Last fall I returned to Memphis to look after my mom following surgery to repair her tricuspid heart valve. Aging, I can say, is not for the faint of heart. And because she’s my mom, well, I see a side of her that only her children could ever see. Despite that, I enjoy my time with her. After dinner, we linger at the table and talk about the things that matter to us. On this visit we talked a bit about the things that she thinks she’s done for the last time, like vote for president. That puts an upward stop on expectations, and embracing that reckoning isn’t easy.
One of the things that conversation caused me to do was to think about how I project into the future, and wonder just how many years of riding I have ahead of me.
That led me to a line of thought that I suppose will be surprising to some folks, but I’m neurodivergent, so it made perfect sense to me. If I want to maximize the riding time I have left, that means more riding in unpleasant conditions. Cold weather, wet weather, days where your sense of sanity surveys the landscape and reports back, “Yeah, like inside. Inside good.”
I can illustrate this in a microcosm of my own behavior. In November I went for a ride at Tiger Mountain. It was raining and the temperature didn’t rise out of the 40s; at the top of the mountain the temperature was in the 30s. It was a decidedly crappy day for cycling. It was so wet that when I reached this one steep downhill pitch that is tiled with rock—a constructed feature, to be sure—I had to exhale through the fear to drop down the face. Even in dry conditions, each time I roll up the ramp to the short tabletop before the drop, I must work to avoid hitting the brakes because I know how that downslope is going to look when my eyes first spy the pitch.
On this occasion the rock was the wettest I’d seen and I believed that if I even tapped my brakes my tires would lose traction and I would land, rather than roll. So, I said a little prayer to Maxxis, hoping that my Minions would maintain traction. The tires gripped like they were on asphalt. That didn’t prevent me from hyperventilating after reaching the bottom and feeling an unpleasant adrenal surge.
That I’ll push through more fear than I could stomach on the daily makes an implicit statement. It’s fair to ask why I was so desperate to ride there. Here’s a clue: When I saved the ride to Strava, I titled it, “Last Tiger ride of the year?” There aren’t many places on earth where I love the riding so much that I’ll go out no matter what the weather.
As I drove home after the ride, I recalled how when Ernest Hemingway’s novel “Islands in the Stream” was published, one of a number of works published posthumously, there was enormous debate on releasing a book to the public that the author didn’t think met his standard of quality. My mom and I listened to a story on NPR that detailed the furor. After it was over, I asked my mom why people would go against the author’s wishes and market something he didn’t want out in the world.
What she said to me was something I’ll never forget. I’m paraphrasing here, but in essence she said, “When you love someone, you want to be with them even when they aren’t at their best. You want to be with them every hour of the day and you look past whatever faults you find because what you love makes the rest worthwhile.”
What I didn’t appreciate at the time was how she was defining unconditional love, the love of no-matter-what, of all-in. To say that I love cycling unconditionally rings trite, so obvious as to cause me to roll my eyes.
As I mentioned, I’m neurodivergent, which is to say my personal relationships are bumpier than I, and those around me, would like. But one of the things my wiring has given me is a real ability to love unconditionally, to see the people in my life, and like that cold, rainy day at Tiger, and say, I love you. Period.