My Tour Continues

 Yesterday I wrote about the penultimate multiday tour I've taken.  It was the ride that, more than any other, changed my life. 

Near the end of that tour, I climbed le Col du Galibier (a couple of days after pedaling up l'Alpe d'Huez) and descended into the valley, where I checked into a small hotel in St. Jean de Maurienne.  The town is next to the Italian border and, though you may not have heard of it, you surely have seen the thing for which the town is best known:  Opinel knives.  (Yes, they are still made there and in nearby Chambery, a small city that just oozes with Savoyard charm.) After checking into the hotel, I walked into the town square in search of something to eat.  That is when I saw a woman, who was not distinctive in any way, crossing a street.  She was probably on her way home from work.  For whatever reasons, I saw in the way she occupied space and time, the way I was meant to live. 

After writing the post, I couldn't stop thinking about that day, and more to the point, what has changed since then, for me and the world.

For one thing, when I returned, my then-partner surprised me by meeting me at JFK Airport.  As tears trickled down my cheeks, she embraced me.  I held her--actually, I held on:  To this day, I see that hug as the single most desperate act of my life.  I knew that my life would not continue, at least not for very long, as it had.

Even if I hadn't seen that woman in St. Jean de Maurienne, I would have, eventually, undergone the process of affirming my gender identity.  But, I believe, some things--including the September 11 attacks a few weeks later--accelerated the timeline.  I was home that but my partner was in her office near Rockefeller Center.  Subway and bus service was suspended, so she and thousands of other people had to leave Manhattan on foot.  I met her on the Brooklyn side of the Manhattan Bridge.  All I could think about was how easily she--and any one of the people crossing that bridge--and I--could have been incinerated or crushed in those towers.

Undergoing my affirmation process, which began, gradually, with visits to counselors and therapists a few months later, changed my cycling.  Aging would have done it, but taking hormones probably sped up the process.  I still like to ride aggressively and show off, sometimes, but I now realize that I now ride more for my mental health than to show off any kind of physical prowess.

Oh, and I no longer have the bike or clothes I rode during my 2001 tour.  The Voodoo Wazoo, built for cyclocross, was actually a good bike for the ride I took.  But eventually I found myself wanting to change everything in my life, and I sold it--ironically, to pay the air fare for my next trip to France.  And those clothes--do they scream '' 90s mountain biker," or what?  I was indeed still doing some offroad riding, and still owned a proper mountain bike (a Bontrager Race Lite with Rock Shox Judy forks) but I eventually sold that bike and stuck mainly to road riding because I was starting to notice that I didn't heal as quickly from wounds and injuries as I did when I was younger and--OK, this will show how much gender stereotypes still shaped my thinking--I felt that I could be more dignified, ladylike if you will, on a road or city bike.

Now, I don't expect to return to mountain biking because, really, I prefer to stick to a couple of kind of riding.  Also, mountain bikes seem to "age" more quickly than other kinds of bikes. On the other hand, I can ride one of my Mercians just as easily today as I did (or could have, in the case of my newer ones) five or ten years ago, and barring crashes or inability on my part, I should be able to ride them--while replacing only the parts that normally wear out, like chains and tires-- for years to come.

In other words, I expect my tour to continue--precisely because it changed the day I rode up the Col du Galibier. 

L'Alpe, Le Col—And A Secret

Today is Bastille Day.

So, why have I posted a photo of a tide rolling in?

No, I am not making a hackneyed metaphor for the mobs that stormed the prison that became a symbol of monarchial tyranny and class stratification.  Nor am I making an equally tired cliche about the cycles of history.

I took that photo on Bastille Day, almost.  Actually, it's from a couple of days after, just ahead of a Tour de France stage--in the French Alps.

That scene is of something to which I've alluded in other posts.  I took the photo as I pedaled above clouds. To this day, I can't say whether I felt more elation over rising above the clouds or reaching the top of the mountain, which I did a bit later.

Now I am going to reveal one of my dim, dark secrets:

Yes, that's what I looked like on 17 July 2001, a bit more than a year before I started my gender affirmation process. (I am squinting because, at high altitudes, the sun is more intense.) Not only was my world different; so was the world.  For one thing, I asked some random stranger to take that photo:  In the days before i-phones, it was more difficult to take "selfies" without special equipment.  Also, 2001 was the last year of the franc and lira:  On my next trip to France, three years later,  I'd be paying in euros.  And less than two months after I rode to the top of l'Alpe d'Huez, ahead of the Tour peloton, the terrible events of 11 September would change so much else.

A couple of days after that climb, I would ascend to another iconic Tour climb:  the col du Galibier.  I described that climb, and how it--or, more precisely, descending from it and crossing the valley--led me to, among other things, becoming the midlife cyclist who authors this blog. (See this and this.)

So, on this Bastille Day--as the Tour de France climbs and descends through its second day in the Alps--I am writing in part to celebrate the country which I feel almost as much kinship as my own and ascending some of its most difficult climbs.  But I now realize that I am paying homage to the person--known as Nicholas, Nick or Nicky-- who brought me to the part of the journey I've recounted in this blog.  I hope I am honoring him in the way he deserves.

Oh, and today is the anniversary of the day I gave up his name and assumed mine, two years after I ascended those mountains.  I remember feeling, on that day--Bastille Day--that I felt more free, that I had climbed another mountain.

Whether they finish first, last or somewhere in between, the riders in today's Tour stage will always have that.  Just ask Phillipa York, nee Robert Millar.

Note:  I apologize for the poor quality of the images.  I'm still learning how to use my iPhone to take pictures of old pictures!

  

The Eternal Quest

What special knowledge do I possess as a male-to-female transgender cyclist?

Well, here’s one pearl of wisdom I can offer, for whatever it’s worth:  Organized bike rides are one of the few events in which the line to use the women’s restroom is shorter than the men’s.

Still, there’s never a place to go when you really need it!

Fitting Man--And Woman--To The Machine

Note:  This post contains a frank discussion of a female-specific cycling issue.

Perhaps I am the last person in the world who should criticize anybody for having a surgery.

Still, I couldn't help but to cringe when I heard about women who had their toes shortened to better fit into sky-high stiletto heels.  To me, it sounded like a version of foot-binding that has the imprimatur of the medical establishment.

I mean, it's one thing to go under the knife, or to be bound and stitched to look the way one wants to look.  Countless people, including many transgender women I know, have had surgeries to lift cheekbones or chins, raise eyebrows or lower hairlines, or to change the shape of their noses or ears.  Still others have had their breasts augmented and buttocks lifted and firmed or had that most common procedure of all:  liposuction.

It's sad when people are cut, broken, bound and stitched to fit some Barbie-like "ideal" that no real woman meets.  Most such people look perfectly good the way they are; the others are simply unique.  But I won't knock anyone who has surgeries or other procedures if it makes them happier and better able to function in the way they wish.  After all, some people would say--wrongly, I aver--that my gender reassignment surgery fits into that category.  Certainly, I could have lived without it:  after all, I did, for decades before I had it.  I just don't know how much longer I could have lived, at least as I was.

What disturbs me, though, about toe-shortening is that it's done in order to fit a device, i.e., high-heeled shoes.  (A device for what?  I'll let you answer that!) How many of us would have our hands surgically altered to better fit our keyboards or our bodies reshaped to the contours of a chair?

Now, you are probably asking what this has to do with cycling.  Well, I'll tell you:  There are women who are having parts of their inner labias removed because they rubbed against their saddles.  This sometimes causes chafing, bleeding and even infections, as it did for me when I first started cycling after my surgery. 

Sometimes I still feel pain, as many other women do.  But it has been less frequent for me, as I have found saddle positions that work for me, most of the time, on each of my bicycles. And I have been experimenting with ways I dress when I ride, especially when I wear skirts.

But I am not about to undergo what some are calling "saddle surgery".  For one thing, my labia was constructed by a surgeon.  She did a great job (and it cost me a bit of coin), so I don't want to undo it.  Also, I simply can't see myself altering my body again to fit a machine, even if it is a bicycle.  If anything, it should be the other way around:  the machine should fit the human.

And my identity--the reason I had the surgery--is not a machine.  

Also, the pain I experience these days is really not any worse than the pain and numbness I sometimes experienced after long rides before my surgery.  Besides the equipment I have now is a lot less noticeable under form-fitting shorts than my old equipment was!

Riding On Race Memory

The other day,  I took a ride I hadn’t taken in a long, long time.

I ended up in Long Branch, New Jersey, as I’d planned.  I rode there back in December.  But I made a wrong turn just as I was leaving the industrial and post-industrial necropolis of north-central New Jersey took a very different route from the one I’d planned.  I didn’t mind: It was a very satisfying ride that took me away from the traffic streaming in and out of the shopping malls that day, the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend.

But on Sunday I took the route I rode so many times in my youth, through the weathered Jersey Shore communities that line Route 36 from Keyport to the Highlands.  So much was as I remembered it from the last time I rode it, twenty years ago, and the first time I rode it, twenty years before that. Then I crossed over the arched bridge that spans the Shrewsbury River where it empties into Sandy Hook Bay and drops into the spit of land that separates the river and bay from the Atlantic Ocean.  

At the top of the bridge, the ocean stretches as far as you can see. Whether it was bluer than any eye or stone I’ve ever seen, or grayer than steel, nothing made me better than seeing it and descending that bridge.

Here is something I wrote about the experience of doing that ride for the first time as a woman named Justine—after many, many journeys as a boy and man named Nick:

************************************************************************************

Yesterday’s ride brought back memories of the race.

I did not make the turn.  I could not.  I did not for many, many years.  But yesterday I did.

Either way meant pedaling uphill.  To the left I went.  Two hills, instead of one.  Between them, a brief flat, where I could regain some of the momentum I’d lost.

But the climbs were neither as long nor as steep as I remembered.  I forgot that I’m not in as good shape as I was the last time I did this ride, this race, more than twenty years ago.  

To get to the ocean and back.  That was all I had to do in those days.  To the ocean and back before dark, before the air grew as cold and night as false as the water, as the reflections on it:  my reflections.

All I had to do was get back for dinner.  At least, that’s all I was told to do.  Sunday; you simply did not miss dinner.  You couldn’t even be late for it.  So there was only so much time to get there, to get to the ocean and back.

I am pedaling on memory now.  My body’s memory:  the only kind.  The first time I did this ride, when I was a teenager.  The last time, twenty years later, twenty years ago.

Before the memory, I knew nothing.  I could only move ahead, I could only pedal.  Gotta make it.  I could not stop. My memory of this ride, this race, could not, could not let me.  You will.  I could not hear; when you’re in this race, you can’t.

On that flat between the climbs, a woman walked toward me.  She says something; I can only see her.  She knows me perfectly well; I don’t.  She does not stop me; I cannot.

She would climb these hills many more times.  You’ll make it!  How does she know?  I have no other choice.

The climb is easier when you have a memory of the race.  It’s inevitable.  You couldn’t go any other way.  There is only the race, the climb, that ends at a bridge that you’ll cross because there is no other way over the bay, to the ocean.  

Because I made the turn. Because I couldn’t have gone any other way.  Not when a teenaged boy’s elbows and knees slung him forward on his saddle and up the hills.  Not when the memory of a woman in late middle age, the electricity in her flesh—his flesh—guides the wheels beneath her, beneath him, over the bridge and to the ocean.

The day is clear.  Reflections of the sun pulse; she moves the weight of his bones down a narrow strip between the bay and the ocean all the way to the end.  His end, where he turned around for the race.  He would have to get there and back while he could; she knew he would but he could not.  He could not have known.  He could only push; he could only pump.

The sunset is even clearer.  Weathered houses stand ready; the abandoned ones lost to the tides.  I am pedaling into the wind but my bike rolls as easily and smoothly over cracked asphalt as boats, sails like wings fluttering between ripples of water and clouds. 

They will reach their shores, whoever is guiding them, whoever guided them years ago.  I came to the end of yesterday’s ride on my memory of a race:  the teenaged boy who first followed these roads, the young man who did not know how to turn; the man who would not—and, finally, twenty years later, the woman who could not.  She crossed the bridge to the ocean. 

Yesterday I rode on the memory of that race, the race that I am.