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Video Summary
It can’t be business all the time, right? Every year on my birthday I like to go for a bike ride equivalent to the number of miles of my age.
I am along the Glacial Drumlin Trail when I saw a chipmunk speed by at a very high rate of speed and I was reminded that chipmunks can offer a little bit of a lesson on the trail.
So what can we learn from these chipmunks on the trail? Make a decision and move. Continue watching to find out more.
Video Transcript
Hey, it’s Jeff here. It’s my birthday and on my birthday I like to take a bike ride every year. Try to match the number of miles to my age. That’s not happening this year. I somehow injured a disc in my neck early before summer and had to be sidelined for a while.
Anyway, back riding again. I am working to make it two days to hit my age and it looks like I’ll make that. So really excited about that. I am along the Glacial Drumlin Trail. Let me see if I can show you that in the background here. There we go, a couple bikes going by. So near Wales, Wisconsin right now and I’m at the site of a train derailment that happened.
Apparently it happened about eight times between 1955 and 1984 at this location. The curve is a little bit too dangerous here, I guess and there’s some debris. Let’s see if we can show that behind me. There. There you go. See some of it on the ground. That’s from 1955, I believe.
We used to come here with the kids when they were young and have a picnic. There used to be a picnic table here and get out on the trail. It was great. But right now, what I’d like to mention is chipmunks.
Why chipmunks?
Well, because they are running across the trail all the time. And I was reminded today when I saw one speed by at a very high rate of speed that chipmunks can offer a little bit of a lesson on the trail.
At another point along the way next to a road, I saw a dead deer. And you can imagine when a deer runs across a busy road and there are cars moving at a high rate of speed, it’s pretty dangerous for that deer. Deer is a big target and cars are rather large as well.
So if the two of them meet, it’s not a very good thing. But you think out on a trail with a bicycle and how narrow bike tires are and how small a chipmunk is. You’d think the two would never meet, but they do. There are surprisingly large number of dead chipmunks every year on this trail.
And I’m thinking about it because today a chipmunk ran across at such a high rate of speed. It’s just a blur of fur and you would never imagine that it would come into contact with a bike. And so I was thinking about that and about an experience on yesterday’s ride and here’s the difference.
The chipmunks that live, they are determined. They want to get across that trail as fast as possible and they just zip right across. Yeah, they might even come close. You might see it run out right in front of you, but it makes it across. It lives.
What’s the difference between the chipmunk that lives and the chipmunk that dies?
Well, the chipmunk that dies does one of two things. First, it could be just standing on the side watching and it knows that its hole is across the other side of that trail. So if it’s in danger, it’s going to run toward its hole. Well the bike’s coming along and that chipmunk is watching. It’s thinking, it’s wondering if it’s going to be in danger.
And when that bike is really, really close, it decides, yep, it’s too scary, better run now and it runs right in front of the tire and it’s a dead chipmunk. It hesitated, it waited too long to make that decision.
The other lesson here is for the chipmunk that is already halfway across the trail. It’s already safe. There is no danger for this particular chipmunk, but maybe its hole is on the side of the trail that it’s moving away from.
Or for some other reason, it second guesses its decision to cross the trail and it turns around. It was safe. It could have made it across, but because it’s second guessed it turned around and ran right in front of that tire and it’s now a dead chipmunk.
So what can we learn from these chipmunks on the trail?
Make a decision and move. The chipmunk that makes the decision and runs across the trail without hesitating or second guessing its decision is the one that makes it across, the one that lives. How often do we do that in our business?
Where there’s something that we need to make a decision on and we either hesitate or we second guess and then it doesn’t turn out well. Instead make that decision and go for it. Because if you discover that that decision was not a good decision, it’s not too late. You lived, you can change your mind. You can undo it. You can try something else.
That’s fine. But if you make a decision and then you hesitate or you second guess, you’re just slowing yourself down and who knows. The decision, the ultimate thing that you tried to achieve could be lost.
So anyway, went a little philosophical on the birthday ride today, but that was running through my head after seeing the chipmunk and the deer. So I thought I’d share that with you. So happy birthday to me, it is a good ride. It is great weather today and I’m going to hit my birthday miles split into two days. So all is well, bye.
