No, It’s Not Because I Haven’t Had A Baby

 I started to go for regular eye examinations when I was about 45–just around the same time I started my gender affirmation process (what most people—and I—in those days were called my “gender transition”). When I had to cut a conversation with an co-worker short because I had to go to an ophthalmologist appointment, he wondered, “Oh, are the hormones affecting your vision?

That colleague could be forgiven for such an assumption even if, as an “educated” person, he should have known better than to conflate coincidence with causation.  

Then again, I’ve seen and heard of health care professionals who make similar erroneous assumptions.  For example, a friend of mine is, shall we say, Rubens-esque. She laments that when she goes for help with any sort of medical condition, no matter how unrelated (the flu! a broken arm!)  nurses and even doctors have assumed that her weight was the cause. Then again, other women have told me their doctors insisted that their mental as well as physical health issues would disappear if they had a baby.

While such cluelessness or dismissiveness is inexcusable when it comes from trained health care professionals, it (or at least milder forms of it) are somewhat understandable from lay people like my former co-worker. I’ve experienced a it during the past few days.  Neighbors and friends noticed a bandage on my left knee. “You hurt yourself bike riding.” Not a question :  a declaration or an amateur diagnosis.

Now, I can understand why they, especially if they don’t know any other regular cyclists, might think my injury might be a result of riding. But its cause is more banal: I tripped over a divider after I exited the Botanical Garden. I can’t even spin a good story out of it,

Well, at least they’re not assuming my admittedly minor injury happened because of my gender “transition.” Or because I haven’t had a baby.

It’s The Little Things

 It’s the little things…

How often have we heard that expression?

I learned how true it is when I taught English to people who don’t speak it as their native language. (People from Japan and France and Colombia who sound like me? Oh, dear!) “The little words are the most difficult,” I would reassure (or so I thought) them.  I wasn’t entirely wrong: Perhaps the most difficult words for non-native speakers to use properly, let alone well, are articles (Russian doesn’t have any), the verb “to be” (It doesn’t exist in Turkish) and prepositions—you know, words like “to” and “for,” which often don’t translate directly and are used differently from their English counterparts.

The little things are just as important on a bike. I, like most experienced cyclists, check my tire pressures, chain, gears and brakes before setting off on a ride. If I’ve had some bumpy treks—say, on unpaved trails or potholed streets— I might look at my racks, fenders or other accessories.

But there are some things, including some of the smallest screws and other parts, to which cyclists almost never pay attention. Cycling Weekly contributor Hannah Bussey discovered that the hard way—almost.

In addition to being a bike tester, she is a parent in a “multidisciplinary” bike family, which includes a daughter who participates in cyclo-cross. In her household, she explains, there are “more bikes than pedals.” That explains why she hastily “borrowed” a pair of SPD pedals for her mountain bike. “As I took off from what seemed a harmless jump,” she recounts, “I found myself footloose and ended up rolling around in, thankfully, a patch of bracken.”

Turns (no pun intended) out, the spring tension was “looser than I anticipated.” The irony is that people often fear the spring tension (or straps on pedals with toe clips) being too tight.  There is apparently a “point of no return” at which the rider can’t disengage because the binding is too loose. Think of a restraint that makes escaping more difficult because it stretches rather than breaks.

Photo by Hannah Bussey

The cleat retention on SPD, and most other clipless, pedal systems is regulated by a small screw or bolt that can loosen with use and time.  The same is true of the screws (typically 5mm) that hold toe clips to traditional pedals.

So now I am giving you, dear fellow cyclists and mid-lifers, the same advice I gave my language students: It’s the little things (or words).

What’s That About The Hill?

When people say that someone is “over the hill,” they mean that person is too old for some pursuit (usually in sports) or simply old.

As a cyclist, I always found that odd:  Pedaling up a hill (or a mountain), even if it leaves me tired, is a way of reassuring myself that I am not old, that I am in the middle of my life.