Bike Newbie

Anyone who reads very much of this blog will know that 2023 was a difficult year for me. It may well have been the most difficult year of my life so far. Even so, there’s a lot to celebrate:

• I was completely sober for all but the first two weeks of the year
• I successfully cleaned up and sold a house (not mine…long story)
• I rode my bike more than 1,500 miles with my local bike club, and rode at least 1,000 additional miles “non club”
• I lost nearly 40 pounds
• I finished and published a novella
• I got into a weekly “habit” of completing the calorie equivalent of 100 “miles” of workouts per week
• I cut eggs, all meat except fish, and dairy from my diet

So, given that 2023 was a year full of victories, my overall goal for 2024 is to keep racking those victories up, and where appropriate, up the ante a little.

• Continue completing at least 100 “miles”, whether actual or the calorie equivalent, per week, totaling at least 5200 for the year.
• Write and publish a science fiction novel, a story map, and a nonfiction guide book.
• Continue my sober and plant-based ways.
• Ride in at least seven charity fundraiser bike rides.
• Continue blogging, journaling about anything and everything that inspires me.

That’s a lot, and I may not hit every single mark, but I will be better for the attempt. Happy New Year to you.

Last night I had a dream that I (1) downed a pint of some hard liquor (I never had a sense of which kind) in a Costco parking lot, (2) in my inebriated state proceeded to enter said Costco with an armload of garbage from my car (including the empty liquor bottle), and (3) left garbage in various Costco displays, and attempted to exit the store without paying for the new items I had shoved in my pockets (I don’t remember what the items were).

As luck and Costco’s inventory control would have it, I got busted for shoplifting. Interestingly there was no punishment for it; I just had to go find the store manager who happened to be a good friend of mine in real life (he is not really a Costco manager, but very interestingly he really is a hard drinker in real life), talk to him and get his blessing to walk free and leave the store.

I was very buzzed in the dream, and it felt very real to me. More fascinating than that, though, at no point in the dream did I feel any guilt, shame, or remorse for getting drunk at a Costco, nor for dumping garbage in the Costco, nor for stealing from the Costco. My overwhelming attitude during the whole dream was, “Hey, people make mistakes. I made a mistake; that just proves I’m human.”

Sometimes you need to have a ridiculous dream to be able to practice self-compassion. By the way, I woke up before I ever found my Costco manager friend.

When I die, don’t give me a spendy funeral. You need that money for chew, beef jerky, and beer.

Let my shroud be a bright blue tarp, honoring the roofs and walls of my kind.

Let my hearse be an old pickup truck, one that has been beat to hell but somehow still runs, one that has a cracked windshield and a different-colored tailgate.

Let my coffin be the truck box, the kind of truck box where you have to jiggle the key to unlock it, with worn out shocks so you have to prop the lid open with a stick.

Dress me up in my best Prison Blues, hoodie, and Realtree hat. On my feet put my best Romeos, the ones with no holes or oil stains.

Drive me through town, wrapped in my shroud, lying in my coffin, riding in my hearse, past the Les Schwab, the Dollar General, the Rite Aid, and the Circle K. Don’t forget the Dairy Queen drive through.

Gather everyone at the boat launch and maybe have Phil say a few words about me. Phil won’t talk bad about me. Phil never talks bad about anyone.

Make sure there is plenty of Rainier in cans. Make sure there are jojos and poppers.

Take me to my final resting place, up in the woods, up a grown-over logging road with brush that scratches the sides of my hearse (it’s a cobby road so put it in 4), all the way up to the old landing on ground that used to be Stimson but now the owner is some big faraway company no one knows the name of.

Don’t bury me, just dump me off the tailgate like an old couch, wrapped in my shroud, bright blue, the only object that gets brighter in a rainstorm.

When anyone asks about me, say “Oh, he died, quite a while back”, no matter how long it’s been, so people don’t feel too sad or awkward or like they have to say something special.

Then, in a generation or two, forget I ever existed, time obscuring my legacy, ferns obscuring my grave.

My book has been out a couple of days, and while I haven’t been promoting it at all, friends and family know that it’s out and several have purchased it. It feels wonderful to have people read something I wrote and gain access to my thoughts (I don’t communicate all that well in person). But at the same time, only one person has given me any feedback whatsoever on the book, which is making me crazy.

The thing that keeps me halfway sane is knowing there are multiple explanations for why people are silent about the book.

1. People are very busy. There’s a high probability they haven’t gotten a chance to read it yet.
2. The people I know are polite and don’t exactly care for the book, but they would never tell me that straight up, so they are just saying nothing about it.
3. They are still processing the book and deciding how they feel about it.
4. They’ve read the book, but offering me a well-thought critique is not exactly on top of their priority list (see #1 above).
5. They’ve read the book and love it, but feel strange expressing things like that to me (I know I often feel that way about expressing feelings, and I often think “Oh, they know how I feel already” or “How I feel is not important to them”).

So, the answer is I should not stress about people’s silence on a story I’ve written and shared with them. The outside world will read it soon enough, and they won’t be shy about sharing their view of it, good or bad.

Title says it all. I never thought I would be able to do this, but I just did it. Cross another one off the old bucket list.

I’ve been to several sporting events since Covid, but not a live music event until last night. I saw Lorna Shore, Mastodon, and Gojira (three metal bands, for the non-metal who may read this) with my son. I was a little nervous, but ultimately glad I went.

I just recently got over a head cold, so I don’t know if exposing my immune system to the cornucopia of germs present in a crowd of about 5,000 people was the greatest idea. But my son and I had been planning this boys’ night out for a long time, and I didn’t want to cancel it just because of an unknown possibility of catching something. We’ll see over the next week or so whether my gamble worked.

The show itself was more than worthwhile. Lorna Shore is a young band with a lot of promise and an engaging lead singer. Mastodon showed off their amazing musicianship and versatility, and sounded even more aggressive live than recorded, although I thought their sound was mixed very cleanly considering the huge venue. Gojira worked the crowd into a beautiful frenzy, combining a sonic assault with a dazzling lightshow and awesome vocal effects. All three bands feature ultra talented musicians, and the drummers especially shone brightly at the live concert.

In my younger days, I would have definitely wanted to experience the show from the floor, pushing my way forward to get as close to the stage as possible. But now I’m more than happy to enjoy the music and the stage show from the comfort of the seats. And I can save my strength for my immune system, and hopefully for cycling again soon.

Have you ever changed something in your routine out of necessity, only to find out you actually prefer the new way of doing it? That was my experience with bike pedals. I went from being a typical “platform only” bike rider to riding with the fancy cleat pedals once I started riding regularly. But because of hip issues a decade later, I was forced to go back to platform pedals only. However, I found I actually now prefer platform pedals to cleats, for a few different reasons.

If you’re wondering what in the hell “platform pedals” are, don’t feel bad. It’s one of the many ways cyclists try to demonstrate they are better than you by using fancy terminology. A platform pedal is just an ordinary flat pedal you place your foot on; there’s no attachment keeping your foot on the pedal. You don’t need special shoes (aka “cleats”) to use platform pedals.

Which brings me to reason number one why I like platform pedals. You can wear comfortable shoes while cycling. I have wide feet and the special cleat shoes needed for cleat pedals have never been comfortable for me. In fact, after 50 miles or so those cleat shoes tend to be downright agonizing. So it was a refreshing change to not have to wear them anymore.

Another thing about the special cleat shoes is they are made for pedaling, NOT for walking. If your long bike ride involves any kind of walking during your breaks (into the coffee shop, into the restroom, or just around to stretch your legs, for example) you run the risk of slipping, sliding, tripping and/or stumbling around as you resemble a duck wearing roller skates on those wildly unwalkable shoes.

Bicycle cleat shoes are not cheap, either. Same for the pedals that go with them. I have spent $350 on a set of nice road bike cleat shoes and pedals, that were considered “middle quality” at best. Compare that to a total of $100 spent on a set of good platform pedals and good, solid leather shoes to go with them.

Now, you might read all this and ask, “Aren’t cleat shoes and pedals needed to go fast or climb hills, though?” The truth about cleat pedals is, while they are more efficient at transferring your leg power to your bicycle, the improvement over platform pedals is minimal at best. This is especially true if you are using solid shoes with fairly stiff soles as your platform pedaling shoes. Sure, if you are racing in competitions, you will probably need to use cleat shoes and pedals (and you don’t read my blog). But for the vast majority of people who just want to ride for fun and health, one mile per hour (or less) faster or slower isn’t going to make or break the ride for you. So if you’re riding for fun, why not make the ride fun?

It’s normal as we get deeper and more involved in cycling that we want to emulate the pro cyclists we see on the Tour de France or in our favorite racing videos. But sometimes it’s best to do what suits your own purposes and comforts.

Over the past several years I’ve noticed a sensitivity to the full moon. No, I don’t turn into a werewolf. But I do have noticeably more energy in the days leading up to a full moon, and it’s tougher to get a good night’s sleep.

Maybe it’s all in my head; maybe I convince myself of a sensitivity and my mind makes it so. Either way, the increased energy and the sleep-deprived nights are no less real.

I don’t see it as terribly harmful, though, and there are lots of good ways to harness the energy and channel it into something good. One of those ways, as you might guess from the name of this blog, is getting on a bike and riding.

The weather, unfortunately, has not been conducive to bike riding. Oh well, as they say, that’s why they make winter bicycle gear. It’s that time of year when there’s a fair amount of tooth-gritting, especially in the first miles and the last miles.

I don’t yet own an e-bike, and I’ve never ridden one. With luck and a lot of regular riding, I won’t need to use one for many years yet. Still, e-bikes have already impacted my life.

Most of the organized rides I register for allow e-bikes. And a lot of their riders register. You would probably guess that most folks riding them in the organized rides are aged 65 and older. Well, you’d be half right…about half of them are older, and the other half are surprisingly young people, younger than 35 by the look of them.

Not very long ago, this would have bothered me. I would have thought, someone so young should not be riding an e-bike when they can muscle through on a mechanical bike. But really, who am I to judge? Who’s to say they don’t have an injury or debilitating illness? Who’s to say they don’t intend to get into “regular” riding shape but want to get involved in some longer rides in the meantime?

Also, just for the sake of argument, let’s assume none of those things are true of the young people riding e-bikes. Let’s assume they are healthy, energetic, and perfectly capable of riding a regular mechanical bike in the organized ride…they just prefer an e-bike. Would they be wrong to ride an e-bike? The answer is no, they wouldn’t be wrong…and the answer should never be yes unless you’re Amish.

E-bikes represent the current state of available bicycle technology. The mechanical bikes I ride represent what was cutting edge technology about 20 or so years ago. If someone from 1970 looked at my bikes and declared that they were too “easy” to ride or that I was “cheating” by riding them, I would scoff. So who am I to say those same things about people who ride e-bikes? It’s just a newer technology applied to a two-wheeled vehicle that is (at least partly) people powered.

I hope I live long enough to see what the successor of the e-bike will be. Will it be able to hover? Will it sense hazards (such as cars) and be able to evade them? Will it be able to “train” its human rider, knowing how much resistance to apply to give the rider the best workout possible without overtraining? And most importantly, will people riding the “old” e-bikes judge the riders of these future bikes harshly? My answer to that question is I hope not, but probably so.

Let It Snow (because I’m riding the spin bike this weekend)

Well the weather outside’s been frightful
And the bike is so delightful
But since it’s too cold to roam
Spin at home, spin at home, spin at home

With temperature I’m no chicken
But I pause when the rain starts to kick in
Got no hair upon my dome, so I
Spin at home, spin at home, spin at home

When it finally turns to spring
How I hate going out in the sleet
Once it warms up, that’s the thing
To get me back out on the street!

Well the forecast looks abysmal
And the sky it sure looks dismal
In a couple weeks I’ll roam, but for now I
Spin at home, spin at home, spin at home.