Doing it Wrong

Living Hard

I used to mountain bike.

I hate that past-tense, I hate it so much I speak the lie and use the present all the time. Hobbies? Oh, you know, I write and I take photos and I do some graphic art and I hike and I mountain bike. I usually put it in at the end to sort of tip people off to the great stonking un-truth. I don't, I don't mountain bike. Anymore.

But I used to - WE used to, Kirk and I. We started in Alaska where I learned to get on the bike even if it terrified me, to go down those tiny hills that seemed so steep I was gonna pitch forward over the handles if I didn't throw my ass way back behind me, finally to realize that as long as I stared fixedly at that damn tree I didn't want to hit I was going to steer right for it, every single time. (look where you want to go; keep your eyes off the obstacles). I learned to be fearless there somehow, I hit that magical point where you just put your tire at the start of the trail and figure, what the hell and take off. Yeah, there will be tight parts where the trees grow so tight you'll close as no matter scrape the handlebars on either side; yeah the hills are gonna get scary-steep and one side will drop off into nothing if you spare it a glance; yeah some asshole will have put a huge log construction across the whole thing where you'll have to pop the front tire up just at the right moment and make sure to hit the pedals just when you should and even then you have to hold your breath just right to get over (yeah, you're gonna fall).

We went to Virginia, some of the best single-track I've ever seen - well, out of the four states worth of single-track I've actually looked at, and every spare day, every spare half day we could scrape together we would be out on the bikes. And, of course, the magical fearless stuff wore off as I got enough experience to realize how hard some of that stuff really was, after I learned enough to be afraid of what should have scared the bike-shorts off me all along. But I wasn't going to stop, hell no, so I kept putting that tire on the start of the trail and taking off and trying not to hit the trees when my handlebars were shaking so bad from the adrenaline choke I must have looked like I was riding drunk. I kept tipping down those steep hills, the ones with the heart-shaking bend at the very bottom that you could take just right or end up down a ravine. I kept listening to my own breath, louder and louder as if I was trying to drown out that part of my brain that was wanting to stare at every tree and root and boulder and drop. Until finally it happened and I came around a corner hard and fast (don't let the fear slow you down) and hit a tire-polished root covered with slick yellow leaves.

I know right where I flew into the tree. I hit it on my collarbone and on my thigh - don't ask me how because that's about all I know. I know I lay there for a minute and I wanted to holler - wanted to shout and cry and scream at Kirk that this, THIS is why I was so damn scared of biking even though I had never told him once how frightened I was. I wanted someone to run over and pick me up and babble about how horrible that crash had looked and was I okay, was I sure I was okay? Cause that was a hell of a crash. But it was the middle of the morning on a weekday and there wasn't a soul around. Damn it.

The stupid bike was fine. No scratch, no dent, no busted in tire. 

I started wheeling it on, limping, winded, pissed off and sniffing because no one cared that I had finally crashed. But it was taking too long, and the stupid bike was fine, so I got back on and slowly, carefully started riding. Then a bit faster, because it was still taking too long, and this was a pretty easy bit, and yeah there was that log bridge to come, but it wasn't that hard, and then just three hills and a squirt through the last two trees and out on the fire road again where Kirk would be waiting. (they're right you know, you should get right back on).

He was, waiting that is, and he knew something was up since I was so far back, but that wasn't enough.

"I came down," I told him, watching closely. "HARD."

I said it very firmly - HARD. Because I wanted him to know, wanted him to understand that when I crashed it was a good crash, a real crash, a right-in-the-tree crash. I crashed because I was going fast around that corner, because I was going harder and faster than I really wanted to because I was riding away from that fear.

"Wow," he said, and I knew he was ready to hear that I was done with the biking, that I wasn't going to bike any more. "You okay?"

Yeah, I was okay. Because that crash? The one that almost-but-didn't-quite break my collarbone, and left a bruise the size of a dinner plate on my thigh? That was nothing. It was just a crash, a normal-sized crash that blew that inflated, bogey-man fear into nothing.

Funny how life teaches in parenthesis so you can miss it, or forget it too easily when you find it. I've been sitting still here in the fear and watching it fill up all the possibilities. It's time to start riding away from it again.

It might even be time to crash.

 

Cliff Diving

I absolutely love this picture. It's just a little sketch, by JRR Tolkien actually (and found in J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist & Illustrator) but I think it's utterly charming. I realize that the glass-half-full view could be this rather blind character blithely walking off to plunge to his death, but personally I see this wonderful little figure stepping off the cliff because it's the only way to experience that starry-starry-night sky.

And yes, this is really to the point. Because what would you do if, just for example, you had a full year to carefully choose your particular cliff and to construct your own personal parachute? Or to put it more prosaically, what if you had a year to plan and a little, just a little, just enough to live on, money?

I mean, we all know what we think we'd do if we were suddenly and inexplicably revoltingly wealthy, but what if you had juuuuuust enough to get by in a decent amount of comfort (reasonably good cheese but not daily tins of caviar sort of thing; moderately-priced sensible car but not Bugatti Veyron) without actually HAVING to work, but really being a lot more comfy if you did?

Would you...

... move to a charming, but inexpensive town in your own country, buy an old house to fix up and get a job?

... take a freighter for New Zealand, find a plot of land and build a cozy little hobbit house?

... buy some acreage somewhere between a mountain and a forest and make your own log cabin?

... move to a totally new country (where you might or might not speak the language) and build or fix or buy a flat or...

If you could jump off a cliff, what kind of whirly, twirly, starry sky would you want to find?

Gravitational Shift

So my all time favorite amphibian came for a visit a little while ago - she of the Overstretchedness and the language school.

There was a lot of laughing and eating and general good times but much of the time the three offspring sprung themselves off - including spending a fair amount of time at the oldest one's house (That's blaidd drwg for those taking notes). Yes, my oldest child has her own house - well, her own shared-with-roommates-because-minimum-wage-is-a-living-wage-MY-ASS house. She pays her own bills and buys her own food and is generally doing a darn good imitation of an adult.

Actually, Over-Stretched Frog, although living in dorms, is ALSO sort of being an adult and undeniably no longer lives here, with me.

You'd think I would have noticed, and I did in a way, but something about this visit, with all the kids merrily breezing in and out - mostly out on many days - and needing absolutely nothing in the way of rides or money or food or drink or ANYTHING sort of brought it, well, home with a bit of a thump.

A good thump mind you, but a thump. Because the thing is that when you're a parent, from the moment you know there's even going to BE a blaidd drwg or an amphibian or an Arbitraxish Xanthar or whatever there is this unbelievable shift in the world. Everything, EVERYTHING from that moment on moves in focus from you to this Other Person. Where you live, what job you take, where you go that night... all that stuff. Things you don't think would be kid-centric have a but-what-about-the-child element. It's in every. last. thought. That's how it should be, mind you, I mean you're the grown up and they're the kid and SOMEONE has to think about whether that toothbrush is suspiciously dry even though the child with the honest green eyes swore up and down it had really and truly brushed its teeth (note: you learn early to get very precise about WHEN that might have happened). Someone must keep a running tally in mind of the games/meetings/lessons/play dates/practices/fund raisers/volunteer events/etc/etc/etc that are happening that week, and the next week, and the next. Someone has to worry and plan and consider, and while that worrying changes from whether that nappy rash really does look like it's clearing up to whether you're nagging someone too much or too little to get their homework done (which leads to secondary worry over whether too little nagging will result in FAILURE AND DOOM while too much will produce a floppy, hopelessly spineless creature who will have to be harried through university, career and eventually mid-life crisis), the amount of worrying, the constant awareness in the back of your mind even when it's not the active, in-your-face worry, never changes.

The thump then, the thump is because in just under a year there's going to be another world shift. A smaller one this time, because they will always be there in my heart and my mind, always a piece of me dedicated to thinking and loving and, yes, often worrying about them. But not ALL of me. Not any longer - because they are, almost all of them, adults now and they can carry that.

Which leaves me, for the first time in many, many years, with this odd, floating sense of - and don't take this the wrong way lovely children - freedom. For the first time almost since I became an adult myself my first thought can maybe be, maybe, what do I want to do.

Yup.

Terrified.

But...

...exhilarated too.

Whoopie!

Now what?