Quinceañera

 So why, you may be wondering, is this post titled “Quinceañera?”

If you are familiar with Latin American cultures, you have heard of “Quinceañera”—or, perhaps, been part of one. Basically, it’s a “coming of age” party for a girl who’s turned fifteen years old.  I guess you could say it’s a Hispanic version of “Sweet Sixteen,” one year earlier.

Of course, I am not writing this post because I’ve turned fifteen. When I was that age, it never would have occurred to me that I was in midlife, or any other particular stage of life.  I probably was as self-absorbed as (or possibly even more self-absorbed than) other kids of that same age.  Now I realize that it, like much about adolescence that is denigrated (“oh, that’s so adolescent!”) is actually normal: Kids are trying to figure out a lot of things as their bodies are changing in ways for which they’re unprepared. In my case, my solipsism had to do with those things and, ironically, something I was trying to avoid—and wouldn’t make any attempt to resolve until decades later, when I realized that I was in midlife but would soon be at the end if I didn’t resolve it.

The resolution of that conflict became part of the basis of a blog I started two years before this one:  Transwoman Times. Writing it led me to start Midlife Cycling: Someone who read  TT noticed that some of my posts were about cycling and suggested that I start a blog specifically about cycling.

So, on this date in 2010–fifteen years ago—I wrote the first of 4754 posts I’ve  written on this blog. Back then, I had no idea of how long I would keep up this blog: Would I run out of things to say? Do I have undiagnosed ADHD that would distract me from this and cause me to start another blog, or some other project? Or would I stop “fooling myself,” as some might say, with the notion that I’m in the middle of my life as long as I don’t know when I’m going to die and finally admit that I’m old?

The answer to that last question is an emphatic “NO!” As long as I can ride, I am not “too old” for, well, anything—including a Quinceañera, if only for this blog.

So, I thank all of you who have been reading—and following me as I cycle through my midlife and this blog’s Quinceañera!

Alternative Energy Source?

 Is this what they mean by “wind power?”

Let Then Have My Power!

 As an educator, the worst thing I can do is to do something for you. In other words, I can’t interpret the poem or write the essay (or poem) for you.  The best I can do for you, or anyone, is to impart skills and knowledge you can use to do those, and other, things.

Librarians do something similar: They don’t do your research for you; they enable you to do your own research. That is one reason why they are some of my favorite people.

The phrase “knowledge is power” (“sciencia potentia est”) is attributed to Francis Bacon, to whom four centuries of crackpots have attributed Shakespeare’s works. To be able to come up with such a pearl of wisdom takes, well, knowledge. That particular kind of knowledge,however, was available almost exclusively to men—and to men of the leisure classes, at that—in Bacon’s time. So, with all due respect to my male readers, I will say that women have a unique understanding of what Bacon has passed on to us. And it took affirming my own gender identity, as a trans woman, to see that.

Now you can understand the joy I felt over reading about the Iowa City Bike Library’s Women’s/Trans/Femme Night.

Iowa City Bicycle Library. Photo by Natalie Dunlap.

Although it’s called a “library,” you can’t check out books. But you can borrow a bike—for a deposit. And the knowledge you can gain doesn’t come from scholarly journals or online sources. Rather, it emanates from staff members and volunteers who have a “hands-off” policy: They will show patrons how to fix something rather than doing it for them.

Such knowledge translates into power in all sorts of ways. The most obvious is that with it, you don’t have to “take it to a dude mechanic who’s the only person who can fix this,” as ICBL board member Clarity Guerra (You can’t make up a better name than that!) says. Perhaps more important, the confidence that comes with knowing you can fix your flat tire or brakes can encourage you to ride more, and even to see your bicycle as your chief means of transportation or recreation.

Such knowledge can be especially empowering for female-identifying people who have experienced domestic violence or who are members of racial and ethnic “minorities.” So it’s not surprising that ICBL has groups and programs to include them—and trans women. Or that it provides child care and snacks.

ICBL was founded in 2004: the year after I began my gender affirmation process. At the time, I didn’t know any other trans-identifying people who were cyclists, let alone who had worked as bike mechanics. Now in New York (where I live) there are rides, workshops and other bicycle-related events geared (pun intended) toward us.  That makes me happy, and I participate whenever I can because I want to share at least some of my knowledge and experience—which I gained while living as a boy and man. Other female-identifying cyclists won’t have to go to the “dude mechanic” (my younger self!) or macho racer wannabes (ditto). Let them have my power!