About two weeks ago, we had maybe the final spring snow in our part of Den­ver. I was fas­ci­nated at how snow fell on the kids’ tram­po­line. Was it wind cur­rents that blew snow off that part of the sur­face? Or was it shel­tered by a nearby tree?

A sci­en­tist could have told me. Or they could have done a 6-month study on what caused the snow dis­per­sal pat­tern. Or maybe a 6-year study.

This lit­tle say­ing is on my bicy­cle shoes.

I don’t agree.

There are times when it’s appro­pri­ate to fol­low. We some­times have to admit that oth­ers know more than we do about cer­tain things. We fol­low. We some­times must real­ize that another has been before us. They prob­a­bly know the way bet­ter than we do. We follow.

Even bicy­cle rac­ers know that you must switch off lead­ing in longer races. If you break the wind for the rid­ers behind you, you’re using up more energy than they are. You must let them lead part of the time to share the energy load.

Lead­ing is great. But not all the time.

A gen­tle­man not far from my house has a Fire­bird in his garage. It’s a shelf for things to rest on dur­ing their jour­ney to other des­ti­na­tions. And it har­bors a major dust collection.

My guess is that it’s a source of guilt for him. Every time he sees the car, he thinks, “This week­end, I’ll start ren­o­vat­ing it.” The week­end starts and he real­izes he has lots of other things to do. The week­end fin­ishes and the Fire­bird has been neglected. Again.

If I knew Mr. Fire­bird owner, I might sug­gest that he sell the car and give up that dream of restor­ing it. He’d then free up a slot in his garage — less snow removal on snowy morn­ings for the car in the dri­ve­way. He’d release some cash to be used in what­ever fun or wor­thy cause he can come up with. And the Fire­bird might end up being restored by the new owner.

My point? Give your­self per­mis­sion to get rid of that project you’ll never do.

I took the photo with my phone’s cam­era; thus the poor quality.

...Stronger than me.

One line I will always remem­ber is from a James Tay­lor song, “That’s Why I’m Here.” He sings:

Per­fect strangers can call you by name
Pay good money to hear fire and rain
Again and again and again

And he has sung “Fire and Rain” more times than I can pos­si­bly imag­ine. If I were a pop­u­lar musi­cian, I might puke if I were asked to sing a song one more time.

At South by South­west, I dis­cov­ered that most of the bands there per­formed more than seven times in that one-week span. That’s not any kind of a record — but just one week of singing a song over and over would do me in.

So let’s give it up for pro­fes­sional musi­cians. Hug one you know.

(The photo is a still from a video I took of the band Ten­nis.)