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With built-in privacy display, security from the chip-up, and battery for busy schedules, Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra works as hard as you do. Visit Samsung.com slash business to learn more. This is optimal living daily episode 2808. Happy with the best possible option by Tynan of Tynan.com.
I'm your narrator, Justin Molick, the guy that reads blogs or articles to you every single day of the year, including weekends and holidays. I appreciate you listening every day. It really means a lot. We get right to another post as we optimize your life.
Happy with the best possible option by Tynan of Tynan.com. My motorcycle gave me three years of virtually no problems. Then water got into the tank and caused it to intermittently stop running. But we got to have that fixed.
The fuel pump broke, maybe because of the water issue. Once that was fixed, the bike felt better than ever. And it felt good making a 200 mile round trip journey to Carmel, California with Justine on the back. Our ride down was as pleasant as a three hour ride on a small street bike can be.
Our legs cramped up a bit and the back guy fastened to the tank slid around. But the beautiful scenery of the Pacific Coast highway kept us pleasantly distracted. After a visit to Carmel that went by too quickly, we loaded up the motorcycle again and headed back on Sunday afternoon. We took Highway 1 up to Santa Cruz and then decided to take Route 17 over the mountain to save some time and see something different.
The bike charged up the mountain until we were about 90% of the way to the top and then it died. The engine just stopped. Electric step running, but the motor went silent. Luckily it died right next to a turn out, so we pulled over and had space to investigate the problem.
The engine would turn over, but there was no ignition. It was just a mechanical sound of the electric starter turning the engine over. From my days of owning a finicky moped, I know a little bit about simple engines, so I began to check for fuel, spark, and compression. Halfway through this process, I realized the engine was way too hot to really check for most of these things.
So I gave up. I didn't notice that the gas tank was suspiciously light though. Maybe we were out of fuel and my gas gauge wasn't working properly. Mostly out of frustration, I pressed the start button again and the bike roared to life.
Justine and I looked at each other and scrambled to get ourselves in our backpack back on the bike. We kept going until the top of the mountain and the bike died again. We pulled over, discussed it briefly, and decided to just coast down. If we could reach a gas station, we could fix this.
So we rolled down in stealth mode, motorcycle completely silent, weaving in between traffic. We were worried that if we didn't maintain momentum, we might get stuck at even a small uphill. The motorcycles sputtered back to life around the bottom of the hill and we limped to a gas station, again dying just as we arrived. We filled with gas, and it started out fine.
Then we went to Whole Foods for a consolation smoothie and discussed what to do. It seemed as though the fuel had fixed it, and I was happy to backwards rationalize various problems that fuel could have fixed. Maybe we were low, maybe there was some water in the tank that was now diluted. Spirits high, we sprinted down the highway, always in the right lane, just in case.
And of course that case happened, and we found ourselves on the breakdown lane of highway 280, still an hour outside of San Francisco. I noticed that the temperatures seemed to be creeping up pretty quickly and guess that maybe had something to do with heat. So we sat on the side of the highway and waited for the bike to cool down. And that's how our evening went.
A two-hour trip turned into five hours, and many times we found ourselves just sitting on the side of the road, jiggling the tank, and waiting for the bike to cool, hoping it would spring to life again. Sometimes it did, but other times we waited and watched the sun fall lower in the sky. Eventually, through trial and error, hoping and pushing, and even dropping the bike at a standstill for the first time ever, we limped to half a mile away from Justine's house and walked the rest of the way. We're pretty early in our relationship.
It's been two months, but I've been away for at least half of that. We're not in the police-style interrogation mode that I delight for states with, but we're still feeling each other out and seeing how we work together. We've booked a trip to Europe next month, partly because travel is one of the best ways to figure those things out. I was really impressed with how Justine handled the whole situation.
We joked around the whole way, enjoyed silently coasting down the mountain, and entertained each other as traffic zoomed by us on the highway. I've worked really hard to stay positive in these situations, not of a near positivity that masks frustration and discontent, but really being positive about the situation. I guess she has to, or maybe comes naturally to her. The trick, I think, is to train yourself to always be happy with the best possible option available to you.
Containment is almost always relative. If you had no money at all and suddenly had $1,000 in your bank account, you'd naturally be happy about that. But if you had $1,000,000 and all of it vanished except for $1,000, that happiness might not come so easily. Same situation, different contexts, different emotions.
Too often we compare our best possible option with an option that no longer exists or never did exist. What good is it to compare coasting down the mountain against having a fully functional motorcycle? Our choices were to sit there and wait hours for a tow truck, freak out and do nothing, or to coast. Coasting was the best option, so we decided to just be even happy with that.
You can use that relativity to your advantage. Our brain sometimes naturally think of better, impossible options, but worse possible options don't come as easily. I was grateful we'd made it that far up the mountain, that it was a nice day, that I had a travel companion who was also being positive, but I had a motorcycle to begin with, and that I can enjoy the view as we roll down the mountain. There's plenty to be happy about if you look for it.
The ability to be happy with the best available option is powerful. It makes your life so much easier. It makes other people's lives easier. It gives you objectivity in the power to act in difficult situations.
It brings you gratitude. This is a skill to build, not a habit or don't attribute. You practice focusing on the positive and ignoring options that don't exist. Be grateful for the best available option you have, and if it goes away, be glad for the next best one.
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Another one talking about perspective and seeing the positive in situations, something we talked about earlier this week. Although this one reminded me of a book that I've heard great things about but haven't read yet. It's called Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I wonder if Tyninin has read that book, it seems I could be right up his alley.
But anyway, this could have been a nightmare with lots of arguments and frustration between both of them. Or it could be what it ended up being, a pleasant memory with gained experience and knowledge. In this case, compared to other examples we heard earlier this week, they did what was in their control, and it seemed most of the rest was out of their control. So getting mad or frustrated wouldn't have solved anything probably just caused worse judgment.
So part of this, for me at least, is slowing down to consider if this is in your control or not, like the long line at the bank, the traffic, the weight of the doctor's office, those things aren't in our control. And getting mad at someone almost certainly won't fix it. So on that note, I was waiting for an x-ray the other day, and a patient was on the edge of yelling at the poor guy at the front desk for the process taking too long, but he didn't have it in his power to do anything for her. He said, look, when I'm off work, I'll drive you to a different clinic since you're not able to drive to the other one, if that makes you happy.
He didn't know what else to say to her, and she was letting out steam onto him, who again couldn't do anything about it. It's not helpful, it was ruining his day, and all that frustration is really just in our own heads. Everyone else there, which there were a bunch of other people, they were either keeping it to themselves or simply just content with the present moment. It was a good reminder for me to show him a bit more compassion and kindness, and hopefully a little story you can remember too when in this kind of situation.
And with that, thank you for being here and listening. Have a great rest of your day, and I'll see you tomorrow, as usual, where you're optimal life. Oh, wait.