THE HARDEST YOGA POSE

In 2008, Chris and I had tickets to see Feist in concert, a concert playing at the Starlight Theater in Kansas City. This was well before we knew that we would eventually be moving to that area. We decided to go to Tulsa the day before the concert and spend the night at my parents. Tulsa had recently opened a new Whole Foods and since Chris and I were all into grocery stores, we wanted to go check it out. As we drove down Peoria, we passed a scooter shop and sitting out front were two scooters, an orange one and a blue one. Chris and I looked at each other and did an illegal u-turn and parked in front of the shop. It was like they had parked us out in front. Chris and Cindy. Orange and blue. My credit was so bad that my Dad had to drive down to sign the loan papers. Before signing, Dad looked at me and said “Is this what you really want?” I replied with my whole heart “Yes. Yes, this is what I want.” He laughed and signed the papers.

There are so many things about that day that stands out in my memory. The perfection of that moment. Chris and I had been eyeing scooters for some time and here we had stumbled upon the most perfect scooters. They were Vespas in our colors. Dad, who I would never in a million years thought he would approve and agree, signed the paperwork to make it happen. There was only one moment of hesitation for me and that was when they delivered our scooters and I realized that I had no idea how to ride. I immediately almost ran into a parked car, but I knew without a doubt that I was meant to ride a scooter. I studied the motorcycle licensing book that tells you all the ways you’re going to die on a motorcycle. I went to a parking lot in the neighborhood every day and practiced turns and stops and driving in a straight line. I passed the motorcycle driving test with flying colors.

My scooter is more than a fancy Italian name with an engine and two wheels. It has been a source of joy since the moment I laid eyes on it. It taught me perseverance. It made me more observant to my surroundings. It has been a comfort in real shit times and it has become an extension of who I am. And on Friday afternoon, two men drove into the parking garage at work and loaded my joy into the back of a van and drove away. Just like that. My V is gone and I have no hope of ever seeing her again. I filed a police report with a very apathetic and robotic woman holding down the front desk of the local police department who couldn’t find my vehicle in the MO registration because she kept typing it up as a Vesta. I never spoke to a police officer. So, I feel certain that V is gone forever. I’ve had a whole weekend of moping about and leaky eyes over the whole thing.

I’m sad.

I’m broken hearted and defeated.

At dinner that night, our conversation turned to yoga and I told the Cabbage that the hardest pose in yoga is savasana. What makes it so difficult for most people is that it requires you to be still with your own thoughts. The true practice of this pose is really hard because the true pose is practicing the art of dying. It is saying goodbye to everything in your life. There are times when I think that I’ve got this pose mastered. It has gotten easy to say goodbye, or so I thought. This current goodbye was so unexpected, such a shock to the system, that it is going to take some time and practice to settle back into stillness. Michael is already talking about my next scooter and of course, when the time’s right, I will get a new one. But for now, I need to spend some time saying goodbye to all of the things that this scooter, my very first scooter, represented in my life. The emotional value of this scooter far exceeds the monetary value of the scooter.

And there’s no replacing something like that so quickly.

VESPERADOS

A few nights ago, I’m sitting on the couch and scrolling through my Instagram feed. Up pops an ad for Vespa and my first thought is “Vespa, why are you wasting your time with me. I’m a sure thing.” Everyone knows that I love my Vespa just about as much as I love Josephine. My plan is to have this scoter until I’m 108 years old, but if something happens and I have to replace it, I will just replace it with another Vespa. So I say to Michael “Why am I getting Vespa ads on my Instagram?” To which he replies “It’s not me! I have not been looking. I swear.” Then I looked. I scrolled through the new line of Vespas and landed on a picture. I turned it for Michael to see and then I said “Yeah, but wouldn’t this look so much better in the garage than that giant scooter you have now?”

Michael’s current scooter is a joke. It is huge and clunky, with a large engine. The engine really belongs on a motorcycle. Watching Michael maneuver his scooter in and out of the garage, hurts my body. It looks like he’s trying to wrestle with a robot and the robot is winning. It takes up so much space in the garage that I struggle to get to my scooter. I’ve never been a fan. I’m a snob and I think his scooter is ugly. Two nights after I planted the Vespa seed, it sprouted while watching Luca on Disney+. Luca sees the Vespa poster on Alberto’s wall and asks “What’s a Vespa?” Alberto responds with “What’s a Vespa? What’s a Vespa!?! It’s only the best thing in the whole world!” Michael looked at me and I just shrugged. Then we both started laughing because Alberto is not wrong.

The next day, Michael went shopping for a new Vespa.

I rode out to the dealership with him last night so he could trade in the old scooter and finalize the paperwork on the new scooter. He settled on a 300cc Vespa GTS. He’s still got to order trunk and windshield. Vespa parts are hard to come by these days partly because of the pandemic and partly because the factory closes for a month in the summer. Afterwards, we took both scooters for a ride out to dinner. When I caught up with at the first stoplight, he turned to me and crowed with laughter. He yelled “it feels like I’m riding a scooter!” The old bike was really a motorcycle dressed as a scooter. Don’t get me wrong; motorcycles are great. They’re just different and riding a scooter brings a certain level of joy. Michael had been without that kind of joy for the last two years. He also rides this scooter differently. Before, we would be on rides together and he’d often leave me behind. Then he’d try to drive it like it was still a small scooter instead of giant beast. We were on rides ‘together’ but we were not together. Last night, we rode together, like for real together, and I got a glimpse of a previous life.

It made my heart swell.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Today, I pulled a blue egg from the chicken coop. It was perfectly intact and not frozen. I figured that Marguerite, our chicken of the blue eggs, was thinking about laying an egg when she hopped into the garage the other day. I heard her clucking around, hunting for a new place to set down an egg. Last year, she took to leaving eggs in the window well of one of the basement windows. When she was feeling really lazy, she’d just leave them in the middle of the yard. It is an Easter egg hunt year round at this homestead.

These are signs of Spring.

The week has been full of these little hints that Winter is waning. I turned a corner while walking the dog and nearly stepped on a small patch of flowers that had sprouted up on the edge of the sidewalk. Temperatures were just barely warm enough to ride the scooter to work. The green parts of my tulips are poking up out of the ground. These are the things I am grateful for this week. These are the things that have kept me going while fighting with a slide loading robot. By the way. If you are under the delusion that robots are going to take over the world, you should work with the ones I have to work with. Sentient beings they are not. Those signs of Spring have helped me battle the head cold that decided to invade my sinuses this week. I thought of all of those things while I cleaned the wall and floor behind the stove. A new one arrives tomorrow and I want everything ready to go. It was gross, but not as gross as I thought it would be. Actually, this week really threatened to kill me. If it wasn’t for that first scooter ride of the season and the flowers popping up, I probably wouldn’t even have the energy to be grateful for anything today.

So, here’s to signs of good things to come.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

I missed a large chunk of scooter season to the pandemic shut down. Weekends were the only times we were going anywhere or venturing out and we tried to take the scooters as often as possible, but weekend errands/outings more often than not happened in the car. Then Michael broke his arm. His elbow is healed, but he still doesn’t have the strength to hold up his heavy scooter. Now that I’m back at work, I ride my scooter as often as the weather allows for it. The weather has been kind because I have been able to scoot to work almost every day of the week.

It has been amazing.

Wednesday afternoon, I scooted down to Union Station to vote and when I told my boss what I was doing, he was seriously jealous. It was summer like temperatures outside and I pulled off my sweater. If I had had flip-flops, I would have kicked off my socks and shoes and put them on even though I know I’m not to wear flip-flops on the scooter. I could easily imagine myself on an island, scooting my way to the beach, a surfboard bungie corded to my crate. This week someone stopped me in the hallway to say something about how I must be loving this weather on a scooter. I agreed that it has been wonderful. Then I said that I was going to see how hard I could push myself this year by seeing how much cold I could tolerate. Once the temperatures drop down colder than a simple jacket and gloves requires, I might try layering on coats and just keep riding until the first freeze or snowfall. Last year the first snow hit us in October. I think my scooter days for the year are very numbered. I’m soaking in as many days worth as I can.

Michael once asked me if I would ever consider buying a different scooter. Michael is the original Goldie Locks. It takes him some time to find the ‘just right’. He is flabbergasted that I would not even want to consider anything else. I’ve had V for twelve years now and I can’t imagine owning any other scooter. I am sure the day will come when I have to replace V, but my plan is to just replace her with a carbon copy of herself. I knew that I wanted a Vespa the first time I saw Audrey Hepburn gleefully and recklessly take off on one in Roman Holiday . I think I was nine or ten when I watched that movie and it gave me grown-up goals. I thought to myself “Cindy, when you grow up, you will ride a Vespa scooter and wear ballet flats. You will have sassy short hair and maybe wear scarf.” Well, I’m all grown-up and I ride a Vespa. I do not wear ballet flats or a scarf (unless it’s cold), but I do have the sassy short hair.

On my ride home from Dr. Mary’s this week, I passed a man walking with his three daughters. The girls ranged from age two to maybe six. The oldest one saw me first. Her face lit up and she stopped short. Then her little hand went into the air to wave at me. I waved back and then beeped my horn. All three girls hopped up and down with glee. I like to think that I became their Audrey Hepburn that day and that they will grow up to ride scooters.

V is still the best investment I have ever made.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Cindy Maddera on Instagram: "V got a new boyfriend"

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Michael had one job that I wanted from him this summer while he was on summer vacation. That one job was to tackle the garage. We had almost talked ourselves into building a shed in the backyard because the garage had gotten so bad. Michael’s new scooter is bigger than his old one. Add in two bicycles, camp gear, an old Radio Flyer wagon we don’t ever use, chicken supplies, gardening tools, extension cords, and just the junk that accumulates in the garage and you’ve got yourself one unusable mess of a space. The garage was frustrating. Then, during our awful awful winter, Michael looked at me and said “Can I buy a snowblower?” I said “Yes, but only if you promise with your whole heart that you will clean out the garage this summer.” He agreed but said “What happens if I don’t end up cleaning out the garage?” I told him that I would send the snowblower back.

Michael cleaned out the garage this week.

The garage came with a set of built-in wooden shelves and you would think that this was a useful feature. Except they take up a lot of real-estate when it comes to scooter parking. Michael ripped half of the shelves out and moved the bike hooks to that wall. Now our bicycles hang flat against a wall and our scooters have space between them when we park. I can actually take my bike off of this hook on my own. Before, it was hanging from the ceiling. I could not hang it or take it off of that hook without bruises. The other evening, I got home and Michael and the Cabbage were off on his scooter somewhere. I was able to pull my scooter into the garage and turn it around in side the garage. Trust me when I tell you that turning a scooter around on a flat surface is far easier than having to do it on a slope. With broken asphalt. We also switched parking spaces, so that if I do have back out of the garage it’s easier to turn around. I back out while turning to the right and then move forward turning to the left and then I’m facing the street. We still think a backyard shed will help us out a lot. We can put the lawnmower and other lawn stuff in there as well as the chicken supplies. Michael did have to take all the camp gear to the basement to get it out of his way. So we might buy an extra rack of shelves for the basement just for camping stuff.

Doesn’t matter. What matters is that the garage is a usable space now. I am thankful for the work Michael put into it. Right now he’s at the doctor, being treated for some kind of spider/bug bite that he probably sustained while cleaning out the garage. That’s how hard he worked! He should know that all of his work is greatly appreciated.

I am also thankful that I don’t have to send his snowblower back.

A BOLT IN THE TIRE

Sunrise

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Last week, I hit a pretty awful pothole with my right front tire. It was so loud, that I was pretty sure I had broken my car. I was hesitant to mention any of this to Michael. Just last month I said something about never having the brakes looked at on my car that is now five years old. Five minutes after saying this, my brakes started to make a weird sound. I was pretty sure that if I said something about hitting that pothole, my whole tire would just fall off the car. I was riding in the passenger seat on Saturday, when I could hear a wub-wub-wub sound coming from the tire. So I asked Michael if he could also hear it. He said it sounded like it was coming from the driver's side front tire, but then I confessed to the pothole incident. He still thought it was coming from his side of the car. It sounded like I had flat tire, but the tire pressure light was not on. Finally Michael said "That's it! I'm pulling over right now." He got out of the car and had me slowely roll forwards and backwards while he inspected the tires. Turns out, there was a bolt with a washer lodged into the front driver side tire. The amazing thing is that the tire was not leaking air, nor had it blown out while we were driving it around. 

Yesterday, I told my therapist that I was finding it really difficult to not be a crankpot all the time. I told her I didn't know what was wrong with me, but I just felt out of sorts. Dr. Mary then had me read a passage from Buddhism Explained describing dukkha. Dukkha is suffering and this passage likened dukkha to a wonky wheel. For example, let's say you have a wooden cart with one wheel that sits crooked. The cart still rolls as you pull it; it just doesn't roll smoothly and makes the cart harder to pull and steer. Dukkha is a wonky wheel. You still experience joy, but there's always this underlying layer of suffering. You will always have this layer of suffering until you figure out what is causing the suffering and eliminate it from your life. I have a wonky wheel, a bolt in my tire. It always comes back to wheels.

I read the news about Stephen Hawking passing away while eating breakfast. Tears splashed down onto my pancakes as I read "It would not be much of a universe if it wasn't home to the people you love." Then for some strange reason, Werewolf of London was playing on the radio. There was Chris sitting in the passenger seat howling through the lyrics and I said "you are not the bolt in my tire." I said it while really trying to believe that was true. This in between Winter and Spring season is the bolt. That first Spring after Chris died, the only thing I wanted to do was ride my scooter. I'd spent the winter unable to muster enough energy to do more than lay on the couch. I wanted something that I knew would be bring me joy. But then I couldn't find my scooter key. I got so desperate that I finally retrieved the spare key from the lock box, the key they told me to never use because if lost it would cost $2500 to replace. At the time, being on my scooter in the sun was worth so much more than $2500.

We are so close to being in scooter season. I went out to the garage to start my scooter and it would not turn over. Sad face. Then Michael hooked my battery up to a battery charger and two hours later, my scooter roared to life. Happy face! Then the temperatures dropped back down below thirty. Sad face. In the years since the lost scooter key, it has always been this season that has made me feel the most out of kilter. Tomorrow, I'm pulling that bolt free from my tire and I'm riding my scooter. 

VISION BORED

Making lazy circles in the sky

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Yes Chad, I meant bored not board. The other morning I was walking outside when I had a very clear vision. In the vision, I was riding my scooter down a back country road. There were saddle bags bulging at the sides of the scooter while I sported a hiker's kind of backpack on my back. Josephine's head stuck out the top of the pack and we were just traveling along the open road. It was such a clear vision that I started to wonder if it was actually possible. The idea of traveling across the US on the scooter seems very inviting. I would stop and photograph forgotten towns and abandoned road side attractions and camp out in yurts and teepees. Then I'd write a book about my adventures that would end up on the best seller list. The book would be so popular that it would made into a movie. Amy Poehler would play me in the movie; soundtrack by Neko Case.

I've done some math/calculations/guessing and I've figured out that I would need to take about a two year sabbatical from work in order to travel across the U.S. and write a book. This would give me six months or so to travel from one side of the country to the other and then back to the middle. It would look something like this.

Except it probably would not be so straight, particularly through that section between Charlotte and Boston because the scooter is not an amphibian scooter. At least I don't think it is. Also, the last time I went to New York, I flew from KCMO to Minneapolis and then to New York. I had never flown across Lake Michigan and somewhere in the middle I reached under my seat to be sure the life vest was still there. So I won't be barging the scooter across that lake. I feel that six months, give or take, is plenty of time for me explore the the winding roads of America. There's a lot of the North East I've never seen like Philadelphia, Boston, Pittsburgh. I've never been to Montana or Idaho either. I could focus on the parts I haven't seen and zoom past the ones I have seen like that giant Ketchup bottle in Illinois. 

I figure I would need the rest of that time to write the book. I'd have to finish writing in at least a year so I could send it away to be edited by people who know how to edit. I feel that if it was my job to write the book, I'd actually write the dang book. The whole trip would make it so the book practically writes itself any way. There'd be pictures and probably a few lessons learned segments. I already envision a part where I try to change the back tire on my scooter. You have to remove the whole exhaust to get to that tire. I'm sure there would be a whole chapter of conversations with strangers. I'm a magnet for eccentric oddballs. It's like a bizarro superpower. I could also do on a whole chapter on food. A vegetarian in Montana. That's almost a book on it's own. 

It's all a pipe dream though, one to put on the list for when I retire. My work is great, but I don't think they'd agree to giving me two years off to go riding around on my scooter. Specially with pay. I'm also not so sure Michael would be all that cool with me taking a solo trip away for six months. I'm not so sure Josephine would be into riding on my back in backpack either. There's to much of a sense of responsibility in me to just drop this stable life for a vagabond life. There would be six months of my life where I wouldn't know what I was having for breakfast every day. Meal plans wouldn't exist. I would not be able to rely on a detailed schedule. The whole excursion would take me so far out of my comfort zone that I'd either adapt or turn right around and come home. Most likely I'd adapt because I'd be too stubborn to call it quits, but it's still a dream.

A freaking awesome dream.