Can't Stop Thinking About Him

I took the day off from work yesterday.  I'm going in today and I hope to have time afterward for a ride (besides my regular commute), however short.  I think it's the best way to deal with my feelings about Max.

He's not the first cat I've lost.  But he has experienced so much with me.  To be more exact, he was a sweet, loving presence through both the joys and the trials of the past ten and a half years.  

Max was at the door when I came home from a couple thousand days of work, a few hundred bike rides, trips to see my parents in Florida, trips to see my friends in France and other trips to Italy and the Czech Republic--and to Colorado, for my surgery.  He was with me during some difficult times, when people who said they would "always be there" for me changed their minds, and when a beau revealed his true, abusive, colors--and nearly destroyed my life.   

Most important of all--at least to me--he was with me as I was re-defining myself as a person, and a cyclist.  He didn't care whether I raced or if a 150 kilometer ride took half an hour, then an hour, longer than it did when I was in my twenties, thirties or even early 40s.  He didn't even care when I had a "bad hair day": something that was never a concern of mine when I was younger.

I had long heard that orange cats were the friendliest.  Max certainly lived up to that.  He was all love, all the time.  And when he wasn't basking in someone's affection, he was doing the other thing he did best:

A friend of mine, Michiko, called him "The Zen Cat."  Now you know why.  Maybe I should remember his calm affection today, as I ride to work and, hopefully, somewhere--even if it's just a park near work--afterward.

R.I.P. Max

I've just lost a friend.

You've seen him on these pages.  He's one of the most loving and friendly beings I've ever known. 

Sometimes he would climb on me while I was sleeping.  I didn't mind: When I woke to him, I felt the sun rising.  He looked like a sunrise.

I am talking about Max, the orange cat who's lived with me for ten and a half years.

He came into my life on 9 April 2007.  My friend Millie rescued him from a street near us.  She told me that when she saw him, she walked right up to him.  He did the same for me the first time I saw him.

What that meant, of course, was that he is anything but a feral  cat.  "He must have had a home before," Millie observed.  When I saw him, I couldn't not give him one.

The vet said he was between five and seven years old when I brought him home.  So, that means he lived about sixteen or seventeen years--a pretty good lifespan for a cat.

Even if he'd been in my life for only a day, he could have given me a lifetime of happiness:  That is what he carried with him, and couldn't help but to give.  He greeted everyone who came to my apartment--including Marlee, the day I brought her home--like an old friend and playmate.

He died late Sunday night, after I'd come back from a nice ride, had a sumptuous dinner and talked to my mother.  I wrote yesterday's post about the ride I took Sunday, the day before, because it was just too difficult to talk about Max.

He won't be waiting for me at the end of my next ride.  Not physically, anyway.  I believe, though, that I'll see him at the end of many rides for a long time to come.

Note:  In a sad irony, I lost another cat--the first one I had who was named Charlie--on 16 October in 2005.

Seasonal Indecision

Yesterday was one of those days that couldn't seem to decide whether it was very late summer or not-quite-early fall.  

My ride started in a cool mist on Tosca, my Mercian fixed gear.  It was actually pleasant:  I felt every pore and orifice of my body opening in a very pleasant way.

I headed for the Rockaways.  The cool mist clung to silent streets, still homes and closed stores--and to me--as I spun through the western Queens neighborhoods near my apartment.  

But, after I crossed under the "el" (elevated tracks, or viaduct for those of you who don't live in New York), the warm mist turned into a mild steam bath on my way across Jamaica Bay to Beach Channel.  Then, as I crossed the Veteran's Memorial Bridge into the Rockaways--and from the waves and clouds of Jamaica Bay to the tides and sky of the Atlantic--I experienced something I normally experience in early spring:  the temperature seemed to drop 20 degrees (F).  That is normal in April, when the air temperature on the mainland might be in the 70s (F), but the ocean is only in the 40s.  Yesterday, however, the air and water temperature were probably not very far apart:  somewhere near 70F, though it felt cooler along the Rockaway Boardwalk.

It's one of those odd coastal days that I truly enjoy:  The sky is overcast, though still only slightly less blue than the sea on the horizon, and that cool mist swirling about me.  I rode under that sky, by that sea and in that mist all the way to Point Lookout.  

Then the clouds broke and the sun peeked through--at least as I looked eastward from the Point.  Behind me, conditions were the same as the ones through which I'd ridden from the Rockaways.

And that is what I rode in all the way home.  I didn't mind:  Such conditions are actually welcome, at least for me, during the last few kilometers of a 125 kilo fixed gear ride!