It’s Not All About Aging

 Those of you who have been following this blog probably have noticed that I haven’t been posting as often as I did, say, a couple of years ago. I haven’t stopped cycling or lost interest in blogging.  Rather, I have been busy with other things, some out of necessity, others by choice.

Even though I am not working as much as I did in the spring, it seems to take up more and more of my time and, more important, my mental and emotional energy. I am exhausted when I come home. Someone suggested that it’s purely and simply a consequence of aging. The fact that I am not as young as I used to be (if you’ll indulge me a cliché) probably has something to do with how I feel.  But I think it also has to do with the changes at work and in my own life.

From MDLive

While the campus on which I teach hasn’t specifically been a target of the current Administration, I feel varying combinations of fear, gloom and despair whenever I arrive.  Much of that has to do with the upcoming “merger” with another school. I encased “merger” in quotes because the college in which I teach will lose its name and become a location of our “merger” “partner.”

Naturally, many of us wonder whether we’ll still have our jobs or will have to move in order to keep them.  Or else we worry that we will be required to abandon courses, research projects and other activities that, for some of us, are the core of our work. 

While the takeover (I’m calling it what it is) might be necessary or simply rationalize-able from financial and other standpoints, I can’t help but to think it’s a symptom of the same mindset that causes children to go hungry because of a government shutdown. Some of my students are among the poorest and, in so many other ways, most vulnerable. It’s a miracle (if I can be allowed to use a religious term) that some of them are in college and we do what we can to accommodate them in their fearfully complicated lives, let alone challenge and inspire them. Will the institution that’s taking over, which is much larger, understand their needs, both in and out of the classroom? Will it care?

Also, I have to wonder whether that larger institution, which probably receives more government money, will subject me or others to the humiliation faculty and staff members of other larger, more prominent universities (think of Columbia) have suffered.

The students, interestingly, have been nicer, even if they are too often ill-prepared. Perhaps they know that I am on their side or, at least, not “the enemy.”  A few have expressed fears that family members or they themselves will be apprehended, detained or even deported to some country they’ve never seen before.  There are times when I wonder whether I will meet such a fate, even though I am a citizen of the country in which I was born to citizen parents—while my father was serving in the military, no less.

Simply living, let alone working, in the United States , is exhausting. Japan is looking really good. So is France. And Spain. And a few other countries. They have a their crazy nationalists and religious zealots, to be sure. But even though the daytime highs were  34-37C every day I was in Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto, the temperature seemed a lot cooler, if you know what I mean.

The Horn Of A Dilemma

 I have never been chased by an angry bear. But I would think that even at my age, in my condition, I would have a better chance of evading ursine umbrage by pedaling rather than carrying my bike.

Especially if I were wearing cleats!

A Better Way On The Greenway

 Every once in a while, my New York Cynicism (TM) is challenged.

Remember, this is a city where it took 100 years to build a subway line that basically goes nowhere.  And there are days when I’m still surprised that the Randalls Island Connector was finished in less time than it took for the creek underneath it to form.

So you can imagine my shock upon pedaling down the Hudson River Greenway and finding this:

Now, you could be forgiven for thinking it’s just another short segment of a bike path. But it fixes what disrupted what might otherwise be the best bike lane in the Big Apple.

At West 54th Street, cyclists had to risk unfortunate encounters with tour buses, taxis and ride share vehicles headed for cruise ships and ferry boats or the Intrepid Museum. That crossing (on the far left side of the photo) wasn’t an intersection with a traffic signal like the one at Chambers Street, just north of the World Trade Center. Rather, it was a spot where the street cuts across the bike lane, with no signal, at a point where the lane curved sharply and visibility was therefore not good.

The new ribbon of asphalt curves away from that spot, away from traffic, and goes underneath an access ramp. It is not only safer; it also makes for a smoother ride with greater continuity. A cyclist can now enter the Greenway at 125th Street and not encounter another crossing until 42nd Street—a distance of about 7 kilometers. In essence, it’s now possible to spin your pedals nonstop all the way from West Harlem to Midtown. That certainly makes the Greenway a valid option for many commuters and simply a more enjoyable ride for everyone else.

I am happy we now have it, but we need more if this city’s planners and policy makers are serious about encouraging more cycling and getting more cars off the streets.

How Did We?

About ten years ago, I was talking on the phone as I scurried down the hall to my class.

When I entered, one student wondered, aloud, how I survived with such a “primitive” device:  a flip-phone.

Mind you, neither he nor any of his classmates was wealthy, at least to my knowledge. But I was a couple of years away from having any desire, let alone seeing any need, for a “smart” phone.

Now I’ll confess that before my July trip to Japan, I “upgraded” to an iPhone 16 from the iPhone 8 I’d been using for seven years. I really wanted to stick with 8 because it was familiar, but the software wouldn’t update anymore, the battery took forever to charge and the charge didn’t last. Turns out that changing the battery would’ve cost more than getting a new phone, at least with the surprisingly generous trade-in allowance I got from Verizon.

Anyway, I thought about my old student when I got my new phone. And I wonder what he would think, if he were a cyclist, of some of the bikes I’ve ridden—and still ride.

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.

At Seventeen

I have never attended any class reunion of any school I graduated. And I don’t plan to be at the upcoming 50-year reunion of my high school class.

It’s not that I don’t want to remember those times.  I couldn’t forget them, even if I wanted to. Among my peers, I had only two friends. Both are long dead. Most of my “social” time was spent among adults: two of my mother’s friends and some teachers, including one whom I hated at first but who influenced me in ways I didn’t realize until much later. 

I wasn’t exactly “date bait.” To my knowledge,  none of my peers considered me physically attractive. I had no social skills. (Sometimes I feel I still don’t have any.) I was bookish, but not in the way I am now: My energies were directed, mainly by my father, toward subjects and pursuits that would help me get into West Point, Annapolis, one of the other Armed Forces academies or an ROTC program. 

And, even if I were less nerdy, I wouldn’t have wanted to date. Like every other LGBTQ kid in that place and time, I was in the closet. Other non-confirming kids might’ve “come out” if the social environment had been less hostile. But I couldn’t have: I didn’t even have the words to express how I felt about my gender and sexuality and knew of no-one who could be a model for me. So, dating anyone, whatever their identity or orientation, wouldn’t have felt right.

About my only solace was cycling: up the Atlantic Highlands scenic route; along the ocean from Sandy Hook to Long Branch, Asbury Park and sometimes beyond; out past the farms and horse ranches in western Monmouth County. That, of course, made me even more of an oddball among my peers, nearly all of whom discarded, abandoned or handed down their bicycles the moment they got their driver’s licenses.

So, if I have no plans to go to my class reunion and make no effort to recall those times, why am I talking about them now? Well, the other day I was in a store when Janis Ian’s “At Seventeen” played on the PA system. 

I hadn’t heard it in a long time, but it was all over the airwaves during my senior year—when I was seventeen. It, of course, is about not “fitting in” because of one’s looks, personality or socioeconomic class. Some, including yours truly, have also heard it as a song about being “in the closet.” That makes sense, especially when you realize that she “came out” a while back.

As much as I appreciate the songwriting talents of Joni Mitchell, John Lennon, Laura Nyro and the Bobs (Marley and Dylan), none of their works, or those of any other tunesmith, has ever meant as much as Ms. Ian’s anthem did during that year. And I daresay that even now, almost no other song can move me, again, the way “At Seventeen “ did (to tears) the other day. For that, I will always be grateful to Janis Ian.

Not Extinct ?

 While enjoying my bourgie Sunday brunch and coffee, I looked at a Buzz Feed item in which people recalled cartoons from their childhood that no one else seems to remember. Dinosaurs weren’t really part of the ones I saw (“The Flintstones” doesn’t count!) but they seem to have been prominent in later generations of animation.

Those extinct creatures, it seems, were in the most improbable of situations. I can imagine one of those cartoons including an image like this:

I’ll Show Them My Midlife Body

 The Fake Tan Führer’s deployment of National Guard troops to cities whose citizens voted for Democratic mayors—and, ahem, against him—and his threats to do the same in other cities with similar polling patterns, is one of the most nakedly political actions taken by a US President.

You, dear reader, will see that one of the adjectives in my previous sentence was a deliberate choice after you read what I’m about to say.

Portland, Oregon represents everything our dear leader detests. A liberal democratic mayor is just the icing on the cake: It is full of (or, at least, has the reputation of being full of) the very sorts of people who scare the orange makeup off his face: environmentalists, vegans, queers and (stage whisper) cyclists.

So of course he wanted to send his Praetorian Guard, I mean soldiers, to the Rosebud City. But first he had to claim it was “out of control.” Translation: People are protesting his policies.  And who, exactly, is behind all of the discord he sees in his fever-dreams? An organization he deems as “terrorist”—even though it doesn’t exist.

But the good folks of Portland plan to show their discontent with the armed occupation of their city in a way you might expect of them:  with a naked bike ride.

The emperor may have no clothes. But could a human body—clad, perhaps, only in a bike helmet and gloves—be the uniform of resistance against uniformed oppression?

If Mango Mussolini decides to sick his bodyguards on New York, my hometown—which might elect a Democratic Socialist (gasp!) mayor—I just might show my midlife body during a raw randoneé.