A Ride of Retirement and Remembrance

"But there never seems to be enough time

to do the things you want to do once you find them."

Jim Croce

Club century ride or solo ride.  I decide to wait until morning and decide, yet when I awaken I remain unsure.  There are pros and cons for both.  My decision is made after hearing the weather forecast, very hot and very humid, and upon realizing that the century destination is the same town as it was a couple of weeks ago albeit reached by different roads.  It's a shame, I think, that they did not have one early in the season and one later in the season rather than so close together, but it always seems to happen that way.  I air up the tires on the Surly instead of the Lynskey and head out on an undetermined route. I have lots to think about.  So much has happened in the short time that I am retired, almost as if everything was waiting for me to have time to deal with it before falling apart.  I laugh at my own pretension, as if I could fix things.  The one thing I have learned in the past few years is that there really is very little that we have control over. 

Almost immediately upon my retirement, my handicapped sister fell, breaking a hip and getting a hip replacement.  My big brother was diagnosed with Myelodysplastic syndrome.  Both of these are complicated by the fact that both live close enough where I should visit regularly, but far enough away that it takes the entire day to go for a short visit. Then yesterday I find out a friend I ride with occasionally, Roger Bradford, has unexpectedly passed away.  Of the work team I left, one is now out following knee replacement and another is off following a cancer diagnosis.  All these things seen to scream to me that I made the right decision, that there truly is never enough time to do the things you want to do if, and this is not part of the quote, you do ever find them.  Today I want to ride my bike and be washed in the sunshine, to forget that life is short and that our health and our abilities decline, sometimes rapidly and unexpectedly.  Today, I just want to be me in that place where I am most happy now that I no longer have my husband's arms to home me:  on a bicycle on roads with little to no traffic.  

I decide to ride to Wascum's Bridge and just go from there.   Gravel, paved....it doesn't really matter much.  I hope to avoid any long, strenuous climbs, but also to avoid complete flat without a terrain variation. I think about Roger.  I first remember meeting Roger when he came to a series of rides I put on for the club called the "Challenge Series."  It was a series of five back to back century rides the purpose of which was to help people who wanted to do multi-day rides get the confidence they needed to attempt those rides by riding locally.  Roger was one of the few who attended those rides and he went on to ride Rain Storm for two years afterward.  I remember how he almost went down on a descent down Bartle's Knob, his back tire slipping dangerously sideways.  I remember the look of accomplishment on his face when the series was completed.  I remember how much more competent he was riding in wet weather, something he had not done before.  I think of how I had actually toyed with the idea of renewing the series after retirement, but since the club changed the rules for ride captains, it will not happen.   

I remember that Roger went back to work for two or three years after he retired before retiring a second time.  During that time he moved to Texas and joined us once for a century there during Hell Week (when there was a Hell Week). He had wanted to ride across the country, then began to have health issues that caused him to cancel.  Sad how our bodies can betray us.  I have no idea if he had to go back to work or wanted to go back to work, but I wonder briefly if he knew what would happen, would he have returned?  But of course we never know.  I hope that heaven has bicycles for him, and he can ride a new one every day if he so desires.  I hope that the hills still hurt but leave you with that feeling of accomplishment and victory because I don't see how there can be one without the other.  I hope, Roger, that you have gone in peace and that your family finds comfort in their memories.  Because of the man you were, I know you have left an enormous hole.

I think of my brother.  I have three big brothers, all of whom I love.  One, however, grew up to be someone I don't like very much despite loving him.  Another is just not and never has been dependable.  He is kind and wonderful, but he is not always there. But Chris, I could always depend upon Chris.  I remember how he would make me buckle my seat belt when they first started appearing in cars, something my parents didn't make me do.  I remember him taking me to ball games and swimming practice.  I remember how we would snuggle together and watch "Bonanza."  I remember how he introduced me to the music of Bob Dylan and the Beatles. I would bring him up a plate of milk and cookies when I got home from school and he would take a break from studying to play cards with me for awhile.  I remember how proud I was when he played football and they were State Champions two years in a row.  Mostly, I just remember that he spent time with me despite the age difference and despite telling my parents, when they brought me home from the hospital, that he did not see what was so great about me.  Just prior to his diagnosis, I had planned a trip for both of us to go to California to hike and kayak with my nephew who lives there, to reminisce and make new memories.  Now he has been in the hospital for over two weeks, a wasted shadow of his former self,  and it will not happen.  Again and again I tell him that I love him, that I appreciate all he did for me both as a child and adult.  I cry a bit despite the fact I would have sworn there were no tears left in me to drain.  Sometimes I ask myself why, if we really believe there is a heaven, and many of my friends, don't, we mourn so.  Is it always about ourselves?  Perhaps.  I just don't know.  I smile through the tears thinking of the look on his face when he saw where I live, my house, and kept saying, "It is like a little candy house."  Because of him, my house now has a nickname, another gift.

I am awakened from my thoughts with the sound of some machinery.  It seems early for harvest though I have seen a few corn fields that are now barren.  It is a logging operation.  What was beautiful is a cesspool of mud and stumps and logs.  I know it is a necessary thing, this harvest, but I just cannot bring myself to like it.  

I notice that the flowers are starting to be those that are harbingers of the coming fall:  iron weed, mist flower, and what I believe is primrose.   I pass a dilapidated farm house and think about how our history, our heritage, deteriorates, bare boned, unappreciated and unloved, around us.  For a moment I am with her in the kitchen, the woman who once lived here, her brown hair heavy with sweat from the canning that must be done to get them through the winter.  Her belly is large and rounded.  Two little ones disrupt her attempts to provide for them. They are too young yet to shoo out the door to play, and too young to be of much help.  But that will change.  She longs for the solace of rest despite knowing that the mattress is still probably damp from the previous nights restless slumber in the autumn heat that seems to turn the bedroom into an oven.  The little one inside rebels when she tries to rest as if disturbed by this unusual luxury.  Life on a farm is not about rest, not until winter settles her arms around them.  Even then, there are the animals and their needs to be seen to, socks to be darned, clothing to be sewn...all the chores that the other seasons leave little time for.  A sigh escapes her lips at the difficulties, the fears.  But she is proud of this house they have built, Jeb and she, the house that will see their children into adulthood and will shelter them in old age.  She does not know that time will weather them all.  She does not think of this house, unmourned and alone, in the midst of a soy bean field, rotting to nothingness.

Suddenly I realize I am hungry, and I use the GPS to see where I am.  I have a general idea, but have been just deciding on which direction to go as I hit an intersection.  Occasionally I have come to roads I am familiar with,  but I have chosen to go a different path when possible.  I decide to head toward Vallonia and come upon a farm market that has a sign saying they offer breakfast.  I stop and buy breakfast, an ear of corn for my dinner tonight, and a peach.  After I am sated, I head outside into the sultry air and decide to head home.  54 miles is enough for today.  It is hot.  I am retired.  Tomorrow, weather and health permitting, I will ride once again to soak in the beauty that surrounds me.  If, when I awaken, that is what I want to do.

Mike Crawford's New 45 Mile Ride

"Summer was here again.  Summer, summer, summer.

I loved and hated summers. Summers had a logic

all their own and they always brought something

out in me. Summer was supposed to be about freedom

and youth and no school and possibilities and adventure 

and exploration.  Summer was a book of hope.

That's why I loved and hated summers.  Because

they made me want to believe."

Benjamin Saenz 

Summer yet again has flown by, streaking past me without so much as a fluttering wave or a rigid middle finger as I prepared for retirement and tried to ignore him.  Oh, there is still summer left for a few weeks more and the world remains lush and green, not yet cloaked in her merry fall clothing, but I feel it winding down.  So much missed.  I had thought retirement would slow down the whirling dance, but life happens. As the saying goes, "Man plans.  God laughs." I only have been retired about two weeks, but my sister, already handicapped, falls and breaks a hip. My brother is diagnosed with a serious illness breaking my heart, the brother whose first words upon seeing me when my parents brought me home from the hospital were, "I don't see what's so great about her,"  the brother who was the first to make me buckle my seat belt in a car, the brother who took me to swim practice and baseball practice and cheated me when we played cards, the brother that I love. I offer a bone marrow transplant if it will help and we match, but he has been told he is too old. It is hard and I wish they had not happened, but these things also assure me that I have made the right decision in retiring rather than continuing to work.  Life, like summer, whizzes by at breakneck speed with an unknown finish line.  At least some summer is left, and I want to believe in possibilities, in adventure, in changes.  And I intend to explore.  One fear I have always held is leaving life before living it fully.

I struggle with whether to drive all the way to Elizabeth for Mike Crawford's new ride as it is only 45 miles, but the possibility of new roads and companionship draws me like the moth to the flame. I decide to go, and I am so very glad I do.  The roads are magnificent:  lightly traveled and scenic.  I have ridden some before, but a few are entirely new to me. Some of the pavement is rough, but that does not bother me.  I would rather have scenery and little traffic on rough roads than smooth roads that lack these treats.  I get to see and drool over Lynn's beautiful, new, bright orange Calfee and hear his first impressions as this is the third time he has taken it out to play. 

I start out near the front of the pack, but decide to ride at the back.  After all, what is the hurry? And I really don't know the others despite a rather large turn out.  Getting to know people is difficult for me, and today I will not force it.  A silver mist coats the air at the start.  As my tail light is not working, I am glad for the light traffic.  It is beautiful, this mist, shielding us from the sun, making the word fairy like and odd, and the mist stays for a couple of hours before the sun pops through, wrapping his arms around us and heating everything up. I ride with Lynn and Mike occasionally talking and occasionally riding in companionable silence.  The corn is tall and not yet brown and withered.  Soy bean fields abound.  Yet there are also roads where tall trees line the sides, stately and dignified. All around me abundance, and I am thankful, thankful for friends and country roads and bicycles.  I think of when I was a child and school ended.  Summer seemed a magnificent eternity before being jailed again, full of forts to be built, woods to be wandered, and games to be played.

Now I am as free as I suppose we ever can be as adults because even though retired, there are responsibilities that I did not have as a child.   And perhaps every season can and should now be a "book of hope" full of possibilities.  What a thoroughly delightful route, Mike Crawford.  Thank you for sharing it.  I have enjoyed it and the company.  It was worth the drive.