How Important Is The Bicycle In Women's History?

In a post I wrote three years ago on my other blog, I relayed one of the most striking insights Susan B. Anthony offered:
   
    "Let me tell you what I think of bicycling.  It has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world.  It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance."

Yesterday, I came across this:

     "Advertisements, magazines and posters promoted the image of the New Woman, just as other forms of mass media would later exhibit images of the flapper, the housewife, the wartime worker, and the androgynous feminist.  The bicycle was the symbol of the New Woman's freedom outside the home, as she raced off with her friends--men or women--down city streets and into the countryside."

Obviously, that didn't come from Ms. Anthony.  It did, however, come from a source that's intersting, if not as much so as, and for different reasons from, the godmother of feminism as we know it.

The second quote is the only mention of the bicycle in The Social Sex:  A History of Female Friendships, by Marilyn Yalom with Theresa Donovan Brown.  Dr. Yalom is a former Professor of French and senior scholar at the Clayman Institute of Gender Research at Stanford University. Ms. Donovan Brown is a former speechwriter and ran a financial communications firm.

I strongly suspect that Dr. Yalom supplied most of the information and Ms. Donovan Brown did most of the writing.  After all, the section on women's friendships and the salons of 17th Century France contains ideas and insights that only someone who read the sources in the original could have gleaned.  And the prose flows freely--like, well, a good speech.

Therein lies both the book's strengths and flaws.  While Donovan Brown's prose flows freely, it often lacks depth.  While Yalom's research provides the reader with glimpses into the nature of the relationships described in the book, and shines a light onto documents that might otherwise have been lost, those documents (letters, stories, essays and novels) come almost entirely from women (and, in a few cases, men) from, or with connections to, the upper classes.  That, perhaps, is not Dr. Yalom's fault, as most women who weren't part of those classes were illiterate until the 19th Century and rarely went to college before World War II.

Still, the book is an engaging and, at times, interesting read.  It won't turn you into a scholar or an expert, but it's a good starting point for anyone who wants to read more about relationships or women's history.  Finally, there is something to be said for any piece of writing that reminds readers of the importance of the bicycle in changing women's lives, however brief and fleeting that reminder might be.

Women, Bikes And Equality

Yesterday I wrote about a rather curious phenomenon:  the cities and countries with the strongest cycling cultures aren't necessarily the ones with weather and terrain most people believe are best for cycling.  As examples, I cited Boston, New York, San Francisco and Portland in the US and such European locales as Amsterdam and Copenhagen.

Last week, I wrote about the relationship between the two major bike booms (1890s-early 1900s and 1970s) and the women's rights movements of those periods.

From Brain Pickings

Perhaps it's serendipitous that I came across a United Nations Development Programme Report which ranked countries, among other things, in gender equality. Tell me whether you are surprised to see these countries in the Top 10 (as of 2012): 

1. Netherlands 
2. Sweden 
3. (tie) Denmark 
3. (tie) Switzerland 
5. Norway 
6. Finland 
7. Germany 
8. Slovenia 
9. France 
10.Iceland.

After seeing that, I did a bit of research. (OK, I spent a few minutes on Google.) I found a number of reports that rank Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Boston, New York, Washington DC and Madison, Wisconsin among the best US cities for gender equality.

Is it a coincidence that the countries and cities in which cycling and cyclists are most mainstream are also the ones where a woman has the best chance to get a good education, paid what she's worth and the health care she needs?

Just askin'.

I Bought It Anyway

Even though I have never, ever wanted what this ad promised, I bought the product. In fact, I bought it several times, for several bikes. 

Life On A Rainy Day

Today has been unusually cool for this time of year.  It's also rained on and off throughout the day.  I managed to ride for about half an hour.

After a dinner of shrimp and corn bisque, tilapia coated with cornmeal, freshly-ground black pepper and thyme and sauteed in olive oil with capers and lemon, and a vegetable medley, I did some work.  But Marley (r) and Max had their own way of coping.  Oh, by the way, they dined on poached tilapia.

My First Swim

It's odd to be writing, two years after my surgery, about another "first."  But today I took my first swim since then.

Of course, two summers ago, I was healing from my surgery, which was in July.  I couldn't have gone for a swim until November.  And, of course, I would have swum then only if I had taken a trip to a warm climate or gone to an indoor pool.  And I much prefer swimming in an ocean, lake, stream or some other body of water that's a geographical feature.


Last summer, I didn't swim.  I told myself I didn't want to swim because an infection I had in the spring had just healed and I didn't want to endanger my recovery.  The truth was that I felt fat and didn't want to put on a bathing suit, even if both of the bathing suits I own are one-piece affairs.  


But today I rode with a friend to Rockaway Beach.  It's not anyone's idea of an ideal beach, but it is on the Atlantic and, actually, not bad.  If I wait for a "better" beach, with bluer or warmer water, who knows when I would have been able to swim again?


Some things don't change:  I felt the same sort of release--a catharsis, a liberation and an opening outward--I always feel when I spread my arms and legs in waves of water.  But, I had two other, seemingly contradictory, sensations:  On one hand, I felt like a new dolphin just released into the sea, while, on the other, I felt I was continuing an old dream.  Actually, in terms of my current life, that dream is old:  I experienced it two nights after my surgery.  But it is new, in part because two years ago is really not long ago (unless you are in the fashion or high-technology industries), but also because it was new in the way renewals always are.


Today I came out of the water to a Lakythia, friend who accompanied me there.  I didn't know her when I had the surgery, or the night I had that dream. In fact, I didn't know her until about two months ago.  But we got on our bikes, and everything felt familiar as it always does when you meet it again.

Companions on Longtime Journeys

Today I did a brief bike ride along the industrial waterfront of Long Island City and Greenpoint and through back streets almost devoid of vehicular traffic.  One of them--named Rust Street--parallels railroad tracks that cut through silent factories and cling to the banks of Newtown Creek, which has been called the most polluted body of water in the United States.


Actually, I had a specific reason for riding that way:  On my way back, I stopped at Russo's bakery in Maspeth, which has--to my tastes, anyway--the best sfogliatelle you can get without taking the next flight to Rome.  I wanted to pick up a small box of the miniature ones and bring them to the barbecue at Millie's house.  Alas, they had only a couple of the larger ones left:  not enough to fill a small pastry dish.  Instead, I bought one and ate it right then and there.  I also purchased a small cheesecake topped with fresh fruit (strawberries, grapes and slices of apple and cantaloupe) drizzled with a light glaze.  Everyone loved it; I thought it was the best cheesecake I'd eaten in a long time.


Millie's friend Catherine came to the barbecue.  I like her very much, but I wouldn't call her a friend simply because I see her only at Millie's barbecues and lunches and dinners.  On the other hand, she and Millie have known each other since they were five years old.  I don't have a friend like that; I met Bruce, my longest-standing friend, during my senior year at Rutgers.  Then we fell out of touch for a couple of years and bumped into each other near Cooper Union late one summer afternoon.  That was in 1984:  I remember that because it was during the first year since my childhood that I was living in New York.  I also recall that I was leaving work, which at that time was at the old American Youth Hostels headquarters on Spring Street.  


Honestly, there are only a couple of non-family members whom I can remember from my early childhood.  Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like to have remained friends with a childhood friend.  I suppose that in one way, at least, it would have been like other longtime relationships:  Knowing that person for so long could have been the very reason why such a person would have remained friends with me--or for wanting nothing to do with me--after I "came out."


Millie and her husband John knew me for less than a year before I started to live full-time as Justine.  Sometimes I think it's the reason why they accepted my change as readily as they did:  After all, they couldn't feel the same sense of loss that some members of my family and other people who knew me for a long time might have felt.  Plus, almost immediately upon meeting me, Millie decided that she liked me, and she tends not to change her mind about that.  


She reminded me that very soon, a year will have passed since my surgery.  Already!  And tomorrow I'm going for another bike ride.  Destination and itinerary are to be determined.

One Wait Ends; I Extend Another

I went back to Dr. Ronica yesterday. Would she allow me to get back on my bike? 

I'm going to make you wait until the end of this post to find out, Dear Reader.

The culture samples came back.  I had a staph infection, she said.  It could have come from any number of things, but the tear, slight as it was, in my vaginal wall gave it a place to take root.  

Infections aren't fun.  Actually, this one was more inconvenient than anything else.  It didn't make me feel ill; it's just kept me off my bike and ruined some undies.  


Dr. Ronica and I were talking about one thing and another and I mentioned that I haven't been sexually active, and that I haven't been in a relationship since my surgery. Although I've met a few people who interested me in that way, I decided that I really didn't want to be involved, and that I wasn't in a hurry to become sexually active. 


"Why should you be?," she said.  "You've given yourself time to develop and to get used to the changes in your body.  I think that's really smart."


I am certainly curious to find out what sex will feel like.  It doesn't take any great perception to realize that a female orgasm has to feel different from a male one.  But how, exactly, I wonder.  I also want to see whether these changes in my body will affect, not only the way I have sex, but in what other ways I might relate to the next person who hooks up with me.  Will it affect, not only the physical sensations, but the emotional and mental aspects of my relationship?  


If my first meeting with any of the people with whom I was involved before my surgery were to take place now, rather than back in the day, I somehow don't think I'd even have an affair, much less enter a long-term relationship, with them.  Granted, I sometimes look back fondly on things I did with Tammy, and even some moments I had with Eva.  But I was a different person in those days.  The funny thing is that I don't see myself so differently, at least in some ways,  from how I saw myself when I knew them.  After all, I knew at least something about myself that I was trying to hide from Eva and hoping to integrate, somehow, into life with Tammy.  


Yes, I am still "getting used to" my physical changes, as the doctor and other people have suggested.  However, I am also how I have--and haven't--changed, mentally and emotionally.  


Dr. Ronica seems to understand that.  And, yes, she told me I could ride again.  Just change my saddles and proceed with caution, for now, she said.

Another Fine Spring Day

Just did some cleaning up and I'm feeling sleepy again.  And Charlie and Max are curled up by my sides.


I pedalled the Raleigh three-speed into Union Square and Soho today.  In the former neighborhood is my gastrointestinologist's office; in the latter, Bruce works and he and I had lunch.  From the doctor, I had to pick up a copy of a prescription  and instructions I lost.   With Bruce, I found that the take-out places had even longer wait times than some exclusive restaurants, and that almost every outdoor space in which one could conceivably sit and eat was occupied.  So we went into a rather cozy and cute Japanese restaurant with food that is definitely mediocre.   At least he seems to have gotten over the bout of the flu he had last week.


It really was a bright spring day.  Lots of people were out, walking, shopping and such.  And, it seemed that everywhere I turned, someone was looking at me as I pedalled my bike.  Both men and women smiled approvingly and, somewhere in Midtown, construction workers' heads followed my movement down the streets.  A woman who was working in an office next to the internist's said that I looked "very stylish and chic," like a woman cycling the streets of Paris or Milan.  I was wearing a long navy cardigan over a periwinkle-lavender scoop-neck top, a silky scarf in a print of blues and purples that draped down from either side of my neck to just above my navel, where I tied the two ends together.  And I wore a navy skirt with a leaf collage print in various shades of blue, from almost green to almost purple, that fell to just above my ankles when I stood up. Actually, I was feeling rather stylish, even if I have a bunch of weight to lose.  At least I'm starting to feel better on the bike.


I'd thought about doing the Five Boro Bike Tour as a "celebration" or "coming out" ride:  It would be my first long group (with a very big group) ride since my surgery.  But I've pretty much decided against it:  That ride is only two weeks away and, while I could probably do it (as it's a slow-paced ride with a lot of stops), I'm not so sure I'm ready to ride in a crowd.  Also, I don't want  to take any chances with my newborn organs.  They're probably ready for such a ride, but I don't want to take any risk, however slight, of injuring or damaging them.


There are other rides to come, and I'll be ready for them.

A Journey Through Change: It Remains The Same

Today I took the longest ride I've taken since my surgery. I pedalled about 40 miles and more or less reprised a ride I did once just before Memorial Day, and once again shortly afterward. I'll probably sleep very, very well tonight!

After crossing the Queensboro (a.k.a. "59th Street") Bridge, I rode up Third Avenue to East Harlem, where I traversed Manhattan on 119th Street. Then, I pedalled along the streets that box in Mount Morris Park and made another turn onto a street full of beautiful brownstones, which I followed to St. Nicholas Avenue. I used to ride that way often when I was working for Macmillan Publishing, on 53rd Street and Third Avenue, and living in Washington Heights.

With all of the changes that have overtaken the rest of Manhattan--Most of the places in which I lived and worked are all but unrecognizable--the St. Nicholas corridor looks much as it did long ago. The people all look either very young or very old; most of the buildings are sad and worn, though seemingly not much more so than they were back in the day. Among those sooty brick tenements, on the right side (as you go uptown) of the avenue, there's a place called Alga Hotel which, remarkably, looks as it did all of those years ago. Its exterior is painted an almost-tropical shade of electric blue, which is utterly incongruous with its surroundings but wouldn't look out of place in Miami Beach or some other place with lots of warm weather and Art Deco architecture.

It has been at least twenty-five years since I first saw the place. I don't recall it painted in any other color, and it never looks particularly worn or weathered. However, it has always looked sad. It's tempting to say that the place seems sad and forlorn in spite of its bright exterior. However, I think that hue actually adds to, or helps to create, the aura of gloom because it so belies what I imagine the inside to be like: I have no proof, but somehow I have always guessed that it was and is a welfare hotel or one of those places that charges by the hour.

Anyway, the neighborhoods are much as I remember them, save for Columbia-Presbyterian's research building, which stands on the site once occupied by the Audubon Ballroom--where Malcolm X was assassinated--and always seems to be expanding. A few more blocks up, I came to the entrance ramp for the George Washington Bridge's walkway. I don't think I can recall seeing so many cyclists or pedestrians, not even in May or June. Then again, I'm not surprised: The temperature rose to about 75 F (24C), the warmest we've had in months. Many of those cyclists were, I'm sure, on their bikes for the first time this year. I haven't ridden a whole lot more than they've ridden!

From the Jersey side of the bridge, I rode past immaculate and sometimes ostentatious houses and stores that had little charm save for the fact that they line the ridge of the Palisades and offer spectacular views of the Hudson River and the city. The streets full of those houses and stores climb the rock outcroppings and end in James J. Braddock Park, a rather charming spot that features, among other things, baseball fields, picnic areas and a pond. Until I Googled his name, I didn't realize Braddock was a boxer. (Then again, I know practically nothing about the sport.) He defeated Max Baer for the heavyweight title he lost two years later to Joe Louis.

The last time I rode through that park, the sun was setting and it was Saturday night. As I pedalled through it this afternoon, the sun shone brightly and spring was beginning.

I continued my ride through North Bergen, Weehawken and Union City, where most of the signs were in Spanish and the air filled with the aroma of roasting meat and spicy sandwiches and tortillas. The next time I ride that way, I'm going to stop in one of those cafes.

Finally, I reached the Hoboken waterfront, where I slurped down an Italian ice--half wild black cherry, the other half vanilla-- from Rita's. They were giving out ice free samples, and the one I got was very good. I'll be stopping there, too, on my next ride.

I never saw that promenade so filled with people as it was today. It wasn't just an unusually warm and sunny day for this time of year, or simply the first day of spring; it was one of those days most people would have prized at just about any time of the year.

The waterfront promenade in Jersey City was also thronged. I could almost feel the Beatles' Here Comes The Sun playing in the background: People seemed joyful, or at least relieved. This winter, while colder than last winter, still was not unusually so. However, we had two blizzards and one other major snowstorm, and most of the weather between those snowfalls was simply dreary. If this winter was a war, people were acting as if they were seeing the Armistice when in fact today and the past couple of days might be more like a truce or a cease-fire.

After I left Jersey City, a fairly brisk wind began to blow from the southeast and into my face. I pedalled into that wind through Bayonne and over the eponymous bridge into Staten Island. Then, along Richmond Terrace, which winds along New York Bay-- where one can see rusted hulks of containers and the ships onto which they were loaded or from which they were unloaded-- until the road makes a sharp turn just before reaching Snug Harbor, a mansion owned by the Vanderbilts and surrounded by some of the most beautiful and interesting gardens one will find. When it's open, you can see more than 400 species of roses, among other plants, as well as one of the best views of New York's harbor and skyline.

Just past Snug Harbor was a donut shop where I've stopped on previous rides. The proprietor, an older Italian man who always seemed to remember me even when a long time passed between visits, always allowed me to use his remarkably clean bathroom even though an "Out of Order" sign always hung on its door and I saw him refuse other customers. And I would always buy a cup of tea and a pastry that looked and tasted like a cross between a pain au chocolat and a cinnamon roll for my trip on the Staten Island Ferry, which was only a couple of blocks away.

However, that donut shop is gone now, just nine months after the last time I stopped there. In its place is a "gourmet" food shop. Why does every other little convenience store have to call itself that?

And here is something else I don't remember from the last time I took this ride: the security measures you have to go through in order to get on the ferry. You're allowed through a checkpoint and ordered into a waiting area, which consists of a few benches in front of a security guards' booth, and a bicycle rack off to the side. All of this is ringed by fences, into which a guard brought what looked like a Labrador to sniff my bike. Other cyclists, who came a few minutes after me, got the same treatment. It all felt rather like entering an airport staffed by junior high school substitute teachers.

The ferry ride itself remains one of the best things in this world one can do for free. The boat docked at the ancient pier and gangplank, which led to a new ferry and subway terminal that had just opened not long before the last time I did this ride.

Now I wonder about some of the other rides I did regularly before my surgery. Will anything along those routes have changed during the months and seasons that have passed?

Still More To Come?

So...after a weekend in which current and former love figured, it was back to reality. And I'm not talking about the TV shows that, in spite of what they're called, are "reality" in the same way that Twinkies are food.

So, after that weekend, today shouldn't have come as a surprise: The classes were great and the department meeting was long and boring--though, to be fair, not as long or boring as the previous couple of meetings were.

I still can't believe how tired I felt last night. The ride I did yesterday, while nice, is the sort of ride I used to sneak in between commitments. Yesterday it was a fairly big deal. These days, just being on the bike is a big deal for me. At least I didn't feel sore in or around my new organs. However, the ride showed me that I do need to lose weight.

Speaking of bikes, I've ordered another. It will be made by Mercian, as two of my three bikes are. However, unlike my other Mercians, which are "diamond" frames (often referred to as "men's " bikes), this one will be a "step-through" or "ladies'' frame, in which the top bar is dropped rather than horizontal as it is on the "men's" bikes. This means, among other things, that it will be easier to ride in a skirt or a long coat or sweater. Plus, this new bike will be equipped with fenders, a chain guard and "porteur" style handlebars.

From what Hal at Bicycle Habitat (from whom I ordered the bike) says, I'll probably have the bike in late July. If it arrives then, it will make a nice, if somewhat late, birthday present to myself. Of course, I'll be celebrating two birthdays this year: the Fourth, which is my natal birthdate, and the Seventh, the date on which I had my operation.

Now I'm feeling tired again, mainly because I've had a long day. And I'll have another tomorrow. I won't complain, though: I have a feeling that there's even more--of what, I'm not quite sure--to come.

Lost With Memory

Today I did about two hours of bike riding. I made a couple of stops along the way, including one at a park in Red Hook, Brooklyn. En route, I rode for a bit down Fourth Avenue. Let's just say it ain't le Boulevard des Champs-Elysees. But now it runs the risk of going from merely drab or ugly to truly grotesque. The Atlantic Terminal Mall, where Fourth Avenue dead-ends on Flatbush Avenue, looks like something from the deck of a baroquely cheesy (Or is it cheesily baroque?) cruise ship with an almost-apocalyptic post-industrial background. In that background, some developer wants to build some humongous sports arena where the Nets will play. Just what New York needs: another terrible NBA team!


A few blocks further down Fourth, at the corner of Carroll, a multi-story condo building has been erected since the last time I was in that area, which was probably a year ago. It was just as gaudily sterile as the Atlantic Center Mall.

From there, I zigged and zagged along streets where my mother and uncles played as children, and where an aunt and uncle lived for many years. It was only a few blocks from where Tammy and I lived together and and even less than that from the place where I lived by myself before I met Tammy.


After buying a bag of white cheddar popcorn in a deli, I rode toward the Red Hook waterfront. It's a strange combination of maritime bucolic and early-industrial grittiness. There's an upscale food market just a couple of blocks from splintered tenements abandoned from the deaths of dock workers who once loaded and unloaded the ships that came and went to and from New York Harbor. There is an IKEA store only a few hundred feet from a lot that, not long ago, was full of rotting couches and chairs.


From that IKEA, from the upscale foodstore, from the abandoned cement plant, from the warehouses that have been turned into artists' studios, one has the best views of Miss Liberty to be found anywhere. In fact, about ten or twelve years ago, realtors tried to make the area--much of which was abandoned--more appealing by calling it "Liberty Heights." Of course, they didn't fool any born or bred Brooklynites.


Anyway, on my way home, I stayed within a block or two of the water. Near the old Brooklyn Navy Yard, I saw a man who was probably my age, or close to it, fixing a flat on the bike of a younger gay (or possibly genderqueer) woman. They looked like they were having trouble, so I stopped to see whether they needed hlep.


It seemed that the man had the situation in hand, but the three of us got to talking. The young woman was very nice. The man was rather charming and reminded me of someone, though I wasn't quite sure of whom. Finally, he mentioned his name. His last name is, from what I have seen, uncommon. In fact, I have known only one other person who had it. So, I asked whether he had a sister whose first name was X.

Turns out, he did. That name is one most people wouldn't associate with their last name, or a person of their ethnic background. And I described his sister a bit, at least as I remember her. He was flabbergasted and wondered how I could have known her.

Turns out...Well, I didn't tell him the real way I got to know her. And let's just say that now I'm very different from the man she knew, albeit breifly, back in the day.

He said that she's married: No surprise there. She was possibly the most beautiful woman I ever dated, or with whom I had an affair or relationship. (Can anyone define the differences between them?) She was born in India to a black Jamaican mother and a father whose parents hailed from India, so she had that wonderful skin tone that was somewhere between copper and mahogany. She also had a long, lean body with gentle curves, an almost perfectly aquiline nose and lips that were plush but not plump. The only parts of her body that weren't exquisitely beautiful were her eyes: They had a nice almond shape but, in spite of their deep brown hue, felt lifeless.

Still, I tried to keep the relationship going even after I knew full well that we had nothing in common.

I don't know what, if anything, she recalls of me. It may be just as well if she doesn't remember me.

By the way: When he asked how I knew her, I said she was a student of mine. She was in fact a student at the time I dated her; she just wasn't my student or even in a college in which I was teaching. And she was about my age--mid '30's--at the time.

As we parted, he said, "Small world!"

A Familiar Shore In A New Life

Probably no cinematic scene is more emblazoned in my consciousness than the one that ends Le Quatre Cents Coups, a.k.a. The 400 Blows. Antoine Doinel, a boy of about twelve years old, lives in a dysfunctional home (to put it mildly!) and spirals downward from schoolboy mischief to petty crime in the neighborhood near Le Moulin Rouge. At various points in the film, he says he wants to see the ocean. After he is arrested, his mother asks whether he could be sent to a seaside reform school. Of course, the truant officer is none too willing to oblige; he says something to the effect that he wasn't running a resort.

Anyway, he's sent to a kind of military school where, during a football game, he escapes and keeps on running until he reaches the sea. When his feet touch the water, he turns his head and his face fills with an expression that has probably been interpreted in more ways than any other facial expression save for the Mona Lisa's. It's a combination of relief, release, conquest and a sense of what Yeats meant by "a terrible beauty is born."

Now, I'm not sure that whatever expression I wore today on the Coney Island Pier is nearly as enigmatic or interesting as Antoine's. But I'm sure I must have shown some of the sense of release--I could feel it--and what I like to call a sense of Zen ecstasy. And, of course, I've been to the ocean many times before. But this is the first time I've ridden my bike there in more than six months.

It was cold, but not terribly so, and there was no wind or precipitation. And the almost pristinely clear sky was almost too bright for reflections: The sun and the clear sky actually seemed to light the water from within, so that the waves flickered like nearly translucent lapis lazuli flames. Even though the air was chilly and the water, I'm sure, was very cold, I felt those colors and the refulgence of the sun glowing within me.

A new life, or a new stage in one's life, is often referred to as a new (and distant) shore. I wonder whether anyone ever thinks about reaching a familiar shore in a new life. Actually, I think that's part of what Zen teaches.

I'm thinking now about a day very early in my life as Justine. I rode my bike to the Coney Island boardwalk, as I did today. And I had a flashback to myself on a beach one Sunday in October during my senior year of high school. It amazes me now that more kids don't run away from home or do even more reckless things at that time in their lives: The pressure of expectations is so great even for a kid who's not struggling with his or her gender identity or sexuality. That tug-of-war between what parents, teachers and other adults want a kid to do and what that kid might actually want to do exacerbates, and is exacerbated by, the tension between the sort of person the kid wants to be, or realizes he or she is, and what the parents and other adults hope for. In my case, it meant that I would apply to West Point and Annapolis because my father and some other adults in my life wanted me to become a military officer. I think women were admitted to those academies the year after I applied to them, and at that time, the number of female officers was probably smaller than the number of male women's studies professors. So, of course, being a military officer would mean living very much as a man.

Anyway, on that long-ago day, I could only see more of the same struggles. In other words, I was seeing what I now call the Eternal Present: Everything ahead of you is just another version of what's in front of you. So, while I could apply to colleges and make plans to prepare myself to become an officer or a doctor or whatever, I simply could not envision the person who would be whatever I was supposed to become at the end of that training. What others dreamt for me was invariably predicated on my becoming a man, or at least their idea of what a man is. And, of course, that is exactly what I couldn't be even if I'd wanted to.

So today's bike ride brought me back to a place where I'd struggled, and first began to reconcile with that battle. In other words, it brought me to a familiar shore in a new life. At least now I can hope the familiarity is a blessing, or at least an advantage. If nothing else, it made me happy, if tired.

Riding Like A Girl

"You throw like a girl!

That taunt ruined gym class for me for life. I heard it more than once, not only from other kids, but from teachers, too.

I never quite mastered the manly art of throwing a ball. However, I got pretty good at kicking one. So I played some soccer (football to the rest of the world) when I was in high school. We didn't have the same cachet as football or basketball players, but those of us on the soccer team nonetheless had the same privileges as other athletes in our school. Among other things, we didn't get the shit beat out of us by the school bullies.

Since I no longer had to throw a ball, people forgot that I did it like a girl. Or, at least, they stopped reminding me of it. And I forgot about it, too, for a long time.

And I didn't hear about the other things that made me a "sissy." Like the way I talked: my emotional, descriptive and, at times, adjective-laden speech was mocked by teachers and other kids. So I talked less and less as time went on. Then I acquired new labels, like "high-strung."

The thing about bicycling--which I continued all through my teen years, my twenties, thrities and early forties--was that there was hardly anyone in the place and time in which I grew up who could criticize the way I did it. Oh, some mocked me for riding at all when I should have been behind the wheel of a gas-guzzler. But no one seemed to know how a boy or a girl pedalled.

And, more often than not, I was riding alone.

So what's different about my riding now?

Well, for one thing, I don't do nearly as much of it as I once did. There were years when I rode my bikes more miles than most sales reps drive. These days, getting out a couple of times a week is a big deal for me.

But even if I were still riding 360 days a year (Yes, I've actually done this!), I still don't think I would be riding the way I once did.

For one thing, I simply don't have the physical strength I once had. My doctor said the hormones would do that: Sinews and muscle would turn to flesh. That's the way of being a woman.

But something else is different: my attitudes about riding. For one thing, I used to feel that I absolutely had to ride every day, whether or not I felt like it. It's true that I raced for a time and I did some touring on a bike laden with camping equipment through the Alps, Pyrenees, Green Mountains, Adirondacks and across the mountains of California and Nevada. You certainly have to be in some kind of shape to do that. But, while those feats were arduous, they were hardly Herculean.

The mountains...They were there to be climbed upon, conquered, subjugated. I realized this the day I did my last long, steep climb: up the Col du Galibier. While a long, struenuous climb, it's not the most difficult ascent of the Tour de France route. Arguably, that distinction belongs to l'Alpe d'Huez, which I'd climbed earlier, ahead of the TDF pack. Getting up those mountains was not just about the conquest of them; it was also a matter of pushing forward through the muck and mire of this world, of my life, on my anger and sorrow.


When you conquer something, you can only be a stranger. You can never be part of what you conquered and it cannot become part of you. Somehow that is what I learned that day when I pumped my way up the Col du Galibier.


As I began my descent, I recieved a message. It wasn't visible or verbal; somehow it reached me. "You don't have to do this. You'll never have to do this again." I mouthed those words to myself; I had no idea of where they came from. I hadn't the slightest idea of what they meant. Of course, I don't have to do this, I mumbled. But how could I not? What am I going to do? Ride around the block to a craft shop? To Sunday brunch? That's not real bicycling, I told myself.


But the message, whatever it was, took hold of me. I wasn't trying to show my exquisite bike-handling skills as I descended those turns through a glacier, fields of wildflowers and finally part of a farm. My senses filled with the smells and colors of flowers and field. "You don't have to do this anymore"--the message repeaed itself.

Later that day, I reached a town called St. Jean de Maurienne, only a few kilometers from the Italian border, just as people were walking or riding home from work. I stopped at a traffic light. (Yes, small-town gendarmes pull cyclists over for running red lights.) Back in those days, I resented any intrusion on my bursts of speed and power. However, that day, I knew somehow that I was stopping for more than a red light.

The light turned green. I didn't click my feet into my pedals. Instead, I straddled the bike as cars made semi-loops around me and, diagonally across the intersection from me, a slender middle-aged woman in a long button-front dress accompanied her shadow along a beige stone wall. Her steps were not meant to push away the distance between her and wherever she was going. Instead, her every step took her further into the sunlight that blazed between that brick wall and wherever she was going. No doubt she wanted to get there quickly; however, she did not seem to be pushing toward her destination. Rather, it seemed, the light and air were drawing her toward it, and she was following and being filled by them.

I had no trouble imagining her following the moon. However, I could not imagine her conquering a mountain.

Needless to say, the rest of that tour was very different. So is the tour I have taken as Justine.

This afternoon, I took a short ride I took through some local back streets and to a recently-opened open-air mall (where I checked out the bike and shoe stores), under clear skies on a very warm day.

I was filled with that light, that ride, even if , in spite of all the ways in which my current bikes are beter than the ones I've had before, it seemed that I was expending as much of my strength as I did when I was climbing the Alps. Yes, I'm out of shape, but I have an excuse: My body has changed permanently.

But more important, my spirit has, too. I was on the bike today. I got fresh air and sunshine in return. The guy in the bike shop complimented my bike; a guy driving home from work yelled "nice legs" as he passed me. Heck, I even stopped for a cat I saw looping around in the yard around a house. And--no film-maker could make this up!--the cat, a pretty calico, tiptoed toward my hand and rubbed her head against my fingertips.

Even Lance says it's not about the bike. His life hasn't been about cycling: cycling has been about his life. He got up l'Alpe de Huez, le Col du Galibier and all those other climbs faster and with more elan --actually, more like la force vitale--than any other rider. He ran--pedalled--for his life, not to get away from or conquer something. Nobody conquers anything in order to stay alive; one simply lives and is not consumed by his or her circumstances or choices.

If I recall correctly, he said that around the time of his fifth Tour win, he was really starting to hate cycling. Of course I can't presume to know what he was thinking. But I would guess that he was trying to live up to the conquests that the press and other people thought his victories in the mountains and "over cancer" were. Also, I wonder whether he simply got tired (literally and figuratively) of pushing his body to its limits every day of his life.

Not to impute my own feelings to him, but I felt something like that, too, during my last conquest--the one of le Col du Galibier. Descending that mountain, I began to learn how to ride like a girl--or at least like Justine.

By the way, I'm getting rid of my last bike jerseys. I'm selling them on e-Bay, with the proceeds going to the American Italian Cancer Foundation.