Medora 2018

"As you get older, it gets

harder  to be mean to yourself."

Lynn Roberts

Today is the Medora century, the last TMD stage of 2018, and the weather is uncharacteristically cold for this time of year.  I have no doubts about going,  but I cannot help but wish for a touch of the warmer than normal weather we had been having.  No shorts and short sleeve jerseys today.  I pull out wool socks and winter riding gear dressing in a short sleeved wool base layer, jersey, vest, and light jacket, glad that I packed things away where I could easily find them.  I am shamed at the start which is only somewhere between nine and twelve miles away for me to find that a group of young men have ridden to the start from Louisville.  Perhaps next year, I think, knowing that it will probably not happen that way.  Still, the crowd is small as almost all of the stages have been this year.  There has definitely been a huge decline in distance riding in this area, and while I have theories I don't really know why.

As I age I have become more susceptible to cold.  Mental or physical, I don't know, but if you believe a thing to be real, it is real because belief is half the battle.  As the ride begins, Lynn and I talk about how difficult it is to ride through the winter.  It is not that you don't enjoy the ride the majority of the time, but  it is challenging to make yourself get out the door to attend the ride so that you can enjoy it.  It is the making a beginning. It is being mean to yourself. During this conversation, Lynn says the above words of wisdom and on and off throughout the day, I think of how right he is.  Age brings so many changes.  I am reluctant to face the pain of riding as hard, as long, to face the inevitable tiredness that follows.  Too much of my life, I think, has been spent in fear.  I wish better for my children.  Sometimes I ask myself if I made them too afraid of taking chances, but then I have seen them take chances without worrying that would have shattered my life for days as I visualized all the possibilities such a chance would have.

 The skies are dense with low hanging clouds, oppressive and gray, at the start, but I know they are supposed to lift during the day and for once the weather man is right.  Bit by bit,  a brilliant blue peeks through clouds that have turned white and puffy until the sun is spilling out, lacking much warmth but still lightening the heart.  I try to appreciate the last of the fall flowers, clumps of purple morning glories, aster, and others whose names I don't know.  The trees have not changed much yet, but I know in a few weeks this landscape will be bare not only of leaves but of crops.  Despite the recent rain, farmers are harvesting.  We never, however, pass the huge fields of pumpkins that normally color the landscape though we pass a few farms selling pumpkins.  After having seen so many fields of pumpkins rot over the past few years, unharvested, I wonder if more and more people are buying the plastic ones and the demand for real pumpkins has declined to where it is not worth the effort?  For awhile I am back when my children were small, too young to carve the pumpkins themselves. I would draw different eyes, noses, and mouths and they would pick how they wanted the pumpkin carved, then I would light it on their dresser for five minutes after turning the lights out at night.  I remember how we would make scarecrows and hang a ghost over the entrance to the drive and how the first year, the ghost hit my husband's windshield when he came home in the dark truly scaring him.  I find a smile on my face as I come back mentally to the group I am riding with.

The majority of these people will soon be putting their bikes up, finding other activities until warmer weather.  Hiking, the YMCA, yoga, and other pursuits take the place of bicycles. The few that don't quit riding normally maintain a pace that I can no longer match, so winter riding becomes a rather solitary activity for the majority of rides.  And there are the friends I love for what they were, for the memories we share, but who are essentially lost to me for one reason or another.

 I always feel a tinge of sadness on this ride, a course that has come to represent the closure of the TMD and the ending of the touring season, for I know I will not see most of these people over the winter.   As we age, there are those that don't return in the spring, whose bikes permanently remain in basements or on garage walls, and I hope that this is not the case for any of the few I have become close with and whose company I so enjoy.  I do know that fewer and fewer ride the centuries and some of these people have declared their intention not to ride the tour next year. 

At the festival, someone asks me how long I have been coming to Medora, since I first designed the route,  and I don't know.  I tell him that it was when the other store was open, before the divorce that ruined that business and the re-opening that was never successful.  We stumbled on the festival one year by accident and have returned every year since.  This year the main bridge into town is closed for construction so we had to enter through the covered bridge.  So far as I know, it grips nobody's wheel and there are no falls, something that has happened in the past from what I have heard though I have never witnessed it.  I remember coming to Medora in the winter with Grasshopper while he was still riding and how it snowed as we sat in the store eating our sandwiches.  I remember the wind and how without the fields to ease his strength, he sapped us of our vigor.  And yet, I remember the beauty of the ride, the flakes of snow unusually large, small flakes clumping together to make large nuggets.  I embrace the memories that flood my mind, holding them tightly, yet determined to continue making more for as long as I can.  I find I fear the possible loss of memory as much as I do the possible infirmity and illness of old age.  I fear the loss of these people that I ride with, and again realized  how much fear has dictated my life.  Perhaps one benefit is a constant appreciation of the good things.  The wise words of Thorton Wilder come to mind, "Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anyone to realize you.  Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it -- every single minute?"  I suspect the answer to be no, but at least I do have an appreciation of the many, many blessings I have received in life, not the least of which is this ride, today, with these people who I cherish. 

Thanks, Amelia Dauer, for captaining.