Future PBP?

"A goal without a plan

is just a wish."

Antoine de Saint-Exupery 

It has been a steamy hot, humid week, filled with ragweed, so once again I steal out of the house quite early to get a ride in before it becomes miserably tropical.  Today I pick the Surly though I have no intention of seeking gravel.  What makes us pick a certain bike on a certain day?  Sometimes it is the route we intend to take, and sometimes it is just as if that bike calls to us.  Sometimes we find we have picked the right bike for the path we find ourselves on, and other times we think another would have been a better choice.  Regardless, like many choices, you just deal with the choice you have made.  Today's choice is perfect.  Today the Surly fits just fine though the SRAM shifters, while shifting so clean and crisply,  test my finger strength.

 

  I just want to get a ride in.  It is still hard to force myself out the door.  Grief is still my constant companion and urges me to stay home and wallow, but I have had lots of  practice with telling grief no.  I will not dishonor this precious gift of health and life that way, to make a mockery of the very gift that has been taken from others.   I can not yet make grief stay home when I leave, but that will come with time.   

 

I don't know that I believe that time  heals all wounds, but we eventually learn accept the dismemberment bestowed.  If we are lucky, perhaps, we learn a lesson from our grief.  In the end, I have concluded that the best way to honor those that went before is to live life as fully and as gratefully as we can while accepting that we are human and will have times of sadness and regret, times when the beauty of the world surrounds but eludes us somehow.    It is best to live so that maybe one day, when it is our turn to move onward, others will learn from how we lived and accepted the events and traumas that life has bestowed upon us and honor our passing.  

 

Everything is still very green despite the heat, and I think how very much I will miss it.  Time passes so quickly any more it seems I blink my eyes and summer has vanished leaving only a memory.  As I ruminate, I come across a large orange and white cat, lazily draped across the road soaking up the heat. He notices my approach, turns his head and stares for a moment, dead still in the way only a cat can be still, then stalks haughtily off the road, obviously angry at being disturbed in the midst of a fine nap.  A short time later, a flash that I identify as a ground hog scuttles nervously to a hidey hole at the road side.  Then, just a moment later, there is a fawn in the road.   "Where," I think, "is your mama?"  Mama is right around the bend.  The fawn takes off to my right, mama to the left, and I hear her snort.  I worry about the small size of the fawn.  Was it a runt or did mom have a late pregnancy?  I am not sure when deer season starts, but this fawn still seems to need it's mother.  A line from "The Yearling" comes to mind, "The wild animals seemed less  predatory to him than people he had known." 

 

I wonder if the snort means something.  Anyone who has been around animals much know that they do communicate though it is certainly not always or even usually through sounds.    Beware the horse that has his ears flat, pressed backwards against his  neck.  Beware the warning growl of a dog who feels you are riding much to closely to his yard.

 

At this point, I am near the big hill that I either need to climb or to not climb depending on if I want to retrace my route.  I decide to climb.  The Surly is heavier than my other bike, but it also has easier climbing gears despite the fact the Lynskey has a triple and the Surly does not.  I climb and find it is not overly stressing me.  Indeed, it feels quite lovely, the way the hills test my thighs and, even more so, my lungs.  I settle into a regular breathing pattern as I tend to do on hills, and before you know it, I have crested the top. The difficulty of climbs depends so much not only on the grade, but also on how quickly you are determined to get to the top of it.  Today I just relax and spin, not worrying about time or speed.   "Lovely," I think, for because of the climb later in the ride I will have a two mile downhill that I enjoy.  Suddenly it comes to mind that on brevets, one thing that always encouraged or discouraged me, depending on the scenario, was that each hill you climbed you would descend and vice versa. 

 

And then I begin to think about Paris Brest Paris and the people I know that were there this year. I got very excited for them and envious of their adventures.  For the first time since my husband passed, I truly wished I were there, and I realize it is not only because of the people I know riding, but because of the people I don't know.  Memories of the experience float through my head tauntingly and making me question if I could,  indeed, complete the course once again.  I think that I could physically, but could I once again obtain the mental fortitude that is necessary to be successful because anyone who rides brevets knows how  important that becomes at the longer distances, that ability to dig deep within oneself and move onward. And could I physically with my seeming inability to recover as quickly as I once did?

 

I toy with the idea the rest of the ride and decide that perhaps, depending on circumstances, I will rejoin RUSA and ride some brevets next year to see how I do.  When I get home, I try to look up the age of the oldest female to complete PBP.  I find the oldest American woman was Elizabeth Wicks who was age 75.   I believe she had a coach to give her direction and was probably a much stronger rider than me to begin with.   But I will only be 71,  so I will have a four year advantage over her. The oldest male was Jean Guillot at age 86.  I never find who the oldest woman was overall.  I do find it interesting in my bit of research to find that 2007, the first year I rode PBP, had the worst weather since 1956, the year of my birth.  How well I remember my husband urging me forward before the ride as I hesitated.  He reminded me that I will become too old to do these things that I love.  It is one reason I continue to ride centuries regularly, because when I stop it will most likely be for good.   So, the question remains, am I too old for PBP and brevets?

 

All this is, at this point, is a pipe dream, or a wish, without a real plan.  Reality comes with plans.  And there would not be the forgiveness that past planning had. My first PBP I rode out too hard but was able to recover with a few hours of sleep. That would probably not be the case again. If I ride out too hard, I will be done. 

 

 Will my desire remain?  Will my current abilities remain that long? I have noticed that  age brings with it one aspect of childhood, changes happen rapidly.   Firsts begin to be more frequent, but rather than it being the first time one does something, it changes to the first time one can't quite do something. Travel and planning the travel is stressful for me, not something that I really enjoy.  I near home and think that if I do decide to try this crazy thing again, in my  mind I will dedicate the ride to all those I have lost. For while I have eluded grief for a bit on this ride, I know it will return. Could I, should I, dream of PBP?  Perhaps I should, but also realize that it is, without a definite plan, still a dream.  And that is okay too. 

Dead and Broken

On the Loss of Victor R. Smith:

And so it is, with the loss of my last brother, Victor Smith, two days ago, I become an only child that once had four siblings. I suppose, being an orphan as well, with both parents deceased, this does not count. I certainly did not expect his loss, or at least not this soon, and I struggle. I find this odd because of all my siblings, we probably were the least close. We didn't hate each other and weren't angry with each other, but we were just very, very different sharing little in the way of interests though he did begin riding a bicycle a bit a few years back. Our lives went such different directions.

 

 

But for there to be no one left. No one left who remembers the sound of my mother singing as she did her household chores. No one left who remembers the stories she told us or the feel of her hands when you got sunburned and she applied a cooling ointment. No one left who remembers my father fixing things and his gentle rumblings around the house as he prepared to go to work at the hospital for doctors back then did rounds in the morning.

 

 

There is nobody left to remember the old family stories like the one about Chris getting out of the car and the gas station during vacation and our parents driving off and leaving him as they thought he was asleep in the back of the car. There is nobody left to remember the time I picked Victor for my Birthday King knowing I had hurt his feelings as I first was going to pick Tim Slater, his friend, who I thought was incredibly handsome. There is nobody left to remember the story about Marc deciding to camp up the road in a neighbor's yard that we didn't know even taking his own toilet paper. There is nobody left to remember Pam looking and buying clothing by price tag rather than by what looked the best or playing country music long before it was popular. There is nobody left to remember the time Dad dressed as Santa Claus and scared the dickens out of me. While they tended to me, the dog got on the table and ate the steak we were going to have for dinner that evening. It is, indeed, as if my childhood were severed from me, becoming more like a novel I read long ago than an experience I had that shaped and molded me and that I treasure. And I mourn. It is just too sad. I have lost so much.

 

 

Sleep well, brother. I have always loved you. You left too soon. Too young. Tell everyone hello and give them hugs. The caboose is still here waiting for her turn. Fly, Vee, fly.

 

 

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The funeral was yesterday and it is done.  Today, in an attempt to heal, I force my leg over the Surly and go seeking gravel knowing there will be solitude there.  I remember this feeling.  How one becomes dead inside for the longest time, broken somehow.  There is nothing anyone can do, though a few somehow manage to bypass the wall I have erected inside with a few words of comfort: a text from Paul, a card from Sharon, an email from Jon, a hug from Tiffany.   In the end, we are  helpless in the face of death.  My sympathy goes to my brother's wife because how well I remember how people, as they should, begin to go about their lives and reality hits like a sledgehammer.

I know it is beautiful here despite the growing heat.  It has been a cooler week and there has been rain enough that water lines the road in places.  The gravel has been recently raked and is rough, shaking me to my very bones, but I do not yield quickly to the temptation of pavement.  It is enough to feel......something, even discomfort.  

The Ironweed is beginning to bloom.  It seems early.  I think that I will remember my brother from now on when I see Ironweed.  Bumblebees are working it and I notice the Sumac is near bloom.  Fall approaches when it seems summer has just begun.  I pause for a moment to eat the peanut butter sandwich I have brought along as I expect no store stops on this ride.  I spot road treasure.  A large Yeti Jug that someone evidently lost.  

Taking my bandana out of my pant leg (I keep it there as I can easily reach it to wipe sweat) I tie it to the rack on the back of the Surly.  After some internal debate, as it is hot and I am sweating, I also remove the bandana around my forehead and use it as an anchor as well. 

I decide to abandon my ride and return home.  For today it is enough that I made myself head out the door.  Time will heal.  Bicycles will help. My heart will once more soak in the beauty God puts before me and send it directly to my heart.  But for now, I am broken and dead inside.