider the greatest country in the world, so that I have had a chance to make the most of my abilities and the freedom to present my ridiculous opinions in this blog.
7. My loyal flock (is three or more a flock?) of readers. I would probably write this blog regardless of whether anyone read it or not, but I get a huge kick out of people commenting on it and telling me later how much they enjoyed it. Or hated it, as the case may be.
8. Finally, roads like Spanntown Road, which I headed down to for a quick 40+ miles Thanksgiving morning.

It was chilly and windy, and this time of year I don't need to worry about burning off the mashed potatoes like this.

But I had the wind at my back all down this little five-mile lane, and there were absolutely no cars. Who could be grumbly hateful with that?