when you are turning 30

You think about when you were five. You recall thinking you were going to get married at 22, have your first baby at 24. You were going to have four. That sounded about right to you. But then again, so did catching fairies in empty pickle jars on the back porch. And back then, you were going to be a doctor, a veterinarian, and a lawyer all in this same life. Because you didn’t think you should have to choose.

Then you got to be 22. And you didn’t think about marriage or babies at all. And you weren’t any of those things you imagined being. Instead, you thought about moving west. Because you had never been there. You apply for a newspaper job in the Bay Area. You get it. And then move 3,000 miles to someplace that might as well be the moon. You have no family there. No friends. Just a paycheck every two weeks and your name in print above stories you never thought you’d write.

When you are 26 you live with a man who wants to get married and have babies and live in a single family home in the suburbs of San Francisco. You think this sounds nice. For someone else. So you move out. And you move north. To a city where you have your own room again. Your best friend five blocks away. And you some space to breathe. You fall asleep listening to the sounds of cable cars rattling along Powell Street. You have a long commute. And a job that pays you well enough.

When you are 29 you move to Utah. For a boy you met when you were 28. You decide to leave California because you are getting by but not getting anywhere. You don’t dream about hunting fairies. You don’t play flashlight tag with friends. You don’t really play at all anymore. You realize you aren’t happy enough. And you aren’t really sure how much it will take to get you there. So you move 900 miles to figure it out.

When you are turning 30 you have a new job that requires more than just showing up. You live with a man who walks with you to work every day and kisses you when you part. You learn to make your own pasta. And meatballs. You buy your first pair of cross-country skis and learn how to fight against cancer. You don’t have marriage or kids. Just a feeling that you are a little closer to figuring out what you want to be when you grow up.

bike maintenance: part 3, some things you cannot fix

I prefer quiet birthday celebrations, if anything at all. Maybe some ice cream. Perhaps some cake. I think it stems from childhood when my birthday often fell over spring break. There was no bringing cupcakes to school, no special day set aside for summer and school vacation babies. And having grown up in New England, my birthday often coincided with the largest snowstorm of the year – a day most people elected to stay close to home. I guess I never really grew out of that.

This year I spent my birthday at the final class of my bike maintenance course, learning how to repair my brakes and true my wheel – an act requiring patience, and the ability to listen to what your bike is telling you. Truing a wheel is locating the point most out of balance and making fine adjustments. Listening and knowing that improvements are only halfway. They are about meeting in the middle – the right way to compromise to become stronger. Truing a wheel is restoring balance to something that can never be perfect, to something that struggles to remain unified under the pressure you put upon it.

Over the course of my class I learned that bicycle maintenance is whatever you need it to be. It is teaching you how to remain upright, teaching you how to be safe. It is teaching you that even if something isn’t pretty, isn’t just so, that it doesn’t mean it’s not good enough, that it can’t get you where you need to go. You just might have to pedal harder to get there.

I needed bike maintenance to be about getting me into shape. To be about putting me up on a rack and looking my chains in the eye and recognizing that parts of me are rusty, parts of me are broken, parts of me need fixing. I could ignore them. Could ride it out until the spokes fail, until the wheel gives out beneath me. Or, I could make some changes. Test my limits. Recalibrate. And set myself true. Make small adjustments and expect incremental changes.

On the way home the streets were deserted and I smiled thinking about how I’d spent the evening. It was only fitting that I would catch up with my past on Church Street, at the point where the rails of the N Judah intersect. Although I have tried avoiding it for years, the fact is, there are just some people you are supposed to know in this life. Some people that you constantly find yourself crossing paths with even when you don’t want to. People who you listen to their stories, and know their wheels are out of true, even if what they say is nothing at all. Because there are some things you must feel to know. And some parts you cannot fix.

So even though you can see the spokes beginning to pull away from their wheels, even though you can tell they really need to participate in the life of their bike, you part knowing they are going to risk it, while you are stopping, flipping your bike onto its back, and watching as they pedal away, seeing how far they can get without you.