Age, Hormones Or Fatigue?

Today I stopped in a bike shop in my neighborhood.  It’s a tiny place that’s been there for about as long as its owner has been in the neighborhood—which is to say, most of his life.

There, I saw someone I hadn’t seen in a while.  He’s worked in the shop during the season for as long as I can remember.  Whatever they’re paying him, he can afford to work there:  He retired from a city job when he was 50.

(Old bike-industry joke:  “Wanna know how to end up with a small fortune in this business?  Start with a big one!”)

We chatted.  “Still riding, I see.”  I nodded, but I wondered why he said that.  As long as I don’t have a condition that precludes doing so, I intend to keep on cycling.

“What about you?”

“My cycling days are over,” he said. 

“Oh, I’m fine.  Just old.  Too old to ride.”

“How old is that?, might I ask.”

He told me.

“So you’re retiring from cycling—but not working?”

He sighed.  “The legs can’t do what they used to do.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“I’m not sorry.  I had some really good times on my bike.  Good memories.”

He didn’t mention any injuries or debilitating diseases.  I’m guessing that riding just became more pain than pleasure for him.

I must admit:  It wasn’t comforting to hear what he said, as I’m closer to his age than I’d like to admit.  He was younger than I am now when we first met and did some rides together. 

When I first started to talk about my gender identity issues with my former partner, she predicted that I might give up cycling. “It’ll suck,” she said, “when you’re full of estrogen instead of testosterone.”

“Why should it matter?”

“You don’t realize how accustomed you are to the strength you have.  I don’t know that you’d like riding without it.”

As I mentioned in a post on my other blog, I thought about giving up cycling when I first started living as Justine, about a year after I started taking hormones.  At that point, I hadn’t yet noticed much of a loss in my strength.  I just thought that cycling was part of my life as a guy named Nick and wasn’t sure I could bring it into my new life.

I love cycling now as much as I ever did.  Perhaps more so: I think that in my youth and my life as a male (which overlapped quite a lot!), I prided myself on riding longer, harder and faster than most other cyclists, at least the ones I knew.  Even more, I liked the admiration and respect I got from other male cyclists, some of whom won races.

Since my transition, I’ve become a different sort of cyclist.  I don’t have the strength I once did.  Some of that may be a matter of age or other factors besides my hormonal changes.  Surprisingly, I didn’t have to “accept” that I wasn’t going to be as strong or fast as I once was; rather, I found that cycling heightened the emotional release I have felt in living as the person I am.

I hope that I can continue it—cycling, or more important, what it’s become for me—when I get to be the age of the man I met today.  And beyond. 

 

Yearning For A New Journey

I am itching to go to France, to Europe, again.  Actually, I really want to do what I did as recently as 2001, just before 9/11:  Buy the cheapest round-trip ticket to Paris I can find, bring my bike with me and decide where I’m going to ride once I get there.

The first time I did that, I didn’t come back for a long, long time.  (Actually, I bought an open-ended round-trip ticket to London.  Are such things still available?) I rode through the English countryside to Dover and took the ferry to Calais, from which I rode through Belgium, the Netherlands and back into France, where I stayed for as long as I could.  Other times, I pedaled to Italy, Spain, Germany, Switzerland or the Netherlands and back. 

When I took such trips—even the first, my first outside North America—I never felt like a tourist.  Even though my French—or, for that matter, English-- wasn’t nearly as good as I thought it was after the classes I took, I felt (with much justification, I believe) I was experiencing the countries, the cultures and all of the architecture and art I’d seen in books and classrooms in ways that those who followed trails emblazoned with American Express signs never could.

On the other hand, when I went to Prague three years ago, I knew I was a tourist.  It didn’t have anything to do with the way people treated me; for that matter, it didn’t even have to do with the fact that I knew nothing of the Czech language.  Many residents of Prague speak German—of which I know a little-- nearly as well as they speak their own language, which is not a surprise when you consider that the area’s history.  And I found it surprisingly easy to find people who spoke English, or even French.  But I stayed in a hotel and rented a bike which while, enjoyable enough to ride, was nothing like the ones I brought with me on previous trips.  In contrast, in all of my other trips, I usually stayed in hostels.  Sometimes I’d camp, and once in a while I’d stay in a pension or inexpensive hotel if the other options weren’t available or I was too tired or lost to find them—or I simply wanted to treat myself.

During the first years of my gender transition, I wasn’t thinking about taking a trip like the ones I took every other year or so.  Then, for a few years, I told myself I didn’t want to take such trips—or so I told myself—because I saw them as part of my life as a male being, which I was leaving in my past.  I also figured that I couldn’t take such trips, which I usually did alone, because I believed that travelling solo as a woman would not be safe.

But I realize that other women have taken bike or other trips by themselves.  More important, I think I still have the same ability to function on my own that I had when I was younger, and male. If anything, I can function better on my own, in part because I have a better sense of when I need to ask for help, or when I want to do things with other people.

Now I see two barriers to doing a trip like the ones I did in my youth.  One is cost.  The past few years have been more difficult for me, financially, than those years of my 20’s, 30’s and early 40’s.   Even if my income were keeping pace with the kind of money I made in those days—or if I came upon the serendipities that sometimes came my way—it would be harder to take such a trip because it’s much more expensive.  Back in the day, my biggest expense was the plane fare:  Once I got to Europe, I could live cheaply and relatively well, even when exchange rates weren’t so favorable to the dollar.  But, since the introduction of the Euro, everything has gotten much more expensive.  Europeans I know say as much.

The other is that I wasn’t in the kind of physical condition I was in those days.  Some people have told me it’s to be expected, simply because my age.  Also, more than a decade of taking hormones and my surgery left me with less physical strength and endurance than I had in those days.  Plus, as much as I love cycling, I don’t do as much of it as I did in those days. That, of course, may have something to do with my physical changes.

Still, I would love to take the sort of trip I used to take, and to experience it as the person I am now.  Some might say that’s an unrealistic hope.  But, until someone can show me that it’s empirically impossible, I’ll continue to hold out such a hope—and to do what I can to prepare for such a trip.

A New Girl In Town

Tonight, as I was walking from the bus stop to my apartment, I heard someone call my name.

She was a young trans woman whom I met, by chance, at an ATM the night our second blizzard of the year began. We've talked a couple of times since then.

Marta hasn't been in town very long. She came here from the Philippines, by way of California. She's been trying to get work and her boyfriend just got a job. One thing she knows: Things ain't easy when you don't have work.

Whenever I meet young trans people, I feel a combination of envy toward, as well as fear --and hope--for, them. My envy comes, as one might expect, from my own experience of starting my transition in my 40's. And the fear is, perhaps, also a result of my own story: As much as I would have liked to transition when I was younger, I can hardly imagine what it would have been like. I had fewer emotional and spiritual resources--or, at least, I didn't know how to access them--in those days. Plus, the world was a very different place for LGBT people. That, paradoxically, is what gives me hope: More people understand us, at least in some way, and more also accept us. So girls like Marta (and young trans men) may come of age, and make their lives, in a more tolerant environment than we've had.

Even so, it's hard to start a new life in the gender of our spirits--which so many of us have suppressed--and in a new city. I've done both. I can't say which was more difficult. On one hand, when I lived in Paris, I had some (albeit limited) command of the language and the sheer bullheadedness young people have when they're trying to show that they can do things their elders said they couldn't. But I knew no one, and officials in the City of Light sometimes act like Princes (or Princesses) of Darkness. I don't know what, if anything, I had going for me, save for the fact that I'd been travelling by bike and was therefore not seen as a "typical" American tourist.

On the other hand, when I started my transition, and to live full-time as a woman, I had online as well as face-to-face networks from which I could draw upon other trans people's advice and experience, as well as those of our friends, families, co-workers and those whose missions--whether voluntarily or professionally--are to support us. Those networks didn't exist in my youth. Even so, finding out how to navigate my new path wasn't always easy.

As far as I can tell, I am one of the first parts of the network I hope Marta will develop. She's nervous because she still needs to develop the sense that she has the same right to be who she is that anyone else has to realize themselves. I just hope she doesn't become embittered by other people's hatred and opprobrium. At least she won't get those things from me.