“Shut up, Legs!” stuck with us because of its simplicity. It’s a universally understood sentiment: the verbalization of the mind-over-body tricks we all try to employ when we’re on the rivet. But the other day as I read back through my written journal, I noticed something I’d written in 2009: Shut Up Legs is about so much more than cycling.

I don’t remember writing that (or even thinking it) but reading it scrawled on that page resonated with me in that moment. I’m prone to beating sports-life metaphors virtually to death, but this one is pretty simple: do your work, get your shit done, stop making excuses.

I receive a lot of emails from people wanting to know “how I do it”. That question could mean a lot of things, but usually they are getting at my lifestyle and work: how did I turn writing into a viable source of income? How do I travel so much?

There are a lot of specific boring tactical answers to these questions (I’m obsessively meticulous with budgeting and tracking money, I’ve made a choice not to have children, I wake up at 5am every day to either write or ride, etc.) but the real answer has more to do with the principles presented in Steven Pressfield’s “War of Art”: Wake up, do your work. Do not tolerate excuses. I wrote for eight years before anyone ever paid me to do it. I did it because I loved it and because I was committed to the inherent value of it. Good things came from that, but good things also came as a result of discipline. I got up every morning and did the work – even when I didn’t think it was any good, even when people told me it was shitty, even when I wasn’t exactly sure why I was doing it or what the hell I was even creating. (Pressfield calls this overcoming Resistance)

Jens rides the way he does because he loves it – that’s clear. He rides with a sense of passion, but also a sense of duty. He hurts himself when he’d rather not be hurting. He guts himself in sacrifice for others and sometimes it doesn’t work out. He goes out and does the work. No excuses. No caving to discomfort. Shut Up, Legs!!

We can’t begin to compare ourselves to this incredible man, but we can learn from his approach. I see it around me all the time in people who are much more accessible. Eryn raises a toddler, works a full-time job, trains her face off, races bikes and spends the winters ski patrolling and the summer’s scurrying up rock faces like a badass (she swears by the 5am workout). My teammate Elise raises three kids under the age of 12, works full time, has a husband virtually kidnapped by medical school, and still managed to pedal her way to Cat 2 road status over the last two years (thanks mostly to a crazy commitment to 5am roller workouts while her kids are still asleep).

If you want it, make it happen. If you love it, make the sacrifice.

Hurt a little. Hurt a lot. Do the work.

Shut Up, Legs!!

Get the T-Shirt.

**

*
*
************

GNG HOME DELIVERY

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(Special thanks to buddy Dave S. for sending this my way.)

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I’m frequently surprised by what stays with me over the years. In this case, it’s a simple nightly ritual – the idea of expressing gratitude each night before sleeping.

We weren’t a particularly religious family though my parents both believed in God. We never went to church together as a family (my sister and I often went with friends) and when I was asked to say grace before meals (it fell on the shoulders on the youngest) I routinely just said, “Grace” and waited for everyone to laugh. Then we ate.

Most nights before bed, I said my prayers with one of my parents. It was the standard-issue kiddie prayer that started, “Now I lay me down to sleep…” I recall being mildly uncomfortable about the “If I should die before I wake” part, but I didn’t spend too much time worrying about it because I was always excited to get to the end.

At the end, I endlessly cataloged everything I loved under the “God Bless” clause in this arrangement. To my mind, this was my opportunity to safeguard what I loved against possible harm:

God Bless Mommy and Daddy and Heather and Shady Lady [my dog] and Mama Kitty [her given name] and Herschel [another cat, named after a football player - my mom was a Cowboys fan] and chocolate and ice cream and Sharon [or insert name of current BFF] and legos and my science kit and our house and our yard and allllll the ducks and my tree house and the Kishmars and the Kishmars’ parakeets and Jenny and Julana and all of Jenny’s barbies…”

On and on and on.

These days my list is a little less exhaustive and, because I’m no longer religious, I don’t direct it toward anyone in particular. Most nights, I write the list in a big journal I keep in my nightstand. I use a Sharpee pen and keep things short and sweet. What I’m thankful for varies from day to day, but things like family, a place to live, food to eat, health, safety, clean water, warmth, security and a rad romantic life partner-in-crime are always in the mix. Sometimes I also add bourbon, pork belly, coffee or cyclocross. You get the gist. When I’m really tired, I skip the book and just write my list mentally as I fall asleep. There’s something about dozing off in a haze of gratitude that always sets me up for a decent morning.

The point is simple: pause, think, express gratitude, recognize what you have, acknowledge what is good. Even on the worst days, my lists are long.

Is this some hippy new-age feel-good shit? Maybe. Do I care? Not at all.

It helps me live a better life.
I’m rolling with it.

And, while we’re on the topic. Thanks for being here. Thanks for reading. Thanks for commenting. Thanks for participating. Thanks for sharing.

You being here makes this worthwhile.

**********

GNG HOME DELIVERY

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I could tell you where, but that would be boring. What I can tell you is this: my blog had a really bad tummy ache and had to take some time off to get well. Now that it’s all fixed up, we’re super jazzed and ready to go again! (If you ever need a WordPress guy, let me know – I have an awesome one!)

There are all kinds of neat things in the works, including a couple working trips to Europe this year and some good adventures here in the USA. I’m also waiting (a little impatiently!) to announce a super-humongous-extra-radical project that is going down this year – one that will consume most of my time until August. I have to wait until the detail people get all worked out on the details, but there will be more on that later. Promise.

For now, I’ll leave you with a few photos and some links to some recent (and not-so-recent) stuff that I’ve been up to:

• I wrote a story about Gary Bonacker for Switchback Issue 02. He rode a cruiser bike down Mt Bachelor in the 70′s. That’s crazy talk! He’s also an amazing soul and true adventurer and he’s battling brain cancer with the heart of a champion. Issue 02: get your hands on a copy and check it out.
• I went to Japan in November with Dan Sharp, Molly Cameron and a few other awesome kids to race cyclocross. It was amazing! There are lots of fun photos here and here. I wrote a piece about our adventure in Issue 09 of Peloton Magazine. Lots of thumbs ups, peace signs and gratuitous food images!
• In December I joined Specialized-lululemon at their training camp and helped craft the introduction for the team. There are photos from Michael Robertson and some awesome video, too: check ‘em!
• I’ve been guest blogging for Light & Motion about bike commuting. Check out Part One (A “real” Job Ride) and Part Two “Like Coffee, But Better”. Parts 3 and 4 are coming in the next two weeks.
• I’ve been tweeting my face off.
• I’m also posting images to Tumblr every now and again.

Pretty Pictures Because I Love You

The amazing Gnat.

My Buddy Copy Matt (And the Pacific Ocean)

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The thing is, there’s might be a point where you realize it wouldn’t be so bad.

My mother was a journalist. She worked in newspapers for more than 35 years. This is how I attained my extensive swearing vocabulary (sleeping under news desks when you are sick with flu will yield some very entertaining eavesdropping sessions). She’s finally retired after much cajoling and persuasion. She didn’t like the stress or the pay but she loved being a Newsie. I know this for fact. It’s who she is. It’s in her DNA. (It’s not at all in mine.)

She came home every night and took a bath. I’d often draw it for her having memorized the exact position of the hot and cold levers that would yield the perfect tub. She liked them hot. Once she was settled in, I delivered a Diet-Coke-on-Ice that I’d prepared 10 or 15 minutes prior. She liked her Diet Coke watery.

She read the New Yorker in the tub, which is a habit that I now emulate. (Truthfully my favorite tub reads are The Sun Magazine, The Paris Review, ZoeTrope and The Tin House, but my mother could not afford such luxuries – the New Yorker was a yearly Christmas gift from her aunt.)

Sometimes she was inexplicably tense, a trait which I now attribute to several things (strained finances not withstanding) but most often to the threat of the deadline. I never understood this until I experienced myself: the deadline will make you great, the deadline will make you homicidal, the deadline will strip you down to a single, pulsing nerve. The deadline owns you. The deadline is everything.

And then when you hit it, there’s the waking up in the middle of the night. My mother did this often. I remember her curled over our rotary phone in a bathrobe placing frantic calls to the copy desk, “Did I spell this correctly? Did I reference this that way?” Her robe was aqua blue. She smelled like Noxema. Her hair cut in a short brown pixie. When I woke up to these calls I snuggled into her and she placed a gentle hand on my back while she spoke into the receiver. Then we laid in front of the fireplace on the sheepskin rug until I fell asleep again.

I wake up sometimes now in the middle of the night wondering what I’ve gotten wrong. Most often, editors make us better. Way better. They push us to be more critical, to ask more questions, to kill our darlings, to write with intention and precision. But every so often an editor butchers a piece with nary a call or consultation and I have to swallow back a little rage and take it like a big girl. Sometimes something goes wrong and it’s nobody’s fault – just a simple mistake – but it compromises something you worked hard on. Something you cared about.

When the words hit the printed page, nothing can be taken back. Everything is forever. Permanence that is occasionally imperfect. Print is brutally physical. It won’t change. It is unapologetically what you made it, good or bad. In the new world of 140-character fluttering personal whims and snarky or sarcastic editorial, it grounds me in a way that I crave.

I called Mom last night to unload. I was tense and irritated and ready for a hot bath with a magazine. Her voice conveyed, as it has since I started writing in a professional way, an unmistakable camaraderie. I didn’t mean for this to happen, but there it is. If she were here, she’d bring me a watery diet coke (with vodka?), no questions asked.

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It’s a catch-up post. And here’s all the catching up that’s fit to post:

Doctors sometimes are wrong. MRI’s are rarely wrong.

The doctors said something important torn, but the truth was I only had a micro-fracture.

[Elation.]

I waited. I rode. I healed.

A man named Vince at Northlake Physical Therapy fixed me with electricity, ice, exercises and sheer determination of his incredibly positive nature. He’s gold, man. I owe him.

I’m good now though I lost a step.
I’m good now though running through sand still doesn’t feel very good.
I’m good now though I dropped my chain today and had to claw my way back through the field.

This is cyclocross – it comes with all these variables. Good and bad things happen. You keep pedaling.
Good and bad people happen. You keep pedaling.

In other news, life also happens. A long-lost cousin dies of cancer and though you probably have no real reason to, you feel the disturbance in the force. You shudder a little bit because he was in his early 40s and he left behind a wife and kids. You feel it.

I’m working too much now. I wake up in the morning and ride from 6-8, work from 9-6, write from 7-10. Sleep like dead. Repeat.
I’m taking a machete to things now – hacking back the excess to get a clear view forward. Make a little breathing room. Find a little quiet.

Mostly I just want to race my bike.
I found a little anger to work with and I’m nursing it.
I’d cut somebody to get a few days of solid rain.

When it comes I’ll be ready. Let’s slide and attack and charge and flail a little bit.
Life’s messy but mud is pure.

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I picked a bright red color that matched the accents on my bike and discovered Shellac which is the toughest goddam nail polish you will every find. Anywhere. When normal manicures will chip a day or two into their short-lived glory, the Shellac just keeps givin’. Through mud and gravel and bike washes and well, just about everything. Fuck yeah! I thought. Nail polish built for rough-n-tumble Tomboys like me! Let’s do this shit.

So I did it. And then I did it again. And again and again.

You see, in addition to being grubby and lazy, I’m also pretty superstitious (don’t ask Sal about the World Series of 2005, I did some pretty crazy shenanigans to will them damn Red Sox to win). I had a few good races and thought maybe the polish was the trick. Then they showed up in a few photos and people liked ‘em. And after that? On and on and on.

I’d deviated from my standard-issue Slut-Tart Red (not the official name) when the photo above was taken. (I have to admit to liking the pink-coral color and it matched my kit – bonus.) The rear flat was a real pain in my ass and, as you can see, my grubby, lazy tendencies extend to my poor bike maintenance. Shit was dirty and so, therefore, was I.

I snapped the photo with my phone and tweeted it because in many ways it perfectly represented what Grit and Glimmer is about: paint your nails if you want to, change your own flats, get fucking greasy, know how your bike works, go home and wash off (also, pumps can be sexy – and not just the footwear kind). The so-called laws of femininity are social constructs: fuck them up. That is a direct order.

The good people over at Handlebar Mustache liked it so much, they made a T-Shirt. I’m not makin’ any money off these bad boys, I’m just stoked to have the first ever piece of Grit & Glimmer apparel out in the world. And the real beauty is that HBStache is donating $2 from every sale to MercyCorps to help ease the worst drought that Africa has seen in 60 years.

Anyway, the gist of this is to say, there they are! Get ‘em while they’re hot!

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I’ll admit, it barely affects me anymore (in stark contrast to my early twenties when I would sob for three miles walking to work after passing a wet, shivering, mentally-ill homeless guy). We’re desensitized and kind of numb. Paralyzed and overwhelmed.

Every once in a while, one of the statistics gets through. This time it was this one: More than 29,000 children under the age of 5 have died of starvation in the last 90 days in southern Somalia.

That’s a lot of dead kids, folks.

Then I saw the now-famous image in the NYT from Tyler Hicks. That is photo-journalism doing its job. That is photo-journalism kicking you in the fucking face.

What can we do? Lots, of course.

What bothered me most about working in Mother Teresa’s homes for the dying was not watching people die, it was the fact that many of the Christians with whom I worked side by side (I would have still called myself a Christian then) refused to acknowledge the global economic structure that underpinned the cycle of suffering. We need people in poverty to maintain our lifestyle.

They’re preferred rationale came from the Bible: the meek shall inherit the Earth. Pie in the sky. (These people are going to a better place!) I never bought it. I’m not advocating a lifetime of eternal guilt, but for fucksake, we need to at least be talking about what is going on. Calcutta was the last straw for me and Christianity. I returned home agnostic.

This is a big conversation and one not really fit for a blog post so I’ll return to my original intent: Somalia. I don’t have any real answers, but I believe that Mercy Corps is doing good things. People in Somalia need food and medicine and I believe that Mercy Corps can navigate the dangerous political and military situation there to deliver it.

If you can, skip a few lattes and donate.

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“Speak for yourself.” I replied.

We went up to see my parents and brought a tent so we could camp in front of the cabin, which is fairly small for four adult-sized human beings.
We chopped wood in the heat of the day because my father is recovering from surgery and, truth be told, the wood pile was dwindling. The sweat came through my wife-beater in wide, uneven patches – I know some chicks who perspire but me? I sweat.

Mom brought us beers which we propped up in little nooks among the wood. Sal rolled rounds down the hill to me and I swung mightily. Dad came by and showed me how to use my abs. After that, I was a natural.

Days later my hands broke out in a strange rash I’d had only once before – while sweating through rubber surgical gloves at a home for the dying in Calcutta. Over the next few weeks my palms disintegrated in front of my eyes – a layer of skin peeling back and away, the entire surface white and ragged and dying.

“Oh well,” I said, “At least now I don’t need to wear cycling gloves.”

Sal shuddered and I took a sip of water from my mason jar.

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Here is what I used to know about Victoria:

Tea
Queen
Parliament
Big gardens I could care less about
Buskers (god, I even hate that word)
Boats and water ferries
Bad trip with college boyfriend and his mom involving tea, previously mentioned dumb gardens and a Christmas Shoppe
Tourists!!

Parliament at night. Taken with Yashica T4 on Ilford B&W Film.

Parliament Building and Queen with tourists. Yashica T4/Ilford

Besides the bad college-boyfriend trip of infamy, the last time I was in Victoria was last summer during one of my solo bike tours. I’d ridden north from Portland and had just come across on a ferry. After clearing customs, I was dumped out into a mass of mindless, touristy humanity on the city’s inner harbor. I’ll be honest with you: I freaked out. Then I did what seemed safest – I got on my big, heavy bicycle and pedaled out of town as fast as humanly possible.

It wasn’t really fair to Victoria, but I did what I had to do. The next day I followed the Galloping Goose Trail and connected to the Lochside Trail system to ride up the coast toward the ferry that would take me to Vancouver. It was one of the best days of the tour. The trail took me through farmland and coastline and gravely passages covered in green canopy. It was lovely. And amazing.

I vowed to give Victoria another chance.

That chance came a few days ago, when I paid the old island a visit for a big bike ride with 1500 friendly strangers. (The Tour de Victoria is a 140k ride that covers the most beautiful roads in Victoria and its surrounding towns.)

Bike Boxes Win Friends and Influence People

(Or at least just make good conversation pieces.)

Having never flown alone with my bike before, I commissioned a Bike Packing Boot Camp session from my favorite wrench (that one boy what lives with me in my house and brings me coffee in the morning). After showing me the ropes, he forced me to disassemble, pack and the re-assemble my bike twice to make sure I knew what I was doing. Apparently, I was convincing because he gave me a bike-packing merit badge and dropped me off at the airport.

Traveling with a big bike box seems to draw a lot of attention and most of the conversations I had went like this:

Them: Hey, what’s in that huge box?

Me: Bike. (I enjoyed saying “Bike” instead of “a bike”. As if Bike were a proper noun. It doesn’t take much to amuse me.)

NO WAY! A bike??! What is it like one of those ones that folds up or something?

[Me looking at the HUGE box kinda funny] No, it’s just a regular bike. A road bike.

NO WAY! How did you get it in there?

You have to take it all apart and then stack it together. It’s like a tetris game but with more grease.

Ha! So, you take it apart… like with a wrench?

Yeah, kind of like that. Handlebars and seat and wheels and pedals come off. You take off the derailleur too. (I started to lose them here, so I’d stop talking.)

Well, I’ll be….

From the Famous Last Words Department…

The weather didn’t look very promising when I left Portland, so I packed a fender. If I pack a fender, I reasoned, then it will be sunny for sure!

I was feeling very smug and sneaky the next day when I woke up to a report that said it was going to be partly cloudy and mostly dry during the day of the race. Victoria better be thanking me for my fender black magic, I thought. I turned my two-room, two-balcony suite at the Grand Pacific Hotel into a bike shop and reassembled Bike. Then I moved the coffee maker to the bedstand, set it up and set an alarm for 5:00am. In the morning I rolled over, punched the button and waited for the smell to hit me.

Hotel room bike shop. Yashica T4/Ilford.

When I woke up I thought, It’s a good day for a long bike ride with 1500 strangers.

On the start line I chatted up a lovely couple.
The announcer bellowed and hollered and it was exciting, though I couldn’t quite make out what was being said.
Then a gun went off or a horn blew or something loud happened and we were rolling.
As we went under the starting banner I could finally understand the announcer who said things like, “look at the mass of humanity rolling through downtown Victoria!” and “incredible crowd!” and “Good luck!”

I reached back and patted my pocket to double check my food supplies only to discover that I’d forgotten them in the hotel room.

No worries. The first feed zone is at 40k. I can ride 40k without calories, no problem.

Meat Sticks and Mud

I prefer to ride alone, but when you’re in a recreational group ride, the point is to relish the togetherness and camaraderie. Riding with people is a quintessential cycling experience – an act that bonds us and brings our consciousness beyond our own suffering. I’d come to the ride alone, but I hoped to find a group to call home.

25 kilometers in, I began to yo-yo with a group of three women who were mixed intermittently in with a pod of men. I couldn’t tell exactly where the alliances were, so I stayed close and paid attention. The woman in gray hammered on the flats. The woman in red pulled away on the climbs. Eventually, I introduced myself to the climber and we rode together a while. She stopped for a nature break and I kept riding, eager to find the first feed zone and get some calories rolling.

Eventually, I realized that I’d manage to miss it all together – my computer read 50k and I still hadn’t eaten. No one else had seen it either, so two gentleman took pity on me and fed me. They got me through the worst of the climbs, a section of the route referred to as the Highlands: punchy, steep hills on narrow roads through wooded countryside. Stunning and spooky with sharp turns that sent at least one rider careening over a barrier and down a hillside.

When we emerged from the Highlands, the Climber in Red caught me. We sat up together and waited for her companions and when they arrived she introduced me. We worked together. It started to rain. Hard. We stopped to put on jackets and The Climber fed me cured meat.

“Be careful with that meat!” laughed Gray Vest, “She keeps it in her bra!”

Gray Vest had a name: Mary. Mary the Mountain Biker.

The rain came down harder and when we hit a grade I decided not to let The Climber get away again. I sat on her wheel eating mud and water, then took a shift dragging her up the second half of the hill. Sitting in back while a steady spray came off my back wheel she said, “UFF! I think I liked it better up there!” No one had fenders. It wasn’t supposed to rain.

At the second feed zone (kilometer 75) we filled our bottles with water and our pockets with food. It was the last time we stopped to rest, choosing to blow through the final two feed zones in favor of finishing faster.

We’re Winning

On long rides, I always get better as I go along – it takes me a good 35 miles to really start feeling good. There is a point where the legs begin to feel disconnected from me – almost numb. I look down and they are turning over like pistons – 85 or 90 RPM. Tick, tick, tick, tick. The connection between my body, my bike and the road is seamless and I feel like I can ride forever.

That happened to me this time, but I could tell my group was starting to feel the pain. I started to drop The Climber when the road tilted up. The pace on the flat sections eased a little bit. We chatted and laughed. We hit and off-road gravel section and came out of it looking like battle-weary cyclocross racers, faces and bodies covered in mud.

As we got closer to Victoria, the volunteers who were controlling traffic (a rolling enclosure for a recreational ride – amazing!!) became more and more animated. At the top of a steep but short hill, one ran alongside me, clapping and cheering. The corner marshals told us we looked strong. The cadets who were stationed at each corner throughout Oak Bay cheered like they meant it.

Somewhere up the road in Victoria, Ryder Hesjedal was finished and showered. Here we were straggling in hours later and the crowds made us feel like we were winning.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

By the time we rolled under the finishing banner, we didn’t feel that way anymore. Weary and cold (my companions all had numb hands from wet gloves – it’s worth noting that though my $18 wool DeFeet gloves soaked all the way through, my hands stayed warm until to the bitter end), we rallied a bystander to take a picture of us.

The lens on my phone camera was fogged from condensation and the resulting image says just about everything there was to say about our ride:

This is absolutely the only photo I have from the entire day.

I said my goodbyes, pedaled around to the back of my hotel and took off my outer layer of socks, which was caked in grime. Holding my shoes and socks in one hand and bike in the other I tried (unsuccessfully) to sneak in unnoticed by hotel staff. Luckily, they smiled at me instead of beating me with my own carbon fiber and then making me clean up the watery footprints I was leaving.

In the room I realized I had no recovery food (I didn’t play this nutrition thing very well, huh?) so I scarfed a bar I’d been handed as a promo on the finish line, jumped into a neck-deep tub of hot, hot water and tried not to scream as the embrocation re-ignited to varying degrees of fiery hell. (ok, I admit it, I kinda like it when that happens. Pain is my pleasure.)

One tw0-hour nap and a very muddy sink later I was ready to rock. Ryder Hesjedal and the Tour de Victoria crew hosted a salmon barbeque on the top floor of the Parkside Resort and Spa which was filled with free booze, hot pro cyclists and really, really awesome local cycling advocates and organizers who filled me in on the state of trail projects, the upcoming Bike to Work Week initiative and what it really took to put together a ride like the Tour de Victoria.

Glory stories and celebration were the order of the day.

I walked home exhausted, stopped at a 7-11 for Kinder Eggs and cream for my morning coffee, and then collapsed with the city winking outside the window.

Muddy sink. (Yashica T4/Ilford)

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