The Mountain We Climbed

Two cyclists climbed the mountain.

Image from Tripsite

Their long, arduous pedal strokes channeled their fear, rage and loneliness into jagged thrusts through virages.  They funneled their darkest secret into energy that helped them push against headwinds on deceptively narrow straightaways.  

They would reach the summit but feel no sense of pride or elation about it.  Years later, each of them would say exactly the same thing:  Yeah, I did that.  To this day, others are more impressed than they are with their feats.

Both grew up in working-class enclaves--one in Scotland, the other in Brooklyn and New Jersey.  They have remarkably similar stories about being bullied and ostracized, and how they both felt the need to escape.  It drove both of them to France.

The American stayed for a time and has returned several times since.  The Scot achieved great professional success there and returns for various gigs.  

They both climbed the mountain.  And, after their descents, they realized that they would have traded that experience, and all of the others, for a life they could not have led until they crossed the valley.

As you might have surmised, I am the American.  What you might not have realized until now---I didn't, until a couple of hours ago--is that the Scot in question was the first Anglophone to wear the polka dot jersey (for the King of the Mountains) in the Tour de France.  In one of cycling's more famous photos, this rider is seen descending a mountain in the 1989 Tour, alongside Laurent Fignon, Pedro Delgado and eventual overall winner Greg LeMond.

In the 1984 Tour de France.

I am talking about someone who went by the name of Robert Millar.  Yes, that Robert Millar.  The one who finished fourth overall (then the highest standing for an Anglophone) in the 1984 edition, when Millar won the polka-dot jersey.   The following year, the Glasgow native would have a Vuelta a Espana victory "stolen" by riders who colluded for a Spanish victory.  Two years later, Millar placed second in the Giro d'Italia:  still the best finish in that race for a cyclist from the British Isles.

Millar, even after retiring from the sport, garnered great admiration and respect from former rivals and teammates, not to mention fans.  While my brief racing career brought me no money or fame, my life as a cyclist gave me, if I do say so myself, people who admired and respected me for riding up the mountain.  And another.  And another.  Some of the folks who shouted "Bon courage!" I would never meet again, but others became riding and training partners for periods of my life.

But even though Millar was a better, or at least more accomplished and recognized, cyclist than I ever was or will be, we do have remarkably similar stories.

We are the same age: only two months separate us.  And in addition to our class roots, we have other similarities in our backgrounds.  In particular, each of us had a parallel experience.  For all I know, we might have had it on the same day:  When we were five years old, the boys and girls lined up on opposite sides of the playground.  Robert in Glasgow felt the same way as Nicholas--"Nicky"--in Brooklyn:  different.  "But there was no way to communicate that without the other boys beating me up or picking on me," Millar recalls.

She took the words out of my mouth!

Philippa York

Robert Millar no longer goes by that name.  Today she is known as Philippa York.  While she has a bike with mudguards and a wicker basket for "going to town", her knowledge of the gradients and lengths of climbs around her home on the South Coast of England is "suspiciously accurate," according to a Telegraph article.  "I still like that rush of speed, but that's only downhill," she explains.  "I can't go fast on the flat or uphill anymore and I accept that I am going to need every gear on my bike."

I can relate.

We climbed the mountain.  And we are here, now--female midlife cyclists, both of us.

N.B.:  I want to thank one of my favorite bloggers, "The Retrogrouch", for alerting me to Philippa York's story!

One of my early posts will tell you more about the mountain (actually, one of the mountains) I climbed.

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.

How To Ride Like A Lady

Historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich has written, "Well-behaved women seldom make history".

She, of course, is correct.  However, when women are entering previously-unchartered territory, we sometimes have to behave in accordance with accepted gender norms in order to hold onto our places in those worlds.  In other words, we can't be perceived as a threat to men.  On the other hand, we also have to do whatever we're doing in our own way--and, indeed, we often have to figure out what that way is--in order not to be seen as inferior to the men who are doing whatever it is we're doing.

I know from whence I speak: In my transition from living as a man to my life as a woman, I have been criticized for being too much like a man and too much like a woman--sometimes by the very same people.  The same people who told me I was too aggressive on the job told me, in the next breath, that I was too submissive--"like a woman."  It's a bit like telling a woman she throws too hard for a girl but that she "throws like a girl".

I thought about that when I came across this list of "don'ts" for female cyclists that was published in the New York World in 1895:

Don’t be a fright.

Don’t faint on the road.

Don’t wear a man’s cap.

Don’t wear tight garters.

Don’t forget your toolbag

Don’t attempt a “century.”

Don’t coast. It is dangerous.

Don’t boast of your long rides.

Don’t criticize people’s “legs.”

Don’t wear loud hued leggings.

Don’t cultivate a “bicycle face.”

Don’t refuse assistance up a hill.

Don’t wear clothes that don’t fit.

Don’t neglect a “light’s out” cry.

Don’t wear jewelry while on a tour.

Don’t race. Leave that to the scorchers.

Don’t wear laced boots. They are tiresome.

Don’t imagine everybody is looking at you.

Don’t go to church in your bicycle costume.

Don’t wear a garden party hat with bloomers.

Don’t contest the right of way with cable cars.

Don’t chew gum. Exercise your jaws in private.

Don’t wear white kid gloves. Silk is the thing.

Don’t ask, “What do you think of my bloomers?”

Don’t use bicycle slang. Leave that to the boys.

Don’t go out after dark without a male escort.

Don’t go without a needle, thread and thimble.

Don’t try to have every article of your attire “match.”

Don’t let your golden hair be hanging down your back.

Don’t allow dear little Fido to accompany you

Don’t scratch a match on the seat of your bloomers.

Don’t discuss bloomers with every man you know.

Don’t appear in public until you have learned to ride well.

Don’t overdo things. Let cycling be a recreation, not a labor.

Don’t ignore the laws of the road because you are a woman.

Don’t try to ride in your brother’s clothes “to see how it feels.”

Don’t scream if you meet a cow. If she sees you first, she will run.

Don’t cultivate everything that is up to date because yon ride a wheel.

Don’t emulate your brother’s attitude if he rides parallel with the ground.

Don’t undertake a long ride if you are not confident of performing it easily.

Don’t appear to be up on “records” and “record smashing.” That is sporty.

Some of these "don'ts" made me cringe.  But I had to get a laugh out of "Don't try to ride in your brother's clothes 'to see how it feels'!"

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!

Why I Didn't Give Up Cycling

I have been cycling, in one way or another, for more than four decades.  Now I do not pedal nearly as many miles (or kilometres) as I did "back in the day."  But I feel that, in some way, cycling is as much a part of my life now as it was then.

Through all of those years, there was one period when I seriously considered giving up cycling altogether.  I was going to keep one bike "for old time's sake" and, perhaps, for errands and transportation.  But I thought that my days as a regular rider were going to come to an end.

That time came early in my life as Justine.  I really didn't know how, or even whether, I could combine cycling--or, more precisely, my identity as a cyclist (There were years in which I pedaled 360 days and 25,000 or more kilometers!) with the life on which I was about to embark.  One reason for that was, frankly, I had practically no idea of what the life on which I was embarking would be like.  Oh, I had visions of who and what Justine would be.  But, as happens with nearly everyone who undergoes a gender transition, my expectations--and the sort of woman I would become--differed, at least somewhat. Although my therapist, social worker, doctor and other transgender people who were further along in their transitions--or who'd had surgery and were living fully in their "new" genders--told me such a thing would probably happen, I had no idea of what I would become as a woman.

Also, I was trying so hard to be the sort of woman I envisioned at the beginning of my transition that it took me time to realize that it could encompass much more than I imagined at the time--and that, of course, the sort of woman I could, and would, become could be different.  I'd entered my transition with ideas of what women in the '40's and '50's were like, which were the ideas to which early transsexuals like Christine Jorgensen conformed, and what the public expected of transsexuals (to the extent that they paid attention to us).

But, perhaps the most important reason why I thought I might not ride anymore was that so much of my cycling had been a means of escape, however temporary.  Whether I was pedaling 180 rpm on the Prospect Park loop or hugging the edge of a virage in the Alps--or dodging taxis and giving the one-fingered peace sign to drivers who got in my way--bicycling had always been a means of escape for me.  I think now of a friendly acquaintance who was one of the first women to attend her undergraduate college on a track and field scholarship.  She has told me that whether she was training on local streets or pumping away during the state championships, she was "running for my life by running from my life".  She never would have been able to attend her college without that scholarship, she said.  But, perhaps even more important, she says she doesn't know  how she would have "survived, in one piece" a childhood that included incest and other forms of dysfunction and disease in her family.

My childhood wasn't nearly as Dickensian as hers.  Perhaps I shouldn't say that, for such a comparison may not make any sense:  After all, she suffered at the hands of other people, while most of my torment came from within me.  Still, I could relate to what she said as much as anything anyone else has said to me.  Her running and my cycling had been means of escape, however momentary.  

She hasn't run, even for fitness, in more than two decades.  She has taken up other sports (including cycling, which is how I know her) and forms of training, but she has not run since the day she was doing laps in the park and "asking myself why," she said.

But I didn't give up cycling because, frankly, I probably have always enjoyed it more than she liked running, and I now have more reasons to continue on two wheels than she does on the training loop.  Also, during my second year of living as Justine, I was running errands and shopping after work one Friday.  It was a pleasantly cool day in May,and I was still in the blouse, skirt and low heels I'd worn to work that day. I had just come out of a store and was unlocking my bike from a parking meter when a tall black man chatted me up.  "Are you European?", he wondered.

"Well, I've lived and traveled there," I explained.  "But I'm from here, and I've lived most of my life here."

"You look more like a European woman, getting around on your bike," he said.  He confirmed what I suspected, from his accent and mannerisms, that he was born in Africa but had lived much of his life in Europe--specifically, France.

By Harmonyhalo

That day I realized that, one way or another, I would probably continue to ride my bicycle in my new life.  I would never be the same kind of cyclist I was when I was living as Nick--and, honestly, at that time, I didn't want to be.  But I knew that as Justine, a newly-born woman in her 40's, I would be able to ride her bike in my new life--and my job and those stores wouldn't be my only destinations, any more than commuting and store-hopping would be my only rides.