Riding Through Midlife

 Sometimes folks in midlife just want to feel like kids again!

In The Air

 I subscribe to Mary Trump’s blog, “The Good In Us.” I learned about her in 2020, when the pandemic was ravaging communities and her uncle was trying to convince everyone he was doing a wonderful job and that he should be re-elected. During that time her book “Too Much and Never Enough” was published. She is a clinical psychologist, so when she says her uncle is a narcissistic sociopath, she is not merely name-calling.

Anyway, in one of her posts following this year’s elections, she remarked that the air felt different. I feel more or less the same way:  We are now, in some ways, in a different world:  The House of Representatives now has enough of a majority, and the Senate looks as if it will have one, to—one hopes—rein in some of Donald’s worst excesses and hold him and his cronies accountable. While I feel some optimism, being in midlife, I’ve seen and experienced enough transitions, in politics and elsewhere, to know that we may have to go through some difficult times in order to make the changes we want and need.

Perhaps it’s fitting that elections, especially the ones we’ve just had, are in November. You know that the days will be shorter, darker and colder for the next few weeks. Then, just before Christmas, the days will grow longer, a couple of minutes each day, but the cold will bite deeper for another two or three months before Spring. But we know Spring, and longer days, will come.

Discovering Midlives

FeedSpot has chosen Midlife Cycling as one of the top 70 midlife blogs to follow in 2026. MC was also included in FeedSpot’s list for 2025. That recognition has increased the number of readers and their sources, online and geographically. Of course I am pleased. 

There has been, for me, a benefit I never could have anticipated: I am learning, from that FeedSpot list, that there are other blogs written by other people (mostly women) in midlife. They discuss and illustrate diverse aspects of being in our stage of life, including everything from health and gained wisdom to style and relationships. 

It’s fascinating to learn other people’s points of view of being in the middle, however they define it, of their lives. While the particulars vary greatly, I see a common theme, whether or not it’s articulated directly:  We are living the truth of our lives, or at least moving towards it. There really is no other choice: We have come to realize that we can’t, for whatever reasons, continue to adopt the wishes, tastes, aspirations and roles, and to make the choices, others have decided were right for us. 

Those realizations, in part a result of learning about the experiences of others, especially women, in midlife, are one reason why I think the focus of my blog is shifting, however slightly, towards the “midlife” part of the title.  Of course, it also has to do with how my motivations for, and style of, cycling have changed in midlife. I have alluded to them, if in passing, in earlier posts. But I am still discovering what it means, for me anyway, to be a cyclist (and transgender woman) in midlife. If that journey parallels those of the women whose midlife blogs I’m discovering, it should be interesting and, hopefully, amazing.