A Journey To Midlife

I have been posting less frequently. Fear not: I am not going away. Nor is this blog. 

Midlife Cycling began as a spinoff of my earlier blog, Transwoman Times, as I was coming out of convalescence from my gender-affirming surgery. At that time (2010) there were a lot of “girls on bikes” blogs. Some seemed to be little more than fashion shoots but others, thankfully offered genuine insights into a male-dominated activity in which I’d participated as a boy and man but would re-enter as a woman.

I took my cues from the latter category. It was interesting to relate how drivers, pedestrians and other cyclists sometimes treated me differently than they did, or would have, when I was in male drag. Also, while I could ride with most of the same equipment I previously used, I became aware of how poorly, for the most part, the bicycle industry addressed women’s specific needs and wants.

All of that kept me going for a while. But eventually this blog became, really, just another bike blog: I wrote about equipment, events and sometimes interesting stories about people. And I was posting nearly every day. I guess it became my graffiti: Like those bold strokes and colors I see painted on public spaces, this blog became a way of leaving a mark, as it were, of my presence in this world.

After my mother’s death—six years ago tomorrow—and the crash and “dooring” incidents I experienced within four months of 2020, my postings became somewhat less frequent. Perhaps that was a sign that I needed to focus as much on the first word of this blog’s title as I had on the second.  That, I now realize, is where I would discover the real voice, as it were, of Midlife Cycling.

Now I realize that going to Japan last month has clarified this new vision. I wasn’t posting every day because I did a lot, including rides in very hot weather, and I was exhausted at the end of most days. But the trip was different from others I’ve taken because, well, Japan is different. It’s hard to imagine a more interesting juxtaposition between an ancient culture and modern technology that makes America seem like in the Late Bronze Age. And, although my perspective might be skewed, I couldn’t help but to feel that you don’t have to hide your age when you’re there. While a reverence for tradition can hinder the ability to see new perspectives, it also means that you’re not something to be pushed out of the way. Young people spend just as much time as American teenagers looking at their screens, but even on the busiest streets, they were polite, almost deferential.

Another way this trip was different was that I didn’t “disappear.” Nearly all of my travel and most of my cycling has been solo. In the days before cell phones, I might call a friend or family member once a week. And I would write letters or send post cards.

During more recent trips, however, I could make—and receive—calls. Cora was well aware of that.

She, the partner of my neighbor and riding buddy Sam, was my cat-sitter while I was away. Since Marlee underwent surgery just before I left, she knew that I felt a little guilty for not canceling my trip. Some of her calls were to reassure me that my feline housemate was doing well. But more than anything, she wanted to hear about Japan—and, as it turned out, simply to talk to me.

Calling, or being called by her, several times a day was a sign, I now realize, that I was not on a footloose wandering of my youth. Rather, sharing my trip with someone about my age who wasn’t a family member really made my trip to Japan a midlife journey.

Perhaps that will be the new focus of this blog. Yes, I will continue to write about bicycles and bicycling—but as they are that midlife journey.

P.S. I can’t help but to notice that this blog has been getting more views since I stopped posting daily. In fact, there have been more views in the nearly three months since this blog’s 15th anniversary (2 June) than in its first four years online!

What Is A Bicycle? Who Is A Cyclist?

 

What is a bicycle? Who is a cyclist?

If I were to teach a class in law or philosophy, I would want to deal with those questions. They’re not merely exercises in semantics. The possible answers have ramifications in any number of areas, including urban planning, law enforcement and insurance.

If I wanted to be pedantic (or what Google-educated “scholars” of the US Constitution call “originalist” or what might be known as “fundamentalist “ in religion) I would define a “bicycle” as two wheels propelled by two pedals. But such a definition could include any contraption with a motor or anything else that amplifies or assists the person pushing or spinning the pedals.

Also, such a fundamentalist or originalist, if you will, delineation would exclude the Draisienne or pretty much anything preceding Pierre Michaux’s creation.  On the other hand, it would also exclude scooters and other two-wheeled devices not propelled by pedals. But it also wouldn’t include tricycles, whether they’re made for adults or children.

Until this month the state of Illinois defines a bicycle thusly: “every device propelled by human power upon which any person may ride, having two tandem wheels except scooters and similar devices.” 

Such a definition might have been adequate a decade or so ago, before the proliferation of e-bikes and electric scooters, even if it didn’t include adult tricycles which, I imagine, are relatively few in number in Illinois. But now people who haven’t cycled much, or at all, since they got their driver’s licenses conflate anything with two wheels with bicycles.

That is part of the weakness in the state’s new legal definition of bicycles, which took effect on 1 August:

every human-powered or low-speed electric vehicle with two or more wheels not less than 12 inches in diameter, designed for the transportation of one or more persons.

So what, exactly, is meant by “low-speed?” (At my age, that could mean any speed at which I ride!😟) Or “human-powered?” Could a hand operating a throttle fit into that category?

While I complain about the lack of enforcement—at least here in NYC—of the prohibition against motorized bikes and scooters on bike lanes, I can almost understand it: In the absence of clear legal definitions, most cops think that anything with two wheels—even if it’s effectively an electric motorcycle—is a bicycle, and anyone who rides them is a cyclist.

A Journey Between Worlds

 Whenever I mounted the bicycle, a journey began.

The previous sentence popped into my head during my second day in Kyoto. I didn’t stop to write it down because my inner editor said, “too precious, too self-consciously Literary (with a capital L).” Perhaps it is, but I have not been able to let go of it.

I had just arrived at Okazaki, the park adjacent to the  Heian-jingu Shrine. It wasn’t very far from the Shimogamo Shrine, where I’d spent the morning and early afternoon. In fact, as I would soon learn, nothing in Kyoto is very far from anything else in the city, especially if you’re going by bicycle. 

But even though Shimogamo and the Heian Shrine at Okazaki are only a few kilometers apart, and represent early periods of Japanese history, I felt as if I were traveling between worlds as much as I did when I set out from my hotel in a modern section of the city.

Shimogamo is a shrine to Tamayori-hine, “the spirit-inviting maiden” and her father, Kamo Taketsunomi. Experts think it dates to the 6th Century C.E., or more than two centuries before Kyoto began its millennium (794-1868 C.E.) as Japan’s capital.  To put that into context, Shimogamo was built a century or so after the Roman Empire fell and Europe was cast into an era of stagnation. In fact, only a few decades before Kyoto became the imperial capital, Europe nearly became a Muslim monolith.

Anyway, as I pedaled from Shimogamo—where I took a ritual bath—I realized that I couldn’t describe the architecture or other aesthetics, history or purpose in the Eurocentric terms through which I’ve learned whatever I know (which, I admit, isn’t much) and I’ve narrated my experience. That, as it turned out, was an important realization when I arrived at Okazaki. The Heian Shrine there is probably just as important to the Japanese and adherents of Shintoism, even if the buildings are replicas of the ones that originally stood there. What matters about the site is that Emperors Kanmu Ana Kōmei, the first and last of the era when Kyoto was capital, are enshrined there. 

I cannot pretend that I understand Japanese people’s attitudes toward their emperors or their history, except to say that it’s different from how I, as an American, see our history and leaders. Something Soh, the guide for my Tokyo bike tour, made sense, however. At Akusaka Imperial Gardens, he remarked that while fewer and fewer people adhere to Shintoism, ands Japanese people in general have become less religious, learning about the faith and its relationship to Japanese history and culture is still considered an important part of young people’s education.

Again, I can’t claim to understand how the people see their history. But another clue became clearer to me as I left the Heian Shrine: I hadn’t seen a Japanese flag anywhere in Kyoto since arriving the day before, and I saw a few in Tokyo and maybe a couple in Osaka.  In fact, of the other twenty-six countries I’ve visited and the two in which I’ve lived, I can’t think of one in which I saw so few of its national flags. In fact, I have seen more Stars and Stripes fluttering along a single block in New York than I saw Rising Sun flags during my two weeks in Japan.

That, in itself is a kind of journey. While the some of the sites  I visited display depictions of battles and descriptions of fights between clans, none of them seemed to portray those events as steps toward Japan fulfilling some sort of Manifest Destiny. Perhaps I missed it because I don’t understand Japanese and know so little about the culture and history, but I didn’t detect the jingoism that affects so much of how Americans are (mis) educated about our history.

Whenever I mount my bicycle, I am on a journey, whether through geography, history, culture. And as long as I am on a journey, I believe that I am in the middle of my life.