To my best friend [and her wedding in September],
I know I said that I would use sun block every time I rode, but I may have forgotten yesterday.
But if it makes you feel any better, a giant fly flew into my eyeball at approximately 16.7mph. Well, flew into and bounced off of. It was weird. I never knew an eyeball could feel bruised.
And yeah, I won’t forget the sun block next time.
It was like any other Friday morning: I was up too early but still hustling to get out the door. It looked chilly out so I went back into my bedroom to grab a sweatshirt when something hit my foot. And there it was.
A dead mouse.
I’m not talking about those tiny rodents that you might see bust ass across your floor, moving so fast and low to the ground that you think for a second it might be a roach. You reach for some kind of weapon, but once you realize it has fur and a tail, it becomes cute. You let go of the can of Raid you McGyver-ed into something that resembles an AK-47 and grab the alumnium foil to plug up the tiny hole it ran into. Then you get on with your day. These tiny mouse sightings happen. No big.
But this one. This one was big. Too big for deluded comfort. And it lay there, dead by my bedside.
Predictably, I started to mentally hyperventilate. I ran down the list of people I could call, before I realized that not only was no one awake, I was probably running close to the limit of acceptable number of times you can make panicked calls to your good friends. I seriously considered calling my parents, before reluctantly acknowledging that my mother might suggest picking it up with a paper towel and that was simply unacceptable. I heard my best friend’s disgusted exclamations in my head and made plans to buy buckets of Clorox. I wondered how to most effectively disinfect my foot and/or my entire body.
Once the capacity for logical thought returned, I managed, but the unsettling events of the morning followed me for the rest of the day. Because - and here’s the most disturbing part - I have no idea how it got there. It wasn’t there when I went to sleep or when I woke up and got dressed. Like a flaming bag of dog poop, it was an extremely unpleasant surprise, seemingly dropped off by the karmic equivalent of unvanquished adolescents. Unable to remember anything I’ve done in the past few weeks to merit the deposit of dead rodents onto my floor, I attempted to rationalize where it came from instead. The possibilities are as follows:
Scenario 1: It just ran across my room and spontaenously died.
This has been the scenario advocated by most of my friends, who are smart enough to know that proposing anything else would mean uncontrollable panic on my part. Mike suggested it “probably ran across the room and croaked,” while Josh offered a slightly more plausible option: that it “probably saw your new shoes and died.” I’ll take either because, most importantly, both mean that it had no physical contact with me [other than it hitting my foot although let’s agree to pretend that never happened].
Scenario 2: It died under my bed and appeared when I made my bed that morning.
The thought that a rodent died beneath me as I slept is upsetting not because it opens up the possibility that there is a colony of them near my bed, but because I resent the implication that I live in filthy conditions. To be fair, I’m not fanatical enough to be able to consistently pick up after myself. This once led my mother to tell me that she had once read a study where sloppy people were also fat, but that fastidious cleaning could somehow lead to double-digit weights. Needless to say, it didn’t work. Slovenliness aside, this scenario also means that the mouse in question has touched both my bare foot and my comforter. Mental images of lice and other insects defecting the corpse to burrow into my comforter are also necessary under this scenario.
Scenario 3: It climbed onto my bed while I was sleeping and I crushed it to death/suffocated it in my sleep.
Yes, full body-to-body contact. It goes something like this: mouse is drawn to my admittedly really comfortable bed. Mouse lumbers over to my warm sleeping figure, looking for a place to curl up and nest. Giant human body rolls over and onto mouse. Death ensues. Comforter, bed, and entire body are contaminated. This last one’s hard for me, because it makes me feel extremely disgusted with myself: both for killing a living thing and for touching it long enough to kill it. The mental images of lice and other gross insects scuttling up into my hair make me consider washing my head in turpentine. I fight the temptation to call an ambulance because, who knows, the thing could have pooped - numerous times - in my mouth while I was alseep before I killed it.
Rational thought suggested I apply Occam’s razor, but given that each scenario involved several assumptions, it only served to slowly shred that thread to which my state of normalcy was clinging to. Only that goddamn mouse knew the real details, but my ignorance didn’t keep me from shooting dirty looks at the spot on the floor where I found it.
A few hours later, as I was considering mopping my walls with bleach, a package arrived from Pennsylvania. Enclosed were two notebooks and a magnet, courtesy of Bill Strickland. No explanations, much like my mouse. Hoping to avoid the confusion, fear, and hyperventilation of the morning, I point blank asked him what it was. His reply came moments later:
“Well, the not knowing is the fun.”
Maybe. But when it comes to mice [and on occasion, men, too], sometimes, it can be nice to know.
Found part of a note on the way back from a ride...
Visited Superb for some repairs...
And made a new friend, Milo [Christian's adorable American Pit].
Not much of a shopper in recent years [the bike thing usually keeps the bank account reasonably depleted], temperatures in the 60s greeted me the other day as I stepped out in black jeans and sneakers. I knew this whole spring thing was coming around, but I had assumed I’d have a few more weeks to get my thighs shorts-ready.
The sun warm enough to make me sweat, it also reminded me that my black leather sneakers are not optimal for spring. So when I stepped into a shoe store with a best friend last weekend, I walked out with a new pair of TOMS shoes.
Founded in part as an initiative to provide one pair of shoes to a child in need for every pair sold, most TOMS shoes are also vegan-friendly, super cute, and oh-so-comfy. I had assumed the sole would be paper thin, like the chucks I nearly wore through a few years ago, but it’s less ballet flat and more like having clouds wrapped around your toes. I love them [even if they don’t come with road cleats...which is saying a lot].
And lest you think that this is completely unrelated to cycling, TOMS also sponsors a competitive cycling team made up of cyclists across the nation. Look out for the light blue, white, and black kits at a race near you [wait, I guess everyone has one of those this season...], and remember to bring a pair of TOMS for your own post-race podium shot...or to your next Spring Classics viewing party.
From a few weeks ago when I was still wearing a thick jacket...
These are awesome.
Therapy, counseling, treatment. Call it what you will, as the basic idea stays the same: an admission that somewhere along the way, something ceased working properly, placing you in a chair or couch, pouring out emotions you usually wouldn’t in front of a stranger. Though not yet fortunate enough to be able to afford the kind of therapist that owns [what I have convinced myself must be] a comfortable couch, I’m a veteran of sobbing in front of strangers within minutes of meeting them.
“I...I just...I’m just...” The tears start to dribble and leak out of my eyes, gravity threatening to pull liquid snot from my nostrils in thin ropes onto my lap. Horrified anew at my own frail grasp on mental clarity, sanity, and lack of crying etiquette, I apologize. “I’m sorry,” I say to someone who I am fully aware is professionally bound to pretend to care about the petty problems that I claim are swallowing my life. I say this as I liberally help myself to their tissues without asking, as if those two flimsy words, overused by assholes everywhere, could possibly redeem me.
The paradox of therapy, I have learned, is not that everyone goes [therefore rendering the implication that therapy is only for the psychologically broken or askew, moot], but that it makes one prone to paranoia, thus creating a set up for more therapy. It starts at the reception area, where I wonder whether there’s some hidden test in which magazine I might pick up from the coffee table. Am I superficial and inclined towards eating disorders if I pick up the trashy fashion magazine? Left-wing intellectual if I pick up the New York Times? Where does this local business magazine fall on this imaginary mental scale? Instead I choose to twist the scarf in my lap, trying to act comfortable with bored isolation. People stare out into space all the time when there’s a perfectly entertaining issue of The Economist lying within 2 feet of them, I tell myself, because by this point it’s too late to get up and pick up the magazine. The therapist might be out any minute, and no one wants to get caught in that moment after a reading choice has been made only to have to put it down before you can sit down again. It makes the person picking up the publication feel awkward, and [presumably] the therapist feel guilty for being on time. So the time between arrival and appointment is stared down in an affected blasé demeanor, while I try not to focus on how crazy my therapist will think I am this time.
This incessant back and forth - the mental pendulum that swoops and swings between worrying about what my therapist thinks of me and reassuring myself that she’s voluntarily chosen her profession and thus proximity to individuals like me - is characteristic of the paradox of therapy. Much like the misleading label of “therapy” itself, which implies some goal or end point. To anyone with a fully functioning head on their shoulders, the assumption that a remedy for a loopy mind would follow any sort of linear path is probably irrational. To those with impaired psyches, however, it makes perfect, illogical sense: pay for enough professional cry-fests and eventually enlightenment in the form of emotional stability, balance, and resilience will ensue. Or so goes the uncharacteristically optimistic hope.
And though my brain might not be wired right [then again, whose is?], it’s not so abnormal to hope that a linear progression towards a defined goal can actually exist in life. There seems to be a fairly steady increase in exhibited bitchiness right before I get my period; why couldn’t the same type of escalating growth apply to other, more appealing aspects of my life? I’ve been told the same can be said for riding a bicycle: do it enough times and you’ll improve. Maybe just a little bit, but enough to plot the beginning of an upward linear vector.
But if the state of my mental health mirrors my ability on a bike, improvement has remained either elusive, invisible, or both. My frustration is apparent enough to my therapist [what did I do? How did she know?] who continues to tell me to give myself a break once in a while. It’s reassuring to hear, but like most things in therapy, it also gives rise to the opposite sentiment of extreme stress. Breaks sound nice, but without a fire under my ass to keep me perpetually on my toes, I fear that I’ll ultimately lose something I love dearly. That I’ll somehow forget how to get dressed to head out for a ride. I’ll take it easy this month, I might convince myself, as my bicycles gather dust. Or I’ll turn around at the base of a hill telling lying to myself that I’ll do it tomorrow, or next time, for sure. Mental balance might be nice when it comes to the rest of my life, but it hints at staying a terrible cyclist.
For that reason, I was rolling away a few days ago, before anyone should really be awake, much less on the rollers. No sprinting, just rolling easy, but struggling nonetheless. Maybe this isn’t enough, I thought momentarily even as my empty stomach churned in protest. No, but it is, the other side of my schizophrenic brain reassured me, because who in their right mind voluntarily rides rollers before work, with only a cup of coffee to fuel them? The mental battle fizzled away slowly as the loss of sensation in my butt turned to sharp pain, but whispers of it came back later. And I know it’s going to, even when bright sun and the outdoors can snatch my attention away from a pair of paradoxically weak yet heavy legs.
But in a way, I take solace in the swinging between extremes of which I am expert, be it in therapy or riding. It’s an uncomfortable ride, sometimes prone to motion sickness and emotional instability, but the motion of sweeping from one end of the spectrum to the other also sends me through, however briefly, a middle ground. That perfect point between failing and succeeding, when nothing is felt but maybe a dose of sun and a wisp of wind, when the asphalt seems to both melt away and hold you up. In those short moments, I switch to my big ring and let out my inner Tatianna Guderzo; my version of throwing rocks at Schrödinger’s cat.