Guest writer

What life can be

For millennials, a different desk

Most people are paralyzed by their nightmares, but for me, it's a daydream that causes my footsteps to falter.

I keep picturing myself at age 50. In the dream I have a wife who loves me, kids who have drawn from my strength their entire lives, and a question from T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Akin to the innards of a fortune cookie, laminated, laying on top of the cubicle desk I've lived at for two decades, it reads, "Do I dare/Disturb the universe?" I reply "No" every day.

Today it's 6:45 a.m. in Corvara, Italy, and I don't have a moment to daydream. I can't lose focus while I'm guiding, or a guest may take a wrong turn, ride through splintering gravel, or descend too quickly. My work has disturbed my notion of what a job can be.

If I weren't here to ride with these people during the Maratona dles Dolomites, a granfondo with 9,000-plus cyclists, who would tell them about the horror stories from World War I where the Austrians and Italians shot cannons at the mountains to cause avalanches and bury one another? Who would paint the picture of the late Marco Pantani cementing himself as a cycling legend as he rocketed up these mountains at a pace fit for a Vespa?

I'm an intern cycling guide and content creator for inGamba, the cycling travel company that practices World Tour-caliber service, and I have the best desk in the world: A bicycle.

I work in one of the most beautiful places in the universe that I can only explain by saying it looks like someone threw U.S. 1 into the middle of the Rocky Mountains. I ride a Pinarello Dogma F8--a bike more valuable than my net worth--all day, and have life-changing conversations with people while I do so. And yes, it's hard work.

Now is where you expect me to complain. I'm generalized as ungrateful and told that I don't know the character-shaping qualities of hard work, and you start to tell me about the job that you had when you were 20 years old so that you may change my perspective and catalyze my transformation into the person you'd like for all millennials to be. Now is where I hope that you will listen.

During my life, I've been fortunate to learn from my own mistakes. I've been more fortunate to learn from those of others. Many adults have lent me their stories so that I may properly battle the inevitable trials of youth. The most sobering of these stories was a man sitting me down as a confused 16-year-old and telling me that regret was the most painful thing he had yet to endure. Since this conversation I decided I'd never deny myself a challenge, never settle for the wrong answer when the right one was available, and do my best to avoid regret.

This lesson was particularly pungent in my mind a year ago as I was working for an independent contractor in southwest Little Rock. The day-to-day grind included sweating, painting the exterior of houses, ripping thorny vines to make backyards into backyards again, sweating, tiling floors, and scrolling through Instagram during my lunch break while sweating.

Scrolling through Instagram may be the demise of a generation suffering from the grass-is-always-greener complex, but it's what introduced me to the cycling travel industry. I double-tapped my damp screen to "like" a Bicycling Magazine photo of an inGamba trip and thought to myself, "If other people get to ride their bikes all day and call it work, why can't I?" More than this, I thought that if I didn't try to find some work as a cycling guide the following summer I'd regret it for the rest of my life.

I had only been riding my bike for about a month when I saw these pictures, having just decided to end my competitive running career, so it made sense that I should be handed a position I had no qualifications for.

Like a kid asking his parents for a present without any special occasion, I started sending emails, cover letters, and resumes to every cycling travel company I could find. The emails I had so carefully thought out were greeted with denial and, more often than not, ignored. Why wouldn't you hire a 20-year old from Little Rock to lead cycling trips in Italy?

It took me six months of denials to realize I was asking for too much, and once I realized that, everything changed.

With a less demanding, more willing attitude, I began advertising myself as an intern. Whether it be washing bikes, sending emails, organizing equipment, guiding, making phone calls, or preparing food, the work didn't matter if it meant I was getting my foot in the door. This mindset and offering developed interest, interest led to interviews, and a good interview launched me into this fortunate position.

"Do I dare/Disturb the universe?" has become less a question of angst and more a promotion for a cause. I no longer have daydreams that paralyze my pursuit of happiness, only plans to enable my venture toward an engaging life. "Yes," I'll always reply.

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Gabriel Lodge is a 2014 graduate of Catholic High School for Boys and is now a junior at the University of Arkansas majoring in news/editorial journalism. He is spending 10 weeks in Corvara, Italy, with the cycling travel company inGamba Tours.

Editorial on 07/28/2016

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