Make Your Own Choice

In the freewheeling spirit (get it?) that is Velophoria, I'm going to officially launch the re-launch of the blog with a post that a) is not about bicycling, per se, and b) was written many months ago, but never published. Relevancy is way overrated.

Notes:

1) I'm a psychotherapist. This will help you make sense of the rant below.

2) Propers: I was reminded of this post by a post on a similar theme on Dave Moulton's blog.

With that, here is the piece:

People who come to therapy of their own will are remarkable for at least one thing: No matter how hard their lives have gotten, no matter what dark clouds or violent storms befuddling them in doggedly the midst of their daily lives, no matter how drained or clueless they feel... they have hope.

It might be the finest silken thread, only seen when the light hits it at a certain angle. It might seem far too slight to hang a promise on, much less the prospect of a better life. But it's what gets them out of bed on the most ominous mornings, days when the only credible option seems to be inching further under the covers and giving in to the siren call of sleep -- "Sleep, that knits up the raveled sleeve of care." But that thread is enough to encourage them to force themselves out of bed two full hours before they have to leave the house for their appointment, so they have enough time to patch themselves together, to steel themselves for that first frightening step out the door, that step into vulnerability, the unknown, the facing of oneself and one's most debilitating weaknesses.

On the way into work this morning, I was listening to recording of Paul Auster reading Brooklyn Follies, a book recommended to me by a kind and smart friend. The first 15 minutes were an oppressive, relentless torrent of depressive thoughts thinly disguised as humor, so bleak, bitter and hopeless that I felt like throwing the CD out of the moving car. I don't know where this book goes from here, but it had better be generally upward.

I find 90% of novels depressing. I don't understand when or how complaining or painting gorgeously detailed pictures of the random cruelty of life became the object of art. I don't  need to be reminded of the astonishing cruelties of life. I've seen my own share, and I sit all day, every day, with people who have seen theirs. At least once a week, they manage to slough that mountain of crap off their heads, get their sorry, bruised souls out of bed, and make it all the way in to town to talk to me about what they can do to improve their experience of their own lives, no matter how overwhelming their circumstances. Many of them don't have the resources (or the right) to own a car. Some of them get on a borrowed bicycle and hump an hour and a half over serious hills just to get here, arriving red-faced and out of breath. Some of them walk six miles on the back roads and highways from their backwater town.

I'm not going to blame anyone who feels that there's no hope in their lives; I've been there. But I won't listen to it. It's pernicious, addictive -- moaning, praised as art or insight. It's not insight; it's a choice.

Narrative therapy holds that how I tell the story of my life changes my experience of it. This is nothing new; when I was in high school, my class read Hamlet, and I fell in love with the line, "There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so." If I knew enough about the ancients, I'm sure I could quote some of them on the same idea.

How could an idea solid enough to have survived thousands of years still be so unpopular? How could people still be walking around thinking that their life is happening to them, that they have no say in the matter? Force of habit, I guess. Humans are the first species capable of reflecting on their own experience, and what a load of crap we have made out of it. How we have wasted that gorgeous gift.

I'm vividly aware of what it's like to try surveying the panorama of one's life, only to find three feet of visibility in an airless, murky morass. I also know that people who seem to have the fewest resources -- mental, material, or otherwise -- and the worst possible luck sometimes grab hold of that bare thread, only to find out that it has the tensile strength of steel, that it can hold the weight of their life and their dreams combined. With a little help (truthfully, very little), they pull themselves, hand over laborious hand, out of the murk and manage to build something real, something bright. They turn outward, to help someone, to fight back, to see the good in people -- to believe in life.

It's the single most daring act in a world chock-full with daring acts, and we make the choice every hour of every day.

Don't let a highly-praised book or movie drag your vision downward. Make your own choice.

Rebirth

Welcome to Velophoria 2.0: Attack of the Re-launch. The Vampire Strikes Back. Son of Velophoria.

Like all sequels, this totally redecorated, botoxed, all-carbon-fiber Velophoria 2.0 will feature a tedious re-hash of all the themes that made 1.0 so wildly successful: Pain, joy, endless inspiraling rumination, and, ultimately, redemption. On good days.

READ! updates on gear so weird, no one else is using it!
 
FOLLOW! ride reports that read more like Romantic fiction!
 
SEE! photos of places so beautiful and remote, you'll never find them unless you hire me as your guide!
 
     Stay tuned friends. Post 2.1 is on its way to a monitor near you soon!

The Year in Spandex

Welcome to the Velophoria 2011 wrap-up. I figure I’d wait ‘til every other media outlet in the world had its annual retrospective orgy before I offered up my priceless pearls of wisdom.

It was, as regular readers know, a tough year emotionally, with my dad's illness and his passing in November. However, I took a full 11 days off for the holiday break, and I’m feeling a bit more spunky coming out of it than I was going in.

With the break, I’ve had some time to consider my athletic year, separate from the crush of everything else, and was surprised to realize that it was extremely successful, especially based on my ever-increasing reliance on the smiles-per-hour (versus miles-per-hour) metric.

I did things I’ve never done before, including my first-ever season of cycling dirt roads, trails, and even some straight-up single-track. This I accomplished on my Salsa Vaya (a 2011 purchase): an on/off road bike with drop bars, no suspension, and narrowish 35 mm tires. Not bad for a guy of 47 to pick up his first dirt skills on that puppy, eh?

I did things I’ve been trying to do for a few years – such as finding a well-established local road riding group I could fit in with. I went on five or six outings with them, had fun, made friends, and managed my share of the work load respectably.

I also did things I’ve been longing to get back to for decades. I had long thought that running, which I enjoyed quite a bit as a college student, was out of the question for me, due to creaky, aching joints. Turns out that, using a very slow and deliberate introductory schedule, I was eventually able to build back up to the “runner’s high,” and even complete a 5K. I ran most often at 7:00 a.m. on weekdays, through inches of snow and the coldest winter on local record for years.

Finally, I returned to another activity I’d been away from for years: Cross-country skiing. I rented at the (pretty good) local ski area three times, and had a blast. Good way to make use of the record snow falls last year. I got Mrs. V out with me once, and she really enjoyed herself too.

I’d say that’s a pretty good list for one dang year. To celebrate, Mrs. V and I just went out and bought ourselves presents to make the coming winter a little more exciting:

Have a great, active new year. If an office-bound, middle-aged dude like me can get out there all year ‘round, so can you!

Beauty Persists

A little bit of normalcy returned to Velophoriaville this week -- a full week of work, followed by many hours of catching up on chores around the property (cutting brush and raking leaves -- not exactly torture on a beautiful fall day). Finally, I took a couple hours yesterday to really get out there on a bike and vacate.

Six weeks of unrelenting intensity fell away. As my friend Herringbone once so aptly wrote (I'm paraphrasing here), "As soon as I got on the bike, I felt better." Miserable head colds, injuries and inactivity, four days in a chilly, dark house without power, endless tense waiting for Dad to die, hopeless wishing that he would never die, anguish over his suffering, and then the surreal visit to NYC last weekend after he passed on...

To say it all melted away is cliché: The more accurate statement is that it vanished, the moment I rolled out of the garage with an image of Atkins Reservoir, shining in the sun at the top of a dirt-road climb, crystallized in my mind's eye.

The day was untouchable, 48 degrees and clear as a bell, the shadows chilly and the sun toasty,  the colors of every object -- barns, trees, meadows, tarmac -- condensed and intensified in the surreal brilliant Kodachrome autumn light. Contrast was cranked up to 11. Everything seemed cut out of brilliantly hued paper and pasted on top of everything else.

I discovered a couple of new hiking trails and some broad singletrack well-suited to the Vaya's limited off-road capacities. Farther on, I paused at the reservoir to snap a shot, breathe, and feel grateful. The silence was golden, the air was scrubbed clean.

A middle-aged, fit-looking guy ran by with his dog, and we smiled at each other knowingly: "This is as good as it gets, it's why we do these crazy things." Caught up to him further down the road and he asked about the Vaya, said he lived on one of the many dirt roads in the area and rued his purchase of an upscale road bike poorly suited to local surfaces. Gave a hearty endorsement of my bike, and rolled on for home, powered up, as always, by a friendly interaction during a ride.

Last night, a deluxe dinner at an elegantly understated Argentinian steakhouse in Northampton. Mrs. V. and I chatted and laughed as if we were still courting, charged up with delight in each other's special-ness.

Death comes. Death goes. Grief is a process we're all involved in, know it or not. Everyone falls down and hurts themselves. Bodies heal -- or they don't. Power lines collapse, bad news comes in clusters, people will be mean and stupid. But there's a lot of good in this world.

Beauty persists.

Go find some.

Now Cracks a Noble Heart

So.

The man who, 44 Springs ago, happily lugged me around Central Park's bike loop on the back of Raleigh three-speed and then treated all of us to the famous soft serve at the Boat House, has left this Earth.

The guy who, 40 Springs ago, ran behind my candy-apple red bicycle (training wheels freshly removed) on the boardwalk in Riverside Park, with his hand steadying the seat until I gathered enough speed to stay upright for ten yards, has left us.

The man who, 31 Springs ago, booked me on my first bicycle tour, in which I ranged from Boston to the Green Mountains to the White Mountains, is gone.

That man bought me my first road bike for that trip, a burgundy Saint Tropez, a cheap, heavy, Asian, steel boat anchor, famous for nothing beyond hauling my tuchus all over the East and West Coasts during two high school summers. While I was still admiring the sparkly paint job, the movie Breaking Away was re-released (due to Academy Award nominations); one soft Friday night in April he pressed a ten-dollar bill in my hand and sent me to the Embassy on Broadway and 72nd Street, knowing that it would strike a chord -- but not knowing nearly how big a chord, nor how long-lasting.

That same man stubbornly forbid me to try organized bike racing during the very next summer.  He had so many admirable qualities, but he also could be controlling, distant, and overbearing, especially in those days. He decided I would earn money and get my teenaged rear end out of the house. Decent ideas, but I'll always regret not finding a way to sign up for local races anyway, even against his wishes, while I was young, strong, and reckless enough to be somewhat good at it.

*     *     *

But let us rewind to the beginning. Way back to Riverside Park, when I was about seven. Because what happened there not only is a primal bike memory, it also reflects something more profound about our relationship.

He took his hand off the seat. While running alongside, he took his hand away, to let me experience self-sufficiency.

I shot along the boardwalk on my own steam for a good ten yards before I turned to look over my shoulder and make sure he was still there, and not knowing better, I let my shoulder, arm and hand followed my chin, the front wheel came off-center, wobbled a little and then a lot -- and then I was down on the pebbly pavement. Top speed had probably been six miles per hour, but at that age, every crash is a disaster, life-threatening. But to be honest, I was more upset at what had happened just before the crash and the scraped skin. My father had deceived me. My own dad led me to think he was there when he wasn't. That was a new formulation in my little Technicolor child's world.

Eventually, he got me back on the bike, and the realization came over me (or perhaps he just talked me into seeing) that I had, actually, ridden on my own for thirty feet -- so perhaps I could do it again.

The next three or more decades would mostly be an awkward dance, in which he usually had his hand on my saddle when I didn't want him to, and didn't when I did. Throughout a dysfunctional childhood in my mom's house, Dad did his level best to provide me and my sister with a sense of confidence and a compass for this confusing world. He himself was confused, still a young man, freshly and very acrimoniously divorced. He was with us a lot, but he could only do triage.

So, I wandered all over the map for my first 40 years, unmoored, looking for Me, for Truth, for Safety and Inner Peace. I made some good things, and some glorious and bloody train wrecks. I broke my own heart and lost hope many times over, and, consequently, he suffered, silently, stoically, more than I'll ever know.

Finally, in middle age, I woke up. I went to grad school (his idea), found a career that I fit into, found an amazing woman, found a beautiful place to live, found a beautiful house to stay in for a long time, and found myself, ourselves, beginning the process of adoption. In about seven years, I did all the growing up and risk-taking I had managed to avoid for four decades. It's been harrowing, still is, but it's been good, too. Smartest seven years of my life, hands down.

Dad was so pleased all along, he probably popped buttons on four different shirts. I was finally out of the nest and flying. He was there for my joyous wedding, helped with expenses in grad school, there for my graduation, visited the house we finally bought... quietly smiling, and giving me congratulations each time.

In the last few years, noticing me become the man he always wanted me to be, he began steadily  confiding in me, treating me almost as an equal. This blew me away, of course -- my stoic, overbearing father was leaning on me? My life was sweetened immeasurably. Last Spring, when he received his diagnosis, he opened up yet more, quite a lot, in fact. Amongst the upset and anxiety, I was overjoyed. Ages before, he had his hand out to steady me, now, by the blessings of God, I could return the favor. More and more, he disclosed his fears, worries, and joys, and relied on me for perspective, for reflection. He recognized my growing steadyness and maturity, and reached for it to brace himself. I was  overwhelmed, even awed, but I can tell you this: I never took my hand off that saddle. I could finally pay him back for the steadfastness he gave me so unthinkingly over the years.

*     *     *

Dad died Sunday night, after a seven-month bout with cancer. He was strong and dignified to the end, and, thank God, did not have a lot of physical pain to deal with.

I know in my heart he is looking back over his shoulder, just like me all that time ago. He was a doting family man, and his greatest sadness was leaving his wife and children. But now there are no training wheels needed, nor anyone's hand on the saddle. Far from falling, he's flying.

Good-night, sweet prince; And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. 
       ~ Hamlet, Act V, scene ii