A Midlife Ride In Adolescence

 Thirteen years ago today, I wrote my first of (to date) 4195 posts on this blog.

It occurs to me now that this blog—Midlife Cycling—is in, or entering (depending on your point of view) its adolescence.  Whether that will affect its hormonal activity, I don’t know.

Speaking of hormonal activity:  I began this blog as I was starting to ride again after my longest layoff from it.  Those months off my bike were a condition of my recovery from my gender-reassignment surgery.

Also, as I have mentioned in earlier posts, this blog started as a spinoff, if you will, from my first blog:  Transwoman Times. I mentioned some of the last pre-surgery and first post-surgery rides, as well as much else in my life, on that blog.

So how has this blog changed?  I guess it has to do with how I have changed:  When I started this blog, I was still figuring out what my life, let alone my riding, would be like after, not only surgery, but years of therapy and treatments, not to mention the people who came, went and remained.

Whether this is the first post you’re reading on this blog, or you’ve been reading since my first post, I am grateful you are—and hope you will remain—with me on this journey.

Happy New Year!

 Happy New Year!

You've probably heard the expression, "May you live in interesting times."  Although often uttered as a benediction, it's said to be a translation of a curse:  "interesting" is, according to this story, is a euphemism for "difficult."  Others have claimed that it was always meant to be said ironically:  The wisher wants the recipient to live in peaceful, i.e., boring, times.

Perhaps more important whether than wanting someone else, or one's self, to live in interesting, boring, peaceful, tumultuous, or whatever kind, of times is how different you want 2023 to be from 2022.

Image by Peachaya Tanomsup

3500

Last week, this blog marked one milestone:  11 years.

Today's post is another:  Number 3500.

When I started this blog, I had no idea of how long, or how many posts, it would run.  I knew only that I wanted to call it "Midlife Cycling" for all of its life.  As a wise person once told me, as long as you don't know when your life will end, you're in the middle of it.  I'd say the same for this blog, or any other endeavor:  You can't define a mid-point without knowing the end-point.

Luang Prbang, 22 July 2018

When I first posted, I had just started riding again after recovering from my gender-affirmation surgery.  Since then, my life--and the cycling scene--has changed in all kinds of ways.  I can recall when chances were that I knew any cyclist I encountered during my ride; now I see all kinds of new faces--and bodies--and, of course, bikes--whether I'm spinning down my street or rolling along a suburban or country road, whether a county or an ocean away from my home.

Once again, I thank all of you, whether you've followed this blog from its beginnings, or you've found it for the first time in a Google search about Shimano DX or cycling in New York or France.

Out Front? Or A Fashion Accessory? Or A Human Shield?

If you live any place long enough, you notice changes.  Even if you find yourself with more choices in stores, restaurants or whatever--or if the buildings and parks get fixed up--you'll probably become one of those bitter or cantankerous people who grumbles, "I remember when..."

I'm starting to become one of those people in my current neighborhood of Astoria, Queens.   Before I moved here, I lived in Park Slope, Brooklyn for eleven years.  That was long enough for me to see it turn from "Dyke Slope" (The Lesbian Herstory Archives are still located in the neighborhood.) to a colony of affluent young couples who divided their work thusly:  one worked worked on Wall Street or was running a tech startup, the other pushed the kid in a stroller from pre-school to soccer practice or dance lessons while toting a yoga mat (and wearing $100 yoga pants).  

By that time, the joke was that the kids were the fashion accessories.  If you saw the way those parents (yes, some of them were men) pushed their carts, with the kid (or, more precisely, the kid's outfit) prominently displayed, you might think it wasn't a joke.

When some of those parents crossed the street, I really thought some of them might be using the kids as human shields!

I was thinking of them when I came across this bike:

It would be perfect for them, don't you think?

Vera Shows Off Her New Accessories

I didn't have to work.  So I slept later and my day got off to, shall we say, a more leisurely start than I'd originally planned.

So I didn't take as long or ambitious a bike ride as I might've.  Still, I managed to get in about 100 kilometers, on a bike I haven't ridden in a while:  Vera, my green Mercian mixte.

A sweet ride she is.  And she's had a slight makeover.

From the saddle forward, she hasn't changed.  It is below the saddle, and to the rear, where she sports a new look:

When Velo Orange had a sale, I decided to go for a constructeur rack and some of those beautiful Rustines elastic cords.   At first, I was skeptical of a rack that rests on the fenders.  But, as Chris at VO and others point out, the fender doesn't actually bear the weight.  Nor, for that matter, do the struts on racks that attach to the rear stays.  Rather, those struts--and the fender--act as stabilizers.  Rather, the load is borne by the rack itself, which is surprisingly strong.

It real benefit, though, is that it sits lower than other kinds of racks.  We all know that the lower the center of gravity, the more stable the bike is. And, on a bike with a load, stability translates into speed.

All right.  I'll admit it:  The real reason I went for the rack is the look.  It really seems right, I think, on a classic twin-stay mixte.  Plus, the rack matches the one on the front. 

Indulgent, perhaps.  But Vera doesn't seem to mind, and it didn't seem to make the bike faster or slower.  But I'm liking it, so far.

What Do You Learn While Cycling?

You learn all kinds of things while cycling.  Some come from those deep ruminations that naturally come with that meditatative state you fall into while pedaling.  You start to ponder the Big Questions, like "Do I cook that wild farm-raised alligator shrimp fish I bought last week?  Or do I go for takeout Chinese?  Tacos?  Pizza?"

Other great lessons come from the things our bodies tell us.  Like the time you tried to do that half-century on two hours' sleep after you pulled a hamstring.  Or plunged down that rock-strewn hill the day after you broke up for the fifth or sixth time with someone with whom you have nothing in common but talk about marriage anyway.

Then there are those little bits of information we get from fellow cyclists and other people we meet along the way.  You know, news about sales, new "dive" bars and the "in" bike cafes:  All the important stuff.

Finally there are the things you would never, ever have found out had you not taken that ride a little later or a little earlier than usual, along some route you told yourself you'd never ride, ever again:

Hillary may well have stolen New York City.  She wouldn't be the first.  Some would argue, as I would, that a Dutchman did the same in 1624.  (Actually, Native Americans have had a whole continent stolen from them, just as African Americans' history and community was taken from them.) For that matter, I wouldn't be surprised if the one who wrote that graffito was involved in stealing the very spot--on the waterfront of Williamsburg, Brooklyn--from some working-class Italian or Jewish or German or Puerto Rican family who used to live there--or the jobs they might have had.

And we all know that Bush The Second stole the election of 2000.  Which means, of course, that he not only stole this country, he stole the 21st Century and, possibly, the third milennium.

Oh, the Five Boro Bike Tour will pass that very spot tomorrow.  Except that it will be going in the opposite direction from the one I'd been pedaling along the Kent Avenue Bike Lane.  So they might not ever learn that Hillary Stole NYC--or that there's construction in the bike lane, and they should proceed with caution.

A Reflection On 2015

I know that for many people, 2015 has been a terrible, tragic year.  I feel their pain, not in the least because at least one devastating event touched my life, if only tangentially.

Still, this year has been a very good year for me---the best since my surgery, and possibly before that--in many ways.  Cycling has had much to do with that.

Of course, riding to and from museums and cafes, along rivers, canals and boulevards, and through new experiences as well as memories, in Montreal and Paris can make just about anybody's year.  What really made those events, and much else in my life, special this year is an observation my friend Jay made while we had lunch in the City of Light: "You seem very settled as a woman now."  


The last time we'd met before then, I was in the early stages of my gender transition.  I was still acting and dressing in ways I was "supposed" to.  To be more precise, I was trying to show that I wasn't a man. (That, after I'd spent so much of my life trying to prove the exact opposite!)  At that point in my life, I really wondered whether I could or wanted to continue cycling. For one thing, I knew that I couldn't continue to ride in the way in which I'd been accustomed.  More important, though, I still believed that my transition meant "killing", if you will, the man named Nick I had lived as.  For that reason, I also wondered whether I would continue teaching although most people don't think of it as a particularly "masculine" occupation.

Since then, I have come to realized that cycling and teaching, as well as writing and even my taste in foods, are not part of one gender or another; they are part of my identity.  In other words, they intertwine with other things to make me who I am.  When anything is so integral to your life, you don't dispose or efface it; it changes with you or you change it as you are changing yourself.  So, perhaps, the way you execute or express them changes.  

In my case, pedaling up a hill or writing an essay or poem is no longer a conquest or even a goal met; it is an accomplishment, on whatever scale. Sometimes I still think about how Nick would have seen all of this--he wouldn't have approved, I'm sure--but I feel compassion for him.  After all, he couldn't have understood that he was, even then, becoming me.   Yes, she was becoming her mother!

It's fun, really. And the cycling has gotten better. That's what 2015 means to me right now.

A Cyclist's "I Ching"

When I started this blog four years ago, I was a little less than a year removed from my gender-reassignment surgery.  Before that, I had been living as a woman for nearly six years.


Through my transition, I noticed my riding habits, as well as my preferences in equipment, changing. Actually, early in my process, I wondered whether I would continue to ride at all:  I went through a time when I did very little riding and was occupied with other things.


But, about two years in, I found I was regaining my enthusiasm and the amount of my riding gradually increased.  The number of miles or kilometers I ride--and, perhaps, my intensity--has not returned to what it was when I was full of testosterone (and myself).  I wondered how much of that change--not to mention the shifts in my gear preferences--had to do with estrogen replacing testosterone, and how much was simply a function of aging.





My doctor and everything I've read related to gender transitions said that I would lose some of my strength and endurance from my hormonal change.   I assume most of what I've read wasn't written by cyclists (and my doctor isn't one), so nothing was mentioned about changes in bicycle and accessory preferences.


Actually, I've always been, if not a "retrogrouch", something of a classicist when it comes to bikes.  I have never owned a carbon-fiber bike, or even a titanium one, and have ridden very few parts made from those materials.  Save for a couple of aluminum bikes, every steed of mine has been constructed of steel, mostly with aluminum alloy components.  I prefer the look of classic or classically-inspired bikes, but more to the point, a rider can form a mutually supportive relationship with one over a long period of time.  They can be adapted in ways that today's ultra-specialized bikes can't be.  Moreover, I have had repairs made to steel frames that wouldn't have been possible on frames made from other materials.


And, even when canvas bike bags and other vintage-style accessories were all but impossible to find here in the US, I looked for stuff that was interesting, tasteful and distinctive: I never went for the Darth Vader all-black look or the cartoonish graphics found on too many current bikes, parts and accessories.  For about a year or two, Cannondale offered bike bags made with Andean-style woven fabric; I used one such bag, which mounted under the seat, for many years.


But now other cyclists are discovering the utility as well as the beauty of older equipment, or gear inspired by it.  Or, perhaps, I am simply finding out about such cyclists.  I ride and chat with a few here in New York (like Hal Ruzal of Bicycle Habitat) and I've come into contact with some through my blogging.  I think in particular of the author of Lovely Bicycle! in the early days of her blog, and of the current "The Retrogrouch" as well as Ely Ruth Rodriguez, who made the bags I've been using lately.    And, of course, there is Chris Kulczyki of Velo Orange, who started off by selling old parts he and his friends found in warehouses and, later, having modern versions--often, with better materials and design refinements--made.


One thing all of those cyclists--and others I've encountered--have in common is that they're near my age or, at least, past the stage in life in which people equate novelty with quality or, at least, hipness.  It's at such a time in your life that you stop thinking that fenders are only for people who are too (fill in the blank) to win a race!

Always The Same: Revelations And Changes

Parisians and psychotherapists disappear for the month of August.  Sometimes I think of myself as a Parisian in spirit,even though I haven't been in eight years, but I have no illusions of being a psychotherapist.  So what's my excuse for being somewhat conspicuously absent this month?

Well, I've managed to be busy with other things, including writing projects.  Hopefully they'll remunerate me; for now I find them rewarding.  And, frankly, when I haven't been doing those things--or riding or playing with my cats--I've felt drained, spiritually and emotionally exhausted.  The pastor of the church I started attending a few months ago says I'm healing. She's right.

Still, I've managed, in the past week, to ride to Point Lookout (Nothing like a few hours riding Arielle to make me feel lithe!) and to take a few shorter rides--and to record a few things along the way.

I'll start with something I saw on my way home from some volunteer work:

Sometimes I think archaeology is the step between destruction and forgetfulness.  At least, that's how things seem to work in New York. Sometimes, when a building is torn down, a long-concealed sign,  like the one in the photo, is revealed.  

What particularly intrigued me was the bottom inscription:  "Separate Waiting room for women."  Talk about a relic!  My undergraduate college went co-ed only four years before I enrolled in it.  And, boys and girls entered my Catholic elementary school through separate entrances:  a practice that was abandoned a couple of years after my family moved away.

Given that I lived as a male until ten years ago, it's hard for me not to wonder and imagine what my life would have been like had I entered through the girls' and women's doors.  Of course, had I lived in such a world, I would not have attended the college from which I graduated.  In fact, I might not have attended any college at all.

In those times, I probably would not have witnessed this:

The stretch of Brooklyn waterfront between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges has been turned into a lovely park.  Not long ago, it was off-limits, as the neighborhood around it--DUMBO--still consisted of functioning and recently-ceased manufacturing and warehousing.  This stretch of waterfront, like so much of the rest of New York's shorelines, was used in various ways by those industries.  In fact, most New Yorkers had little or no inclination to spend any time by the water, as it was associated with rough trades and characters.  Fifth Avenue became Manhattan's most-desired address in part because, of all of the island's avenues, it is furthest from the East and Hudson Rivers.

Ah, but some things don't change:

That's one reason why I--and Arielle and, on occasion, Tosca--like to take a spin to Point Lookout.

 

The Bike Shop Moves Away From Memory

The other day, I stopped in a bike shop I used to visit, and buy from, quite frequently.  That was when I was the "before" photo, and I was riding off-road with a few other guys.   The shop was the nearest one to Forest Park, which is to Queens what Central Park is to Manhattan and Prospect to Brooklyn.  The difference is that there's more wooded area that is, if not virgin or wild, at least less sculpted.  And more remote.  What that meant was that, as often as not, we'd encounter spots that looked as if a Santeria ritual held been conducted--or that a baby had been conceived--on it.


But I digress.  We often stopped at the shop in question because, as often or not, one of us needed an inner tube or chain, or even a pedal or derailleur.  And I would sometimes go there when I was riding solo, particularly if I was riding to or from Rockaway Beach.  They had a good selection of components, and the proprietor, now retired, was a Frenchman.  That gave me the opportunity to talk about my experiences in his home country as I practiced his native language.


But I wondered how long the place would endure.  Of course, I was thinking of how long the shop as I knew it would last.  I guess I feel about bike shops the way I feel about favorite cafes or bookstores:  I don't want them to change, but I know that they must.


And so it is with the bike shop in question.  The former proprietor's son, who was in junior high school the first time I visited that shop, has taken over.  He is married and has a kid.  One of his riding buddies has become a business partner as well as a husband and father.  And a couple of young men who weren't yet born the first time I went to the shop are working there now.


So far, that sounds like normal progress.  But other changes may be more ominous, at least to me.   There are no road bikes, and only a few mountain or comfort bikes.  Those bikes are at least a couple of years old.  And much of the cycling equipment is even older.  In a way, I don't mind, for I've often been able to find a discontinued or "obsolete" part there.  And I still get good deals on them.  


The few new bikes are those small-wheeled wonders meant for BMX.  So are the new components and accessories.  Again, that may just be a consequence of time marching on.  The same may be said for the new clientèle, all of whom seem to be kids in their early teens.  Again, that may just be progress, in the literal sense of the word.


I have to admit to some amusement I got from the kids.  They peppered their speech with profanity, as boys that age are wont to do when they're amongst themselves.  (That hasn't changed,  believe me!)  What I found ironic was that the riding buddy-turned-business-partner admonished the kids, "Watch your language!" and glanced in my direction.  One of the kids turned toward me sheepishly and whispered, "Sorry, lady!"


Their banter continued, and the profanity returned.  I intoned, "Could you please clean up your language."  They apologized in unison.  And, a couple of minutes later, one of them yelled, "Shut the..." before glancing in my direction.


As I said, they are not such unusual pubescent boys.  But, as I am growing old and conservative (!), I couldn't help but to wonder where their parents were.  All along the street where the shop is located, and the streets of that neighborhood, no-one who looked the right age to be their parents was to be found.  There were only other kids like them, who seemed to have even less structure in their lives than those kids had, and older people, who were living those kids' futures.


It occurred to me then that it was a wonder the shop has survived as long as it has.  The neighborhood around it has been a blue-collar enclave for the better part of a century; relatives of mine grew up and raised their kids there.  So it never has been a neighborhood with high incomes or people who rode bicycles after they started to work.  It's always been a place where the men take the train that rumbles overhead to their jobs until they can afford a car, and the women stayed home to raise their kids and cook for large gatherings that included other people's kids.  They rarely, if ever, emerge from the shadow of that train, and the neighborhood grows dirtier and sadder.  


And now "nobody has any money; everybody's out of work," according to the now-proprietor.  He is happy to be "making it," although, he confided to me, he never could provide his kid the standard of living his father provided for him if his wife didn't have her job.  He also intimated that he hardly rides anymore and that he spends more of what free time he has on his skateboard.


As the shop is along a couple of routes I ride, and requires only a slight detour when I ride to or from work, I am sure I will stop there again.  I just wonder what will be there.