the red pill

I love gadgets. 

I want to know how fast I am going.  I want to know how many watts are being transferred into motion.  I want to know how far I went.  I want to know how many feet that I rolled up.  Give me an overlay of my GPS waypoints on a topo map.  I want to be able to tell you what my cadence was.  I want to put it all into a computer and see it on pretty pie charts, bar graphs, numbers, decimal points, calendars.  I want it now give it to me caffeinated and in HD.

Could I turn it all off?  Could I do it all without having a number, a dot with a line, or a colored piece of pie?  Could I unplug, take the tech out of my life?  How would I ever quantify, calculate, nurmerate?  How can I even breathe without knowing how many calories I am burning to sustain life?  Was that 144 or 145bpm?  Did I gain weight? Is it water? Is it muscle? Don't tell me it's FAT!!

I love I'm addicted to gadgets.

I don't want all of this in my life, I need all of this.  I know, I know it's a sickness.  I've taken something as pure as bicycle and turned it into a wheeled iPod with more computing power than the first Mercury Missions.  I am guilty, I'm a sinner in the Church of the Purists.  I've eaten from the forbidden fruit and my eyes are open, open to technology and wanting to know.  Wanting to know everything, every number, every equation, every solution.  Give me the answers, yesterday.

I have to know.  I have to know, so that I can change anything and everything to just get faster.  I ride, to work harder, to get faster, to ride longer, to work harder, to get faster, to work harder, to ride longer...