the tao of cycling: end of the blahg

Friday, February 3, 2012

end of the blahg

a friend of mine, the other day, commented that they had been reading my blahg . . .
which made me smile, while internally wincing.
ouch.

I'd better get gruntled quickly, hadn't I?

well here goes.

our biking buddies brad and ivy moved to seattle last november, breaking off little corners of all our hearts. they were in town last weekend and we gathered for dinner--fourteen of us, a goofy collection of souls--and I think part of my malaise has to do with the fact that they were brilliantly here and now woefully gone.

the crew who gathered comprised
a plane salesman (girl)
a computer guy
1 entrepreneur
1 nurse
1 writer and small business owner (me!)
2 geologists, one of whom works in academia and one in the real world with environmental issues
1 PhD who has just begun medical school
1 strikingly lovely bulgarian grad student
1 environmental attorney who loves to rock climb
1 professor in the school of business

3 physicians (who can be, if you don't know this, a little bit lovably geeky)

the interests of this combined group skip and scatter about, jumping around the globe and covering many sports, most outside activities known to man, myriad intellectual pursuits, fabulous authors, independent and big screen movies, bacteria, viruses, and raising chickens.

if only our 2 biologist friends had been there, we could have widened the interest range to include worms and axons and plant toxins.

two days ago our temporarily-based-in-seattle (hint hint) friends posted a short video on facebook; ivy the cinematographer, brad the actor. brad was riding his bike around their living and dining rooms and kitchen, while ivy provided the dialogue which was to the tune of "we're adults, look at us, brad is riding his bike in the house, yes, we can do this because we have a big enough house and we're adults."

I miss them.

and my point today is simply this: we are not only what we eat, we are who we choose to spend time with. the people we love, the people we choose to be with, they are part of us, they fuel us, they may at times reflect portions of ourselves (and that is why we're drawn to them) but they also, at times, provide what we ourselves don't have.

I've never ridden my bike in the house. and now I don't have to, because I can live vicariously through the brad-and-ivy show.

and I'm a better person for it.

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the Male Ego

The other day I was coming down a canyon in my drop bars (two years ago I would have said, 'what's a drop bar?'), working hard, when I came up on two guys who were also heading downhill but at a more leisurely pace. I passed them, said hello as I did so, and pulled back into the bike lane. a few minutes later they went flying past me, faces looking dead ahead, not a single bit of acknowledgment that I even existed on this planet let alone was involved in and enjoying the same sport they were.
I have to attribute this to the male ego. what else can it be? now I know we all have egos, myself included. and mine even shows its ridiculous little head once in a while, or perhaps more often. but the difference between mine and say, those of certain men on bicycles, is that I KNOW mine exists and I can LAUGH at mine. I know my ego was quite excited to pass those guys, and I could also smile because I knew if the men had really been working like I was, they would have kicked my butt down the hill.
I think I pissed them off.
and I'm sure I will be sharing with you much more of my thoughts about the male ego . . .

a little history

I was married, and I had a mountain bike which I rarely rode. we separated, I moved out, and four months later someone stole my bike. the next spring, 2005, I bought myself a new mountain bike. I rode occasionally, and in april 2006 I rode in my first century, the Cactus Hugger in St. George, Utah. I made it 54 miles on that mountain bike, and it took me about 6 hours. I think that included the rest stops where I prayed that someone would steal my bike again . . .
in june 2006 I started riding my mountain bike five mornings a week, a 45-55 minute loop that was intended to be all about exercise. and what I found was that I loved the quiet, peaceful morning full of bird chatter and barely breaking sunrises. by that fall I was hooked, and began considering the purchase of a road bike. I rode up emigration canyon for the first time that Labor Day of 2006, panting and plowing along on my trusty (heavy) bike, and a month later I was the proud owner of my own road bike: I had become a two-bike girl!
a 17-week-long "power camp" over the winter and a handful of new friends kept bicycling front and center in my life, and when spring of 2007 rolled around I was ready to hit the pavement. I rode my first century the end of april, when I again went to St. George and completed that Cactus Hugger. it took me about 7 hours, but this time I rode the entire 100 miles with about 9300 feet of vertical gain. woo hoo!
I started riding canyons around our area, emigration and millcreek, city creek, big cottonwood, little mountain and big mountain, and once--yes, only once--little cottonwood.
then in september of 2007, I rode from Logan, Utah, to Jackson, Wyoming, in the slightly infamous LOTOJA race. I rode, I did not race. and I completed the thing, crediting my good training buddies, the incredibly perfect weather, my support team, and an amazing convergence of all things positive in the universe.
I put in about 3500 miles last season, and as of today, july 19, 2008, I have about 1700 in, adding to it every day.
I have again signed on to ride the LOTOJA race, and my goal is to have just somewhere near as great a ride as I did last year. oh, and to have someone fun to talk with along the way as I got incredibly bored last year . . . star valley is still a nightmare scene in my biking memories . . .
and here is a picture of the machine that has helped me reclaim my life.