But it is about biking. The New York Times had a short piece about Svein Tuft up the other day. He’s a Canadian who’ll be riding in the Tour of California and will probably ride in the Tour de France. The article’s well worth a read, but I wanted to quote a couple of lines from its end:
When this new life unnerves him, he said, he looks at a tattoo on his right forearm: We will never be here again. It was his mantra while on trips with Bear, who died seven years ago.
“It was by far the most content I’ve ever been,” he said. “My bike was a piece of junk. I had nowhere to go, no place to be. Didn’t have anyone telling me what to do. If I felt like lying on the side of the road, I did.”
To say more would take away from his story, but that ethic, that sense of taking responsibility for the present, seemed something that we (or maybe just I) could take for my life. We will never be here again as a way of saying embrace the moment of where we are because it might never come again in this way.
los angeles rides 
My next tattoo is already planned; up the backside of my forearm:
“Anything is possible, it’s easy.”
The first part is from the Hendrix song, “The Power of Soul” and the second is from The Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love” and it will be in Jimi and John’s handwriting.
A similar mantra, I suppose.
One of the hardest skills I’ve tried to develop has been to learn from the past and prepare for the future, but live in the present. I’m still working on it.
There was something DJ Waldie said some while back that just came to mind: One of the problems with the City of Los Angeles is its collective inability to live in the present. It’s always talking about the future. And then as a way of thinking Tuft’s ethic for a city: Celebrate where we are as a city, cherish it – the views of the mountains this afternoon, for example, the kind of heartbreakingly clear light that throws the whole city into sharp relief after the rain…