What Happens When Girls on Bikes Can Beat Boys on Bikes

Sometimes I seriously lack self awareness. Sorry guys, I don't MEAN to do it. I really don't think a lot about these things. When I am riding to work my intention is just to get from one place to another and when I am leaving work, my sole goal is to get home, man.

Really.

There isn't a commuter on the road that I can't over take if I try. Most of them are on gigantic heavy mountain bikes with fully treaded tires wearing the least aerodynamic clothes possible. It's not hard. There was just this one time on Pembina Highway with a 30-plus km/hr wind behind me that some young strong guy on an ancient ten speed and no helmet, feet in running shoes and traps, took off at a red light and I couldn't keep up even at 47km/hr. He eventually cut between a bus and a line of traffic and I draw the line at potentially getting killed. Race over. You win.

So today, as I rode home down Berry, minding my own business, I didn't think too much about passing the guy on the mountain bike with slicks, wearing jeans and cycling bull-legged like there was no room in there to tuck his knees in (or at least, so he thought, -- that's foreshadowing by the way). I had been BLOCKS behind him and I caught up to him while riding at recovery pace. I have a rule for myself for my commutes, now that they are only 10k and I am not so pressed for time: No faster than recovery pace. I've done enough damage to my body going all-out under unnecessary circumstances. Save it for race day. So when I passed him just before the stop sign near Silver, I didn't think anything of it.

I carried along on my merry way, recovery pace, and sometime just before Ness, I noticed there was a shadow of another cyclist behind me, and perhaps a little heavy breathing too. A glance over my shoulder told me it was my friend Mr. Jeans.

Now don't get me wrong, I like when I can beat the boys. I have always liked when I can beat the boys, but I found this curious. I caught up to this guy without any difficulty at all when he didn't know I was there, and here he had been sitting on my tail for the last half kilometer or more. Something curiously fishy was going on here. Something that seriously reaked of male preening and ego.

At the lights at Portage Avenue. I stop close to the curb, unclip, and sit and wait. It proves to be a long wait -- long enough for me to contemplate rolling myself over to the crosswalk and press the button to request to cross. I don't because more interesting things are happening behind me. My friend has also stopped about 10 feet back and far off to the left. Ah. Pole position. There was a car behind him. I turn to see if this car has its signals on to indicate which way it is going -- left, meaning I am not in its way. Mr. Jeans, however, is.

When the light turns green, not needing to clip in, Mr. Jeans sprints cutting off as much of that turn arc as he possibly can (and probably pissing off and blocking that car that was behind him also turning left). Now with a tail wind behind him, he's cooking it down Portage Ave tossing little glances over his left shoulder the whole time. Me, needing to clip, and NOT in race mode, am slower to get started. I am gaining on him just as I reach my turn. He goes straight, I turn and I say good bye and good ridence to what is clearly a testosterone motivated act of prowess.

So I head on down behind the government building, down the ramp through the condo parking, under the St. James Bridge and down Wolesely. I am just reaching the entrance to the path when  I see Mr. Jeans also heading to the same path from off St. James Street. He's just taken a different route and he's cutting me off at the pass.

At this point the question needs to be asked.... has he seen me on this route before? I don't recall seeing him before on the road on my commutes but he wouldn't exactly be the kind of rider I would pay attention too. He wasn't a REAL cyclist. Where's the spandex shorts? The team jersey? The clipless pedals? The fingerless gloves and the bad farmer's tan? Did he know I was going to turn at the government building? Did he know I would end up on that path? One has to wonder because the route he took to the path would certainly not be the most efficient route. It wouldn't be the quickest either unless you were deliberately cooking it with the wind down Portage Ave just to beat a girl. Frankly, the last place I want to be riding at 5:30 at night is on Portage Ave. GET ME OFF. The one block I do is enough.

I give way and let him on the path first and the whole time, his head is doing the little twist to glance over his shoulder, no joke, probably about one glance every 3 seconds like he is being chased by an axe murder. I am full-on amused now. I also know what I am capable of. I've already won this race. I passed him like he was standing still without even trying way back on Berry and I got his goat. I got his goat good. There was no way he was going to let a GIRL, a SPANDEX laiden GIRL none the less, on a SINGLE SPEED BICYCLE overtake him.

I'm sure you can see my eyes rolling all the way through your computer screen.

But he is kinda in my way now. And he's pretty slow on this path and there is that short steep uphill at the end to turn onto the footbridge so I am hanging back because I know this dude is fatiguing is not strong enough to power up that little bit of hill as fast as me and, if I am too tight on his ass, I will be right in his back tire. And sure enough, I read his abilities correctly, even hanging 20 feet back, by the time I hit the top of the little hill and make the turn onto the bridge, I am right on his back tire. We both get held up on the bridge by other slow cyclists, dog walkers, and random derilicts, but at the down slope off the bridge, he tucks like a pro and and kicks up dust behind him at full speed, once again doing those little neck spasms that cause his head and eyes to glance behind. I wonder if he even knows he is doing this?

We both slow as we get closer to Wellington. I can see through budding leaves that there is a stream of cars coming close to where we need to cross. I prepare to stop. I'm already twisting my ankle to unclip. I sense determination in the pedal strokes of Mr. Jeans, screw those approaching cars, says he. I will risk it all to beat this chick. And without much hesitation he is gone.

I skid to stop in the gravel. As I said earlier. I draw the line at death.

I wait for about 8 cars, cross, and enjoy the wind behind me as I ride East. I am nearly running out of gear. My last sighting of Mr. Jeans is just before I turn on Oak street. I've gained on him but he's still a block ahead. His body is in a full twist now taking a good long glance over his left shoulder as he rides off into the sunset.

Climbing Tucson: Part II

Well it has been a stressful couple of days since returning from Tucson. As you may or may not know, my bike took a little detour on the way home. I think he was pissed at me for not riding Mt. Lemmon again, so he pulled a rebellion and refused to leave Arizona. Hid from the baggage people and decided to not get on the plane and just make my life miserable with worry for a few days. But no worries now, he’s back. He just so indulged himself along the way I can’t lift him out of the car.

(And on behalf of my friend Mich who works for the other airline I am supposed to say: Damn West Jet.... damn damn West Jet. There you go! By the way when I picked up my bike, there was a gentleman ahead of me picking up TWO bikes. HA!)

But there were so many other rides to do and I was bone tired. Mt Lemmon is one of those rides where, especially the first time you do it, you should take a day off after and recover but with only a week in the town that has multiple rides you need to do before you die, there were a few other rides to be done. And one damn good hike.

Picture Rocks and the Saguaro National Park Tucson District (there are two of them as you will see)

Tuesday happened to be a stinking hot day. We drove to the West end of the city. The plan: Sonora Desert Museum with a little ride along the way. I set out with the fast boys again and lasted about 18km (admittedly downhill and with the wind the whole way). This was the day I got dropped because I couldn’t get clipped fast enough at a stop sign. I’m really bad for that. I’m told I need to be ready before everyone else just to be able to keep up. I think I do it on purpose though, to have an excuse for getting behind.

The roads were crap most of the way and there were quite a few stop signs. We did 62km total and I did about 40 of them by myself. This is the only ride I did where when I pulled into the parking lot of the museum at the end that I truly felt done. DONE! And it was 93F which is somewhere in the neighbourhood of 32C. There was a huge hill at about km 50 or so that was about 10-12% grade. It flattened out in the middle and then carried on. Neither section was very long but my heart rate was 178. I stopped in the middle. I hear rumors that I wasn’t the only one. But the truth of that will remain as legend as I was not a witness to this alleged event. Then there was this nasty looking kamaze piece of downhill that required both hands on the breaks and when you get to the bottom of that you’ve reached mile zero, according to the signs, that is until you turn toward the museum and ride that final 8km into the wind uphill. Oh yeah! I was DONE. Recall this was the day after Mt. Lemmon. Total ride time 2:20.

We paid $13 dollars to get into the museum after that and I felt nauseated at the start but I dare say I looked more healthy than Michael did at the end of the day. And I had my hair tied back which I almost never do so that meant that I neglected to put sunscreen on my ears. I’m still peeling the remnants off the tops.

The Desert Museum was a cross between a small scale zoo and any desert you can see in Tucson for free. Highlights of the day were mating doves and phallic cactuses. Stig and I politely walked around for about 30 minutes before, and I think it was me who spoke up first (because I am less polite than he is), “Alright, I’m ready for beer.” And so started the desperate search for beer. So in addition to stinking hot temperatures, animals that were hiding from the heat (why weren’t the humans also hiding?), all the restaurants were closed by 3PM and there was NO BEER TO BE FOUND. We eventually wandered into the coffee shop and found Kim W., Chris, and Sean in the same state (minus the search for beer for 2/3 of these folk). Michael wandered in about 10 minutes later looking like death and the consensus was, Why are we here when we could be in a bike shop?

Saguaro National Park Rincon Mountain District; Old Spanish Trail, Colossal Caves

Wednesday had us once again sleeping in and driving East this time to a Safeway parking lot. Total km for the day amounted to about 88 for me. I did not last long keeping up with the boys this day. They even tried to create a double pace line for me and put me on the leeward side of the wind in the back left corner. We had wind coming from the side and a little bit from the front and the whole way to Colossal Caves was uphill. Deceivingly uphill. I just thought I was losing my touch the whole way out because it really really looked flat. I was about 10 minutes behind them or so by the time we arrived. I batted my eyes and said I was with all those boys over there and they didn’t make me pay to get in. When I mentioned to the boys that I got in free and that it paid to be cute, Jim T. asked which one of them was I talking about. I knew then, officially, I had been accepted as one of the boys. It warms my heart to think of it.

We rode up a steep hill to get to the touristy part of the caves, fondled the statue of the cave worker who had the most humongous disproportionate arms – kinda like Barbie’s breasts.

I was done trying to keep up and the ride to the turnaround point contained some of the sketchiest roads yet with piles of asphalt crumble to dodge. The reward was the downhill the whole way back with bonus side winds to nearly blow me into the cacti at the side of the road. We ran into Jim M. On the way out and the boys decided to try and catch him but Stig and I turned around and went to Saguaro National Park and rode a loop of the coolest road ever. I would have loved to have done video but it was another ride where both hands on the breaks was pretty much a requirement. 

We rode back to the Safeway to find the van gone which meant we had to ride the extra 8 or 10 miles back to the ranch. I called Jim T. and the fast boys met us at Starbucks. On the trip back, I hung on for as long as I could and promptly got dropped again (but... probably only at the 2 miles from the ranch point). It is a good thing that I am well aware that comparing me to them is like comparing a rattler to a garter snake, or perhaps a better comparison, a Greyhound to a Chihuahua. Or I might have come home from this trip with no self esteem whatsoever.

It was a nice night of alone time for Stig and I which sounds all fun and romantic until I tell you that we did laundry and watched Sideways and could barely move all night.

Catalina State Park

On Thursday the gang had to move from the Ranch to a hotel. To make a long story short there had been a screw up in the booking and the ranch double booked itself. So they moved to a gorgeous high end hotel, the Hacienda Del Sol which was probably typically $400 per night. We did however spoil ourselves later that night by going out for dinner at the hotel restaurant which included free intermediate courses and dinner served in unison with 8 waiters. Wow.

It was truly a much needed day off the bike. As hard as it was to do that while in biking heaven, my legs told me a different story. But the day was spent hiking up a mountain. So much for recovery. It was so worth it though. We hiked to the pools on the Romero trail, described as a 7 mile hike with a 1600 ft elevation gain. I’ll say it in pictures. We had lunch at the pools and then lunch again after the hike at a happenstance found Danish Bakery conveniently located in a strip mall with two, count em, TWO bike stores. I told you I was in heaven.

Deja Vu

I really wanted to climb Mt. Lemmon again. I probably should have as Sophie and Margaret did and said it was far easier than Monday, but I had no legs. We went out instead and did a repeat of the Colossal Caves ride and Saguaro National Park part II..... and it was so worth it. I even did a brick after riding 60 km and it felt OK which was surprising given that the run was downhill on the way out and uphill the whole way back. I decided to do a 20 minute run and I was feeling so good at 10 minutes out I decided to run for another couple minutes, knowing it would take me longer on the way back.

Coming back I came upon a stick in the middle of the path. That stick eventually caused me to stop dead in my tracks because it was moving, ambling, slithering, across the path. Rattlesnake. I let out a girlish shriek and ran back about 10 feet and gave it lots of space to cross. And he looked kinda like this dude right here. The next thing I thought was where is my camera. But no camera. You’ll just have to take my word for it. I haven’t gotten the hang of using my sixth sense to tell me that I need to have my camera with me because events will transpire that I will want to write about.

By the way. I negative split that run.

Climbing Tucson: Part I

As I write this, I am sitting at the desk in my hotel room in Phoenix. Everyone else has flown back to home. In fact, by my calculations the plane lands in about 30 minutes but given I booked into the training camp a little later than others, the cheapest flight home was leaving a day after everyone else, so here I am in Phoenix alone.


Every time I touch my ears I can feel the flakiness of them from when I sun burned them somewhere on the Picture Rock ride on Tuesday (which, by the way, has nothing to do with pictures or rocks, it is just a hole in the wall town) or from wandering the Desert museum. I’ve put in about 365 km of riding, the majority of that uphill, about 12 miles of hiking and running, the majority of that also uphill, and not one single lap of a pool – oh wait.... I did swim across the ranch pool once or twice and dipped in the hot tub.

Despite what amounts to about 20 hours worth of time spent with a heart rate above 135 bpm, I think I likely gained weight on this trip. Stig’s Garmin calculated that he burned over 15,000 calories. We figure we must have ate about 30,000 in return. Double sized breakfasts at the hotel continental breakfast (waffles, eggs, yogurt, friut, and horrid watery coffee), road food was our typical lunch, and we stuffed our faces daily at dinner because we were ravished from a day on the road. It is hard to imagine how one can gain weight after all that but I suppose anything is possible as you encroach on 40.

Today my legs feel recovered, but that is the one thing on this trip my body wasn’t prepared for – constant abuse with no recovery. How this training benefited me won’t be known for a few weeks I am sure. I’ll know when I get out to Bird’s Hill Park and do a lap and wonder what happened to the hills. I’ll know when I am riding to/from work into 30-plus km/hr winds on my single speed and it doesn’t feel so bad. I'll know when I pull off a sub 1:20 Olympic bike (HA!). I’ll know when I’m pulling the ride group at 35km/hr for 10 minutes straight into the wind and my heart rate stays below 160 (yeah, like that is gonna happen, but a girl can dream can’t she?).

That is one thing I can say about Tucson, there is no escaping the hills. There is no such thing as an easy ride. Often what looks like a flat section of road is really sloped very gently in one direction or the other. So riding in Tucson means this: you either feel like you are dying and something is majorly wrong with you today because you have no power in your legs, or you think you are having the best ride of your life and you are the fastest cyclist around and you could probably beat even Lance at his own game today.

We rode for 5 days with one day break in the week. Two days if you count today which was going home day. I rode hard. I dare say I rode harder and more to my max than anyone else on this trip. I was the only woman on the trip who wanted to do the distances. The other women had different goals. My goal was to ride as much as I could. But the guys doing the distance can also pull off 1:10 or faster (including transition time) 40km rides in Olympic distance triathlons. I busted my ass to keep up with them. And here is the thing. I was pretty successful at it by my standards. More successful than I ever imagined. One day I stayed with them for 17 out of 60 km. So what if Chris got up Mt. Lemmon 37 minutes faster than me with Michael about 10 mintues behind and Sean about 10 minutes behind that. I would have thought he could get up there a whole hour faster.

The problem was that there was no such thing as an easy ride when trying to keep up with riders of that calibre. I went into this trip with the attitude that I was going to do the distance and I didn’t care if there was no one my pace to ride with. I didn’t want to hang back with the women because, well, I’m a woman. I went into these rides expecting to get dropped and I did. Often quickly. Sometimes too early. Sometimes not because I wasn’t strong enough. A couple times I got dropped because I was too slow getting clipped in at red lights or stop signs. Sometimes it was because it was too early in the season and I haven’t reacquainted myself with riding as close as I could to get the draft. Once I got dropped because I was about 4 feet back and it allowed just enough room for a gust of wind on our windiest ride day to push me back and out of the draft. I got dropped several times because of my hesitancy on sketchy roads. But it didn’t matter. Most of the time I used getting dropped as an excuse to slow down and ride with some sanity. I was dog tired by Wednesday.

I didn’t expect Stig to hang back with me either. He did a much better job of hanging on in those guy’s draft and for far longer than either of us thought he was capable of and I would say that was thanks to Cervelo S2 and Troy Jacobson and maybe a little fear that his girl was gonna outride him (snort!). He did say all winter that he was OK with it if I was faster than him this summer, to which I just rolled my eyes and said, Whatever Mr. Ironman. But he did get dropped at times, sometimes because he was at his limit and sometimes by choice, and he would slow up and wait or... not.

Mt. Lemmon

I found out I was climbing Mt. Lemmon the following day on Sunday night just as I was swallowing the last mouthful from my 4th alcoholic bevy. Let’s just say I might have made different evening hydration choices if I had known earlier. (And may I add as an aside, if I had remembered to grab the itinerary from my work printer prior to leaving, I might have noticed the schedule change all on my own.) I didn’t know how I was going to handle 25 miles of climbing so I took it easy. Bob and Margaret and Sophie and Jim, who have climbed Mt. Lemmon about 5 or 6 times, in whole or in part, since they’ve been out there told us that the day we road Mt. Lemmon was the hardest it ever was for them. But given the wind factor on the next two days, I’m glad we did it Monday. Certainly up to about mile 5 you could feel that you were working against the wind in places. It was a warm day too. I was sleevless all the way to the top, only putting on warmer gear for the decent. And I am sure I was dehydrated.

I rode out from the ranch with the boys despite being offered a ride in the van to a closer starting point. And, may I add, I didn’t get dropped the whole way in but I was working pretty hard to be sure I didn’t. We did an 18 km warm up to the base of Mt. Lemmon and as Michael so aptly pointed out, Mt. Lemmon is like dying. It is just one of those things you do alone. I stopped a few times on the way up but my ride time, excluding stops, was 3 hours exactly. Stig figures I was only about 10 minutes behind him, including stops. My total ride time for the ride was 5.5 hours. My total time out on the ride was 6.5 hours and that includes a 20 or so minute stop at the top, another 15 minutes on the way down when we stopped to strip out of our long sleeves and pose for numerous photo ops, and about 10 minutes of stops on the way to the mountain when we lost Chris and Jim T. (due to technical difficulties) and stopped to wait.

I stopped at mile 5 to check on Jim S. who was having a bad day. As he was clipping in to start off and up again he lost his balance and ended up on the ground. He turned around to go back at that point. He knew he was done.

I made a brief detour into one of the camp areas around mile 6 to look for water as I was one bottle done by then. No water to be found. I carried on from there all the way to mile 14 which is known as Windy Point stopped and took a self portrait, looked for water (none) as I had sucked the last mouthfuls at that stop. I had seen numerous spring run-off streams up to that point so I carried on hoping there would be others to use as a last resort, but all I saw for a few miles was snow. I stopped around mile 16 to fill my water bottles with the cleanest snow I could find. I stuffed one of them in the back of my shirt hoping my body heat would melt it quicker. No go. But just past mile 18 I hit my oasis. There was a spring run-off waterfall right by the side of the road. I filled my water bottles and all I can say is this:

BEST WATER I HAVE EVER TASTED IN MY ENTIRE LIFE

I drank down about half a litre right there. But don’t try this at home folks. Spring run-off is not to be trusted. I was desperate.

And from there I carried on right to the top. At mile 20 there was an information centre where I could have bought water and had I known, I would have waited, but I passed by without stopping. There was a brief reprieve of downhill for about 2 miles from about mile 20.5 to mile 22.5 which was a wonderful relief until you realized that when you turned around to go back, legs ceased from resting post 23 miles of climbing, that you had to climb that two miles to get to the downhill. Piece of cake.

I celebrated at the top with a Coke. Best Coke I’ve ever tasted. And, of course, a nice commemorative photo at the mile 25 sign.

And a word about altitude riding: we went up to 8000 ft after starting at about 2500 ft. At the bottom of the ride a heart rate of 165 was a manageable state to be in. By the time I was at 7000 feet, a heart rate of 150 was barely manageable. When I climbed up the short hill from the convenience store at mile 25 I was sucking wind so bad I thought my heart was going to burst. My heart rate there was 135.

And the way down was amazing if not a little nerve wrecking at moments on some of the switch backs. I had visions of myself catapulting over the guard rail and down the mountain. That was enough to get me to back off at moments. I did hit 60 km per hour or higher in places. I don’t know the exact max speed as I didn’t have that set to record on my Garmin. The wind wasn’t too much of a factor coming down. Chris went up again to mile 18 a couple days later and he said coming down was far more treacherous on that day with side gusts of wind. He couldn’t get over 45 on that day.

Stig, Michael and I rode back to the ranch together and there was one thing we all agreed on. None of us knew how we were going to top this ride. I would have liked to have done it again before we left but by Friday, the fatigue in my legs didn’t leave me with a whole lot of confidence. And there were other rides to do and other places to see. And a week isn’t enough time to do every ride available in the amazing Tucson area.

Jim S. did eventually make it up Mt. Lemmon. He psyched himself out (pun intended given he is a psychiatrist). He did get dropped on the ride to the base (uphill and against the wind) that morning and he mumbled behind me before starting into the ascent that he didn’t think he was going to make it. I think he had made his decision right then and there. He’d had a series of small injuries all winter that had killed his endurance. But he was the only rider in the group who didn’t make it to the top that day. So he went out the next morning by himself and he did it then. I asked him later that evening if he was happy with himself. His response: Well, Kim, I’m never happy with myself but at least now I can live with myself.

Yes. This is a sickness.

A Repost: 25 Things About Me

Posted Originally on February 6, 2009 -- Reposting only because I recently mentioned it.

1. It makes me anxious to “friend request” people on FB. I’m 37 years old and still afraid I won’t be invited to the party.


2. There was only one thing I ever wanted to do with my life and that was be a writer. I wrote stories before I could actually write. It is written on every page of my “school days” book from about grade 4 on. Instead I conformed and got a real job. At 34 years old I finally wrote a novel and it was the most amazing experience I’ve ever had. Ultimately it changed my life forever. But I still have a real job.

3. My marriage ended because I changed. Not because he did.

4. I am a huge romantic. I don’t fall in love easily but when I do I give myself wholly and completely. I’ve had my heart broken a half dozen times and I’m still willing to come back for more.

5. I didn’t start drinking coffee until I was 34 years old. It was because I was up until 1 AM writing a book and tea didn’t cut it for getting me through a workday the next day. I am now fully and forever addicted.

6. I never wanted to be a nurse growing up. I’m still not sure how that happened. I went through 4 years of nursing school and still wasn’t sure I wanted to be a nurse. I won the gold medal for highest GPA in my class. I worked in a hospital for no more than 3 months and knew I wouldn’t do that forever. I went back and did my masters to try and find contentment and ended up more disillusioned than ever. I still love health and wellness but my disillusionment with my profession is why I teach the least nursey subjects in the curriculum.

7. Women make me nervous. I guess I was backstabbed too many times in my adolescence. I am much more comfortable around men. Unfortunately the paradox is that I also believe that the essence of “When Harry Met Sally” is true.

8. In high school I never ran more than 100 or 200m at track meets. I was the kid who could show up to track practice two weeks before the meet and make finals in my sprint events. This attitude frustrated my coach. Today I still think like a sprinter (go out hard!). This is problematic when trying to race long events.

9. I am anal about words. I will edit this document for hours before I post it. I love: Type. Formatting. Commas. Periods. Spacing. Italics. I really do appreciate the details of APA. Conversely, I don’t care if my counters get wiped daily or if my floor gets swept.

10. I could never talk about #2. I didn’t think people would understand. Then I found a mentor who taught me how to talk about writing.

11. I am addicted to email. I check my email 100 times a day (or it is just always open). I usually always reply immediately. It will usually be longer than necessary and say more than I need to say. I will almost always have the last word.

12. I usually make the first move.

13. I look forward to when my children are teenagers. I may regret wishing that when the time arrives.

14. I am still proud of who my ex husband is even though I don’t want to be married to him.

15. Bending rules still gives me an adrenaline rush.

16. I have a recurring nightmare that I am trapped underwater and can’t get up to breath. Related: I frequently dream that I am swimming and my arms are so heavy I can’t move.

17. I enjoyed being in therapy.

18. As a kid I was annoyed by Sunday dinner conversations between my mother, my grandmother and my aunt about the latest Family Circus quick-fix diet. I vowed out loud that I would never get fat. They laughed and said, “we’ll see.” So far so good but I’m battling some pretty heavy duty genetics in that department. I want a tummy tuck. Can we start a fund?

19. My whole life I’ve wanted to find sport that I was better than average at. I think cycling could be it.

20. When I was in university, I thought every one of my classmates had the same work ethic as me. It wasn’t until I started teaching that I figured out the truth.

21. I eventually forgive anything. I have to be crossed dozens of times to finally walk away. I have no interest in revenge.

22. I remember the first and last names of every guy I have ever kissed and beyond. I regret none. Some of them I still think about.

23. I think being a parent is far harder than any day job.

24. Someday you might turn up in one of my novels. Maybe you already have.

25. I’m not very good at keeping secrets, including my own. But I won’t reveal anything that would hurt another person or cause harm.

Social Networking Part II: Define “Friend”

So I have way more friends than I ever thought I had. When I hit the 50 friend mark on Facebook I was a little astounded. Do I actually know 50 people well enough to call them friends? I don’t think so. Presently, the count sits at 200. I did not throw a party or even announce it in my status when I hit this number. It is significant only for one reason which I will get to later.


Facebook has redefined friendship as we know it. I Googled it to find out for sure. (Who needs a memory anymore when we have Google to do it for us?). Being an academic, I sat for a long time thinking up the best search terms possible and came up with “Facebook and friendship.” What I found were headings like these: Is Facebook misreading friendship? Is Facebook making friendship too easy? MySpace vs. Facebook: Is friendship real? Or my personal favorite: How Facebook can ruin your friendships. Nobody see’s facebook’s definition of friendship as a particularly positive thing.

Rules for “the list”

I think most people on facebook have some kind of rule-set about who gets included on “the list.” Some people are more restrictive than others. Ironically enough, the most restrictive people seem to also have low participation. So really, what does it matter? Rarely are people completely non restrictive. I have one “friend” whose present friend count is 2,536. My newsfeed tells me he adds about 8 friends a day. He falls into that category of friends my last post referred to as “shameless self promoters.” He’s a writer. He has about 12 books out. I’ve met him in person once and it was a significant and interesting enough interaction (and likely, one day, worthy of a blog post of its own) to warrant a facebook friendship. But where does he find all these people to be friends? He can’t possibly know 2500+ people that well and intimately. I keep him on my friends list still because he entertains me (and he entertained me in person the day I met him and he made me blush  -- which is hard to do -- so he earned my respect). He writes his statuses in verse. He refuses to use capital letters. And he posts these interesting photo diaries. I watched his little romance with his present girlfriend unfold because of this. He takes pictures of everything including the refridgerator isle of the grocery store. He’s quite active on facebook and he’s quite personal as well. I have a good sense of who he is as a person because of what he does on here. And so do 2,535 other people.

I only have a small number of friends on “the list” that fall into the category of people I’ve only met once or twice. My general rule is that I have to know you in person, past or present, for you to make the list. And there is only one person on my version of “the list” that is the exception to that rule and that was for photo sharing purposes with my running group. I am sure that one day I will meet her in person. It just hasn’t happened yet. My other rule is: No Students. That is simply a boundary I will not cross.

Still afraid I won’t be invited to the party

It was the number one item on my list of 25 things about me. “It scares me to friend request people on facebook. I’m 38 years old and I’m still afraid I won’t be invited to the party.” Here is the explanation.

I find on facebook that people fall into one of two categories. You are either a friend accepter or you are a friend requester. Because I am on facebook quite regularly I fall into the latter category, probably because people on facebook cross my path via natural forces. But you better believe that unless I have a really comfortable relationship with you in person and in the present tense, if I have chosen to add you as a friend, I’ve been contemplating pressing that “Add as a friend” button for weeks, and sometimes months, before I go through with it. And it is rare that I add someone the first time I see them. Sometimes I sit on a large list of people in the back of my mind (I don’t make physical lists, not even for the grocery store) and then do a mass friend request session and add 15 to 30 people at once. Why do I do this? It makes it less obvious if you choose to turn me down. As I said, I’m 38 years old and I’m still afraid I won’t be invited to the party.

Facebook likes to taunt you into considering adding people in their little suggestions box. “You have 10 mutual friends with so-and-so.” Most of the time the people that show up in those boxes are people I have never met and do not know at all. But sometimes they are people I know casually. I cross paths on a regular basis with a good chunk of the athletic community in this city. It is a small enough community that there is one degree of separation with virtually everyone. There are a couple people in particular I am thinking of that I have added from a facebook prompt and none of them ended up adding me. But strangely enough, none of them rejected me either.

This is a particular friending behavior that I really do not understand, letting friend requests sit un-answered, like you can’t make a decision if someone qualifies to be on your facebook friend list or not? Most of the time when friend requests go unanswered, I’ve already forgotten I sent it and then I see it, weeks or months later when scanning my “connections” and I see that “friend request pending” notation beside a particular individual and I think, “hmmm.” The majority of requests that sit in limbo like that are to people who make only a rare appearance on facebook, but there have been a few that have been to people that I cross paths with often enough that I find it odd. And some of these people, while they won’t answer my request, have absolutely no problem at all commenting right below me on a status of one our 10 mutual friends.

I guess you simply don’t like the cut of my jib. I’ll just have to live with that. But I am taking it personally. Just so you know. I added you because I wanted to get to know you better. And the odd thing is that when I see some of these people in person now it just feels slightly more awkward. Because one thing you can never never do and is a huge social taboo is ask someone in person why they won’t be your friend on facebook. Never to be done. At least not by me.

But it has made me think. You can have rules such as: “I will only have people I am truly friends with on my facebook friend list,” but because of the facebook revolution, is the reverse also true? You cannot really be considered a friend in person until you are also friends on facebook?

But, like I said, everyone has their own rules about what the purpose of facebook is for them and that is to be respected. I may place a lot of weight on facebook friending (and unfriending) behavior but I do believe it is more average to simply not give a shit.

I added someone who worked with me early on in my facebook adventures and he very politely emailed me and told me that he wouldn’t add me. He liked to keep his work life and his private life as separate entities. I found it odd. I’ve drank with him, ran with him, biked with him, flirted with him, I’m on his email list when he sends out messages about his travel adventures. But he won’t be my friend on facebook.

OK. I did appreciate the explanation. But I’m still taking it personally.

Personal trauma generally results in an automatic friend list clean-up

I’m sure there are psychological theories behind this kind of behavior. I don’t know what they are but here are 3 stories.

There are probably 40 or so friends that I have on facebook that I would classify as highly active. Their information permeates my newsfeed. When they disappear for a while I notice. And I worry about them. One such friend was someone I knew in high school and from a job I used to have back then. I would drive him home sometimes and cry on his shoulder about one guy or another. (OK, there was only ONE guy I used to cry about in high school). This friend recently split with his wife. He had been a pretty regular participator on facebook and I could see something coming but I didn’t know what and then one day his relationship status changed and it all came clear. And then he disappeared. So one day I went to check on him and see what was up and I found he was gone. No longer on my friend list. So I searched him and there he was still on facebook but at some point he had removed me. And not just me. We used to have about 18 mutual friends and we were down to about two.

The same thing happened with a former coworker. She and I used to message back and forth regularly discussing some of the goings on in our workplace. She wasn’t the most popular person at our workplace and she had some pretty controversial behaviours but I felt I got along with her well. She had some conflict within a group she was working with and then I heard she resigned. She also was a pretty regular participator on facebook and she disappeared. I went to look for her and she was gone. She had removed virtually everyone associated with our place of employment. No reminders. She never worked here.

I’m a pretty open person. As a writer I have to be. Write what you know is the first lesson in writing school (if such a place exists). Given this rule, inevitably if you are my friend, (or, even more likely, if you are someone who is or was in a relationship with me) at some point I will write something about you. If you have a significant interaction with me and it makes me say WTF, make no mistake I will eventually write about you. Numerous people from my past and present made an appearance in whole or in part in my novels I wrote. Maybe it was a whole scene and maybe it was a just a line of dialogue or maybe it was a description of a particular hand gesture. Those who know I put them in my novel have already forgiven me for my inaccuracies in the name of art. Some of them have had to forgive me for not making them look so good. Building a character is a complicated process. It is like growing a fetus inside you and seeing what is created.

But in this blog I talk about my real life and the people in it. Usually I talk about other people as a preface to saying something about myself (I refer you back to A Reason and a Season). But it is entertainment, make no bones about it. And it is my version of reality and there are two sides to every story. And I will never tell a story about anyone that is so specific that the person would be recognizable universally. You may recognize yourself (or maybe you won’t) but that is likely to be it. Everyone else will just have to wonder.

I told a story in Part I about two halves of a former couple and in which one half of that former couple behaved passive aggressively and used me to try and make his ex girlfriend jealous. There is no doubt about it that I did not appreciate being used like this which is why the story stuck with me in such detail. I’ve also told that story verbally on more than a half dozen occasions as an example of the “many weird things that have happened to me on facebook.”

I also told the story and posted it publicly knowing full well that these two individuals were still on my facebook friend’s list and they could possibly see it. But neither of them have been very active on facebook, so I took a chance that it would float by unnoticed. But not long after I posted that link I was on my own profile page and I noticed that I was back to 200 friends on the nose (and I had just added someone not seconds before and should have been at about 202). If my friend count had been 186 or some other odd number I might not have even noticed. On a lark I decided to search for the male half of that couple on my friends list. He was gone. And we no longer have any mutual friends so they are gone too.

Coincidence? I think not!

She’s still there though. But then again, I didn’t make her look bad.

It made me laugh. Last night anyhow.

Social Networking Part I: The Rules of Engagement

To be perfectly honest, when I first signed up for facebook, I didn’t get it. Three years ago I didn’t know what Facebook was. I had received a couple of email friend requests, one from my cousin and one from a close friend, and figured it was junk mail. Then one day, in July 2007, I was sitting on the beach with my friend Christine and she explained to me what it was. I was newly separated (it had been mere days), and she told me about some people who she had reconnected with on there so I thought I would give it a shot.


The version of facebook I signed up for quickly filled my page with boxes and applications, most of which required you to select 10 friends to send things too: Eggs that cracked open in 3 days, cute puppies and kitties, make your own Halloween jack-o-lantern, specialized pokes for your friends as opposed to a regular poke (and what the hell is a POKE anyway?), the fun wall and other walls in addition to your regular wall. You couldn’t comment on people’s statuses back then. If you had something smart-ass to say as comment then you had to send them a message or write it on their wall. And newsfeeds weren’t live. You got a small sample of your friends’ statuses and you could select who on your friend’s list you saw more or less of.

I figured out what was good and what was a plain old pain in the ass essentially by trial and error. And now I just don’t add any applications. No games. No pillow fights. No Farmville. No Mafia Wars. No I won't let you add  me to your family or your birthday calendar (What for? You know I am in your family and facebook tells you when it is my birthday two days before the event). No gifts. No nothing. Most of it is just an invite to bring viruses into your computer system. If you want to send me something, send me words. Words get me excited. I practically respond to ALL words that come my way. I'll even respond without being invited to respond.

Olympic Spirit: The sending of status messages on Facebook peaked Sunday at 2:29 pm PST and 2:54 pm PST during two significant goals in the Olympic hockey finals: when the U.S. tied and Canada won. More than 3.5 million status updates were sent during the time frame of those key plays, twice the pace of the rest of the day.

Facebook is my news source. It is how I found out Michael Jackson died, and Brittnay Murphy and John Hughes, and the earthquake in Haiti. It is how I got the play by play for the gold medal hockey game between Canada and the US. (I am ashamed to say that I DIDN’T watch the game. Post a 4 hour epic workout, I slept through most of it). I knew the US scored, not because someone wrote “the USA just scored” as their status, but because one of my friend’s statuses popped up and all it said was: FUCK!

Facebook has gone through about a half dozen facelifts since I’ve been on there which has been a pain in the ass in itself and everyone moans and whines (in their statuses) and says they hate the change and then, because the facebook conglomerate never listens, they adapt and shut up. Such is the way of the world. All I can say is that facebook is way more useful now than it was in 2007.

Verbal weaponry

But weird things happen on Facebook. And facebook can be very very dangerous. I have learned so much about human nature watching events unfold between the lines of people’s status and the comments underneath. My first big lesson on Facebook happened within a couple of weeks of signing on. I had friended [note the new piece of vocabulary I have added to my repertoire] a couple I knew from an activity I used to belong to but hadn’t been involved with for about a year or so. The last time I had seen them was the previous spring when they were out running at the university. After the male half of this couple agreed to be my friend, I wrote on his wall to say hello and asked him if he and his girlfriend were still going there to run. He responded back to me in a private message that, after five plus years, he and his girlfriend were no more. He then told me how devastated he was about it, that he still loved her, and then he asked me to tell him how to get started in writing.

I responded back briefly about the break-up. To be perfectly honest, I had never thought they made a good match (they’ve both since moved on – I found out on Facebook). I told him I was sorry to hear the news and that things always work out the way they are supposed to blah blah blah. I then wrote him a few long paragraphs on getting started in writing. He answered me, not in the private message he started, but back on my wall again: “Thanks for the advice Kim, on all counts.”

Uh oh.

I hadn’t been on facebook very long but I am very astute in making observations about how “things” (and “things” can be broadly defined – usually that means policies and procedures) can work to my advantage – or as in this case, disadvantage. One of the observations I had made very early on was that what you wrote on a mutual friend’s wall would end up in the news feed of all your mutual friends. The male half of the former couple I am referring to, hyper intelligent being that he is, had obviously made the same observation. He wrote what he wrote to ensure that it would be seen by his former girlfriend and to make it look like we had some special communication. And I mean, SPECIAL COMMUNICATION.

I sat on this for a day and couldn’t get it off my mind. I decided to message his former girlfriend and I shared this observation with her. I was glad I did. She had seen the message and hadn’t been surprised. Without getting into the details there had been a history of this kind of behaviour (and MUCH worse) over the past few months. Ultimately, I cut and paste what I had written to him word for word and sent it to her, not because I didn’t want her to be threatened by me but because I wanted her to see how he had twisted my words. He, of course, had been sure to tell her his version of my so-called advice which had me all hopeful and encouraging that they would get back together.

In the ever changing world of facebook, there was a period of time when you could turn off your wall comments from ending up in your mutual friend’s newsfeeds and, once I found it, I did exactly that after that episode, but in this version of facebook you cannot do that. So I am forever conscious of that when I write on someone’s wall. In fact, unless I am saying something completely benign like “good to see you, and welcome to facebook,” I rarely write on walls.

I meant that to be nice

This might be a nice bridge into a “be careful of your privacy” speech but that is not my intent here. We are adults (most of us) and we should be able to monitor our own privacy, but doing that on facebook requires awareness.

OK, I lied, it appears I’m about to go there a little bit.

I remember once sending a message to a friend or two who had themselves in those “dating” applications (Are You Interested?) where you could view other application users profile pictures and click on someone if you “liked” him. I was in that application myself for a while until I realized (just by looking at the photos and occasionally a profile that was wide open), that half those people were already married or were posting fake photos or were looking to get into this country. Well every time you clicked that you “liked” someone, it showed up in your friend’s newsfeeds. I had turned off the ability for this application to do that on my profile, but a few of my friends hadn’t. Do you really want your entire friends list, half of whom are people you haven’t seen in 20 years, to know that you are scanning profile pics for a hot face or two? No thanks.

Although I have to admit, my first escapade in dating post separation happened through said application. A guy I had known for a while came up to me in person and said, “I saw your picture. What are you doing on there? I didn’t know you were single.” To which I said, “What are you doing in there? I didn’t know you were single.” And well the rest was history even though not forever. And it happened face to face and in person in a world where I have a much greater degree of charm than I do in some two dimensional photo.

I can’t say I’ve always been careful. I’ve publicly written things I’ve regretted and deleted them seconds or minutes later. I’ve written things that have been misinterpreted which is always a danger when communicating in writing. You can’t trust that you will be heard in someone else’s head the way you were heard in your own head as you typed. I have one simple rule about that: unless you have proof otherwise, or bad history with the person, always assume that if there are two interpretations of something that has been written, the other person intended for you to read the nice version. I am getting better and learning to inflect fake intonation in what I write. But there is still no such thing as a sarcasm font.

Did I really want you to know that about me?

Everyone uses facebook and other social networking equivalents to their own purposes but I would estimate that somewhere in the neighbourhood of a quarter of my friends on "the list," maybe more, make an appearance of once a week or less often. Another quarter are on here every day but they only lurk. I only become aware of their lurking when they come up to me in person and make a comment about something they could have only seen on Facebook and I am always a little taken aback by this. And on occasion, it makes me think, Did I really want you to know that about me?

It particularly pisses off my mother, who is not on Facebook (thank God), when one of her friends sees something I’ve posted on Facebook and they tell her about it and it was something that she didn’t know.

Sometimes I take Facebook for granted. If you want to know what is going on with me, you better be on facebook. Otherwise I am not likely to voluntarily call you up and tell you. I don’t like phones. This is why facebook works well for me.

I have friends who use facebook for shameless self promotion. A few writers. Some bloggers. Several home party consultants. A few wannabe rock stars and other business types. This is OK. I wonder how they feel if no one responds or comments or if no one shows up? Sometimes I think you have to be a bit thick skinned for certain aspects of facebook. But more on that in Part II.

But my favourite Facebook friends are those that say something about themselves. Not those that are so revealing as to give me third party embarrassment on their behalf but those that are simply vague, or clever, and who show me a little bit of what is inside them. I will fully admit to spending a lot of my personal thought time daydreaming about the clever status. I enjoy when people put in the effort to tell me in their own words about their quirky perspective on life, who make me laugh at life’s irony’s because that is what’s on their mind in that moment.

Stay tuned for Part II.

Or Not.

A Reason and A Season

I was discouraged when I arrived at my staff Christmas party this year. I came dateless. I had originally asked for two tickets, circumstances changed and I only needed one and then by the time the event date arrived, I could have used a second ticket but could no longer get one. So when the seating was made for the tables, being the odd woman out, I was sat at an oddball table off in some remote corner with some people who work at my institution that I barely knew but maybe in passing.
I sat beside a woman who has worked with us for a couple of years now. I’ve always looked at her and thought she was vaguely familiar, I thought, maybe, from a past job in my profession. The conversation started like this: She told me she heard that I just moved and wanted me to know that she used to live on my old street.

Me: Oh, which house?

She: (tells me the number and describes the house colour)

Me: Well that was very close to where I lived. I lived at number __. Your old house is (name of people’s) house.

She: Yes. I sold my house to them about 7 years ago. But I know your house well…..

And that, for the moment, was all she said about that. Those small-talkish beginnings, evolved into a conversation that shaped my evening. The rest of the table essentially disappeared. I don’t think that I could tell you who else sat with us anymore because it was just she and I, forehead to forehead in the din of a four-course meal and a bottle of wine, sharing stories. She too had separated and divorced from her husband while she was in her 30’s. She too continued to live in the house that contained her marriage for a few years after he moved out and she too brought another relationship into that home.

She also dated a person after her marriage ended where the age difference was large enough to be socially frowned upon and whispered about. I too was and still am dating a person where such an age difference exists. The taboo nature of her relationship was much greater than anything I might experience because, in my situation, I am the younger one.

So in the middle of conversations that revolved around age and relationships and choices and the drama of divorce, (and in terms of drama I will give her the nudge of victory, but it was definitely a photo finish), she stops and puts her hand on my arm and says, “Well Kim, I believe you and I were meant to sit beside each other tonight.” And I couldn’t help but agree. I had already been thinking that exact thing from almost the first five minutes of being seated together. In an hour and a half worth of conversation, I told her things that I hadn’t even told people that I consider to be true friends. And I am sure she would say the same. She did, after all, eventually tell me why she knew my former house well.

It hasn’t happened often in my life that I've cross paths with a person that I know was put in my path to teach me something and help me grow. I'm not a very religious person, just today I referred to myself as an atheist, but I am a person who believes in fate and perhaps has a certain sense of spirituality associated with that.

Several years ago I took a walk with a person, who at that time was simply an acquaintance that I had things in common with. Our conversation on that walk progressed in such a way that I ultimately shared, on almost a whim, something I had not shared with anyone else in my life up to that time. And maybe it was the degree of acquaintanceship that made this person safe in that moment to share my secret because telling people I was close to what I had been living with for the several months before this day, was an emotionally frightening and risky venture indeed.

What I told my friend about was my writing my book, and that one revelation alone changed acquaintanceship into very close friendship which ultimately changed my life and maybe my friend’s life as well in ways that neither of us ever fully articulated. It lead to hours upon hours of conversation about life and relationship and fate and the future and fear and choices and parenting and heart's desires. And all these conversations took place over the next two years in planned two hour rest breaks, or in 30 second passings in the hallway, in hurried 15 minute coffee breaks, in lengthy emails, or on the telephone. We had code words and phrases and facial twitches that could only be understood by us.

Or sometimes we just talked about our jobs.

It opened other doors for me because suddenly I learnt how to talk about things I wouldn’t have dreamed about talking about with friends before. It allowed a formerly trapped emotional passion out of me, wailing and screaming. And like anything in the process of maturing and growing, that passion was a little uncontrolled and tremendously reckless. Soon after, I told other friends about my book and I got the same response as I did from my acquaintance-who-became-friend, but that first scary revelation resulted in an avalanche of revelations to multiple people and I learned to open up myself to the world in ways I never could before.

Sadly, I am no longer close to this second friend. We cross paths once and a while and we say hello and we make small talk but that is all. And there is nothing in the way we talk that reveals how much we really know about each other. And it isn’t something either one of us needs or wants to revisit. Lessons were learnt and it will always be a relationship that will hold importance for me because of how it changed me. But it was a friendship that turned out to be for a season.

As for my Christmas party friend, I have only seen her once since that evening and it was at a meeting and she was across the room and neither of us made a move to approach the other. Because while we both knew that we were meant to sit beside each other that night, I knew, even sitting at that table wine glass in one hand and fork in the other, that this was likely going to be the only time I had a conversation like this with her.

I haven’t fully figured out what I was meant to take away from that night. A feeling of being soothed perhaps? – Because I was. A little bit about forgiveness? -- Definitely. A calming of my worries about venturing into a new but exciting relationship with a man much older than I? -- For certain. About 15 years my senior, my Christmas party friend is miles ahead of me down the same path I have chosen to take in life, but she told me that I am, at present, further ahead of where she was when she was in the same phase as me. I needed to hear this as I ponder the uncertainty of my choices. And people who know me, know I don’t handle uncertainty well.

After dinner we got up to mingle with others but I felt lost. There seemed to be no other reason to stay at the party. The only thing I know for certain is that she, in that moment, was my only reason.

And then there are the friends I have for a lifetime. And you know who you are.



A Reason, a Season, or a Lifetime

People come into your life for a reason, a season, or
a lifetime. When you figure out which one it is, you
will know what to do for each person.

When someone is in your life for a REASON . . . It is
usually to meet a need you have expressed. They have
come to assist you through a difficulty, to provide you
with guidance and support, to aid you physically,
emotionally, or spiritually. They may seem like a
godsend, and they are! They are there for the reason
you need them to be.

Then, without any wrong doing on your part, or at an
inconvenient time, this person will say or do something
to bring the relationship to an end.

Sometimes they die.
Sometimes they walk away.
Sometimes they act up and force you to take a stand.

What we must realise is that our need has been met, our
desire fulfilled, their work is done. The prayer you
sent up has been answered. And now it is time to move on.

When people come into your life for a SEASON . . .
Because your turn has come to share, grow, or learn.
They bring you an experience of peace, or make you laugh.
They may teach you something you have never done.
They usually give you an unbelievable amount
of joy. Believe it! It is real! But, only for a season.

LIFETIME relationships teach you lifetime lessons; things
yomust build upon in order to have a solid emotional
foundation. Your job is to accept the lesson, love the
person, and put what you have learned to use in all
other relationships and areas of your life. It is said
that love is blind but friendship is clairvoyant.

Author Unknown