"The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men.....

Team Ride Red Mouse
(image from istockphoto.com)

"I gotta warn you.  There is a mouse in the Rider RV."  Thus the warning of Dolores after spending three days driving the RV out to Oceanside for the start of RAAM 2011.  Pete and Dolores had endured tire blow outs, forest fires, and apparently rodents to take the RV out to RAAM.   I didn't worry to much about the rodent.  I figured it would ride out in the RV, arrive in sunny California, find a nice condo to occupy on the beach at Oceanside, bless itself for having the common sense to move from Austin in the summer to California in the summer and it would do all right.  If I had known what was coming, I would have made sure it got out in California, as the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals might have gotten me on the way to Annapolis.  

In 1785 Scots poet Robert Burns wrote the poem ""To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough" Probably the best known part of that poem is as follows.....

But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,

An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!
Our team did an immense amount of planning for the RAAM.  Every event,  anticipation attempted - every contingency planned for, an every solution readied.  However, it is impossible to plan for every scenario that life will throw at you.  You will always run into something that you could not have anticipated happening.  With an event the magnitude of RAAM, it will happen.  The ability to handle issues as they arise, and not as they were planned for calls for flexibility of character, measured thought, a willingness to consider multiple options, to problem solve without thinking about the process of problem solving. All of these characteristics change with changing amounts of sleep, food and rest, some people simply find it hard to make decisions, and decisions must be made, actions taken - sometimes with limited opportunity to evaluate the situation.

No one gets on their bike and thinks.  "OK, I'm going to put one foot on the peddle and push down and forward with enough force to clip in my cleat, then I am going to push down on that peddle to get myself rolling at 2 mph, or at least enough speed to stay upright while I put the other foot on the other peddle and push down and forward with enough force to clip in my other cleat, then I am going to push down on that peddle with enough force to keep my momentum up and building to maybe 10mph..... etc. etc. ad nausem."  You just get on your bike and ride. If you stop and think each step out you will fall over.  What if your cleat doesn't clip in? Well you problem solve that as it happens. 

RAAM requires that you solve problems as they come at you.  If you stop or hesitate at every unforeseen event, you will stall and not move forward.  This is tough for people who need to think things through completely before acting.  It is a very uncomfortable place to be.  You can see the pain in their faces.  You can hear the frustration in their voice.

As Burns said in his poem, something unforeseen is going to happen no matter how much you plan for it.   Your ability to decide how much analysis is warranted before you act is part of how rapidly you can move across the U.S. during RAAM.

The mouse stayed in the RV.  It went to ground, building a quick but comfortable nest out of TP paper (2 ply I'm sure), stocking a few power bars, and watching the drama unfold around it.  It came back out last night while the RV was parked in our drive way.  Probably wishing it had avoided the heat and gotten off in California, but unwilling to miss the drama of RAAM unfolding before it.  I felt the same way.

   It really wasn't this bad, but it could have been.