How Do You Measure Your Ride?

 J. Alfed Prufrock laments, “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.” It seems that some of my neighbors measure out, or at least schedule, their lives by doctors’ appointments. I promised myself I wouldn’t because, although I am living in a senior citizens’ building, I am not old; I am, ahem, in midlife, just a bit further along.

Yesterday I broke that promise. Well, all right, I didn’t measure my life by doctors’ appointments: I scheduled my bike ride around one.  To Randall’s Island and back on Tosca, my beloved Mercian fixie, after a breakfast and before a lunch I couldn’t eat because my appointment would include blood work.

I’d planned to ride some more after my appointment.  But when I got home, Marlee beckoned. A cuddle turned into a nap, which turned into real, deep sleep. Could I really have been so tired after riding only 25:kilometers? Have I become old, but without the poetry T.S. Eliot put in Prufrock’s mouth?

Carrie tried to call me a couple of times last night. She figured I was asleep and asked how my doctor’s appointment went. When I mentioned that the phlebotomist took five vials of my blood, she exclaimed, “No wonder you were so tired!”

It had been a while since any of my blood had been drawn. Did I drift into dreamsville? Or am I getting old, I mean, later in midlife?

As long as I’m not measuring my life in coffee spoons or doctors’ appointments—or anything else, really—I will be in the middle of my life. Measurements lead to comparisons, sometimes with the wrong people, for the wrong reasons. That’s not living your own life, in whatever way you choose. So what if I rode only 25 kilometers before my doctor’s appointment? That’s just one ride, one day among many in the middle of my life.

Bicycling in (the) Middle Age(s)?

 Bicycling in (the) Middle Age(s)?

Midlife Bikes

 

Yesterday I pedaled Tosca, my Mercian fixed gear bike, to City Island and back. It wasn’t a long ride: about 16 miles (26 km), and only because I took a slightly convoluted route on my way out. But I was happy because I felt good: My body and bike felt as if they were were one, an absolutely perfect form of energy spinning across pavement and dirt.

I have been riding Tosca for nearly two decades, longer than any other bike I’ve ever owned. It was repainted once. I can’t think of anything I’d change on her. I feel the same way about my other bespoke Mercians—Dee-Lilah, my Vincitore Special and La-Vande, my King of Mercia—and Vera, my Miss Mercian mixte.  

Why am I praising my bikes now?  Somehow Infound myself thinking about how, in my youth, I would’ve followed the Tour de France (running now) and other races and wanted to make my bikes more like those Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault, Lance Armstrong (before I knew how much he’d cheated) and other champions. Their bikes weren’t very different from the Colnago or Land Shark I rode. But I always felt the need to keep my bike “up to date,” even long after I’d stopped racing or even riding with wannabe racers.

Today I hardly follow racing and am much less interested in professional sports (except for women’s) than I once was. Today I ride only for transportation or pleasure. My bikes serve those purposes; the ones ridden by the pros would not. Integrated cockpits might be great for efficiency, but they don’t allow for adjustment. Disc brakes are more work than I am willing to do; I have not had trouble stopping with caliper brakes as long as I keep them adjusted.  And I don’t need 12 or 13 gears on the rear of my drivetrain.

In other words, the bike I might’ve wanted if I were, today, the young rider I once was has no use or appeal to me as a midlife cyclist.