fatherhood – Grasshopperking(0)

May 18, 2020May 18, 2020

Why i gave up on being fast.

Rippin' that singletrack

For years i’ve been obsessed with getting faster than i was the year before. Pushing myself. Looking for bigger climbs. Longer rides. Intervals. Sprints. on and on….

Riding became about meeting my training goals.

In the midst of all that riding bikes just stopped being any fun at all. My most common thought mid-ride was, “This sucks,” or “Why do i do this?”

That’s when i just accepted the facts: i’m never going to really be competitive. i’m creeping into my mid-40s, i have a small child to take care of, i have other hobbies, and i like food too much to maintain anything even remotely close to “cycling-weight”. So i stopped training! i stopped making every ride a piece of the plan to get faster. i just started riding my bike again! It was amazing: Trans-formative! i spent a year or so getting progressively slower as i embraced letting go of the need for 2-wheeled speed!

Riding bikes is fun for me, painful fun – but fun! i’d lost sight of that. i started stopping to take in the views. i stopped pedaling so hard on climbs that i’d get the “fat-kid-wheeze” and just started pacing myself. i started getting dropped more. i stopped setting a do-or-die weekly mileage goal. i started to love being on a bike again!

Fact is being fast costs quite a bit (and just to be transparent with you: riding a bike is fun, riding a bike fast is even more fun) and i’m just not willing to pay those costs any longer. i want to spend time with my family, i want to play D&D with my friends, i want to fly RC planes… i want to do other things. To be exceptional at a thing (which i’ve never been “exceptional” at cycling but i do know people who really are) that thing has to be your primary focus. i’m just not willing to focus that much on it any longer, call it cycling-ADD.

In the past year i’ve added some weekly goals back to my routine, but i’m not so hard on myself when i miss those goals. They are also more reasonable. i still love to climb mountains on a bike and it’s still my number one mental health activity. i’m still riding, still improving, and still setting PRs. BUT: those PRs are bonuses now, not goals for me.

December 30, 2017

What Year Am i?

My former “youngest” child is a senior in High School this year…

Now there’s a surprise child on the way!

These two spectrum spanning life events happening on top of each other have me feeling a little topsy-turvy about the whole age thing!

Some days i feel better than i ever have. 42 year old me could totally take 23 year old me on those days! i’m like Will Smith, fine wine, or a charred oak barrel of bourbon: i just get better with age!

Other days i feel like i’m leaning against a wall of geriatric destiny. Like rechargable batteries, a bag of apples, and CGI special effects: aging is not my speciality!

My early 40’s have been some interesting few years for me already. It takes me longer to recover when i get banged up. My feet and ankles hurt most mornings. Injuries i sustained in my 20s remind me that they happened. My parents have gone through a bout of medical issues. i had my worst year on the bike that i’ve ever had (guess it’s time to actually watch what i eat?)… i could moan on and on.

Conversly: people still call me when they have technical issues with electonics, i still get alot of new humor (helps that i have a 17 year old who prides himself on meme-lore), while i logged fewer miles and made almost no gains on my road-bike i did get faster on average on my mountain bike this year… guess you could say that i’m still pretty awesome!

it’s an odd age to live through that’s for sure… Sometimes, i’m a wisened old seer; othertimes i still get carded when i buy a beer (of course ONLY when covering my dome with a hat)… Hopefully in 2018 i’ll sort out if i’m old or young… or just here!

September 15, 2017September 15, 2017

Young Dad / Old Dad

I am unable to produce descendants at a decent age…

When i was fresh out of High School my first child was conceived. In the Photo on the left i am a whopping 18 years of age. My first wife and i began our “adult” lives as statistics used to pressure parents, teachers, and youth alike about the virtues of safe-sex or abstinence.

We were young and foolish with zero clue of what we were getting into! We struggled through years of scraping by and raising kids (2 more followed the first one). It was tough. Having kids that young often equals a lot of sacrifices, and it meant sacrifices for us. My tentative plans to go fart-around at college with my friends was traded for full-time work. She finished up her senior year in an off-campus facility for delinquents (because being pregnant is basically the same thing as selling heroin!). They claimed it was for her protection, but really it was the 90s and can you imagine how unseemly it would’ve been having an impregnated human getting education with the normal people? (we really do need to establish a standard font for sarcasm)

Those early years were some of the hardest years of my life. Hard work, small kids, feeling trapped in a continuous circle of work, pay bills, work, repeat…

But i don’t think i’d trade them in for anything. i got three amazing kids out of the deal. Smart, witty, creative, funny human beings who will have to pick out a nursing home for me one day!

For the last twenty-plus years i’ve encouraged myself regularly with the thought that they’ll all be grown and i’ll be fairly young, or at least “Not-Old”. Not-Old and free to travel, to ride across the desert on a motorcycle, to jet-ski across one of the smaller oceans, maybe book passage to the arctic and watch icebergs calve with my own eyes!

Then on Father’s Day of this year i had a revelation… i looked at my wife… This amazing dynamo of a human who can just power through things, this being of amazing ability who can set a plan in place and move heaven and earth to make it happen, this tiny person who joined forces with me to live out a life together, a life where we go places, live in 20 different places across the country, see the world… i looked at her and i KNEW…

She’s Pregnant!

It wasn’t long that it was confirmed, by not just a single test either- a whole flotilla of tests and an official doctor’s office test! To Quote Slartibartfast*, “Best laid plans of mice.”

So here we are. Like Abraham & Sarah or Jay & Gloria Pritchett: Old(ish) and pregnant! (The photo on the right is me now, at 42) It makes me think back to discovering i was going to be a dad the first time. My life was RUINED, all my plans destroyed! i had that moment again this time around as well.

But then i reflected: Progeny batch 1.0 are all some of the best things to ever happen in my life. My heart is at it’s fullest when i’m together with my entire little clan (which as they get older happens less and less). So Progeny batch 2.0 should be equally amazing!

I’ve been young and i’ve been old… and both times i went and made babies without meaning to!

From Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: if you haven’t read it… read it!