ANOTHER POSITIVE INTERACTION WITH MY MOUNTAIN BIKE

Since all my bellyaching after riding the Jay Hoggs trails at Georgetown Lake (okay, maybe it was the all the bean tacos I've been eating), I redeemed myself to my bike and again feel worthy of owning such a complex yet simple machine. Evan and I nursed our egos with a short, spry 15 mile road ride around the farm towns just East of Austin. Again ready to face our two-wheeled friends, we tried our luck at Walnut Creek, Northwest of Austin. It was a Sunday, around 11 a.m., and the park was absolutely packed. We talked to a lot of riders, including cyclists associated with the Austin Ridge Riders group ride (though the ride itself had already taken off), and set out exploring. The trails were much more in line with what I'm used to riding: punchy uphills with lots of turns and not a lot of visibility, some creek crossing, and more roots than rocks. It felt like riding Pittsburgh during the best day of the year, when the trails are dry but not decimated, all the dogs are on leash or otherwise controlled by their human friends, all the cyclists are happy to be out and see other riders, and the trails are fast and swooping and hold onto tires not like peanut butter but like a well-made wooden roller coaster whose bearings have been properly greased and maintained (dig?).  Rickety but the leap of faith isn't totally unwarranted. I felt alive! Really!

After that, I felt like I had made up with my bike, whom I'd previously embarrassed at Georgetown. Evan and I spent the rest of our time in Austin taking care of errands and riding bikes around town when we could, enjoying local paved trails and the joy of warm air. We left Austin a few days ago and headed to Marfa, which was unfortunately not the place for us outdoor kids, and after one night decided to keep moving down to Terlingua, Texas, outside Big Bend State and National Parks, and home to the Lajitas trail system.

It was an adventure getting the camper down there, and had a few moments where our hearts stopped as the camper and van slowly pushed up hills too steep for some cars I've owned. Once in town, we stopped into Desert Sports, a great little mountain bike shop and all-around outfitter run by some old hippy types. Dogs ran around the showroom while Major Tom antagonized them and we tried to get some information from the large map of Lajitas (the local trail system) Mike pulled out for us. He showed us all best trails and gave us very helpful advice on everything related to the trails, natural environment, Terlingua, and even some life advice, whether or not he meant to. Meanwhile, one of the women who worked there called around the gas stations to see if anyone still had gasoline. No one did.

At the recommendation of the fine folks at Desert Sports, we stayed at Rancho Topenga, a new tent campsite in the area. We were the only ones staying there, and again had some problems maneuvering the camper into the tight spot down a ridge and on a cliff, but we survived and through on some cycling clothes to hit the trails, which were a mere 2 miles away.

The storm could be seen rolling in over the mountains to the Southwest and wrapped around to the North. The trails were all facing Eastward so we took our chances and rode the Trail Loop 3, the best trail in the park. Lighting bounced from cloud to cloud and the sun shifted dramatically above us. It sprinkled intermittently, pushing us to pedal harder to make it back to the van before the rain. We made it just in time, and had to sit inside our van back at the camper to wait for a relative break in the winds and rain to make a run for it.

Lajitas, as a whole, was the most fun I'd ever had on a mountain bike.

Despite the Wind Advisory boasting 40 mph gusts, we headed back to the park to ride the whole thing (with a few jeep roads emitted, because they did not look awesome). Every part of the trail system delivered something magical. Whether it was incredible speed, swooping whoop-dees, challenging rocks, ridges, and downhills, impressive climbs, or just epic scenery, there was no part of the ride I would have done without. I say this now, after having whined about the relatively flat, open section that Mike referred to when he warned us about "heeming and hawing" for too long, while the strong winds gave us a headwind that decimated any speed we might have maintained through the very gradual ascent. Evan convinced me to keep riding, though, pointing at a section of the map up ahead called "Fun Valley."

"C'mon, don't you want to go to Fun Valley? Yeah, you want to go to Fun Valley." Of course I did, I'm not a monster.

The wind came back in my sails and of course, eventually we changed direction and the headwind again became a crosswind and then a tailwind to take us back to the van. It was a good ride, and the first time in a long time that I felt like a mountain biker, like a person who knew how to handle her bike. I rode a lot of sections that would have been too difficult in other parks, because I was having enough fun to try them, and maintained enough speed to succeed. At these times, I thought of an article in Mtb4her.com that I read the day before, called, "Don't Take It Personally, but Maybe You Need to (HTFU)" (Harden the F--k Up). It was true. During the first challenging descent, which I knew I could ride but physically had a hard time not shifting my weight forward and trying to put my foot down, I kept going back to the top and forcing myself to do it until I just rode it. A few other sections were the same way.

When I used to ride a fixed gear, a common romantic notion was that the bike is a part of the rider and vice versa. While it was too nauseating to actually admit publicly, I did agree with the sentiment to some degree. In the case of mountain biking, it's more real than that. Arms are no longer arms. They are extensions of the handlebars and fork and you have no control over them; any control you try to maintain will only cause grief. Eyes are part of the wheels. You need to look where they are going, not where they are. You are a brain, a set of lungs, a set of legs, and a gigantic, beating heart. To think anything more of yourself is to fool yourself. We have to give ourselves to our bikes if we want them to do their jobs, and if we don't want them to do that, why don't we just give them to someone who will?

We Ride With Susan

All things considered, I want to live. The pain my loved ones would endure is palpable enough for me to never want to die; although I have no fear of death, the love I have for my family—and, possibly more importantly, that they have for me—gives me a firm sense of self-preservation. While I do have a nagging sense of invincibility (despite having never stepped into oncoming traffic, there have been plenty of other close calls), I know eventually my family and friends will have the option to attend a memorial service of some sort in honor of yours truly. Hopefully not for a very, very long time. Hopefully my parents aren't here to scatter my ashes.

I don't want a ghost bike memorial service. I don't want my parents to fly in to whatever city I've been living, to be picked up at the airport by my husband, to find the nearest clean hotel to the area where the incident occurred, to prepare a few sentences to say into a news camera or to a crowd of people they've never seen before and probably won't ever again.

I don't want my friends to gather in the rain and exchange awkward, "How are you?" "Good! Well, you know, considering..." conversations. I don't want anyone to catch cold on my behalf, for cops to stand in the road to direct traffic around my ghost white bicycle while cars, enraged behind them, resist the urge to honk as they pass the lone mourner across the street from the vigil, holding a sign that says, "What's the hurry?"

Susan Hicks was about my age, an academic, friends with my friends. She was following the rules of the road that were made for cars, that drivers of cars throw in cyclists' faces when other ghost bikes are chained to poles, rules they insist would have saved that life. A driver wasn't upholding their responsibility as the controller of a 4,000 pound car, and crashed into a car that became one end of a Susan sandwich, along with the car it had smashed her into.

The problem isn't just this driver, it's that this is a common problem. That cars honk when I ride my bike 28 miles per hour in a 25 mile per hour zone, because they want to drive 55 miles per hour. That the railway crossings to enter the park are guarded by rail yard workers who yell at us to get on the bike path as we are trying to get on the bike path they are guarding against us. That cars yell at us to get on the sidewalk when there is no sidewalk, and when even if there were one, it's illegal and dangerous for us to ride on them. That as we've tried to ride home from work, or just enjoy a beautiful day, drivers have become incensed, have thrown bottles at us, shot at me with a bb gun, and have swerved their cars purposefully into cyclists, righting their destructive ships at the last minute, laughing at this game they play with our lives. That distracted driving is an epidemic, and many drivers text and drive while speeding, even in residential or business areas. That four lane roads, like the one on which Susan was slaughtered, carve through college campuses and cars swerve recklessly from one lane to another, desperately afraid of getting stuck behind a bus. That these memorials happen everywhere, and the news covers them, meanwhile publishing slanderous articles and letters to the editor calling for more restrictions on cyclists, who are responsible for a scant number of fatalities.

I don't want my family to come see me in the hospital, or to figure out how to pay off my debts, or what to do with my lousy stuff. I don't want my sister to have to explain to my nieces that I won't be able to FaceTime with them anymore. I also don't want to call my husband's parents and drop the devastating news that their son was killed. I don't want to go through his belongings and figure out how much is enough of a keepsake to keep, I don't want to think about what to do with the house or the cars. I don't want to have to figure out how to continue on with my lousy, ruined, meaningless life without the love of my life. But I know it's so, so possible. 

And yet, still, people have a place to go, somewhere to be ten minutes ago. We are in the way, and the response to a text is more important than a life.

Indeed, what's the hurry?

There were over 250 people standing in the rain today near where Susan Hicks was killed (which is incidentally where Critical Mass starts), holding candles and hoping they don't catch cold. There shouldn't have been anybody.

Over tea and coffee this morning, my roommate and I talked about our complicated feelings about attending the vigil. How it's important to be there, but that for many people it isn't a place to be political, they don't want politics to be involved. But for a group of people who have been asking for years for a bike lane on that stretch of road, who lost a wonderful young person (though even if she was an asshole and old, it wouldn't make a difference), it is political. Sadness and Anger go hand and glove. It's hard to attend a memorial and not be mad that we even need to be doing this, again. It's a horrible feeling to think that maybe, now that a well-loved academic, a smart and charming white woman, a well-known citizen of Pittsburgh, was killed, things will change. That is a disgusting thought. And as it passed through my raging, sorrowful, idiot brain that wants so much to not be the next one whose name is Sharpied onto a sign next to a white bicycle, the SadMad began to subside, pushed out by the familiar depression that so often takes precedent, and I felt sick to my stomach.

Race Across the West 2015, Vol One

Guys. GUYS. I didn't tell you about Race Across the West.

I later lost this hat in Squaw Valley. Donations being accepted to reconnect me with a hot pink cycling cap.

When I signed up, I was interested in spending a week with my sweetie, who works so hard (I go through phases of working hard and being a bum. Right now I'm kind of a bum) all the time and I don't see him nearly as often as I'd like. We work well together, which is a big plus in something like RAW. I was also excited to see the American Southwest, my favorite landscape, including some parts and parks I'd never before experienced, or had never seen in the day time. I thought maybe I'd get some photos and stories out of the event. I did, and I'm slowly working through the process of organizing them all in my head, as this summer has been such an incredible whirl wind.

Racer coming in!

What I was surprised to gain exposure to, however, was something I'd only thought I knew anything about, and something that didn't initially strike me as all that interesting, frankly. By far the most mind blowing part of the race was getting to experience the gut wrenching endurance of athletes, teammates, and friends, and the personal sacrifice that comes from truly working and thinking as a team.

Last year when Team Phenomenal Hope raced Race Across America (RAAM), the team was made up of a very large crew with two suppose vehicles, an RV, and a media support vehicle; there were four racers who worked in pairs for three or six hour shifts, rotating every twenty minutes for those six hours and switching off with the other pair. This time, we had the two support vehicles and a van of off-shift crew members, and only two racers who raced for roughly twenty minute pulls with no real downtime except at night when they would each ride for longer stretches to allow the other to achieve some version of sleep in a moving vehicle.

It was the hottest race in years, with each day hovering at about 113° with no shade or cloud cover as we pushed through from Oceanside, California all the way to Durango, Colorado. In the Mojave Dessert, sand dunes pushed up against the road way, spilling into the line of traffic and causing chaos as crew teams scrambled to direct their racers out of danger. I was on shift at this time, and it was the middle of the night as the peloton came through, the solo racers RAAM and RAW racers, and some of the RAW teams, the solo racers all bunched together for camaraderie and safety, though their support vehicles were caravanned behind them illegally. Our racer struggled to find a good line in the confusion of so many racers and vehicles, without getting separated from us. We held onto her wheel as she stayed in our headlights, and as called out whatever sand we could see in case we had a better line of vision, able to pull our eyes up the road ahead a bit, to the furthest line of our lights rather than directly under wheel.

morning in Arizona. Hey there big guy.

I believe it was the next day when we went through Arizona and its blazing, unrelenting heat. Arizona is, frankly, a rather unwelcoming state, especially for cyclists, though it does have its unyielding beauty and some kind and generous residents. and I met a couple at a gas station who had left their homestate of California for the first time ever in a road trip to visit the boy's sister in Denver. 

"It's really something out here, isn't it?" I asked the girl while she admired me tattoos and I scanned her scabs with a worried glance. Chuck, my crew partner, had just given her $10 and her boyfriend was scratching a rash and swearing under the hood of their old Durango. 

"This is the worst place I've been to in my life. Everyone is mean, no one wants us here. I just want to make it to Colorado and be done with it." She then took me to her dog, who was tied with a rope to the hitch. I gave him a few pets and tried to calm him down when he started jumping. She scolded him and the pup turned around and bit her on the arm. It started to bleed a bit. I frowned again and asked if I could get her some ice for it.
"This place sucks," she said, kicking her truck tire. "Even pooch hates it. We gotta get out of here." She turned her back on me then just as my racer was coming out of the convenience store in a fresh chamois to start her next ride shift. Life goes on.

Somewhere outside Prescott, I believe, one of the riders started to experience heat exhaustion and mental fatigue. It's hard to watch someone for whom you have come to care deeply sink into what is a dark place in the psyche, knowing from experience that there's no real way to be pulled from that place but to be convinced to do so on one's own, and that's a difficult feat on both sides. Matched with the unrelenting heat and sun, the brutal climbs, descents, and flats, and the basic struggles that come with being a human being with our complications and backstories, it was an immensely difficult day for my rider.

Christmas Circle, California

Her teammate, however, dug deep into that same well of human spirit into which my racer had sunk, and found her own strength to ride through, doing longer pulls without complaint of sign of wear. It was one of the most impressive sites I've ever seen, and I was so proud to be a crew member for Team PH as these two women communicated and worked to support one another during this very difficult shift. At the Walmart in Prescott, we took a team break for some IV fluid, shade, and much needed rest. No one had had a proper meal in a long time so some of the crew members who were on the rest shift set out in search of pizza, only to discover the only pizza place in town was a "bake your own" type of establishment. Someone from the town invited them into his home, a mansion in the hills of Prescott, to bake the pizza there, and ultimately all was right with the world.

My racer wasn't depressed, she was having a mental reaction to being in a physically dangerous situation; however, being a person who lives with depression myself, I was at a good vantage point to talk to my rider who was struggling with moving forward in this very difficult race. Perspective is important. Not only the rider's perspective on her performance, race, numbers, and achievements, but the crew's perspective on how to take all of that into account with the (rather unfair) pressures we put on ourselves—not only as an athlete but as a person—to conquer ourselves, always put out better wattage, faster mileage, more impressive numbers. It's easy to forget to look up from the GPS, and it's just as easy to forget how difficult that can be, and how tricky those numbers can be when they ultimately mean very little. Perspective means the ability to look up and see the fantastic view, and to know that that's what someone is missing, because I've too been a person who was unable to see the incredible mountains and valleys and now that I can, I know how breathtaking it is, how much of my life depends on being able to see it. I'm speaking at once metaphorically and literally here, because our racers were passing through such incredible landscape, and were truly moving along at an impressive clip too, averaging 20mph, and I was fortunate to see all of it from the driver's seat.

After our pep talk and pizza break, my racer took a long pull to give her teammate some much deserved time off the saddle, and put out one of her best rides of the entire race, Garmin-free. I feel fortunate to have been able to be there. While our own inner struggles are different, it validated my own complicated self to put my depression in perspective and to give it meaning. Without that vantage point, I may not have known to kick everyone out of the RV, to give her what she needed, to know that its impossible to replay last year's race but that this year had its own saviors. Instead of ice cream it was pizza, instead of six hours in an RV it was five minutes in a kiddie pool. We take what we can and I understand that, as a person who is constantly working to find out what works and make it the best I can. Isn't that all that any of us can do?

The rest of the crew had the knowledge to administer an IV, fix the flat on the van (which I had kept filled with the bike pump until we were at this stopping point), communicate with our fans and supporters in a cool manner to keep everyone happy and appreciated, and communicate with all the crew members to make sure everyone is on the same page. We each had our roll, strengths, reasons for being there, and I'm proud to have been a part of that. I'm really so proud of everyone involved and have more stories to share, and I can't wait until the next chance to crew for an endurance race. Hopefully I won't be needed past pumping tires, charging lights, refilling water bottles, and driving the van, but it's nice to know we all have our small worths.

A Stab In the Dark

There comes a time in every blogger's life where she needs to look at her surroundings and make some assessments. Last night, I stepped on a stick that impaled my foot about an inch and a half deep, leaving just a teeny tiny mark but swelling my foot to about 150% its size. Then, I sliced my hand on a knife my friend Nick Anger made me, attempting lamely to hold it in my teeth like a pirate holding her sword. My eye has also been twitching for about two days.

What do I make of all this? Even Wikipedia offers me nothing but, "no one really knows what causes it, your guess is really as good as ours. Oh wait, do you have any pain in your eye? Oh, no? Never mind, yeah, still don't know. Sorry." The twitching started before the stab wound, before the slice, and after I started the kickboxing challenge, around the time of Easter. So is it holiday stress? Sugar consumption? Not enough time to get everything done, with three days of the week pulled out for family activities?

Personally, I like to blame everything on water intake. Headache? Probably dehydrated. Nauseous? Have some water (and salt). Chest pains? Down some H2O. Muscle cramps? Load up on the good stuff. Eye twitch so easily falls into that. After all, it's basically just a charley horse on my face. So I'm drinking water, infused with some old lime sliced effortlessly with my gorgeous knife. But I also put my feet up after a day of postering and editing an article, and have been watching Bob's Burgers, so who can really say?

The point is, self care is important. Whether that means drinking enough water or taking some time to relax with cartoons. Whether that means punching things or taking a day off from punching things. Whether that means quitting one's job to pursue one's dreams or just eating a balanced meal every once in a while. It's all worth while, and our body will tell us this by giving us an eye twitch or making us clumsy enough to step on a stick or stupid enough to slice our hands open with a knife. Or maybe by placing the stick there to step on at three a.m. to give some perspective on the important things in life.

Water and cartoons.

Time For Ourselves

It's taken me a while to find time to update the blog. Posters, one of my many jobs, picked up, as did my writing work. It's been hard to get in every P90X workout, and something that's been causing me some contemplation is the purpose of the workouts, why I love this set of cheesy home exercise DVDs.

I constantly grapple with my own use of time. I'm a procrastinator when I don't take up a project or assignment head-on and right away; most of my editors say I'm a dream to work with, because I get things done so soon; I know myself well enough to know that if I don't do it immediately, I'll forget about it. That said, it leaves a lot of room to be constantly accepting assignments, as they're always finished ahead of deadline. A great problem to have, really. These assignments, of course, don't appear out of the blue, but come from networking and loads of research, reaching out to new people, building and maintaining relationships on all ends of the spectrum. I find myself looking at my Facebook, Instagram, and email almost constantly. It's addictive work, which isn't really something I thought I'd say about a job, but here we are.

How does this pertain to P90X? It's an hour of my day that isn't dedicated to work or social media. An hour for myself, completely, where I have to be in the moment. It's an active meditation. Before freelancing picked up, there was always time found in the day to meditate, time to clear my head and ground myself with my own goals and presence of being without the influence of outside forces. More time for art, love, nature. More time for health in all its forms. This mere 60-75 minutes, now, is a struggle to dig out, which makes it so much more important. Everyone wants something from us, and we can break parts of ourselves off, ad infinitum, if we choose, but its our choice, ultimately, to leave something or nothing for ourselves. Working out is my declaration that at least this small moment in my waking life is just mine. For 60-75 minutes. y attention is just towards myself. It isn't selfish to need time for ourselves, it's self-preservation.

After an incredibly challenging Thursday that including working all three current jobs (posters, journalism, teaching) and a bike ride with a loaded pack from the posters, I took all Thursday off. From everything. I didn't respond to emails, reach out to editors, write anything, fix anything. I didn't clean, I didn't engage in internet drama. A friend who lives down the street came over with his dog and we hung out in the back yard for a couple hours while our dogs wrestled in the mud, then I took a nap, did some stretches, and went out for ice cream at Page Dairy (which just opened for the season). It took the declaration of "this is a day off" to realize how hard I'd been working, how little time I'd had for myself, and how much I needed to just reboot and not put myself up to any expectations.

Today, though, the posters and emails are piling up, and Kenpo X is on deck. It's another rainy day here in Pittsburgh, my elbows, shoulder, and knee/shin are sore and swollen, but as Tony endorses, I'll do my best and forget the rest.

Oh Kale Yes!

Today was an incredible 50 degrees out here in Pittsburgh, and the scheduled rain held out, so as soon as I got home from band practice, E. and I pumped up the tires on our road bikes and headed into the park. Days like today help me appreciate owning a road bike, when the weather is too warm to train inside but the trails are still too icy and even the thawed trails are too wet and would be ruined with bike treads. The roads of Schenley park were packed with joggers, walkers, and people napping in their cars. We didn't ride for very long, or very far, because we are both getting over colds and long bouts of inactivity due to a number of variables. But it was nice to spin the legs, get our blood pumping, and breathe some fresh air, even if only for an hour or so.

Getting over injury and sickness is never fun or easy, but the payoff for laying low, daily yoga, and herbal tea comes in the form of quicker recovery to enjoy these beautiful days. I complained a lot and posted a few too many photos of me and my dog in bed, but I'm grateful today for my health.

To celebrate our first bike ride together of 2015, E. made dinner. Crusted barbecue tempeh, raw kale salad, and fried potatoes, paired with some cider from East End Brewing Company, was a great way to end the day.

The dressing for the Kale salad was then used on our dehydrating kale. This recipe is E.'s, adapted from Brad's Raw Kale Chips, using ingredients readily available around the house. These aren't "guilt free" except that no one should feel guilty about eating. They have fat and calories from healthy sources, and are a wonderful snack to satisfy cravings for crunchy, savory treats.

• Raw sunflower seeds, enough to coat the bottom of food processor
• Garlic (whole cloves, 3+ depending on preference)
• Green onions (1-2), hard to taste and therefore optional
• Miso paste (scoop about the size of a ping pong, about 2 Tbsp)
• Peanut butter, natural and crunchy (hefty scoop, a bit more than the miso)
• Lemon juice (2-3 Tbsp)
• Ginger (optional, to taste)
• Water
• Kale, raw and destemmed (however much you have and can put on your dehydrator, probably 3 handfuls or so)

1. Add the sunflower seeds to the bottom of food processor to coat the bottom. Grind up into finest powder possible.
2. Add garlic and green onions. Blend.
3. Next, add the wet ingredients, starting with the miso and peanut butter. Blend again.
4. Add lemon juice, ginger, and water. Water is the magic sauce! It adjusts the dressing consistency. If you add too much, add a bit more PB to bring it back. Blend.
5. Pour dressing on kale and massage it in. The surface area of kale shrinks, so if the dressing is strong, add less dressing because the chips will also be strong.
6. Add kale to dehydrator. Spread out bigger pieces, but if you buy the pre-cut kale on sale at Trader Joes, layer the smaller pieces and "cook" for a bit longer so they become one motherchip. Otherwise, leave the kale alone for 12 hours or so, checking periodically to see how they're doing.

This recipe also works well for beet greens, a great way to make the most of these healthy leafy tops.