I haven’t been blogging much these days, too busy with work and out of the habit. But I was thinking about this blog on my ride yesterday and wanted to check back in and say thank you, bicycle and bicycle blog, for teaching me how to pay attention in new ways.
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I spent last weekend all by myself–the ladyfriend was visiting family in St. Louis. I love her so much, and I was also thrilled to have four full days in the house by myself to do whatever I wanted. Now, I do whatever I want all the time. I don’t have to wait for her to leave to sit on the couch watching terrible reality and eating a whole box of cookies, for example; she’s happy to share space with me as I am being myself, and I feel completely able to be fully myself, too. That’s my favorite part of this relationship. And yet, there’s something different about being truly alone, and I was so excited to have that time and space.
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Sunday’s ride took me down the hill to meet L. and friends for her birthday brunch at our regular place–she’s fun and 41, as she says! I don’t personally celebrate Easter, but it looked like everyone else in the neighborhood did. There were lots of suits and ties, dresses and hats, kids squirming in clothes that looked cute and uncomfortable. I rolled up to the bike rack and had to ask a family of eight to make way so I could use it. We shared some words about the weather (it was amazing) and waited impatiently for the restaurant to open. When it did, they got themselves a big table at the back, and I grabbed the corner bar for us, ordered coffee, and stared at my phone until my friends showed up.
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I was in New Mexico celebrating my boo’s 40th birthday for a week and a half, and it was magical. Northern New Mexico is breathtakingly beautiful, and they put chile sauce on everything, which is such a great idea, and I didn’t want to leave at all. Except I did–I love Baltimore and my life here, and I am happy to be back on my bike.
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Monday was cool and gray, but the wind machines were turned down for the first, and I fear last, time for awhile–perfect day for a bike ride. I spent my morning in virtual meetings, my lunchtime with M., our usual walk to coffee and back, and planned to head out on the bike. M. and I have been doing the same walk to the same cup of coffee and outside chit chat, and walk back for years, and we always check on the cat litter that was dumped on the sidewalk just past the alley at the side of that burger place. Somebody dumped their litter box on the sidewalk, and still, at least two years later, there’s cat litter in the corner where those two pieces of sidewalk don’t quite meet. I’m sure who(m)ever dumped it has long forgotten about it, but M. and I can’t forget about it, especially because every single time I point it out: “Still there!” I like taking the same paths over and over not just to see how things change, but also what stays the same.
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I needed to do a long ride, or a long ride for me. I increased my mileage too much too soon, and I gave myself some shoulder and neck pain that was my body’s way of telling me to slow down and take a break. I did that, it helped, but I missed the long ride. Monday I’d go for 20 miles, I told myself over the weekend, and when Monday came, I was a little scared to do it. I have ridden 20 miles many, many times in my life, and I rode 15 last week, but sometimes I still get a little bit anxious. So I did some work tasks, took an online German class, but then, instead of waiting all day to see if I would be able to ride 20 miles, I just headed out the door at 10am to see how it would go.
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The ladyfriend was working from home on Monday, and as I got ready to head out on a bike ride, she was like, “You know it’s raining, right?” My rule, borrowed from my dad, is to never start a bike ride in the rain, because I’ll finish enough in the rain as it is. It was barely drizzling and my weather app said it wouldn’t be more than drizzle, so I shrugged and headed out.
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The last time I trained for a century ride I was ten years younger and hadn’t been through cancer treatment. I had a different body back then. I do, though, have a very similar body to the one that trained and ran a half marathon during the COVID lockdown, though, so I know if I give us some space and time, we’ll get to peak adult onset endurance athletic form together. But that means I have to be patient, which people who know me well know is most assuredly not by strong suit. I am also a compulsive person, so if I have a plan, it is very hard for me to deviate from it. This week, though, I heard my father’s wisdom: listen to your body, not your training plan. My body requested a drop down week in mileage for my long ride instead of upping it by five miles, so on Wednesday I rode 20 miles instead of 35, and my body is thanking me for the rest, I think.
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This week marks my 14th anniversary with my Surly Long Haul Trucker. This is a picture of us on our first ride together (yes, New Orleans in February is sometimes warm enough to dress like that!). A friend met me for a photo shoot, and this is me, on my bike, talking on the phone to someone about how amazing my new bike is. I imagine I was talking to my dad, who was even more excited about the bike than I was. His motto was always “shop often, buy once,” and he had done a lot of shopping on my behalf. It was between this bike and the Trek 520–I don’t even remember why a touring bike was deemed necessary–and the LHT was a few hundred bucks cheaper, and dad’s good friend Tom rode it, so voila, my new bike! I ordered it from Bicycle Michael’s on Frenchman Street, paid half in cash from the six hundred dollar bills my dad sent me in the mail–always cash in the mail because as a former postal officer, he trusted the U.S. Mail like no one I have ever known.
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The thing about training for a century is that every week your long ride gets longer, and if you don’t want to haul your bike out to the airport to do circles around BWI or go to and from Annapolis, you have to figure out how to get all those miles on city streets with their hills, stoplights, drivers, and pedestrians zipping in and out of the street without warning. It’s like that Paperboy game we used to play at the Brass Lamp back in Boise. I looked at the 25 miles on my calendar for Wednesday and decided that yes, I was going to do this in the city because I don’t want to get in the car to ride my bike. Dundalk, I thought. If I zig and zag enough, that’ll get me to 25.
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What I Saw Riding My Bike Around Today 