A Paris.
It's been months in the planning, and only a few nearest and dearest were privy to this secret trip, but I am currently in Paris. No, I can't believe it myself.
There is a final Tour stage just around the corner, and a few friends - old and new - to meet. I'll tell you all about it. But for now, some charcuterie sounds really nice...
When I moved back to Tokyo two summers ago, my mother was growing about three different things on the balcony. A net supporting a curtain of leafy vines stretched from our second floor balcony to the roof, sprouting delicate flowers.
"I'm growing bitter gourd," she said.
"Is it working?" was my response.
As this is Tokyo, where a backyard is considered a luxury, my mother's horticultural experiments usually take place in giant, black planters that resemble witches' cauldrons. Appropriately, they seem to yield little that is edible. In otherwise bountiful moments of the year, my mother will put on an old, wide-brimmed straw hat, pull on rubber gloves and disappear with a large garbage bag in hand. She'll return an hour or so later with a corpse of a blueberry bush, or some other casualty of neglect half protruding through the plastic.
"Can you help me move one of the big planters? I'm replacing the blueberries with eggplants this year," she'll say. "Oh, but be careful, don't try to do it alone, I'll help," this 5'3, 85 pound, 65+ year old Japanese woman who pouts when a size 0 ends up being too big will add, "I know you're not very strong."
My response is always something along the lines of, "what....what are you doing?" Because between the plants, the dog, the house, and making sure that my father doesn't die of starvation because he barely knows how to use a toaster, my mother's made herself into quite the accomplished lacquer ware artist. There are never enough hours in the day two weeks before a deadline for a competition, but she will insist on swimming lessons once a week and social obligations I wouldn't bother ever penciling in. I don't get it; it's like she hates sleep.
I've often looked at my mother's never-ending list of things to do and simply shaken my head. I always preferred to focus sharply, obsessively on my loves, because I didn't want the additional worry of other distractions. I also wasn't sure if my heart had room for too many extra things, as if loving something else would signify some hint of apathy. In those moments when I can't stand to turn the pedals without sobbing, my natural inclination has been to simply smother myself with the bike. I don't know, it always seems like a good idea at the time.
Looking back on those crazed moments, what I ultimately didn't want to face was doubt shrouded as "other priorities" that might crowd in and push out the sweaty suffering. I remember looking at the mess of scars covering both knees after a week riddled with too many meltdowns. Why did I do this to myself, I briefly wondered. I remembered something my sister had said the first time I tore up my knees: "Ew," she had scoffed, "I hope it was worth it; you can't ever wear a skirt again." And that had been okay, because when you limit yourself to one love, it has to be worth it.
The funny, inevitable thing is that I caved and wrenched that stubborn heart of mine open, just a little. A few weeks ago, I clipped out of the bike, inhaled, and let myself get distracted away from my watts by designs, secret plans, and other half-formed things that are currently tumbling towards a doozy fixation. I made a dress that will hopefully always show half my tan lines and all of my scars. You wouldn't know it from the arid desert this blog has turned into the past week, but I wrote, too. I lost some sleep doing all of the above, lost more sleep to ride and watch the Tour, and was surprised to find myself happier for my multitude of loves.
Like the omnipresence of some degree of Kevin Bacon in Hollywood, you could easily trace all of my current daily distractions to the bike and therefore claim that nothing has really changed. I think that’s the point: true loves – like, the really real ones – should never be so limiting that they impose straitjackets, blinders, or simmering doubts of potential loss. They should, instead, usher you out the door on sunny days to ride and put a book, a keyboard, or a sewing machine in front of you on the rainy ones. They should do things like wake you up at 5am to insist on some quality time together, yet share you without guilt or jealousy, allow you to kill some poor, unsuspecting plants every year, and never, ever be your obligatory one and only. They should set you free, really, and kiss you always so you keep coming back.
Again and again and again.
One of the more interesting things I saw this weekend...
Proof that my shins are getting lean...?
It's going to be a crazy week, but good stuff coming soon!
skratch in my bottlesascending tokyo mountains sweet, red gasoline
Three days before my birthday [I am now officially 70 years younger than the Tour de France], I only managed a scant 30 miles.
But there was a little over 3700ft of climbing, which included one of my most favorite passes. I even took a few of you there with me, breaking up the cathartic quiet with mental images of a Rosko, a Parlee, and a super fast Ridley.
As a woman, I suppose I should have been riding 100 miles or 100 km on Sunday, but a haircut and color [you can't tell but it's a dark, dark brown] seemed more pressing. Because you can't turn 30 with bad hair [but sweaty eyeliner is perfectly acceptable].
More words soon.
In all the notebooks I'm scrawling into on any given day, the random, disjointed thoughts are broken up by half completed designs for garments I'm going to get around to making. Once I finish my ride, do the laundry, run to the grocery store, clean my bike, edit that blog post, I was going to get to it. You know, eventually.
While I continue to prioritize the riding, in the beginning, I used to have mixed feelings about it. I wanted the bike to make me a waif-ish climber, but despite what Rapha ads might promise, the opposite happened. Though pedaling for hours might gift some women with narrow hips and gazelle-like physiques, the kilometers built me up into what would be considered, by Japanese standards, to be similar to a brick shithouse. It makes sense - for every Contador, there is a Cavendish - but I can't say I was elated at this discovery. I'd be lying if I said that the projected restriction of my already limited wardrobe wasn't a part of that disappointment. [Skirt below made and embroidered by me, tan lines from last year. Someone in NYC will hate me a little for this so...um...sorry?]
Growing quads, glutes, and calves made it easier, though, to convince myself that my abnormal proportions had exiled me from shopping like a normal person.The voluntary disqualification from consumerism also stemmed from the fact that I never liked to blindly throw myself into trends. Scallop-edged shorts that make me look both blubbery and like a pedophile's wet dream are in? No thanks, I'll pass. The temptation to conform lingers, but I'm still vain enough to refuse to wear anything that makes me look worse. I'm also, unfortunately, funny about clothes in the same way I am funny about bikes: I can't bring myself to buy anything that isn't [reasonably] well-crafted. It's unfair to compare stock welds to those that now grace Fireflys, but the exposed zippers and cheap, hurried seams of everything offered at Forever 21, Zara, and H&M ensure that I'll never go into bankruptcy via fast fashion. Learning how to use a sewing machine and an appreciation for impeccable tailoring have resulted in a perversion of the Diderot effect: I can't, in good conscience, buy anything that I could make - with my limited skills - better, and so I end up refusing to buy anything at all. [And yes, those ridiculous tan lines help, too.]
Unconsciously - and perhaps to my bank account's detriment - I've somehow grown into my cycling body. I like knowing that I'm stronger than women with smaller legs and nonexistent calves. On doing the usual personal physical assessment that every woman does at least once three times a day, I caught myself wishing that my glutes were bigger. Quad separation seemed like a reasonable goal, too. With that, I looked at my closet, sighed, and went shopping.
Unfortunately, self-acceptance doesn't mean that the world automatically embraces your proportions and starts producing things that fit just right and are incredibly flattering. And because I refuse to trade watts for a wardrobe, I dusted off some French curves, pulled out drafting paper and ironed out rolls of muslin. Since then, I've been working on a couple of projects, post-ride, when my legs don't work so good. Because what girl doesn't want to [try to] be [as Zoolander put it] really, really, really, ridiculously good-looking, tan-lines and all?
[I'll be posting progress updates and completed projects that hopefully don't make me look like a vertically challenged blob. Keep those fingers crossed for me!]
