So I would like to give a full on lengthy version of how I have gotten here. It sets the preface for things to come. Having turned 29 recently and gone through more than one mental breakdowns it felt like in my twenties, and still living in an ever and oh so more obviously corrupt and unjust society, it has really given me the push to follow the wildest dreams I have come up with over the past ten years. So let that set the stage, it is time I share whats been brewing up in my head and how I see things, what makes me happy, lessons I have learned, and how experiencing all of these things has led me to here, writing a blog because somewhere along the lines of my life, I realized, some paper trails are good. I won't bore you with the details of my younger years. I spent my time outside skateboarding, riding my bike, eventually lead into snowboarding, and I was a Boy Scout. I actually received my Eagle Scout award at 16 years old, one of the youngest age's you can obtain it at. So outdoors, camping, hiking through the woods to get to places was a typical day to day operation. I also was a paper boy at the age of nine and have never not really had some sort of income since then. So that has taught me a lot about delayed gratification and the reward of working hard for things. I never try and look back and classify myself as this or that. I always found myself communicating with friends from all different walks of life. I found that really helped shape me to see how everyone struggles in their own way. Then when I was 13 years old I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes and soon found out that was going to be a bit of a struggle. Having diabetes for 16 years now has taught me everything. It has made me think long term, its made me become healthier than ever before, even on my worst days. Having diabetes has just really taught me how to "grow up" in short. So ever sine then, it has kinda been a balance between having a blast everyday not worrying about whats next and freaking out because I need health insurance and insulin and regularly fed and all these things that sound so simple but get all jumbled up and contorted when you throw in a crazy lifestyle.
So fast forward, through high school learning how to eat better, learning things about my body now, and being aware that physical activities have a huge impact on my numbers. So I followed that passion and fell in love with "fitness", never understanding at that time what it was or how it worked. Simple gym class understanding of it all. I work hard, get sore and tired, replenish with meat protein, and i'll be looking like Arnold in no time. So I tried real hard to gain weight and build muscle. It was fun at the time and taught me proper posture and lifting techniques, but I always noticed I would sacrifice some of my agility with being sore all the time. Then you find out all about body profiles and learn you may never look like that. Not to mention injuries throughout the years. Learning how to rehab, come back, and face the mental fear of doing it again or worse! That is when I fell in love with calisthenic style and body weight workouts. I began having fun at the gym and results actually happened. I began focusing on what I needed out of the gym instead of what everyone wants to go to the gym for. So this boost in fitness triggered a health kick at a younger than normal age, for the time I would say. I was working at my local ski shop since high school, Peak Ski and Board, and a random guy came in looking for a jacket next thing you know we were talking and he was looking for a diabetic cyclist to do some experiments on. Turns out 1 month ago I sold my car and had been living life in the burbs solely from my bike. It was a wild time and taught me a lot about self sufficiency. So much in fact the next year I had moved to the city in hopes of never owning a car again. I had a "big boy" job at PNC bank as a loan administrator. It was a joke. I had a lovely sit down with my manager after six months and told her politely that this is a soul sucking place and I do not know what I am going to do but I cannot keep coming here. She opened up in that meeting and cried. You could see it hit home and that she was racing through time spent here when she wished of being elsewhere. We continue to talk in a friendly manner and she began to come back and realized there is no reason to regret that past, and wished me all the best!
At the time the only thing that made sense to me was riding my bike and I became a bike messenger. I have done concrete work, construction, and random stupid hard jobs most my life and being a messenger defiantly ranks up there with them. I had so much fun riding my bike everyday that I never realized how strong I had become, along with still working out and attending yoga classes. I treated my life like a ninja warrior, body is thy temple kind of shit. And it paid off, I was doing well for 1 or 6 messengers in the city. I continued mess life and found out about cyclocross, specifically single speed cyclocross. Since my work bike was a brakeless fixed gear bike (can't coast) riding a much lower gear ratio and being able to coast was easy, and it was on grass, dirt, and mud! After two or three years of racing and being in the sport, I had met a fellow type 1 diabetic and he crushed it! It made me question what I was doing wrong? So through him and more practice and dedication I was granted a spot on Team Novo Nordisk, an all diabetic cycling team. I rode for them for a year and it felt amazing to feel like something so much bigger and to have made it on such a large and reputable team. It lasted one season, and I was displease with how inefficient the team was and the lack of camaraderie amongst team members. It bummed me out, I thought it would be a great place to exchange ideas with other diabetic cyclists. Just didn't feel like a team fit for me. So I forged on trying my own team working with local shops like Kraynick's Bike Shop to host alley cats and CX races. During this time I was a spin instructor (certified from our jacket friend that needed a diabetic lab rat) teaching one or two classes a week, still living a carless life, working as a full time bike messenger, and started to travel to other cities to teach and certify others to become spin instructors. So life was all about bikes. And this was great, it taught me so much about endurance, how my body should actually work, heart rate and how to control it, increased mitochondria, just everything I needed to know to give me an extra edge on my diabetes. That's why I kept pedaling. Not to mention the time alone in the saddle to just think allowed so much to just brew up, so many thoughts I never knew I had. All this while maintaining some time on a skateboard or snowboard and progressing fun art skills. Trying to make something happen with my life. About three years ago I got really into snowboarding again. It was something I always loved, it was always amazing to be in nature in the winter, having fun! I never did like winter though, I always wanted to be a surfer and live on a warm beach. So long story short that same ski shop I worked at in high school needed someone to run it for the winter or it was going to get shut down. It was a no brainer, 27 year old me running a ski shop, thats what 15 year old me dreamed of! Since then, I have really looked back into the me I was, from early teens to drinking age. It is a magical time, everything seems possible. So over the past two years I have been making moves to tap into that magical era of life and resurge that innocence outlook on the world and just simple flow through life instead of resisting what you know and what your good at to impress some people that don't care either way. My latter twenties have, and still are an, exploratory time for self wander and discovery. So having "officially" one year left of my twenties, I wanna send it off with a bang, I want to build that van out, I want to travel west and explore more, I want to share the fitness knowledge I have with anyone willing to listen, and I want to inspire everyone, type 1 diabetics especially, to go out there and make it happen, cause no one else will for you.