Well, after over a month’s hiatus I am back. The good thing about this blog is that it lets me take a month off without an editor (other than myself) breathing down my neck. It’s a nice respite from previous writing I have done, but also lends itself to letting the rest of my worlds consume all of my time that I would naturally allocate to writing.

That said, I actually have been writing. Over the last month I have basically completely rewritten most of the Biker Chaplain training material. So, I really should be honest and state that I have not been doing any conversational writing during this period.

Which is a way of saying that I have not been assuaging that part of me that must ramble in print. I had to stay targeted on my topic and not let my mind wander to topics of choice.

Which basically means that I am pent up now, mentally, with too much on my mind.

During this time I have also been trying to read a book given to me by a good friend, Tommy Newberry’s “Success is not an Accident.” My friend had told me what a great book this was and I had been remiss in getting it due to many other reading projects. He, noting it missing from the stack of books I normally bring to Star Bucks and was kind enough to get me a copy. Since starting the book, I have now “played it forward” and purchased it for three other people.

Books like this are dangerous material for people like me. It focuses upon moving concepts that make one successful forward and allowing “God’s Plan” for my success to play out, with a lot of God ordained work from me. It’s rare that I agree and connect with every concept in a book, but I have with this book.

This is dangerous because it pushes me forward on concepts that I have let lag due to my, already overloaded corporate work schedule. It pushes me forward toward what I think is my “God Ordained” path toward expanding my writing and my ministry was always supposed to be.

God has given me a fantastic and very successful career in IT management. He also introduced me to my ministry partner and the closest friend I have ever had (this from a guy who lets very few that close). In recent years I believe I have found that he did both to create an avenue for me to be able to create and co-create what I now believe is my reason for being on the planet. My writing and my ministry.

Those two things look so small in print and are so large in reality, easily second and third jobs. Both of which I am still defining the parameters around. This book is helping me focus those parameters in ways I have not been able to do in the past.

You see, I am hoping one day to see the ministry I co-founded go international and become a resource for a multitude of fringe ministries. Those ministries that take their message to the streets like Biker Chaplain. Additionally, I hope my writing will one day produce a constant stream of revenue and the two together will sustain me well into my retirement years (if you could call them such as I do not plan to retire from either ministry or writing until God retires me from life).

I understand that, in and of itself, that is a tall order, but I have also experienced a God driven purpose in what we have created in these areas to date. Things that have come to fruition in such a way that they could only be something driven outside of me or my ministry partner.

Thus, I know that if I will provide the effort God can and will provide the path and these things can become all that I wish them to be because I am too upon His path for me.

Now I get that some will negate this possibility out of hand. Not necessarily because they do not believe that God can do it, but because they will want to give me “good” advice. This would include a heavy dose of what they will call reality that will be contrary to where I hope this leads. They will want to protect me from myself, and I appreciate that. However, it is exactly when these doubts creep in that I must stay vigilant to stay the course. I have a good job that I like and it provides me the resources to dream these dreams, and make these plans. Today, it coexist with my ministry and my writing and the three together only cost me a bit more in time thank I would be giving regularly to leisure, and far less productive, activities.

Thus, as I plan for my future and focus setting personal, professional and entrepreneurial goals I can know that the path I trod is one paved by the grace of God.

I want to slow down a bit. Yes, this is a component of my advancing years, but, in reality it is more a component of not letting two things happen; 1. Life pass me by & 2. Live my life with less aggravation.

Since my last piece, “Consider This”, and the circumstances surrounding the narrative, I have been doing some observational research. It’s been something close to “face of the sun” hot early this year in Texas, so I have been driving more than riding. This gives me a better platform for observation, as I have to be uber vigilant on the bikes to keep my hide in one piece.

My observation has been in relation to two elements; cell phone usage and anger.

It will probably come as no surprise for me to tell you that well over fifty percent of the people I pass on the road are, in some way, using their phones. Text, phone calls, web searches, games, Facebook, whatever, they are doing it. Not hands free mind you. In fact I am curious how we drive at all anymore, so few hands are actually on the wheels of the cars around us.

I understand that my research is far from scientific. However, while my statistics may not be one hundred percent accurate, if we take the auspice of eighty percent of statistics being made up, and sixty percent being inaccurate, that gives me a roughly twenty percent chance of being fifty percent correct.

My calculations are indisputable.

Regardless of how accurate I might be, this situation and its rising tide is creating a world that is more than a little dangerous (as a biker or not – heck, it’s dangerous to be on the sidewalk in some cases). People are wielding two thousand pound hunks of metal in a ballet of steel destruction that can make a Die Hard movie look like a Disney flick.

You think I jest? Let’s take the events of yesterday into account. While leisurely heading to my local bookstore for yet another book to jamb into my overstuffed shelves, an accident slowed my progress. As traffic started to mount and ambulance was working its way from the rear of the pack to address the situation at hand. I, playing good citizen, and being in the left hand lane pulled into a turn lane to allow him clear access to the crash scene just ahead of me. I was clearly in the minority as one of only two cars in the left lane to move aside. The three people who passed me, on their cell phones, were far too busy to be bothered by something as trivial as a person’s life!

Once the ambulance passed I tried to reenter traffic and was promptly treated to blaring horn of the older gentleman still in the lane I had vacated. Being my good, even tempered, Christian Chaplain-self, I promptly stopped half way back into the lane, put my truck in park, opened the door, stood on my side step and yelled over the top of my truck to this kind gentleman, “DID YOU EVEN SEE THE AMBULANCE? THAT’S WHY I PULLED OVER!”  I may have also commented on the his state of intelligence, but that’s beside the point.

Feeling better for enlightening my fellow road-mate, I reentered my vehicle and pulled in front of the gentleman and past the crash scene. Upon passing me a block ahead this older gentleman spat, what I can only imagine were words of thanks and apology (spittle hitting the windshield, dash and passenger side window) and then motioned my status as his number one. Score one for age based maturity (on both our parts).

This would bring me to my second point, anger (mine and his).

I have driven all around the US and in a few countries abroad.  I have witnessed some truly amazing examples of bad driving, and the anger driven by those examples. But what I have noticed in the states in the past few years, and heightened in the past six months, is an escalation of road based rage that pales in comparison. I can only speculate as to what is driving this heightened state, but it is increasing, and we are the lesser for it.

It seems to matter little whether I am on my bike or in my half-ton pickup truck, people just do not care if they hit you or not. They would rather prove their point, whatever that might be, by forcing you off the road or running the risk of running into you than give right of way.

Now, this has to be something scientifically relatable to the vehicle itself. I believe this because these same people, the ones you run into at the local StarBucks, Albertsons or theater would never go so far face to face. Of course, my theory may be flawed (though I do not think it is) being that I am a big man that few want to “take attitude” with face to face. I can be an imposing figure and sometimes relish (I know that’s bad) in my slightly intimidating visage.  So as such I will consider the fact that few take an attitude of anger with my wife in public either. Thus, I can only assume that it has something to do with the vehicle and the invulnerability we feel while encased within.

Now, to this end I know there has been much research done on road rage that definitely points to the change in people’s physiology behind the wheel. However, my informal assessment is that this has gone from a simple element of feeling invulnerable encased in our steel cages, to allowing our mounting anger to override our common sense. How else does one explain the rampant rise in what I and so many others are experiencing? And I am not talking primarily about men. Far more women are now taking this “Get the Heck outta my way” attitude.

I am sure the economy and mounting job (or jobless) stress accounts for a lot of this. We are all required to do more with less with our money or in our jobs daily now. We are all feeling a bit hunted and continually under the pressure of keeping one step ahead. I get all of this and think that it is high time for the peasants to once again begin to take their rightful place in the world. I am not talking about governmental takeover, I am talking about the fact that we have forgotten that we (jointly) have the ability to change the trends in all that we are involved in. We hold the power to influence cost of every commodity we secure for our daily living, every service we subscribe to and every price tag put on any item we consume. We have forgotten this in our dependence upon those tags having certain names on them and being willing to go deeply into debt to obtain the latest market scheme.

We will only reduce our stress when we start, once again, taking control of our lives. We are the “who did it to me” generation. We cry injustice and then go pay for said same injustice and are angered by both the injustice itself and our weakness to keep ourselves from indulging in it. Thus our anger is continually on the rise and it seeps into every facet of our lives.

It is time for us to observe ourselves and deal with the horror of what we see glaring back at us from our on visage.

I had a rough weekend. Nothing insurmountable, just a lot of little things that made for a less than enjoyable time. So by Sunday afternoon I was in a foul mood from half a dozen small items that, ultimately, amount to nothing other than nuisance, really.

Then I get the call.

My ministry partner lets me know that a biker had been hit and killed. As Chaplains for the local HOG chapter, this fellow worked at the shop the chapter is sponsored by, we are called to provide pastoral care for the families of both. These are visits no one likes to make.

The man was a veteran of Desert Storm, husband and father. Their youngest the cutest little boy who is autistic, a situation the widow will now have to deal with alone. A step daughter who was close to her step father and had followed his footsteps into service of our country in the Navy.  A grieving widow still in shock.

This can really put a rough weekend in perspective. My nuisances paled in comparison to this family’s pain.

A death like this is compounded, as it so often is, by the extended repercussions of how it happened. A lady on her cell phone not paying close enough attention had hit him. She will now have to live with the death of this man for the rest of her life. The most expensive phone call of her life.

My first response, as a biker, is compassion for the family and anger at the lady for her absentmindedness. For the fact that she, like so many others, put safety on hold while she had someone else on the line.

I do not want to diminish either the family’s loss or what will probably be a pivotal point in the woman who caused the accident’s life. But it is a moment to reflect on two things.

The precious nature of one’s life and the increasing danger we are experiencing on the road.

The world is a dangerous place. As a biker, you do not take that statement for granted. I often say “ride like the grass is coming after you” to others, and truer words have not been spoken. Over the course of the weekend I was on my bike only a few times. However, in those brief moments I encountered no less than half a dozen potentially dangerous encounters. Encounters that ranged from the innocuous road debris to a gentleman who got so mad that I was taking up what was obviously his lane that I believe when he pulled up next to me he was fumbling with his glove box while cursing me, to potentially retrieve a gun.

Situations like this cause a biker to then have to further endanger him or herself by riding to get away from the crazies.

I accept, as all bikers must, that what I do has the potential for disaster. For this reason I have moved more and more toward wearing protective gear that is not consistent with the culture I am a part of. I am most at ease on my bike now with a full face helmet (from my half helmets of old) and complete riding jacket, even though it means that I swelter in the Texas sun.

I have determined that I am more concerned about making it to a ripe old age and dying quietly in my sleep than I am about current comfort while on my bikes.

Cell phones and SUV’s have become the pariah of the biker. As with this gentleman’s death, we are constantly at odds with people distracted by cell phone conversations, texting and any number of other electronic convenience activities.

People talk continually about the anger they have over bikers like me on loud Harleys. Well, I am of the school of thought that “Loud pipes save lives”. I know the research says that this is not the case, but I can tell all those researchers out there (who probably do not ride) that a blip of my throttle and rap of my pipes has more than once alerted someone that I was beside them but in their blind spot as they tried to change lanes and run me over.

I get that this is a delicate balance, one between us harsh biker types and the rest of the civilized world. However, after living many years in both worlds I prefer the harsh biker types. They may be harsh, but I trust them more and know that what I see is what I get. They are aware of what is going on around them at all time. Interestingly enough, the group I am now most frightened of is women in SUV’s. In the past month I have had three women quite literally try to run me down in SUV’s. Once when I was in my huge quad-cab Dodge pickup! This woman decided she wanted to get in my lane and make a right and did not care at all that I was already occupying the space.

Now quantum physics says that one object cannot occupy the same space as another object of similar mass without displacement of some or all of the other objects mass. This lady obviously had displacement of my mass in mind, and did so without concern over anything in her way. This was not some random accidental movement of mass, this was an eye to eye, “I’m coming so you can move or I can hit you” situation.

Now, ladies, I am a southern gentleman who was taught to be kind to women, children and my elders. But there is a limit that even a southern gentleman reaches. Of course, what am I to do? Damage my vehicle and endanger others to make a point? Obviously, that was what she was prepared to do as both time and space ran out and mass displacement had to occur on some quantum level, I acquiesced.

 Acquiescence is not my nature. However, vehicle damage is not my nature either. Thus, for this once, I allowed my gentler nature to assert itself and I displaced my mass.

 I was stunned at this woman’s boldness and carless manner. She had no qualms about trying to run me off the road. Having had it happen a number of times since, I can only assess that women in SUV’s are feeling invincible and willing to wield that invincibility.

 So I sit here, Sunday evening, after a bad weekend that has just been capped by an even worse event and looking at my family, some of who are just beginning to go out into this cruel world. I am comforted in the fact that I know they are looked over by someone much greater than I and that He has their lives in His hands. However, as a father and husband, I am not comforted by what I now experience almost daily. The increased aggression, road rage, and even the simply temperamental people who are licensed to wield a weapon of singular destruction on a daily basis in the single-minded pursuit of their simple lives.

Consider that the call you are placing or receiving may not be worth someone’s life. Consider that the person in the car or on the bike next to you might have a family to take care of. Consider that in the grand scheme of things you are but a grain of sand on the beach of life – no greater, nor lesser than any other grain of sand. Consider that the life you save may just be your own.