I Will Survive: I Ride Again

Gloria Gaynor is most famous for I Will Survive.

I could have sung that to myself yesterday.

For my birthday, I simply had to end my longest spell without cycling in eleven years.  

In 2009, I didn’t ride through most of the summer and fall. I was recovering from my gender-affirmation surgery. Although I missed riding, my doctor, therapist, friends and others helped me to prepare for my “vacation” from it.  Also, I gave up those few months in the saddle for something I’d wanted for a very long time.

On the other hand, my latest spell without riding was induced by something that I did not foresee when I slung my leg over my bike.  Most of us are aware that a crash or some    other mishap can befall us, but I suspect that few, if any, of us ponder that possibility as we put our feet to the pedals.

The seeming randomness of my situation could explain why I felt more anxiety—and, perhaps paradoxically, urgency—about going for a ride.  

Oddly enough, I was more worried about having lost strength and endurance during my latest period of healing than I was after the much longer period without riding that followed my surgery.  Of course, my memory of walking up climbs no steeper than highway ramps in those days colored my perception of what my latest return to cycling would be like.

That fear, thankfully, was unfounded.  Then again, I rode maybe 10 kilometers, so my legs weren’t challenged.  I also didn’t notice any change in my balance or anything else.

I have to admit, though, I had an “oh no, not again moment when a delivery guy on an electric bike whipped around a turn and directly into my path.  

We could have collided head-on. We didn’t.  He could have side-swiped me and caused me to crash.  He didn’t. I could have cursed him out, in English or Spanish. I didn’t.  

Neither of us knew what the other had experienced a moment, a day or a month prior—or would experience.  There were only our roads ahead of us, whether or not they would intersect again.

His next delivery, my next ride.  Fate brought us to that moment.  For now, at least, I know I can ride again because I rode yesterday and many days before.  I have survived;
I hope I will continue to survive, and ride.

Fall, And What I Needed

Some have called last night's debate "depressing".  

I was too much in shock to be depressed.  The last time I felt that way about an event in which I was not personally involved was on 11 September 2001. 

Like many other people here in New York, I was stunned for days, for weeks, afterward.  Then came grief, a sense of loss:  Even though I didn't lose anyone I knew in the events of that day, I felt a sense of loss.  When a complete stranger cried on my shoulder, I held her until she got off the bus we were riding.  We didn't speak and I never saw her again. Each of us understood, I believe, and gave each other what we needed in that moment.  

I had not thought about that encounter in years, until now.  Some have seen that time as a kind of Fall, when this country lost its collective innocence.  The days and weeks that followed--which, as I recall, were unusually warm for the time of year--did not feel autumnal.  

The holidays, like the days that preceded and followed them, passed through a kind of gray storm in which needles of ice rained down even on the clearest of days.  Those first glacial spears stung; the ones that followed stunned; after that, I was too numb to feel the rest, for a long time.

There may have been a Fall that year.  But the season that followed did not feel Autumnal:  that October and November felt just like the following January and February, in no small part because those months were--up to that time--the warmest winter months this city had experienced.

Today, in contrast, felt exactly the way some of us might have, at some time in our lives, expected a day from this time of year to feel.  Today began overcast but turned, rather quickly, into an afternoon with a blue sky lit by intense sunlight that hinted at the sunset that would tinge the horizon a few hours later.  The morning's chill had, by that time, turned into a nip.

In other words, it felt like the Fall day it is.  It was that day when one realizes that the season is well underway:  It's no longer possible to say that summer has just passed, but winter, though everyone knows it will come, does not yet seem imminent.  

Fewer cars and taxis and buses plied the street on which I live, or the avenue around the corner or the other streets that branched from it, than one sees on a typical Monday.  The reason, of course, is that today is a holiday (as I like to say, for a guy who got lost):  the one that always seems, to me, the one that signals that it is indeed Fall.

On this holiday last year, I was in Montreal, where--ironically--it was warmer, more like a September day here in New York and the leaves of the iconic maple trees that line the city's streets blazed in the sun.  Montrealers, like other Canadians, don't celebrate Columbus Day.  Rather, the second Monday of October is, for them, Thanksgiving Day.   I certainly was thankful for having such a wonderful day to ride and interesting places to explore.  

I had those things, today, too.  So of course I went for a ride.  I didn't plan anything, not even which of my bikes I rode.  As it turned out, I took Tosca, my fixed gear Mercian, for a spin.  Perhaps I chose her because, somehow, I knew--my body knew--that I needed to keep my feet spinning.  But I was not riding for escape:  In fact, it was quite the opposite.  

Where did I go?  I know I pedaled through various parts of Brooklyn and Queens; I think I even popped into Nassau County, briefly, and back again into the borough I now call home, into the one I called home The Day The Towers Fell, and back home.

That ride gave me exactly what I needed, for I did what I needed to do.  And I am satisfied now.

(Note:  I didn't take any photos during my ride.  The image you see was made by Matt Hyde.)

Colors At The End Of The Day

On my way home yesterday, I rode the promenade at the World's Fair Marina.  It runs just to the northeast of LaGuardia Airport.

While it isn't the Big Sur, it does have its own local color, especially at the end of the day:

A long, long time ago, one of my science teachers told us that we don't actually see anything; instead, our eyes collect the light reflected from it and form an image that is projected onto our retinae.  I hadn't thought about that in a while, until I saw this photo, which captures, not the sun, but a reflection of it on the water.  

Amazing, isn't it, that even the murky waters of Flushing Bay can provide such a palette of hues?

Isn't it also amazing that cell phones these days can record stuff like this?

Stopping Is Part Of The Journey

I can say with near-certainty that on this date at around this time, ten years ago, I was riding on rollers.  Back in those days, that's what I did during the winter.  Even after I stopped racing, I still was trying to prove something to myself.  Or, more precisely, to disprove something.

What was it?  Well, before I try to describe, let alone name, it, I have to say that what led me to ride rollers even after my racing days ended was the same thing that kept me training for soccer after I stopped playing it.  I knew full well that I would probably never play again and, even though I enjoyed playing, I wasn't mourning my acknowledgment that my playing days were over.  In fact, I felt surprisingly little.  But I still had the impulse to train as if I were still playing.


Something similar happened after I stopped racing.  Although I'm glad I raced, I wasn't upset when I knew that part of my life was about to end.  And once I "retired," I really had no urge to go back.  However, I wanted to know that I could.  


Why?  Well, I always want to feel as if I start or leave stages and challenges in my life on my own terms.  It's never a good feeling not to do something because you're not capable of it.  The worst of it is that you can't even kick yourself, in hindsight, for lack of effort if you simply didn't have whatever it took to do something that you wanted to do.


Perhaps I never got past or over being the ungraceful, unathletic pubescent child I was.  Until I started training and playing, I was taunted by other kids--and sometimes adults--not only for my seeming lack of athletic ability, but also for my perceived lack of manliness, or even the capacity for becoming a man, whatever that meant.


Those taunts were echoing in some recess of my brain.  That's the reason why, ironically, I spent more time on rollers and trainers in my early post-racing years than I did when I was actually racing.    In an irony within that irony, I was pushing my body--my male body--so hard because I was trying to poound it, or something about it, out of existence altogether, or at least into submission.


I've been on my bike once in the past two weeks.  I'm feeling antsy and hoping that I'm not gaining weight.  (At least I'm not eating any junk.)  But, at the same time, I'm not as ornery as I would've been back in the day.  When I couldn't ride--or after a few weeks of riding rollers or trainers--I used to feel resentful and angry that I couldn't do what I wanted to do but, it seemed, everybody else could.


I think that being off my bike for a few months after my surgery last year made me aware, for the first time in my life, that the times when you recuperate, or simply stop for whatever reasons, are also part of the journey. In fact, those times might be almost as important as the times when we're riding and training.   For some people, it's the only opportunity to reflect on the question of why they are doing whatever they do.