THANKFUL FRIDAY

The weekend before last, Michael and I spent almost the whole day on our bicycles. We cycled up to Brookside to our favorite nail salon for pedis. Then we walked the bikes across the street (so we wouldn’t mess up our new toe paint) to a sushi place that we always forget about until summer time because they have nice patio and reasonably priced lunch bento boxes. After lunch, we rode over to an art festival that was happening in Prairie Village where I convinced myself I wanted a new driveway more than I wanted a new piece of art for the walls. We got ice cream and bought some weird canned fish meats from the cheese shop. Then we rode the bicycles to the grocery store to pick up some salad fixings for our dinner, before finally making our way back to the house.

There was a moment during our bicycle ride when we were leisurely riding down a neighborhood street lined with tall trees. The weather was perfect. We were not baking in the hot sun and I wasn’t struggling up a hill. I said loud enough for Michael to hear me “I really like riding my bike!” Which is the truth. At first I felt a little bit of shame because it is an electric bike, but I’m way over that. It’s about intention and I was never one of those hardcore bicyclists. I don’t care about the exercise. Well…I kind of care about the exercise. I don’t care about that sort of Pelaton style of bicycle exercise. I just like riding a bicycle for the joy of riding a bicycle. My electric bike makes it easier for me to do that. I’m still moving my legs. I’m still feeling the burn. I’m just not giving up halfway up a hill and wanting to die and then hating myself for not being fit enough to get up the hill.

I want to be the kind of person that rides their bicycle regularly to work. There are a few things working against me in this venture. One is uncontrollable and that’s the weather. It’s been risky to ride the scooter lately with all the storms and popup showers. I am not fast enough on the bicycles to ride between raindrops like I can on Valerie. Morning temps have been chilly. There is no joy in having to bundle up to ride my bicycle only to end up sweating inside a coat because I’ve built up some heat through peddling. The other thing keeping me from eagerly riding my bicycle is totally controllable and that is my brain. My brain starts to worry about time and if I have enough of it. This creates anxiety and when it is time to open the garage and get a two wheeled vehicle out, I hesitate.

On Monday, I fought through that anxiety and rode my bicycle and I learned that time was not the only thing contributing to my anxiety.

Going to work on the bicycle is great. It is an easy carefree ride. There is little to no traffic at that time of the morning and I take the recommended bike route which means I should have a bicycle lane. Unfortunately the section of the Paseo I use does not have a designated lane, but the right lane is wide enough for both a car and bike. Unless someone is parked on the street. Which happens all the time. Still, at seven fifteen in the morning, this is not a problem for me because I’m the only one on the street. Coming home is a different story. There’s a lot more people on the rode at 5:00PM and they are all very anxious to be home from a long day of work. Many do not care that you are a bicycle on a designated bicycle route. It doesn’t feel safe and this stresses me out.

The first thing that Michael asked me when I got home on Monday was “how was your bicycle ride?” So I told him about the good parts. Then I told him about riding home on Paseo and how it stresses me out. His advice was for me to just take the Trolley Trail home. Remember that whole brain-time anxiety thing? That’s why I don’t normally use the trail. The Trolley Trail is out of my way. I have to go about one mile west to connect to the trail. Then when I exit the trail, I have to go almost two miles east to get home, whereas the Paseo is a straight shot. I live a block west of that street. Here’s the thing, and I just looked at the map, it truly is not all that far out of my way, but for some reason my brain has decided differently. So when Michael suggests I just ride the trail home, I get whiney and roll my eyes over how much longer it is going to take me to get home.

Wednesday, I rode my bike to work and at the end of my work day, I got on my bike. Instead of turning left to get on Paseo, I took a left and cut through the UMKC campus to the Trolley Trail. Then I proceeded to have the most delightful ride home from work. I stopped to wait for stoplight at an intersection with a family of three also on bicycles. The child was young, maybe six or seven, and the mom was explaining the stoplight and the crosswalk rules for when the light changes. When the light for the opposing traffic turned to yellow, I heard the mom say “Okay, the lights are about to change. Get your body ready. Get your bike ready.” I took off ahead of them, but I thought about that mom’s lesson to the child. It’s a pretty good lesson, but might need one more thing.

Get your MIND ready. Get your body ready. Get your bike ready.

This should be the first thing I tell myself when I get out bed each morning, no matter what vehicle I end up driving that day, especially if it is my own brain keeping me from doing the thing(s) I want to do. So there’s a few points of gratitude here. I am grateful for Michael’s suggestion to use the trail for my bicycle rides home from work. If I had ignored his advice, I would not have had the opportunity to hear that mom giving her kid the lesson of being prepared to cross the street. I am grateful to have overheard that exchange of words. Finally, I am grateful for joyful bicycle riding experiences.

THE ONLY EXCUSE

I’ve been a ‘member’ of the Yoga In the Park facebook group for years. I joined the group thinking that I would go to the yoga events, but I never do. The group usually meets at 2 pm on Sundays outside of the Nelson Art Museum. So..yoga with shuttlecocks. The teachers rotate and vary. The class is free but donations are recommended. I see the reminders for classes all the time and I always come up with some reason for not getting my butt off the couch. That’s not fair. My butt is usually not on the couch at two in the afternoon on a Sunday. I’m usually in the kitchen chopping vegetables for the week or folding the last of the laundry. So my usual reasons for not going is that it is just inconvenient.

My marshmallow body is the excuse I’m using for everything these days. I just sit back and watch as my barrel shaped torso get larger and larger. I’ve taken to buying the kinds of dresses that keep you guessing on the shape of the body underneath, partially for reasons of girth and partially for reasons of I like to keep people guessing. I’ve been minimal maintenance over here for months. This attitude is fading. I have been consistently getting ten thousand or more steps in every day and I’ve added weights to my yoga practice. So, on Sunday when Michael asked me if I had plans, I told him that I was thinking of going to yoga in the park. He said if I rode my bicycle, he’d ride with me to the Nelson and then go do his own thing while I did yoga. I agreed and we figured out a way to strap my yoga mat to my bike. We were at the Nelson in no time and agreed to a meeting time. He went his way and I went mine.

I found a nice spot in the shade to roll out my mat and did some people watching while I waited for class to start. The class was nice, not too flowy but moderately challenging. My biggest distraction was the guy who rolled out his mat directly behind me. I mean DIRECTLY behind me. I’m sure that at some point during the class, his nose was inches from my ass. Surprisingly enough, this was not the thing that bothered me the most. What drove me absolutely bonkers was that the guy was wearing heavy wool socks. His yoga mat wasn’t a true a yoga mat, but one of those really thick gym mats and every time I was in down dog, I could see this man struggling. It took all my willpower to not be yoga teacher Cindy and tell the man to at least remove his socks. By the time savasana rolled around, the sun had shifted. So I moved my a foot forward to be in the shade and to create some distance.

And this is why I make for a terrible yoga student.

Michael rode up just as I was putting my yoga mat on my bike. I told him about yoga and wool socks. Then we rode our bikes to Char Bar in Westport for linner. We spent most of our afternoon on our bikes and I was not mad about it. In fact, I learned two things that day. First, I don’t think I like yoga in the park. I mean, I didn’t hate yoga in the park, but it may not be the yoga class for me. Secondly, I love riding my bicycle. Like, I really enjoy riding around on my bike. When I was a kid, I went every where on a bike. Bicycles went with us on camping trips. I always had a bike. Once we moved here, I hated riding. Even Bessy the Bingo bike turned out to be only mildly enjoying to ride and that was only if I wasn’t going anywhere with Michael. Because I am slow and I don’t like to work hard. It’s raining here today and I am actually sad that I couldn’t ride my bike to work. And I am little confused as to who I am now because I never thought I would be someone that enjoys riding a bicycle to and from work. My ebike makes me less slow and I only work a little. That’s not true. I get in decent cardio workout while riding. I never stop peddling and the peddle assist kicks off once you reach a certain speed. It’s only there to give you a nudge up the hill.

A nudge up the hill is all I needed.

BICYCLE

Almost alien

"Almost alien"

I was determined to not let the whole bike riding to work thing be just a passing fad and vowed that as soon as it was the weather was nice, I'd start riding Bessy to work. The nice weather showed up around here sometime last week. I rode the scooter. It's totally a lame excuse, but if I can't start my week with riding the bicycle, then I'm ruined for the rest of the week. Plus it was the first scooter ride of the season. Sunday rolled around and Michael said that it was going to be 77 degrees on Monday. I then declared that I was riding my bike! I said it with an exclamation point, but I didn't feel that exclamation point on the inside. 

The minute I agreed to ride my bicycle on Monday, I began to doubt myself. I've been walking over ten thousand steps every day, but I am not "in shape". My mind instantly pictured the three big hills that I have to tackle to get to work. Those hills took on a ridiculous incline. I tried to think of the downhill parts where I don't even peddle, but I started to remember those sections as being to short and to far between. What if I couldn't make it to work? What if I did make it to work, but it took me over an hour? Just what if I couldn't do this? Then Monday morning came along and I was still doubting the whole bike riding thing. Michael stepped outside and said "whoa! it's thick as soup out here!". I thought "here's my out!" I could always say that it's too foggy outside to ride. Except I didn't.

I dragged my bicycle out of the garage and headed out into the fog. As I turned the corner to head towards the bike route, I felt the cool air sting my cheeks and my eyes tear. Then I felt an involuntary smile creep up on my face as I coasted through the neighborhood. The stillness of the morning combined with the heavy fog gave the illusion that I was the only person on the planet. Then a car would pass or a person would emerge from the fog to stand at a bus stop and I would remember that I was not alone. I struggled up the hills that I have always struggled on. They were not better or worse than they were when I was riding to work regularly. When I got to work and parked my bike, I noticed something shimmering and sparkling in my peripheral vision. Dew drops had collected on my eyelashes. My cheeks had that rosy crisp air glow and I filled up with a little pride for myself. I suddenly wanted to brag. I rode my bicycle to work. Like this made me special even though I know that millions of people do this every day because it's the only way they can get to work. 

Well, pride goeth before the fall, because my ride home that evening was pathetic. I was so slow. It was like was I only moving just fast enough to keep me balanced upright on the bike. It took me forty five minutes to ride four and half miles home. The next morning was worse. My knees started to ache on my third turn of the pedals. My thighs were burning. My nose was dripping. I wheezed up the first hill. I seriously considered walking up the next hill. I practically whimpered with relief when I finally reached that last section of the ride where I could just coast into the parking garage. I knew my ride home would be excruciating. I thought maybe if I could get out a little early, I could just take as much time as I wanted to get home, but then a miracle happened. Just as I was walking out to the parking garage the sky opened up and dropped buckets of rain down. Michael had to pick me up on his way home from work. When he showed up, he said "What about your bike?" I replied that maybe Thursday or Friday he could just drop me off on his way to work and I'd ride my bicycle home. 

A friend of mine was saying the other day how she's been working out for three years now and she just didn't know if it was doing any good. I can relate. I walk every day. I get on my yoga mat. I hardly ever use the elevator at work and will walk up four or five flights of stairs three or more times a day. I have this idea that I am fit, but when I'm wheezing and pep-talking my way up a hill that idea becomes a very fine piece of china that I just violently threw onto the sidewalk. I have to remind myself that I haven't done this kind of activity in months. I have to remind myself that I am not in any sort of competition with any one and getting to work and back is not a race. I have to remind myself that it is OK to huff and puff. I have to remind myself that it's OK to be a little bit outside of my comfort zone. 

I'll be riding my bike home today.  

LOVE THURSDAY

Trolley Track Trail and I don't care

"Trolley Track Trail and I don't care"

Here is what I have learned while riding my bike to work every day. Riding your bike takes longer than driving a car or riding the scooter. At first this was the most vexing thing to me. It would consume every section of my brain. I was going to be "late" to work. I was never going to get home. I was working way too hard to get up that hill. This was made worse by being on an uncomfortable bike. My butt kept sliding to far forward on the seat and my wrist hurt from the angle of the handles. Since the bike frame was too small, I wasn't getting a full extension with my legs and this made pedaling twice as hard.

I thought this would be solved with the new bike, that I wouldn't worry about time because this bike is more comfortable, but the ride home, up all of those hills, wasn't any easier. There was also still this needling thought that I wasn't moving fast enough. The cars just zoomed by, sometimes dangerously fast and more than too close for comfort. This didn't help the constant nagging feeling that I was moving too slow either. I had chosen the shortest route, traveling up and down Troost. It's 3.2 miles from home to work if I take this street. Troost is a busy street and evening rush hour traffic was harrowing. Often times I would ride on the sidewalks even though this isn't really any safer. Riding a bike down Troost at five o'clock is like trying to meditate in a room full of twenty screaming toddlers while balancing knives on your finger tips and a platter of hot lava on your head. 

Michael kept telling me that I should jot over to the Trolley Track Trail. At least for the ride home. I wasn't convinced that this would be any better. It just seemed too far out of the way. It added 1.4 miles to my trip. But he told me it was a good trail. It's flat and I'd only have one hill to contend with and that one really isn't as bad as any of those on Troost. So for my ride home on Wednesday, I made my over to the trail and had the most pleasant ride home from work on the bicycle since I started this whole bike to work thing. I never felt like I was working too hard to make distance. I didn't feel the need to keep up with cars. I just pedaled along. The trail is mostly shaded so I didn't feel like I was being baked and it only took me about five minutes longer to get home. 

I'll still take Troost in the mornings to get to work. I leave early enough in the mornings that traffic isn't too bad and it's mostly all down hill. The Trolley Track Trail is my new route home. Sure it might be slightly out of the way, but it's definitely a more pleasant ride. It's easier to just be present on my bike and really see the joy in riding a bicycle. When Michael saw the bike I wanted and saw me on it he said "all I see is country girl." Well...it's true. I grew up riding a bike in the country. There was no rush to get any where. We just went off with no real destination in mind. There were no cars zooming dangerously by. A lot of the appeal of riding the trail is that it's very similar to taking those back country roads. But also it is a reminder that sometimes the best path isn't always the most direct path. 

Here's to taking the long way home. Happy Love Thursday!

BINGO AND BICYCLES

Michael calls this his dauber art. It was worth $500. #winners

"Michael calls this his dauber art. It was worth $500. #winners"

A couple of weeks ago, after dropping the Cabbage off at a birthday party, Michael and I ended up at Custard's Last Stand for some frozen custard. It's the kind of place that serves its burgers and fries in a guitar shaped basket. There was a Bingo Bugler sitting on our table which is a  newspaper devoted to Bingo. I made Michael keep it because the headlines made me laugh and there was an editorial on what to do with those summer tomatoes, but it also gave us an idea for a date night. I don't think I've ever played bingo at a traditional bingo hall with daubers. Mom and I used to play in one of the community center tents in whatever small town we were in when traveling through Colorado. We used those bingo cards where you dragged the little shade over the number and prizes where gift cards to local shops and restaurants. 

Friday night, we went to dinner at Elsa's Ethiopian and then headed over to the American Legion to play some bingo. With the senior citizens. Michael and I were just about the youngest people there. There might have been one or two other women who where our age there with their mothers, but for the most part Michael and I were the young whipper snappers in the room. The two ladies sitting across from us at the table where a sister team. Judy was the oldest, just turning 68 last week and her hair had just started growing back from her last chemo treatment. We never caught the other sister's name, which I'm really sad about. We chatted about all kinds of things and laughed and joked through the whole evening. 

Playing bingo is hard work. I just had one book of nine squares, meaning I basically had nine bingo cards per game. Many of the people there had multiple books. One woman had strategically taped three books side by side and I don't know how many under each book. She had to lift up the top sheet to play her other cards. I had a hard enough time keeping up with nine squares. Then there's the patterns. All the games we played (except one), you had to make some kind of pattern. Judy and her sister had two books of nine they were keeping track of. We got to the game where you had to make an arrow and it nearly broke us. My sheet was a mess. I couldn't make any sense of it. At one point Judy said "this sure is a lot of work for fifty dollars." Then she won that bingo. The game after that was just a traditional Bingo. That's the game I won. 

The final game was a card of six and it was a blackout game. Just as the game was starting, Michael picked up his dauber and said "Come on Bingo. Cindy needs a new bicycle." We all laughed because the chances of one us winning the last game that was worth $500 was pretty slim. Blackout games take forever and we all started to lose momentum. We were chatting about gardening when Michael looked down at his card and realized he only needed three numbers to win. Judy got so flustered, she said "Lord, I'm gonna have a heart attack!" That was when he was down to two numbers. Then we see all see the winning number pop up onto the TV screen, but Michael can't say anything until the caller actually says the number. Which seems like is taking FOREVER. Our whole table was about to explode when Michael yelled out "BINGO!" It was very exciting.  Michael collected his winnings and we high tailed it out of there because we could feel all the eyes staring daggers at us. Well, except for Judy's and her sister's. They congratulated us and we all said our goodbyes. 

We had such a good time. Both of us agreed that even if neither of us had won anything, we still would have had a good time. We laughed and joked so much. Winning was exhilarating and we talked about our bingo night all weekend long. And then on Saturday, Michael used his bingo winnings to buy me a new bicycle. He said that he had been trying to figure out a way to get me a new bicycle for Christmas or my birthday. So winning $500 (technically it was $499, because of taxes) worked out perfectly. Turns out, my old bike could not be adjusted to make it more comfortable because the frame was too small for me. I replaced it with a vintage style Reid seven speed. It's the same color as my scooter and I'm thinking of naming her Bessie. 

Michael bought me a bike! @familybicycles

"Michael bought me a bike! @familybicycles"

BICYCLE! BICYCLE!

This is how I got to work this morning. Blame it on Portland.

"This is how I got to work this morning. Blame it on Portland."

I don't like riding my bicycle. The handlebars are weird to me and my seat is adjusted so that I sit higher than the handlebars. It had to be set high to accommodate my long legs, but leaning down on the handlebars makes me feel awkward and uncomfortable. Then there's like a million (24) gears which takes a relaxing bike ride and turns it into a Mensa test of lever pushing.  I feel wobbly on my bike and slow. This doesn't really make sense to me at all because when I was a kid, I went EVERYWHERE on my bicycle. My best friend lived probably two miles away. She was also the nearest kid. My bike gave me independence and the ability to go see Steph when ever I wanted. The only rules were to stay off the main busy road and not to go as far as the highway.

Once I got a drivers license, I spent less and less time on a bicycle and by the time I got to college, I didn't even have a bike anymore. There's been a really long stretch of time between riding my bicycle everywhere and not really ever riding a bicycle. I became comfortable with using my two feet to walk to places instead of using two feet to pedal to places. Then I met Michael who is all about bike riding. I bought a used bike (his ex-wife's actually) so I could go on bike rides with him and I can count on one hand the number of times in two years that I've gone bike riding with Michael. I made a scrunched up face when Sean suggested I rent a bicycle while we were in Portland. Sean walked with me the first day to the conference and said "nope! I'm riding my bicycle the rest of my time here." After the afternoon sessions on that first day, I walked back across the Steal Bridge and right over to the bicycle rental place. They set me up with a seven speed cruiser and a helmet and off I went. 

Sean and I rode our bikes to different food trucks for lunch every day. We rode out to cool restaurants in the evening. On my last morning, I rode my bicycle all along the Willamette River. I did complain a lot about the hills. That first morning, we rode our bikes up to the Waffle Window for breakfast. The ride was a gradual incline over twenty blocks and at one point I looked at Sean and said "I am not going to make it." I made it and once I realized I didn't have to keep up with Sean, who rides all the time, I was just fine. There was one day where I found myself riding back to our condo and I thought  "I could totally do this ALL OF THE TIME!" Sure, I was still complaining about hills and my butt hurt from the seat, but I was getting places.  I realized that I could do the same thing at home. I live 3.2 miles from work and most of the way to work is downhill (going home will be a pain). There's really not much of an excuse for me to not ride a bicycle to work.

Monday night (it was raining Monday), I got my bike down from it's hook in the garage and Michael made sure there was air in the tires. Tuesday morning, instead of rolling the scooter out of the garage, I rolled out my bicycle and pedaled my way to work. I struggled. I felt like I was going so slow. I am a sloth on a bike. Of course this is in comparison to what? There were no other bicyclists on the road. I was comparing myself to the passing cars, who were going way faster than me because, well, they are cars. Then I thought, at this pace, I was for sure going to be late for work and I started to get really frustrated that my body could not make this bike go any faster. Then it dawned on me. It's not that I am out of shape, it's that I'm out of bicycle shape. I just haven't ridden enough to know how long it should take me to get anywhere. I may be going slow, but I'm going and as long as I keep pedaling, I will eventually reach my destination.  

My new mantra just might be "I am a sloth on a bike".