My LIfe on a Bike

Two posts ago, I wrote about Bike Snob NYC's book Systematically & Mercilessly Realigning the World of Cycling and said, near the end, that the direction that post took was not where I thought the post would go, which sounds an awful lot like what life is like in general these days. I need to say as an addendum to that post, and before I get into writing what I originally intended to write about, that in a moment of courage, or perhaps insanity, and with no expectations, I emailed that post to the Bike Snob himself and he REPLIED... and this is what he had to say:

From: BikeSnobNYC
To: Kim
Sent: Monday, June 14, 2010 7:32 AM
Subject: Re: book review...

Thanks!

RE: this:

Given that I know that publishing a book, unless you are Stephen King or Dan Brown or Tom Clancy and have gained a little power, is little more than indentured servitude to the "chain ring" of a publishing editor's wishes and some marketing agent's crystal-ball like prediction of what "the people" want to buy, some of that edginess of the blog is lost in the book.

Just to clarify, Chronicle were great and there was absolutely no pressure on me to "tone anything down." I approached the book much differently than the blog because a blog can be ultra-topical and full of inside, self-referencing jokes ("memes"). That doesn't really work for a book though. Reading (and writing) a book is a more intimate, solitary experience, and it was especially important to me that the book work for someone not only unfamiliar with the blog but unfamiliar with cycling.

Thanks again!
http://www.bikesnobnyc.blogspot.com/

Critiquing the entire culture of cycling one ill-conceived bike at a time.


So needless to say I was impressed, even if it was a reply to correct a perception I had. I sent the email a day or two before he was set to embark on his nationwide book tour, or what he affectionately referred to as his BRAs (Book Related Appearances -- but you MUST see the innuendo) and I figured a minor book review written by a minion such as myself with (???) little following would barely catch his attention now that he was famous and had a face.

But as I said in that post, my favorite section of the whole book which left me howling with my flashlight under the covers, was his parody of the Footprints in the Sand parable. In the words of the Snob himself, "if I looked at my life as footprints on a beach there would be a lot of bicycle tire tracks." (p. 89) And he then proceeds to scold the Great Obvious Bicycle Metaphor for all the times he was failed on the road, like when he hit a tree and broke body parts, or when his bike was stolen.

It made me think about my life on a bike, which to be honest, was sporadic and, during big chunks of my life, nonexistent. I do remember losing the training wheels, riding up and down my driveway determined to stay upright. I remember this as a solo self-motivated activity and do not recall a parent chasing me with a hand on the back of my seat. And I don't know if this is an accurate memory or not, but I swear I was 4 years old -- although it is more likely that I learnt this skill in the spring that I was 4, mere weeks before I turned 5. But there is no video record of this momentous event in my biking life and the photographic evidence is sporadic and my parents memories would be less reliable. It is significant in that my daughter was at least 7 before I got her to shed the training wheels and my son who is currently 6 won't even try. But I remember my first moments of freedom clearly, so I must have been pretty proud.

I remember spending huge chunks of my childhood riding back and forth around our bay in a horseshoe arc, avoiding the busy bus route at the entrance. We crashed into cars, we crashed into each other, and we got our front tires caught in the storm drainage grates, and me and my street friends, we learned to love to ride. .

This must have been a brand new bike. There is still a label on the "top tube." I would guess I was about 6 or 7 in this photo. And now you all know the truth. I am not a real red head.

Around the time I was old enough to ride to (and crash on) the bike trails behind the local swimming pool and ride my bike to school with my trumpet on the handlebars and no hands, would have also been around the time that I was pretending I was a real girl in gym class and did things like allow myself to be hit out in dodge ball early in the game so I could sit on the bleachers and giggle with the other cool girls. If I tried, I could always be one of the last girls standing. I was paper thin and as agile as a striking snake. It was hard to hit me, even if they targeted in on me, which they sometimes did because I wasn't one of the really cool girls. I was just one of the middle-class socially-acceptable girls.

In high school it was cooler to walk to school and these were also the years that I was cocky about my natural agility and athletic ability and I would show up to track practice two weeks before the meet and win my heat and make Provincials with no training. What did I need to train for? But I had no endurance. I was all power and sprint and short effort. Good enough.

But in that summer between grade 9 and 10 I met Dean and he got me interested in bikes and Dean and I kept in touch for the next few years until we lost touch as inevitably happens as lives move on during an era when technology is lacking. Dean lovingly showed me his bikes back then. He tells me now that he rode a Bianchi and a Concorde in the 80s and still has an 18 year old Pinerello Gavia with Campagnolo Record in his possession and if I don't know what that is, I am supposed to ask -- Gavia with TSX tubing, is apparently really stiff. That tubing had ridges on the inside of the tubes and they spiral, hence the stiffness. Oh and its steel. And it cost him $5000 in the early 90s.  And I have no idea what I'm talking about, can you tell? He let me drive his truck once but I doubt he would have let me ride his bike. He used to be able to pull off a 54 minute 40k Time Trial (but couldn't walk after, let alone run, like we do in triathlon) and could do 200 km in 6 hours, by himself.

I am sure it is because of Dean that I went out and spent about $450 in 1989 on a brand new mountain bike made by Mariah, which was a subsidiary company of Bianchi kinda, I assume, like Gary Fisher is to Trek. I thought that bike was sooooo light in 1989. I gave it away to the son of a friend last year and it weighs a TON compared to what I ride now. But it was lighter than my old 10 speed and it was my first exposure to a quick release front wheel. I rode that bike on a road trip through the Whiteshell when I was 19 and was hired as a lifeguard for a group of grade 9 students on a spring camping and cycling trip. The ride was from Beausejour to Falcon Lake (on highway 44, I presume) and I'm sure we did it in 3 days which means, by today's standards, we didn't ride very far every day before setting up camp. Maybe 25 or 30 km.

I also rode that bike to and from the university on several occasions when I spent the summer working for Mini University. But for the most part that bike didn't see a whole lot of action and spent a lot of time gathering dust in the garage. I pulled the kids around in trailer for a couple summers and then finally, the summer I became a single woman again I pulled that bike out and cleaned it up well and did several "distance" rides up and down the Perimeter highway. (I used to go out and back for an hour.... which turned out to be about 25km, which isn't a bad average speed considering it was a fat stubby-tired mountain bike and the wind comes from all and every direction on the Perimeter, and the gears on that bike didn't work very well). I was in "training", you see. I had aspirations of joining some work folk on the MS bike tour through Riding Mountain National Park. Kid things and money and fear kept me away from the tour that year but it was in my head.

But really, if I have to blame anyone for my re-introduction to and current obsession with biking it is one of my work friends. He talked about biking all the time and I used to wistfully say: "Biking is cool. I find biking pretty easy actually." To which he used to say, "Well, get a bike and ride." And I made all the cliche excuses about being afraid of cars and not wanting to die.

I'd been at his house, I'd seen his bike -- in his basement -- and I remember thinking: Oh you are one of THOSE that keep your bike in the basement. He told me how much he paid for that bike, which he purchased before the birth of his first child who at that time was about 7, and I justified that a $3000 bike was an acceptable expense when you were child-free. He was the only person I knew who would do things like ride home from Victoria beach into a 30 km/hr headwind for 5 hours. He was only the second person I knew, after Dean, who'd spent more than $500 on a bike. That bike was in perfect condition and not a scratch on it and clearly loved and pampered. It still is.

The same work friend, the following spring --the BB spring -- before biking spring -- was heading out to Bird's Hill to compete in a triathlon one weekend. I was already running pretty consistently at that point and I could swim and, well, who CAN'T ride a bike, so I asked him what the distances were and he told me and I said..... "Yeah, I could do that." So come on out and do it.

Well I didn't that year. But it was in my  head and it fixated there until the following spring. My birthday treat to myself the following year was this:

Notice I still stand holding my bike the same way I did when I was six.

I had a price limit of $500. It was used and about 7 years old and I bought it from one of the triathlon officials.  I didn't want to spend more than that because looking back on my history with bikes, I wanted to be sure I was actually going to use it. After you factor in shoes and helmet and gloves and decent shorts, $500 quickly turns into a $1000. It was a good start. And my goals for that summer were, train for the MS bike tour (for real) and my first triathlon.

And biking feels so much different when you are riding a quality ride. It was hard not to let the addiction take over after that purchase.

I rode that bike to work shortly after I bought it. I barely knew how to clip. I fell off somewhere around the corner of Lindsay and Academy clipping in right in front of a big truck. My chain fell off. I called up my bike friend at work because I was planning on trying out my first duathlon that next week and I wasn't sure, after my ride experience, that things were working properly and he offered to tune the bike up for me which resulted in humiliating bike clipping incident number 2: where-in Kim falls off her bike for the second time but this time onto bike friend's front lawn and right into a thorn bush. I got up and tried to reassemble my pride, rode down his driveway only to look down and find blood streaming down my leg from multiple places. I likely trailed blood through his house as he and his wife dragged me to the bathroom and rinsed me off while I bled all over their bathtub. I looked like I had been attacked by 1000 cats.

Well they do say the course of true love never runs smoothly and such were my humble beginnings with the love of bikes. I didn't ride that Devinci for long, About 3 months later I upgraded to this Devinci (Sliverstone SL4):

But I was misled and ignorant when I bought that bike and it wasn't long before I was having problems related to bike fit. And so came the series of moves designed to make the bike fit me: A shorter stem, a bike fit session. They all failed to make me truly comfortable.

But that first summer on a bike was full of surprises. I did my first long group ride (although, I am sure I was never properly drafting), I did my first 100km at the old more pleasant version of  the Muddy Waters event. I had the 7th fastest bike time amongst all female sprint racers at the Riding Mountain Triathlon. I was about the 3rd woman in on the hard, steep-climbing day 1 of the MS bike tour. I had predicted I would do that segment of ride in 3 hours. I did it in 2:32. I was pretty good at this for a "girl" who'd been riding for only 4 months.

So I suffered for another summer and then came time for the Madone. I haven't earned the full suspension mountain bike but I felt I had earned the all carbon Ultegra-adorned Green Riding Machine.

I've spent the last two years floundering around with  my biking goals. Triathlon. Randonneur. Casual group rides. At some point I'll find some focus. But right now, I'm just happy to ride. I'm pretty strong. I could be stronger. When I got back from Tucson this spring I wrote laughingly, thinking I was being arrogant to even suggest it, about dreaming of pulling off a sub 1:20 bike (and two transitions) on an Olympic Distance Triathlon. And much to my surprise, I did just that at my first triathlon of the year: 1:18. Who would have thought it possible. But DAMN now I only have to be faster. I'm told, cyclists peak at 7 years on the bike. I don't know how that applies to riders who start late in life but it means I still have 5 more years to go before I can consider myself at my best.

Feelin' like Bailin'

I don't know, maybe I'm just being a whiner tonight. I signed up for the Calgary Ironman 70.3 last October and I don't really want to do it. I'm not excited about it. I'm not looking forward to it. I see nothing but pain and torture. The race is on August 1st. Am I having normal pre-race jitters or am I truly in over my head?

WHY?

1. I don't think I'm ready. The training was going well up until the beginning of May and then life seemed to take control and pull me in other directions.  I could do the bike in a heartbeat. I can do the swim. The Run looks like hell. Every time I get off a long distance bike the thought:  "OK, now I have to run a half marathon," pops into my head and I want to vomit. I really don't like running. Not true. I don't MIND running but for the last 2 years running has been perpetually and unpredictably painful. I haven't done a long run in a month. I really don't like running in heat even more and now we've hit the humid season.

2. It wasn't my goal. When I signed up for this race I did it because the person I was with also signed up. I watched him race it last year and it is a beautiful race.  I signed up because I thought I should show support. and then life changed.

3. I feel like I'm doing it alone. No one is motivating me.

4. I really can't afford the trip. It is going to cost me about $1000, or more,  to get there, stay, do the race and any other fun stuff and food etc. I feel like I am constantly battling my finances. I would rather sacrifice the entry fee than put out the expenditure to go all the way there and not feel good about my race.

5. Psychologically life is giving me an ass kicking. New problems showed up out of the blue to take me by surprise. Old problems reared their heads and carry on in a new form.  I feel weary and weakened and I don't have the will to convince myself to keep going when I am in this state. I don't feel like I am in control.

I don't know if I am writing and posting this for sympathy, for a convincing, or for affirmation and permission to give up. Maybe I'll feel better in the next couple of days but the fact that I've done nothing towards preparing myself for this race in terms of finding accommodations, deciding on travel arrangements, or even simply looking up the athlete information on the website, tells me a lot. I feel OK about doing a couple more Olympic distance races. I can VISUALIZE myself doing that. I don't feel good about this one.

So. Advice? Moral support? Permission?  What do you think?

Crit Groupie

I wish I'd started cycling at 15. This week in the ever exciting world of facebook where wonders never cease, I received a friend request that hurtled me back into the volatile hormone land of my adolescence. Back when I was 15, I worked in Kenora for a summer and was very enamoured with a "boy" who loved bikes. He also raced bikes and I didn't know what that really meant at the time except that people told me he was really really good. But he was my first introduction to boys who wore Lycra and shaved their legs and there was nothing weird about this because he was damn cute and had the nicest "eyes" I'd ever seen and the best body a guy can have at 16 and he made me laugh.

And since I know you are reading this, Dean, stop blushing and get back on your bike.

Dean inspired me once to attempt to hop on my 30 pound ten speed and try and ride from my parents cottage North of the Kenora Airport all the way to the Husky station near the harbour front of Kenora (I'll estimate this to be 20 km) just to pick up my pay cheque, and, truth be told, to see him. Problem was that back in 1986, the road to the airport (which was the start of the pavement to the town) was made of lose gravel and I didn't have a clue about changing gears so I probably rode single speed my entire teenage life regardless of the impressive number of gears a 10 speed had (for the 1980s). I made it as far as what would now be the Kenora bypass (or about 2 km) before giving up and turning back. Not a small feat on a bike of that nature. There is a 14% gradient on that section of road.

I was pretty good on that 10 speed. I used to ride it to school with my trumpet case on top of the handle bars and my school bag on one shoulder and steer with one hand. When I didn't have to bring the trumpet, I rode no hands the whole way to school. I used to go out biking with my friends and ride up and down the bike paths behind the swimming pool and the big Superstore near my house. I had my first and (hopefully only) bike crash on that bike. I came hurtling down the bike path and somehow took a curve too wide coming off a bridge and went flying into the brush down a path to the edge of the Seine River. So it wasn't really a road crash, it was a pseudo mountain bike crash -- slash -- cyclocross crash -- except it was neither because I was on a skinny-tired ten speed and I was 12 and mountain bikes were barely invented in 1983 if they even existed at all (its cousin, the BMX did, though), and no one wore helmets so I wasn't wearing one in that crash which might explain some of my recent moments of utter stupidity.

Tonight I went to watch my friend Andrea race in a Criterium bike race at the park. I had thought that maybe one day I might consider trying that type of bike racing but all I can say to that now, to save you the suspense, is NO BLOODY WAY. It is fast, and there is tight cornering and I was misled to believe that the first 20 minutes of the race before the final two laps was "slow" and it is, if you consider 36 km/hr slow. I would get killed. But Andrea did awesome and she inspires me. She came in 4th out of a field of 12 riders in her Cat 5 race and she stayed with the lead pack the whole way while I empathized with the two riders who got dropped early and were lapped a couple times because I knew that would have been me.

On the advice of another cycling friend, Jason, who was there because his son was also racing the Category 5 race with Andrea, I stuck around and watched the Cat 4 and Cat 3 races and got to see one of my triathlon teammates Marc, take the Cat 3 race and win both the mid race "Primes" which are kinda like mid race sprints and there are prizes involved. I don't know if I can even begin to describe a Crit race except that it is fast pack riding with lots of sprinting and is full of head games. I wormed my way over to where the timers stood during the Cat 4 and Cat 3 races and started asking questions of the timers (between laps). I felt like the bat boy for the big team getting my only shot to hang out with the pros. I had a gazillion questions and I only got out about one tenth of what I wanted to ask. But the timers and the lap counters had to read every racer's number at each lap and write them down and record a lap time and I didn't want to be a pest.

Except I really really wanted to be a pest. Just not as pesty as the idiot people who kept wandering onto the race road without any regard for the fact that there were 10 riders doing 50 km per hour or higher.

And I know, without question, that I am not ready for a crit race. I'm training for a half ironman which means I've done nothing involving speed for the last 3 months or so. And while I'm posting faster bike split times than ever in the duathlons and the triathlon I did recently, I have no extra speed above and beyond. I feel like I get killed on road sprints. But then again, I am probably more built to wear the polka dot jersey for climbing than the green jersey for sprinting. I had a conversation with one of my fellow early morning riders just today. He told me that when he dies on the sprint it is because his legs give out. For me it is the opposite. My legs are happy and fine, it is my entire cardiovascular system that is failing me. 

Not to mention the fact that I have only emerging bike handling skills. I spent last evening practicing cornering and mounting and dismounting. While I used to be able to ride hands free for blocks, now I can barely take one hand (my right) off the handle bars. I blame this on my 16 pound bike (shucks!). No stability. I rode home with the coach of the evening from my triathlon club last night and he was teaching me bump and touch drills (brush hands, elbows, one hand on another rider's shoulder) the whole way back. As he inched closer to me with the intention that I was supposed to let him brush up against me while I was riding, I instead squirmed further away not allowing him to get close. I felt like a teenage girl out on my first date and the guy's hand was creeping further and further up my shirt. My instinct was to move away from this strange new experience.

Except.... wellll.... you know....

And I don't want to play head games on a bike. I want to get on my bike to forget about head games because I appear to be losing all the real life ones that are being thrown at me. Life is kicking me enough in the ass right now. I want to ride fast and long and strong and I want to climb. I don't have the self-confidence at this moment to risk the possible humiliation of a crit. Maybe next year. I'm not bad for a girl on a bike who only came back to the game after a 20-odd year hiatus (with the occasional relapse) just 2 years ago. And, yes, I now at least know how to switch gears. But I have a lot to learn still.

On Being a Bike Snob

I've been reading the Bike Snob NYC's illustrious book this week, Systematically & Mercilessly Realigning the World of Cycling. I thought about writing a review of the book but I don't much care for book reviews as, in my opinion, they tend to do one of two things: 1) Gush about the book in an annoying way, or 2) Deliver nothing but negativity about the book and tell me how it imitates every other book out there and how completely unoriginal it is.

The Bike Snob, for all you non-biking-types out there is a pop cycling "culture" blogger who has been going strong with his week-daily blog since sometime in 2007. The other thing you need to know about The Bike Snob is that until this March, he wrote his blog anonymously. Then his publishing contract thrust him out in the sunlight to fizzle up and fry like any blood-sucking vampire (he talks about the double life of "vampire" cyclists in his book -- p. 50, complete with diagram).

Now my introduction to the Bike Snob occurred almost exactly two years ago in a casual conversation with my friend Colin at work. We were having a conversation about particular people we knew who were riding in a particular charity ride that I've mentioned before in this very forum. We were talking about how those particular-individual(s)-that-we-know-and-love like to race this charity ride. Colin suggested I check out this blog by this "New York City Bike Snob" guy who wrote this "hilarious" blog post making fun of guys who race charity rides. Well, I checked it out and it was as hilarious as he said and the rest is history.

(Now as an aside I must tell you that the link I direct you to is the post that I think Colin was referring to. It isn't really making fun of the guys who race charity rides, it is actually making fun of all the non-cyclists who call charity rides races. Which means, really, that just Colin and I were making fun of our friends who race charity rides.)

Except now, of course, for fear of being called a hypocrite, I have to acknowledge that I too have been sucked into the racing of charity rides. Guilty as charged. But, in my defence, during my conversation with Colin, I was a baby cyclist (still AM , really). I didn't KNOW at the time that I could turn into one of THOSE.

Now I haven't followed the Bike Snob religiously for two years. I've just poked my nose into his blog once and a while. I tend to gravitate towards writing that connects the soul of the person writing it to content, which, of course, if you are trying to stay anonymous, you can't really inject yourself and who you are in what you are writing. He has a few shticks: his ubiquitous love of the "quotation mark" (as well as bracketed items, which is kind of the one stylistic thing we have in common), his continual political incorrectness, his disdain for the fixed gear rider (especially the brake-less fixed gear rider) and hipsters, and his string of lists that play the one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-other game.

Given that I know that publishing a book, unless you are Stephen King or Dan Brown or Tom Clancy and have gained a little power, is little more than indentured servitude to the "chain ring" of a publishing editor's wishes and some marketing agent's crystal-ball like prediction of what "the people" want to buy, some of that edginess of the blog is lost in the book. Your market value will grow if the cleanliness factor is increased and the raunch factor is dampened. I know this well because the one agent who LOVED my book that I wrote didn't think she could market it. It fell too much between genres -- too adult for teens and too young for adults. She told me to contact her again if I wrote something "younger." My raunch rating did me in.

One part of The Snob's shtick that survives is the one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-other game which I illustrate by example as my friend "The Snob" talks about bicycle obsessed riders (of whom all us riders can name a few):

For them it is not about the riding; it's about the bike, and the riding part is simply their way of fondling their possession. They keep their bicycles clean all the time, they fear scratches like they're herpes, and they don't ever ride in the rain (or as they call it, "water herpes") so their bikes won't get dirty or rusty. They're like the people who collect toys but don't remove them from the package so as not to diminish their value, or who swish wine around in their mouths without swallowing it, or who never get around to having actual sex because they're too into sniffing high-heeled shoes while dressed as Darth Vader. These are not cyclists, they're bicycle fetishists. (pp. 46-47)

Anyways, the one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-other game is that whammy moment that takes you by surprise when the commentary (or in most Snob cases, a list) seems to stray away from the expected direction. It's kind of the pinnacle moment of written comedy. What the hell do high-heeled shoe sniffers have to do people who love their bicycles too much? 

But I do have to say that while I recognize immediately when he uses this shtick on first reading, it is very difficult to go back and find an example because it doesn't take you quite by surprise on a second reading. The connection between the sexual fetish and the bicycle fetish is a little more obvious.  This, of course, coming from a woman who was married to her bike.

But my most favourite part of the whole book is the fact that he talks about himself and who he is and his history as a cyclist. In Chapter 4, he uses the Footsteps in the Sand metaphor to describe his life path as a cyclist, except in it, he is tire treads instead of a second set of footprints. In the original, The Snob presumes that the man (or woman's) footprints disappear when bad things such as "addiction, sickness and sunburn" (See! See! There is "the game" again) happen in one's life. In The Snob's version, the tire treads disappear during all his bad cycling moments in life.

Up until this point, the book has been pretty bland. I missed the unrelenting political incorrectness and show-off-y vocabulary. It is too clean, it's stripped of the raunch factor. But here the book becomes nothing but laugh out loud bike snobbery goodness.

At this point I have to point out that this blog entry has, indeed, started to sound like a review. Shame on me. But I do have to say that when I start these posts I rarely know where I'm going with them until I get there. Kinda like life, I suppose. I thought I was going somewhere else but I've ended up here. So this is where I will end. Where I originally intended to go will come next as I cycle my way back to my original goal.

As always, stay tuned.

Relationship Conditioning: Ring a Bell and I'll Salivate

I was lying in bed one night and I had forgot to turn out the lights. Knowing me it was multiple lights, actually. I have a problem with lights. So do my children. I presume it is genetic.

I looked at the person who was with me at the time and asked kindly if he would turn off the lights for me and then proceeded to go into a very long babbling explanation as to why I needed him to do it and why I couldn't get out of bed and do it for myself even though I know I was the one who likely left them on. I don't remember what my reason was but I do remember it was something good. For all I know I could have been in the midst of icing or heating some body part as I know this incident occurred in the midst of a very long year of over-training syndrome.

He turned to me and said: No worries. I'll get it. I don't need the big long explanation.

Oh.

That was simple.

And as is my nature I immediately flipped into self-reflection. Why did I need to give the explanation? Not only did I need to give the explanation, but I didn't even PAUSE after making my polite request and wait to be asked to delve into said explanation. I just assumed it was a required component of making the request to get him to do me a favour.

It occurred to me that this was something I had to do in my marriage every time I needed my (ex) husband to do me a favour. No matter what I was doing  or what he was doing, the explanation was always required. I could have baby in one arm and random kitchen utensil in the other hand and be standing in front of the stove and he could be on his way to sit in front of the TV but I always had to explain why I needed his help.

[As an aside, I will now stop giving too many examples from my marriage as I sense myself edging up to that line of ex-husband-bashing which is something I've sworn to never do here. I'll forgive myself this one transgression because I also plan to tell a nice story about my ex as well. They will cancel each other out. It will be like I never talked about him at all.]

I had a conversation recently with one of my triathlon friends. We were at a "meeting" and  talking about relationships. Specifically we were talking about training for Ironman in the midst of a relationship. This topic was something near and dear to my heart and I considered him an expert as he had already trained and completed one Ironman.

I don't know how you could do it, he said. It would be very difficult to be in a relationship and train for Ironman. It just takes up so much of your time and energy.

He then proceeded to admit that he hadn't done much training this season and doubted he would be able to do any racing. If the choice is between spending four hours on a bike or spending four hours with this person who you love to spend time with, then the choice for me is to spend the time with the person.

Why can't you spend four hours on a bike with the person you love? I asked. To me that would be just as good. And you get the bike ride too.

I know, he said, and she always tells me to 'just go' but I had a really bad experience in a previous relationship with that so I try and limit my time away.

Ah, I said, you were conditioned.

Yes, he said, I guess you could say I was.

And you know how it is after that, you have one conversation on a topic and suddenly everywhere you look, instances pop up everywhere on the same subject. Next came my writing friend's blog on "Drama Queens and Kings" talking about requiring a harmonious relationship environment in order to create and changing your behaviour in order to try and avoid ANYTHING that you already know will disrupt that harmony. After that came a couple of related conversations within my own relationship and that all spurred my own need to write this post.

What causes us to become conditioned in our relationships? I wrote about this in my first novel too. "Maybe being in a relationship means altering our choices to make someone else happy." Everyone has their hang ups. One guy had a thing about me coming to bed at the same time as him because his ex wife would sit up at the computer through half the night and it made him anxious to wake up in the middle of the night and not find her in bed. So I did. At least as often as my night owl self could tolerate it. One had an issue with phone calls because he had a long distance relationship in which he started to resent having to be at home at a certain time so he didn't miss her calls. And it didn't matter that I never even once got mad at him if he missed me calling. He still assumed that I was going to flip out.

"Guy Panic" is a huge one for me. Guy panic, by my definition, is any behaviour from a guy that is obvious evidence that he can't handle your emotions -- no mater how nice they are. I have one guy from my past who I still run into on a semi regular basis that I'm quite certain I've conditioned into flipping into guy panic just on the sight of me. In his defence he had been hurt in multiple painful ways in his past and he was cowering from the possibility of getting hurt before I even had a chance to do anything really nasty to him. Poor guy. He simply wasn't ready to be loved. I react to guy panic. It sends me into an anxious and depressed tailspin of confusion (because it also usually comes on suddenly and unexpectedly without warning). And there are a lot of preliminary behaviours to guy panic that can also be innocent meaningless accidents or oversights (showing up late for a meeting, not calling when they say they will, not returning a text in a timely manner...... and you could go on). And on the wrong day these oversights or accidents can send me into that same conditioned tailspin. But I'm aware of it. So I stop myself from over reacting.

I don't remember what we were arguing about. All I remember is that very early on in my dating life with my now ex husband I was dropping him off at home and I was calling him on some bad behaviour and he ultimately bolted out of the car and started running to the door of his apartment. I opened my door and ran out after him and I grabbed him and hugged him because I knew this didn't have anything to do with me. I don't know what it had to do with the person(s) before me but this wasn't about our relationship because whatever it was that I was upset about for the moment didn't change how I felt about him for the future. [Well, at least not for the near future]. All I wanted was for it to not happen again. So I grabbed and hugged him and all I said was, "I'm not her. I'm not her."

He told me once, much later in time, that this was the moment that he knew he was going to marry me.

What do they say about how you choose a mate? Men choose their mothers? Girls choose someone like their father? And then somewhere along the way these mates individualize themselves and you start to be the target of backlash of things they may be reactive to from past experiences. I dated one guy from my youth that repeatedly stated that the past didn't matter. He was an idiot.

Like I was reactive by always having to justify all my requests for help. Or the guy who had to deal with an irate girlfriend if he missed her calls. Or the guy who's wife eventually abandoned him and one of her initial behaviours prior to this happening was that she stopped coming to bed at the same time as him.

I find this the hardest thing to deal with at the age of 39 now that I am back on the market. Baggage. At one time baggage meant children but to me baggage means all those things we are conditioned to from the life we have lead and all the people we have lead it with prior to the person we are falling in love with now. Like the dog that cowers from the potential hurt of getting kicked, at what point do you realize that you are dealing with a new person who isn't likely to respond the same way to the same infractions that the person you were with before did? Like Pavlov's dog who started to salivate for the bell even when no food was presented, there are certain things I am likely to continue salivating for even though the person in front of me is not my ex husband. And how do you warn someone about what you are conditioned to when you might not even be conscious of all that conditioning yourself?

I don't know. It could be worse. You could be that frog in tepid water that ended up boiling to death as the temperature got turned up and you just tolerated the increasing heat rather than making the effort to jump out and escape.

But I promise to try and accept you for who you are. And I promise to make concessions if I know you are scarred from the past and are reacting to me to avoid backlash from someone who came before but is no longer in your presence.

And most of all, I promise, to try to remember to turn out the lights.

Two Sides

I'm not much of a follower of news. I've already admitted in this blog that I use facebook as my primary news source. There are a few reasons for this choice. For the most part when reading newspaper style writing, I rarely last beyond the first couple of sentences. Sometimes I don't get past the title. Why? Because newspapers rarely get it right. Mostly because writers of daily newspapers or internet news sites aren't granted the TIME to get it right. I particularly dislike when they report on health research studies and get most of the interpretation vastly wrong, or spin alternative controversial interpretations to feed an agenda or promote a trendy health choice.  

Case in point: the argument that receiving the seasonal flu vaccine in 2008-2009 increased your risk of contracting H1N1 flu in the fall of  2009.

To that I screech a resounding and incredulous, WHAT?!

I've given you a link to click on, but I don't advise you read it. It incenses me beyond belief. But it's there if you are open to being bullied into that argument. But think about this for a second. Who do they advise to receive the seasonal flu vaccine?

(The elderly, babies, immunocompromised individuals, people with chronic illness, health care providers, people working with or living with children under 6 months of age).

Thank you. Now who would be most at risk for contracting H1N1?

THE SAME PEOPLE!! ding ding ding ding ding

Isn't that kinda like saying that since most people die in bed, beds must be a death risk? You better not go to bed tonight.

But I'm not writing this blog to talk beds as a cause of death. Nor do I want to talk about immunizations which is a can of worms bigger than I am willing to wade through in this forum. Today I am going to talk about, as I have also stated elsewhere in this blog, the fact that there are two sides to every story.

Celebrity Worship: Power and Money

I don't follow celebrities or seek out stories about their personal lives. I speak nothing of when these stories permeate my ears and eyes. I cannot control the ubiquitousness of celebrity drawing power. If ever there is anything written about a celebrity's personal life you can almost be assured that 90% of what is said is sensationalized, inaccurate, exaggerated or just plain wrong. Celebrity news is written to sell and it is written to bias you. And one can argue the same about all news writing. It is written to bias you to take a side. And it works.

Lots of big cycling news today amidst the Tour of California races. Team Radio Shack has been posting item after item on their facebook fan page and most of it is about Floyd Landis attacking Lance Armstrong and several other American riders and former teammates. Landis, you may or may not recall, won the 2006 Tour de France, and scandal erupted when he tested positive for banned substances. He staunchly denied the accusations, wrote a book telling his side of the story, launched law suits claiming defamation, and when the legal fees got too high, begged money from his fans to help cover the costs. He allegedly collected over a million dollars from regular folk, like you and I, to cover his costs. Now he's saying it is ALL true. He was guilty of doping and he's selling out names to go down in flames with him.

Floyd would probably prefer that I use this creepy photo of Lance as I would be more likely to bias you to his side of the story. Incidentally, on the day of this accusation, Lance crashed in California and is out of the race -- hence the eye.

Armstrong and crew, who have never tested positive, deny everything. They claim they've been receiving crazy emails and texts for years from Landis uttering threats and making demands for money, sponsorship, team slots, race slots. You name it.

Lance, I am sure, prefers this photo to promote his side of the story, looking all debonair in his Shack kit.

Landis got caught. No one seems to be able to speculate why he's doing this now. There have been questions about Lance's cleanliness for years. Before he got cancer and came back to cycling, he was apparently a second rate racer with little promise, and now he's practically an invincible superhero. Not only did he survive stage IV testicular cancer with multiple metastases to the lungs and brain, but since recovering, he's turned into a cycling icon and cancer survivor poster child. And he's had 4 children with number 5 on the way and he only has ONE testicle. Who is this man? And how after all that did he manage to win 7 Tour de France's?

There are two sides to every story. Which is true? We may never know. But isn't truth often decided based on how well people handle controversy? The most well behaved individual wins? Or maybe the person with the most power and the most money wins?

Rewards for Good Behaviour Only

I was involved with an organization for a time which will remain unnamed. The scenario I am about to talk about played out in the press to some degree and blemished this organization. I no longer belong to the organization, in part, because I wanted to let the drama settle before joining up again. And because I'm a little wary and mistrusting now about how all this was handled.

The controversy erupted out of a conflict between the Executive Director (paid staff) and the President (a volunteer) and the outcome was that the organisation dissolved and and is in the process of being rebuilt. The ED was accused of some mismanagement and illegal doings with funds and was fired, and the President was accused of being a controlling jerk (a softer word than I would like to choose, but it's gender neutral and I'm trying to keep gender out of this). The president's behaviour was so allegedly bad that the office staff quit and the majority of the elected board resigned.

The President talked very little.There were a couple benign brush-off quotes in the newspaper. This person was, for the most part, silent. The ED, on the other hand, used access to a master list of emails to send a multi-page letter dictating that side of the story to the entire membership of the organization. The claim was that this email was sent on the advice of a lawyer. I was on that list. I got the letter. It read defensive and whiny and was full of excuses.

I didn't know what to believe. And I still don't. Both sides behaved badly. I support this organization and it has done a lot for me and served me well but the whole scenario has left a bad taste in my mouth.

But there is something to be said for keeping silent and not publicly badmouthing people. Somehow it makes you seem more noble and less desperate.

Tell the Truth Quickly

And sometimes it is smarter to come clean as quickly as possible. Second case in point: Tiger Woods vs. David Letterman. What an odd link-up you say? What could they possibly have in common? I'm counting on you not remembering what they have in common. But much they have in common indeed!

Tiger, as we all know, lived through this fall hiding from the press and ducking questions in the name of his own privacy to avoid dealing with accusations of multiple episodes of extramarital affairs. There are still email jokes floating around. Tiger eventually, months later, hosted a stilted and controlled  press conference to apologize for his indiscretions and answered no or few spontaneous questions.

Letterman, if you may now recall, was accused of having affairs with multiple interns on his late night show. The accusation was made, and mere days later he voluntarily made a speech on his show acknowledging it was all true. No one saw it coming. He apologized and everyone moved on.

And everyone forgot. Even when the whole late night controversy erupted between Conan O'Brien and Jay Leno, which Letterman was peripherally involved, never once was there a mention of Letterman's indiscretions.

So there is also something to be said for telling the truth. It gets it out of the press. Deal with the issue quickly and it goes away far more quietly.

Favoritism

So that is public news but what about in day to day life? Has someone ever sat you down and told you a big long story of wrong doing they've received at the hands of someone? Perhaps it is someone you know and like? Someone who has done no harm to you personally? Or maybe someone you barely know? Do you automatically take their side and criminalize the person they speak about?

The best example I can give you from my own life goes back to being 18. We had a friend who was a little younger than us and not 18 and we decided  one evening we were going to the bar after a social. We did not spring these plans on our young friend. We told her right from the start of the night what the scoop was and why. But our younger friend was instant on sitting in a greasy spoon restaurant.

This was back in the day where there were no photo's on driver's licences. We suggested numerous people to her that she could borrow ID from so she could come to the bar with us but she insisted that the only thing she was interested in doing was going to this restaurant and she expected us to go with her.

One of our friends who was coming to the bar had very strict parents and a ridiculously early curfew that wouldn't let her ever stay out for a whole social let alone go to the bar after the social. That night she was sleeping over at my house and she could finally stay out as long as she wanted. We and she were not going to sit at some greasy spoon restaurant this night, the ONE night she didn't have to be home early. But that isn't what our young friend wanted to do and nothing we said seemed to make her understand that we weren't going with her to this restaurant so her options were to find ID or go home. She was pissed. She told my curfew friend's new boyfriend to F-off. She'd only just met him that night. It is a memorable enough incident for him that he STILL to this day remembers her even though he only met her the once.

Which kinda tells you how the story ended. She never talked to us again. And not only did she never talk to us again but she also called up another one of our friends who wasn't present at that social and fed this person her side of the story. I called this second friend later the next day -- probably to tell her what happened -- and I could tell by the coldness in her voice that she had already talked to our young friend and not only had she talked to her, but she had picked which side to be on, and it wasn't mine. In fact, she had no interest in hearing my side of the story.

So I and my curfew friend didn't just lose one friend that night, we lost two.

I don't know exactly what our young friend said to this second friend to turn her so cold so easily. There is also something to be said when people blow up the way our young friend did. Usually a blow up like that doesn't happen from one incident. So likely this wasn't the first time we'd pissed her off. It was probably her last straw. Her icing on the cake moment. (And knowing how women are it likely had something to do with a guy.)

But everyone picks sides, the question is How do you choose? Do you pick sides because of power, loyalty, money, love, an agenda, good behaviour, popularity?  Or do you listen and weigh evidence?

N + 1

This is the formula for the correct number of bikes that one should own with N = the number of bikes you presently own. (So the Tribalistic boys tell me.....) And I guess buying bikes is like motherhood. It is just one of those things where you KNOW when your done. Or maybe you are never done? You just perpetually covet the next.

I guess I am not done yet.

I own (not counting my children's bikes):

This:

This:

And This:

The next thing I would like to do is create this:

Outta something like this:

So if you come across such an animal. Cheap. Let me know. It is just one of those things that I have in my brain right now and if you  know me, when something enters my brain it doesn't leave very quickly. I may or may not act on it soon but if something crosses my path. I am sure to jump on it.

Literally.