Somewhere along the way, before we had the kids, we bought a tandem.  For those readers who do not speak bicycle, a tandem is a bicycle-built-for-two.  We’ve been asked if we are planning to ride the tandem to Florida.

No.

Technically, we think taking the tandem would be a bad idea.  For one, there would only be one bike, and if that one bike breaks down, we would be stuck.  With 2 bikes, if one bike breaks down, the other bike can go for help. Two bikes also means more room for the panniers and other equipment.  And the tandem is a very heavy, cumbersome piece of equipment.  Carrying it up and down stairs, fitting it into elevators, and hiding it in parking lots is always a challenge.

Personally, I would feel somewhat cheated after riding 2200 miles on the back of the tandem.  On a tandem, the front rider is the captain, and the rear rider is the stoker.  Since the captain has to hold the entire weight of the bike and the stoker whenever you stop, it makes sense that the stronger and heavier rider be the captain.  I don’t mind being the stoker until someone sees us and yells “Hey honey, getting a free ride back there?” or “Make her do some work back there, she’s just slouching!”  And since the stoker pedals as much as the captain, this stoker wants some credit, thank you very much.  

Then there’s the fact that, at least in the past, our tandem was a rolling argument.  There’s always something to argue about on the tandem – either Dana thinks I’m not pushing hard enough, or I want him to warn me before we hit a big bump.  But in our early days of tandem riding, we spent the entire time arguing about his kids.

This is the second marriage for both of us, and while I had no children in my first marriage, Dana had 3.  When we first got together, Lauren was 6, Brian was 4, and Tim was 2.  As difficult as raising kids can be, raising part-time step-kids is by far more frustrating and challenging. 

Divorce is hard for kids.  They have to move between households, constantly adjusting to different rules and different parenting styles, and be the sounding boards for 2 hurt and angry adults.  When a kid from an intact family asks for a new toy, he may be told no, but when a child of divorce asks for the same toy, he may set off a multi-household argument peppered with terms like lawyer, lost visitation, and restraining order.

While I cared deeply about the kids, I had no control over their behavior, and no say in their activities.  Fun times always ended abruptly.  Bad times seemed to linger into the week, since there was no time to resolve anything.  So I would voice my concerns on the tandem, and Dana would defend his kids, and I would tell him to stop defending them and start raising them, and things generally got worse from there.  (I was going to say “went downhill from there”, except that on a bike, downhill is good, and those arguments were not good.)

We no longer argue when we ride the tandem, and The Rolling Argument has become an endearing name for it.  I’m also proud to report that, now that the kids are adults, we all have a great relationship.  We socialize with them, and I think we have found a pleasant family/friend place that we are all comfortable with.  All 5 kids get along great, and view each other as siblings, a blessing I do not take for granted. I credit all 7 of us from coming out of those early years intact and happy.

Of course, the big villain in any such story is the stepmother.  In all the fairy tales we read as children, was there ever a nice stepmother?  The kids laugh when I refer to myself as their evil stepmother, but sadly, the term rolls off our tongues way too easily.  In defense of all stepmothers, I’m thinking of writing a prequel to Cinderella.

In my story, Cinderella will show up for the weekend and complain that the food and the TV are better at mom’s house.  She will inform her nice stepmother that said stepmother is not allowed to touch her or talk to her because mommy says that she is a bad person.  She will remove random objects from her stepmother’s home, accusing the stepmother of stealing them from “nice mommy”.  And she will begin every statement with “mommy says”.

And then the nice stepmother will go through a musical, magical transformation, during which she will turn purple and grow fangs.  I’m totally seeing Disney here, right?

I was dreading getting back on my bike last week.

Last summer, I usually rode either after work, or to and from work. But in the spring, it isn’t warm enough in the morning or evening, so I decided to try riding mid-day from work. I can’t take my bike in my normal car, so on Tuesday I packed up my gear and my bike in our (very) old mini-van. Then I planned a route from my office, and watched the hourly weather forecast and my schedule of meetings. At 3:00 I set out for my first ride of the year.

[My normal car, by the way, is a Honda S2000 roadster. It’s sleek and small, a 2-seater convertible. It hugs the road… Carolyn hates it – she calls it the “stupid car” or “the snowflake” – I call it the “fun car”. She prefers the minivan, which can hold a household full of what she calls furniture and I call crap. She refuses to believe that you can even fit a week’s worth of groceries in my trunk. Which you totally can! Carolyn adds: if you don’t plan on much cooking that week.]

Right off the bat, there were annoyances on my ride – I forgot to bring my sun glasses, the fancy new helmet intercom wouldn’t sync with my phone to play music, and I couldn’t find my full finger bike gloves. (I think one of the kids stole took them, but I’ll never know.) These annoyances were quickly overshadowed by the pain of struggling up the first hill out of the office complex. In the end I managed to slog through 10 miles and ended up cutting the ride short. Sigh.

It was during this ride that I finally realized that the reason my foot hurt was because my bike shoes were pinching my foot. And since the shoes lock into my pedals, they have to be aligned correctly or I’ll develop other aches and pains and injuries. So I decided to get new shoes and get a complete bike fit at the same time. I scheduled one for the next day.

Of course, the weather that next day was beautiful, but with taking time out of work for the bike fit, I didn’t have time for a ride. The bike fit, however, was great – I was gratified that I had the bike set up just about perfectly in the back (seat and pedals), and was surprised by the suggestion to get wider and higher handle bars. I had been thinking of raising them a bit, but had never considered widening them – something that seems to have come into fashion in the 23 years since I bought my bike. The guy at the shop set me up on a trainer with the higher and wider bars, and I really liked the result. Perhaps this will fix the pain I get in my right shoulder while riding (it’s only been bothering me for 40 years).

It being spring, the bike shop is very busy. They estimated a week to change the handlebars, so I decided to do it myself. It really isn’t hard, but it’s a pain to take off the bar tape, brakes, and mount for the front pack and remount it all on the new bar. The hardest bit was the retraining cable for the front pack mount – it is a standard braided wire cable and the end frayed a bit – I had to tin it with some solder to be able to feed it back through the locking bolt.

Thursday I tried riding again – I did the same little 10 mile loop and felt much better. I found my sunglasses, and I charged the helmet intercom so that I could listen to my music – listening to music while I ride really makes it much more enjoyable for me. Again I cut off the ride at 10 miles, but at least it did not kill me like it had on Tuesday.

Friday was supposed to rain so I drove the Snowflake and didn’t bring my bike to work, but I kept looking out the window and it was sunny and nice outside. I decided to leave work early, go home and ride and then work from home for the rest of the afternoon. Once I was on the bike and on “home turf” I decided to do one of my regular routes – a 20 mile route. I was sorely tempted to cut it short, but managed to finish the whole route – at a pathetic pace, but I felt good finishing it. I think if the weather holds out, I’ll be feeling much better in just a couple of weeks.

Speaking of TV and college… (and not really about biking)

When I was in college, my roommate and I loved to read Good Housekeeping magazine.   We would cut our afternoon classes and go to the corner store, where we would purchase milk, Freihofer chocolate chip cookies, and the latest issue of GH.  Then we’d rush back to our apartment and settle into our under-furnished, roach-infested living room.  As we devoured cookies and guzzled milk straight from the container, we studied our magazine, learning how to save our marriages, bake tuna casserole, and help our children resolve problems on the school bus.  We did not consider this to be a frivolous waste of time; we were preparing for the future.

We had a plan.  After graduating from college (even though we had cut all of our afternoon classes), we were both going to get married and buy houses in a cozy New England village.  Then we would each have 2 children (a boy and a girl, same ages and same order, of course), and we would happily sit by the fire, watching the snow fall gently on the windows.  And while our toddlers babbled happily in the corner, we would sip our General Foods International coffee.

That was my coffee commercial dream, which, sadly, never came true.  Then again, neither did any of my commercial dreams…

As a child, I had the toy commercial dream, where I have this really cool toy, like a Barbie, and I have some really cool stuff to go with it, like a Dream House and a beauty parlor.  And I have lots of friends, all of whom also have Barbies and her cool accessories, and they all come to my house every day, and bring all of their Barbie stuff, and we play happily together for hours.

I had a Barbie doll, of course, but I was never allowed to get the Dream House because, as my mother said about every really cool toy, “it’s too expensive and it’s crap”.  And although I once had a few friends over to play Barbie, we only did so for about 5 minutes, after which we spent the rest of the afternoon fighting over who broke the Barbie hairdryer.

Of course, I outgrew the Barbie dream, and moved onto the soda commercial dream, which rapidly matured into the beer commercial dream.  These dreams involved doing lots of really cool stuff with lots of really cool people.  Like spending a day at the beach horseback riding, playing volleyball, surfing, and having a clambake.  Or skiing all day, getting all cozy and rosy-cheeked, then sitting around a fire wearing trendy ski sweaters.   And drinking bottle after bottle of soda.  Or beer. 

Responsibly of course.  Always drink responsibly.

But alas, none of my commercial dreams came true – not the toys nor the soda nor the beer nor the coffee.  And now that I’m middle aged, and I watch very little TV and even fewer commercials (thank you TiVo), there are only a few commercial dreams left for me.  There are the 2 nice old ladies playing Bingo and discussing whether they can afford to pay their husbands’ funeral expenses.  There are people who are able to walk on the beach and play with their grandchildren because they take meds with labels like “fast-acting” and “arthritis-strength”.  There are rugged, good-looking men sitting with their wives in side-by-side bathtubs.  (I think I recognize one of those guys from an old beer commercial.)

And my personal favorite… a body in motion stays in motion.  Well, we are going to be in motion.  Non-stop.  For 2200 miles.  Bring on the fast-acting arthritis-strength pain relief!