TJROW ver. 3.0

I am bookending the week with another favorite pro cyclist. Tim Johnson and crew left Boston yesterday on the first leg of their 525 mile trip to Washington, D.C. to raise money and awareness for peopleforbikes.org. It's a great cause, and if you live along the route, you are obligated to go heckle Chan.

There should be lots of Tweeting and blogging. Oh, and you should donate, too.
Have fun guys! Miss you!

winning the lotto

As a diehard believer in the power of postcards, I love getting real mail. For me, it's one of the best parts of Christmas; I am guaranteed a few real cards, complete with paper stamps and postmarks. Handwritten letters on real paper are the key to my heart. Call me materialistic, but packages will always be better than emails, texts, or even gchat. They are signs that someone cared enough about you to put something in a box, tape and address it, and then carry it to a post office. Even if you paid an Amazon employee to do all of the above.
I understand that this revelation of mine is nothing extraordinary. It's a happy event that occurs quite regularly in daily life. Sometimes, when you know mail is headed your way, it becomes something to look forward to, other than 5:01pm on Fridays. I could write a billion words about how real mail makes me feel, and you'd get it. Most people would.
There are no words, though, to accurately describe the feeling of complete, unconditional happiness when your favorite UCI WORLD TOUR PRO CYCLIST sends you something [priority!] in the mail.

A package from the Czech Republic, courtesy of the most amazing Adam Hansen, arrived last Thursday. I've had a stupid grin permanently on my face, since.
"What's your favorite color?" Adam had asked a few weeks ago, "I'll send you a t-shirt."
But what came with the perfectly fitting Hanseeno t-shirt, were Lotto socks, a Lotto cap, Lotto neckwarmer, and a Lotto jersey. I was sweating so much I had to shower 10 minutes after opening the package.

I didn't want to take the shirt or the jersey out of their plastic sleeves at first, but I eventually caved. Unfolded, the t-shirt has these great little details [the logo on the sleeve, and the "Hanseeno" down the side]. The geek in me loves the plastic toy-inspired design [what are those called, exactly?]. It's become my new favorite t-shirt.

As for the jersey, I'd secretly lusted after it on the Lotto-Belisol e-shop and had to take a better look. It's incredibly thin and light but super soft at the same time. It feels dead fucking sexy. [I have the sleeves tucked in here.]

And then I flipped it over, and noticed...

I almost screamed and passed out at the same time.
"Does it fit?" Adam later asked.
"I don't know, I'm going to frame it," I replied.
"No, wear it! I should send you an aero one...those are tiny!" He joked.

Yeah, I still haven't come to terms with the fact that this actually happened. But the jersey's still in my room so...I think it did.

......So, um, does the Universe make any more of these? Preferably very single and totally in love with me? Because I'm calling fucking dibs.
Adam, I owe you major hugz.

the secret language

The beginning of road season is becoming, to life, what a friend's cupcake usually is to my dieting brain; the one I'll stare at while the same friend will complain to me about very valid things that I won't be able to process over the animalistic desire to stuff her untouched cupcake into my entirely deserving face. There have been other things going on, sure, but with the Volta a Catalunya, E3, and GW going on in the same week, I couldn't have cared about what my own legs were doing, much less anything else.
Having swiped a fingertip of frosting of what's to come this summer, I've been mentally salivating for more. The Three Days of De Panne have gifted me some more crumbs, to get me through to the Tour of Flanders. April comes storming in right after that, with Paris-Roubaix and Liege-Bastogne-Liege, but I'm already itching for the Grand Tours.

It's every cycling fan's complaint; old news to those who have been doing this for a few decades, but still new enough to me that I feel justified in being a brat about it. A few years ago, bike friends and even a guy I once really wanted to stay with couldn't get me to focus on pixelated pros doing ridiculously hard shit in impossibly foreign countries. Now, I can't seem to get enough.
The 180 is a weird one, because I initially thought I lucked out in getting a pass from actively spectating and not stalking Cyclingnews Pez Cycling News and Velonews. And because I like to blame others – or at least my gender – for my laziness, I suspect it was, in part, because I have a vagina. When it comes to sports, women always get a different set of rules. Apparently it was enough that I liked to ride. I suppose people thought that expecting me to be able to tell the difference between Flecha and Mayo would have been asking too much, even of someone who enthusiastically lanced saddle sores. A willingness to do more than 80 km on the road on any given day was good enough. Like girlfriends who are invited to watch football games with the guys, as long as I didn’t complain about it, I was in the clear.
Curiosity eventually got the better of me, but since fans can be possessive, I was instantly cockblocked. "You're not into pro cycling, anyway," that boyfriend had declared before turning back to his live stream. Overwhelmed by European names with too many vowels, teams I knew nothing about, and frustrated by how stupid I felt every time I didn't understand a joke about an attack or a mis-timed sprint, I folded my cards and did what I was supposed to do. I rode instead of watched. Josh continued to ask if I'd watched Stage 10 of the Tour, Paris-Roubaix, or the Dauphine Libere. "I'm not into pro cycling," I used to parrot back at him. He never judged [at least overtly] if I hadn't, and never asked why, in 2011, I finally started.

It was a lot of things; a break up - and the consequent freedom to do things I'm not supposed to be into - being one of them. I started with the Spring Classics as a friend advised, then graduated to the Giro and the Tour de France. By the time the Vuelta rolled around, I had moved back to Tokyo. Back at a place I hadn’t wanted to return to, I was struggling. Watching pro cycling suddenly became unbearably lonely. I watched the occasional highlights in 2012, but the likes of Lampre and Sky brought back too many sticky reminders of friends a world away.

Not quite a year after stubbornly ignoring the Tour, something drew me back. It’s not that things have changed much – I’m still struggling – but the familiarity of pro races announced in English, Dutch, or Italian suddenly have a different feel. There is a happy completeness in sitting back to watch a pro race unfold, close to that bubbly feeling you get in your chest when you clip into your most trusted steel bike after either an extended hiatus or too much time spent sitting on something lighter, racier, or more aggressive. Currently surrounded by a language that I understand but by a culture that I sometimes fail to grasp, those live streams of the pro peloton remind me that there is at least one language that I can still comprehend. It’s the ones friends speak, that Josh and I use when comparing notes after any race, the one that makes me unafraid to ask strangers who race bikes for a living to surprise, inspire, or even disappoint. It’s the secret language that compensates for my muted hours at the office and pushes my burning legs to keep up the pace for another minute and 5…no…4 seconds. It’s what I think and cry in when everything seems to be going wrong.
“I don’t even know what that means,” I had shouted at my father a few days ago. It was the same old bullshit argument, in which I screamed in English and he yelled back in Japanese.
“Then maybe you should study Japanese,” he had snapped, before pulling up the Great Wall of Ignore.

Free-falling into cultural limbo, I shamelessly bawled my eyes out that night. I woke up the next morning with those swollen eyelids that scream at people to ask what's wrong although what's wrong is clearly bad enough that you have no desire to talk about it. I remembered, with guilt, that I had skipped out on GW to throw myself that pity party the night before. I cradled a cup of coffee while I watched the highlights and cracked a smile. In those minutes, it didn’t matter that I look Japanese but don’t act like it. Or that I’m a woman. Or that I’d rather spend time on my bike than update my severely outdated wardrobe. The noise of miscommunication paused as I focused on my personal cupcake, presented by Sagan with a wheelie over the finish line.
Whispers of that secret language began to run through my head again, and the day seemed, if only just a little bit, to brighten.

playing the love lotto

I realized, a few years ago [yes, it took that long], that the reason I generally suck at relationships is because I hate to be wrong.
Not in the small things – I’d rather be happy than right, most of the time, unless it involves horses, bears, or salmon – but there’s a considerable amount of usually unconscious resistance at the idea that I’ve been wrong about…me. I have, admittedly, some difficulty facing the reality of having made a slightly regrettable choice a little too long ago to be personally acceptable. Denial morphs into the kind of optimism that's often referred to as "delusion." Somehow, it's much easier to blame the guy who breaks your heart than concede that you don't know yourself enough to make semi-prudent choices. "You're breaking up with me?" to my ears and ego sounds a lot better than, "...but how could I have been so completely wrong [about you]?"
It's made me a little commitment-shy. The shadow of a doubt tends to linger, like the creepy friend of a friend who won't get the hint that you are - under no circumstances - going home with him. Everything becomes a little questionable. Because who is to really know? Certainly not you.

There is little comfort in self-awareness of my complete lack of self-awareness. Like getting an award for recognizing how dumb you are, there's no real winner in this situation. You might be holding a gold star, but in the end, you're still stupid. And if you can figure out that much, well, then, the idea of base jumping into the abyss of "he must care because I do" starts to lose its philanthropic appeal.
It becomes easier then, to turn in your parachute, so to speak, and fantasize; to assemble a dream date in perpetuum, and front like you’re not scared shitless of being wrong, again. At least for a little while [or until some good friends throw you off that dating cliff, whichever comes first]. That would be the normal thing to do. What wouldn’t be so normal would be to swing to the opposite extreme, to dump all your chips onto one hope, with fingers crossed, until death [or finances or too many changes] do us part.
I married myself off to Lotto-Belisol earlier this year. It’s been a hell of a ride, since.

We’ve already had some ups and downs, but the beauty of sports fan-dom [and probably, arranged marriages] is that the decision has been made for you. You’ve been committed, which means you better fucking make the most of it. Despite the mega hotness present on the team, it’s not easy, but I’m learning. A lot. Like how worrying about team rankings and Greipel’s lead-out train might temporarily make me feel better about being completely powerless, but ultimately won’t make any difference in the end. And how my mental health is slowly becoming dependent on the ability to maintain a frantic sense of optimism at the beginning [and end, if the results were less than spectacular] of each stage. I'm even trying out visualization, i.e., focusing on something and trying to will it to simply happen. It usually goes like this: JULY. GREIPEL. GREEN.
I still fall back into bad habits. There’s been pouting and groans of disappointment. I’ve used my fan status as an excuse to slip into bouts of self-righteous rage. I’ve even considered divorce and infidelity. Neither are really options...or so I like to tell myself, though my relationship with Lotto is more like an unrequited crush than a marriage of two very unlikely partners [most of the time, I don't even know if Lotto knows I exist...!]. The relationship, though, remains oddly fulfilling. In that ridiculously fun sort of way.

I know, I know. You're all rolling your eyes and muttering things about how it's still the honeymoon period, and how I'll end up fleeing into the arms of OPQS or Sky before the end of the Giro. But really, do I come off as so fickle? And so predictably boring? And would I set the picture above as my iPhone background if I wasn't 120% committed?

No, you're right. That's all bullshit I've spewed before, only to end up either very, very sad and/or very, very pissed off. But apparently being terribly wrong about everything doesn't buy you karma. You still end up being wrong. Kind of like any good lottery. But sometimes, like when Kenny Dehaes wins Handzame, or when JVDB grabs 4th place on the queen stage of the Volta a Catalunya, you will be right, and all that blind, manic trust will somehow make everything that much sweeter. And you'll just know that vicariously tethering your soul/happiness/sanity to the wheels of H[enderson,]G[reipel,]H[ansen] et al. this season was the right thing to do.
Or here's to hoping, anyway.
[Amazing pictures above obviously taken from various sources.]