Write it on your heart

Are you fascinated by other people’s New Year resolutions? Naw, not me, either. But you can’t help thinking about it this time of year, can you? The media is in our faces with resolutions that are made and not kept and they’re all so predictable.

Mine is: don’t change a thing this year. I think it’s the first time ever that I haven’t had some major aspect of life to repair/renovate/retrieve and I couldn’t be happier. The thing is, I didn’t consciously make all of the changes that add up to what’s going right for me. That’s because lot of it had to do with letting go.

Four years ago we were under the Sydney harbor bridge for New Year’s Eve. I was a magazine editor enjoying a decent salary after a 20-year climb in my career but not happy with lots of things in my life. I thought I was near the top of my game professionally but was juggling like mad to deal with family stuff, never having enough time to really enjoy the fruits of my labor. That all changed a few months later as I was laid off and my magazine shut down due to the economy. For two years I struggled to get back into the game while biking, running and exploring away the unwanted free time. The tumult turned out to be a gift in disguise.

I accepted the first full-time job I was offered, and despite it being technical and tedious and having nothing to do with my career in journalism, it is the best thing that could have happened to me. It took a while to make the transition but the hardest part was shutting up and learning to enjoy the benefits. It’s work-from-home and completely flexible, allowing me to take a laptop on the road to pursue adventures anywhere, or to check in with the fish on the bay rather than being tethered to a desk just about anytime I feel like it. It has freed me from the professional aggravation of climbing a corporate ladder or sitting in an office on a sunny day that’s perfect for being outside. I’m still putting money away for retirement, but I’m not putting off enjoying life.

Emerson said, “Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.” And that’s what I’m doing.

Could I have made these changes consciously? Probably not. The Kool-Aid has been in my system since birth, telling me to pursue corporate success but not really justifying the servitude. Now I am learning to look at situations that we assume are “normal” and asking whether I want to take that route. It took major upheaval to alter the path of my life, but it was a good kick in the pants. I just wish it had happened sooner.

I wasn’t ready for my life’s path to veer off-track but now I am glad it did.

My road to riches

It’s easy to make January 1 a day of reflection and reassessment. We always think of it in terms of joining a gym, trying to stay in touch with friends, or traveling more in the coming year. Yesterday was Thanksgiving, another opportunity to reflect on who and what we have.

Thanks to a deep vein of attention deficit disorder, to me every day is a combination of New Year’s Day and Thanksgiving. I’m constantly reassessing, looking for new opportunities, turning over more leaves than a landscaping crew. Enriching my skipping from one activity to another is gratitude, a recent theme.  Rather than mindlessly charging into activities, the presence of gratitude has changed every run or bike or paddle, and every sunset, every kiss, every colorful flower I see.

Before you wonder if I’ve been consuming wild mushrooms, read on.

It all started last spring when I was in a hotel room in Hoboken, looking forward to a day of exploring Manhattan by myself on my old bike, following my whims and my wheels around the city. That’s when I learned that my first childhood friend, Scott, had been killed in a car accident.

I hadn’t thought of Scott much in years, hadn’t seen him in a long time. So it’s a little twisted to think of him now nearly every day. But he was taken unexpectedly in an accident on a familiar road near his home, leaving daughters about the same ages as mine. At his wake it took hours to get through the line to his wife and parents next to his casket, and I passed the time chatting with “kids” we’d grown up with, played touch football, street hockey and truth-or-dare with.

It took months for the reality to settle in that someone healthy, my age, and absolutely treasured by a loving family could be snatched from life. Somehow that horror mellowed into gratitude that has become part of my everyday thinking.

Now when I’m out on a trail and have to stop and spend a minute enjoying the way the light is filtering through the leaves or a bright bloom of color on a plant, I think of him. I think of Scott when I’m alone on the water, just enjoying the rhythm of my paddle and the ripples alongside the bow of my board. When my daughters smile or laugh it has new meaning to me.

That day in New York was all about remembering him and the way we played together as kids. I pedaled for miles, lost in memories of the years he and I spent together. He had an uncanny ability to imitate old style police sirens, so we always had to play Adam-12 on our bikes, up and down the street, investigating “break-ins” by the mailboxes and pretending the space under the neighbor’s forsythia bushes was the squad headquarters. We built forts in the woods, played endless games of street hockey and basketball, got jobs at the same place when we were 14.

At his wake I learned that he and his family had rented a house every summer in Edgartown, overlooking the area where my family frequently anchored our boat. We worked in the same industry. He had just taken his oldest to visit his alma mater, the college where my youngest are now freshmen. We might have passed each other on the street many times, shuttling our daughters to practices and to visit our parents.

Instead of a greedy pursuit of my “bucket list” items, bagging peaks or charging down a trail without taking time to look around at the beauty there, I am now proceeding through every day with gratitude. Life is precious. I plan to enjoy every moment, every opportunity, every beautiful vista I have left to see.

A hardcore hit

So, what’s middle age got to do with it, anyway? Those of us who’ve gotten a second wind in athletic pursuits over 40 don’t want to slow down, dammit, we’re going faster and harder now. Trying to prove something? Lots of people will toss out the idea of “midlife crisis” but maybe we’re enjoying pushing a little harder on the limits because we’re mentally tougher now, having been through a bit of what life can throw at us: raising kids, changing careers, family crises, illnesses, divorce. And maybe we know this level of physical activity won’t last forever but we’re going to enjoy it while we can. It’s sweeter now.

And then this happens:

a friend’s spine that’s been pinned back together

Yup, that’s an inside look at someone near and dear to me, someone who crashed during a pretty hardcore bike accident. Those are, in fact, rods and screws holding her spine together. And wow, does it give me pause.

My initial reaction to the accident was, “damned unlucky to break a wrist with so much of the season yet to go.” Then the MRI results were added to the news and it got worse. And even when visiting in the hospital and seeing her in a Gladiator-looking body cast afterward it didn’t really sink in. There are months of limited mobility ahead, perhaps she will return to some level of normal activity by mid-winter, I was told. Yet nothing really sank in until I saw the x-ray. It actually gave me nightmares, flashbacks to all of my ungraceful near-crashes and endos that had thus far resulted in nothing worse than bruises and palpitations. What if my luck ran out too?

I’ve always been an advocate of the rope swing approach: jump and the net will appear. But maybe this changes things a bit. I’m still in shock, really, but wondering if my significant other is right when he says to be gentler to my joints and bones by emphasizing the lower-impact and less-dangerous things in life. I can no longer write his advice off as irrelevant because I’m younger; maybe I even have more at stake.

The shock I’m experiencing could be an infusion of wisdom that had been lacking. I can still enjoy what I do but I can never erase that image from my mind, and that’s going to govern the speed of my wheels and whether I jump headlong into uncharted territory. That’s a gift I didn’t ask for but will not refuse.

I got a gearache

Where the hell is the snow? It’s January, and as much as I love my bikes, I miss my skis. When I’m out running or riding the trails, I find myself daydreaming about moving through snowy woods in a different, more graceful way. Getting out for hours, pushing through untouched powder and enjoying the snow’s blanketing silence refreshes the soul. But those skis are sitting high and dry this year.

Still, biking on 40 degree days in winter is nothing a New Englander dare complain about. We know worse. In other years, we’ve prayed for 40 degree days in April so we can break the bike out of the garage for the first ride of the year. In other winters, we wouldn’t be out running in a single layer of Techwick in January. Right now, it’s different: I’d love to retire the bikes and running shoes for a while.

When I’m able to set my bike aside for a few months of skiing, it’s like new when I go back to it. Sadly, it’s difficult to get excited about either of them these days. Familiarity breeds contempt: I chuckled at the irony of using a battleship chain-like Kryptonite cable to lock my 20-plus-year-old Cannondale up at the trailhead while I ran today. I could probably leave the bike leaned against a tree and nobody in this town would look twice at it, I thought. As much fun as they are, my bikes are best described as “classics” — more than a little dated, and showing some wear.

can't be too careful with this gem

My Giant has been a war horse on the trails for months longer than it really should without a tune-up. When is there time? It’s on the rack and back out for heavy use again and again, now with mismatched tires (I am not a purist) and other semi-malfunctioning-but-not-quite-broken components. In past years it was fun to bust it out midwinter to try riding on the snow (mixed success and some spectacular spills). This year, after adding so many more weeks to the usual riding season — as much as I love it — it’s beginning to feel a little like work.

January in New England shouldn't look like this.

I don’t mind the shoveling. A few days of snow might be enough to quench this need. Without snow, I don’t know what I may do. God help me, I could become a climber.

A little problem

My name is Alison. I have a gear habit and it’s gaining on me.

It started with socks. No joke. Once I got turned on to good socks, there was no going back.

Next, I needed new backcountry skis and boots. I learned the pleasures of powerstretch fabrics and I sank deeper. I needed a Thule hitch-mounted bike carrier, clip-in pedals, polarized sunglasses … the more I acquired, the more stuff I needed to feed my habit.

Pretty soon, my sleek little sportscar became a rolling gear locker. I never imagined that it would be full to the windows with camping stuff, biking stuff, water jugs to refill my camelbak and … firewood?? Sure, that was a rather frenetic weekend of camping and mountain biking and working (with luxurious spa-like bathing thanks to the sink in the ladies room at the store), but there’s never a day when I’m not dipping into the back seat for my running shoes, my comfortable after-sport flip-flops, some almonds, my bike helmet…

view of the back seat at the height of my addiction

And where would I have been that day early in the season when having my climbing harness in the car enabled the rescue of a loose halyard that had flown to the top of the mast on the sailboat? I’m sure that wasn’t among its intended uses, but when you don’t have a bosun’s chair handy, you make do. That justifies carting the stuff around, in my opinion.

To the kid who asked for a ride then had the nerve to sniff and say, “Mom, your car is starting to smell … sporty.” I say you should hope to have so much to enjoy about life in 30 years.

Now … I’ve had my eye on that Sprinter Stick to add to my hoard. It’s great for sore hamstrings, calves and even hip flexors. Question is, do I buy two: one for the house and one for the car? Hmmm…

the Sprinter Stick, my next acquisition

Getting Up There

Been running a lot. Haven’t touched the road bike in … a couple months? It’s been a time to go back and enjoy the mountain bike trails I like most, and expand my trail running to a steady pace I can hold for 90 minutes. But that gets boring too. So, when the opportunity arose to try something new and different, I climbed aboard.

Last weekend I found myself atop a 20-foot-ish rock face with a beautiful view of … the Chestnut Hill Mall in Newton. And I was wearing a dominatrix-style belt and ballerina shoes. Whoa, bad dream? Actually, it was a dream come true.

While I’d been rock climbing indoors this fall, I craved the challenge of outdoor climbing. At work, I’m surrounded by climbers who leave their homes before dawn to get in a climb before their shift. I wish I could articulate what it is about climbing that’s so attractive to me: the risk? the self-challenge? the need for a ridiculous amount of new gear?

along with 100-foot sections of shock cord, harnesses, special shoes, helmets, crash pads... you can never have too many carabiners

My intro to outdoor climbing came at the hands of fellow EMS employees and guide Luke Foley at Hammond Pond reservation in Newton. I had to look at the directions twice: isn’t that the parking lot for the mall? Yes, indeed. And I could see Macy’s clearly from the top of the rock. Crazy.

Yet for all of the counter-culture hipness and youthful vibe of climbing, there’s nothing haphazard or left to chance when there’s corporate liability resting on the shoulders of a guy like Luke who plays for a living. Hence the helmets, harnesses, new rope, and triple anchors. Contrast that with the guy who walked over to the rock next to us, took off his shoes and proceeded to climb without a net/crash pad.

Punctuating the grunting, scraping and cursing of climbing was a lot of information about doing it right. Almost too much. We ascended the rock on foot three or four times to learn new anchor techniques and uses for all of that gear that Luke carries. There’s an anchor for climbing over the top, anchor gear that looks like medical devices, and decisions to make about the strength of trees that virtually every climber in suburban Boston has tied a rope to. And we tried a couple different belaying devices, sometimes anchoring to a tree at the bottom so the belayer didn’t get airborne if a climber fell. All good to know.

the anchor that lets you get over the top

No, I don’t remember all of the clove hitches and tricky stuff he did with the ropes. I was focused on getting up the rock without smearing my face against it, using the vertical cracks to my advantage without breaking an ankle in the process.

when you only have cracks to anchor to... the little pieces of gear all start to make sense

for all of its counter-culture hipness, I was happy to see prudence and security holding the other end of the rope (triple anchoring in cracks)

What a way to spend a beautiful Saturday in fall. I’m thinking this could be fun… and I’m thinking ice climbing could be in my future too!

Mitch going up the crack

me going over the top