Overthinking Things……

I am as ready as I’ll ever be. There are a limited number of times I can pack and unpack my bike in preparation for our ride across America. There are a limited number of additional miles of training I can clock up and there are a finite number of lists I can write. I cannot be more ready and yet, we have ten more days until we leave and my usually rational self has taken to overthinking things. Seriously overthinking things, none of which are particularly helpful at this stage in my preparations.

Even when asleep, my mind is overthinking things. I am having a recurring dream where I am cycling to Yellowstone National Park and I cannot cycle fast enough to outrun the grizzly bear chasing me. I’m sure it is related to a more general anxiety related to undertaking such a huge challenge. However my recurrent dream is beginning to unsettle my normally rational self, so to try to maintain some perspective, I engaged in a spot of Googling to see what the chances of being mauled by a grizzly bear actually are.

In Yellowstone specifically, since records began in 1872, eight people have been fatally attacked by bears, all of them of the grizzly variety. That’s reassuringly only one death every 130 years or so.

I learned from my Googling that in America, the chances of being injured by a bear are 1 in 2.1 million. I was surprised to learn that the chances of being killed by a bee in America however are 1 in 41,076 and the chances of being killed by another person in America are 1 in 18,989.

I was bemused to read that I had missed the suggestion that panda bears aren’t real but are actually people dressed in bear suits, in a conspiracy theory that apparently went viral on TikTok a few years ago. It was at this point I began to suspect my Googling was not helping my overthinking, nor indeed my sanity, so I drew it to a close. I concluded that the odds are very much in my favour and if I carry my bear spray and follow the guidance when cycling through bear territory then I need not worry excessively about coming to any harm from a grizzly bear.

Having rationally put my grizzly bear overthinking into perspective, I now find myself wondering if if I should start worrying about bees, other humans and perhaps, despite there being several thousand miles between the natural habitat of panda bears and Yellowstone National Park, what the chances of seeing a person dressed as a Panda bear might be and what risk that might pose?

I learned that there are many interpretations of what dreaming about being chased by a bear might mean and was not surprised to read that it could mean that something scary, uncomfortable, or overwhelming in real life may be headed in your direction. I wonder what that might be?

Sincerely hoping that normal service will be resumed on the thinking front when I actually start the challenge.

Nine days and counting………

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