WHAT MAKE US MOVE ON?

Em Janeiro de 2000 eu definia a minha "motivação para fazer BTT" do modo que se segue. Curioso, que sete anos volvidos aquilo que me move não se alterou...

WHAT MAKE US MOVE ON?

Literally, our bicycles. But seriously, it remains the question: what strange force move us to abdicate of the pseudo-comfort of my sofa or of one delicious "heavy-meal" to take the MTB "paths"? Probably the deep true explanation can only be found in the fields of the psychology or of the psychoanalysis, nevertheless, there are simple reasons that can explain why somebody that "already had age to have judgment " goes to spin, for times almost until the exhaustion, on the "paths":

* First the will of "evasion". A word often spooked that it means to escape of one prison, understood here as the urban prison and the one of the daily stress. In fact, those are good moments of evasion that we pass on the " paths " mounting on our bikes.

* Second the "adventure". In fact there is a good portion of adventure in those " paths ". It’s related with the inponderability of which way to chose on a crossroad, where sometimes, the options are unexpected; or, still, with the innumerable episodes that happens to us on the "paths" where we circulate on a different way as a motorist on a ordinary road, I use to say, often, that it is more difficult to navigate between Palmela and Sesimbra through the "paths" that from Lisbon to Madrid on a highway. Each curve, each jump or each descending are, for us, an adventure and an act of passion for the controlled risk, for the adrenaline injected in the blood stream in a moderate and rational way in order that we do not mix adventure with unconsciousness.

* Third, the "environment ". To circulate in the "paths" means to circulate outside of the urban accumulations, away from confused roads, far of the motorized vehicles, crossing natural parks, breathing pure air, reaching the mountain top with flaring landscapes where few had been before and where we feel them in intense communion with the Nature and, if we believe, with God Himself. Away from crowds and confusion of the cities where the spaces are inhuman builded according the motor vehicles that impregnates the air with pollution. We learn to know and to respect Mother Nature and, therefore, to be more intelligent and more conscientious citizens in presence of its innumerable threats. For us the progress it is not a fast automobile but one immovable tree in the top of a mountain. That’s how we create our "roots" and how we learn to love Mother Nature above all the other things.

* Fourth, the "friendship". Maybe one old-fashioned value that seems to be overtaked by today’s social life but that we care and increased by the solidarity links between the elements of the group. The friendship, for us is not a vacant term, but something that grows up and solidifies in the arduousness that we share, in the construction and the following of common values that united us, what the French call "l’esprit de corp" or that the old ones assigned with " et pluribus unum ". Therefore I affirm: - it is good to have friends.

* Fifht, the "spirit of sacrifice", which means to participate in something that it is extremely demanding from a physical and a mental point of view and to surpass the difficulties that we faced, "Situs, Altus, Fortus" seems to be one of our main mottoes. In fact, only someone with an enormous spirit of sacrifice can overcome the difficulty that is to up-hill a mountain with an inclination of 20% in a poor sandy path with the lungs and the pulse "breaking", arrive to the top and feel the enormous sensation of happiness. The words of an anonymous author resume everything: " Full of God, I fear nothing, because it comes what it comes, nothing will be greater then my soul ".

* In last, but not the least, the passion for the "physical fitness", to feel ourselves in peace with our own body, to cultivate the leisure and the physical aspect as a essential component of the welfare and to despise all those elements that are harmful to your body, as all the types of excesses. It’ s how we obtain superiors physical performances, in function of our age, and comparatively with many other people who confuse sedentary habits with happiness and becomes a kind of "loosers of the life" dragging its increasing obesity in the restaurants tables or in their car seats. When we walk on our beaches in the Summer time we find many adepts of the "eat & drink national sport" - standing before so many obesity is even to admire that there are no more illnesses on our society. To feel great physically, it’s also, like to the Renaissance’s man, to feel great mentally. Thus, we follow the principle of Juvenal of "Mens Sana in Corpore Sano".