Bikemum

Here we go again.

I am safe and warm, sitting at my dining room table on the first wet, raw day of autumn. My toes are a bit damp from shuffling through the wet grass on a dog walk that I took several hours ago-other than that I am dry and feeling rather contented.

I have the house to myself and, truth be told, just binge-watched my secret addiction, “Grey’s Anatomy.” I am embarrassed to admit that publicly. It is my Diet Pepsi-sweet and full of saccharin with absolutely zero health benefits-but I find it delicious just the same.

My dogs are sleeping on the couch, which I allow to happen when my husband is not home and one of them,Georgie, is kicking his feet spasmodically in his sleep, chasing a chipmunk, I am sure. I have all this, yet I am choosing to leave it again.

On January 3rd, I will fly to Montevideo, Uruguay and attempt to bicycle solo from there, across the grassy Pampas, up over the Andes, and down to the coast of Chili. Hopefully I will cycle 1,350 miles and this time, I am going alone.

I have a rudimentary, if that, understanding of Spanish, I have never been to South America, and I am making up the route based on researching blogs of people who have gone before me and studying maps. There are no guide books for this adventure. I am flinging myself out there again, and tonight, it feels like I am wearing a reversible shirt-one that can change from fear and anxiety to excitement and gratefulness in the wisp of a breeze.

One of my children questioned my motives for this trip recently, and for that I love them. They questioned why I feel compelled to up the anti and go so far and so alone. Why I feel driven to feel afraid rather than safe. Why I don’t allow myself to just feel comfortable. These are great questions, and after thinking about them, here are my answers.

Life is dangerous business. The provincial trip to the grocery store could get you killed. An aneurysm could stop you in your tracks. Cancer lurks. There is plenty to be afraid of. But, I don’t want unfounded fear to keep me tethered and hold me back from engaging with this world.

At 53 years old, I feel like I have been given a gift. The hot flashes that burned through me during menopause ignited something. They woke me up, shouting, “Now is the time! Wake up! What next? What will you do with this burning power?” Walking through midlife, I see that there are new choices all around me. My children don’t need me in the same way and there are new career options, new ways to reconnect with what is important, and a chance to reflect. There is also an inner strength and confidence that has grown through navigating life’s challenges. I have learned that I am capable.

I don’t believe that there is anything to fear where I am going that isn’t here. The people in South America are not more dangerous than the people in my own backyard. They are just regular people; dentists and shop clerks, mothers and teachers, children and coaches. The drivers on the roads there are not more uncaring about human life, than drivers here. I would like to meet the people there and see how they live and how they view the world.

The wind does not blow harder in Argentina than in Kansas, nor does the rain fall heavier there than in Oregon. The mountains still rise up from the plains at the same rate whether in the Andes or the Rockies. My legs will get just as tired as they do here. But, it will look different. There will be different plants and animals, different vistas and valleys, and different people.

And why do I want to go alone? So that I don’t make small talk to pass the time, and avoid speaking to strangers. When it comes to speaking a foreign tongue, if given the opportunity, I definitely keep my tongue tied behind tight lips and and insecure grin -I want to have to learn. Going solo will make me have to speak to locals.

Also, being alone will give my mind time to wander and to miss home-which I will-my heart will long for it and longing has it’s own sweetness.

I like picking up a fear and spinning it around and looking at with eyes wide open. Where are the truths and biases there? What is rational and irrational? What dangers do I really avoid by staying here and biking to work every day?

I also know how much more comfortable my couch will be after sitting on rocks for a month and how much warmer hugs will feel after being alone…and how much more I will enjoy Diet Pepsi and “Grey’s Anatomy” after missing them.

I will keep on adventuring and uping the anti so that I keep learning. That is what learning is right? Every test builds on what you learned before.

When I am finished I will come home and I will fall fully into it. I love it here. I love my friends and family and my sleeping dogs. Now though, it is time to study some Spanish.

I am sitting in my shop alone with my feet up. Way up. I am tired, but content and full of anticipation about what comes next.

This blog post isn’t a story-it is more of an announcement. I had the good fortune of spending two days with Marielle Segarra from NPR’s Marketplace and she has created a profile piece about my son and my bicycle trip across the United States, my book “Changing Gears“, and how it all inspired the opening of Lighthouse Bikes. I am positively giddy.

I guess I had no idea where I was really heading when I decided to take off on a bicycle journey with my son Oakley, but maybe that is part of her interest in the story. Sometimes taking chances is the only way forward. And the truth is, I couldn’t be happier than to have landed here-sharing the joy of bicycling, adventure and the outdoors while getting to interact with many good people everyday.

And Oakley? He is doing great. Growing up. I miss him and that is a good thing. He is becoming more independent and standing on his own two feet more-it is all I ever wanted, but our adventure has remained the fulcrum of our relationship. It has wound us together and I hope it will never let it go.

If you are interest-please listen-I haven’t heard it yet, so it could be really humiliating, but I am good with that. I have a tendency to put it all out there.

I forgot my helmet tonight. There are worse things, riskier things, but never-the-less, I am sorry. I am aware that I am not leading a good example, as I pedal across the Casco Bay Bridge in the half-dark, coming home from Lighthouse Bikes, but I feel like I am getting away with something and it feels delicious. The colors of the sky are deepening from violet to purple and the air is holding the warmth from a sultry, summer day. It is tempered though, by a gentle breeze that wafts up from the Fore River far below me. It lightens the night’s humidity and makes me feel like I am floating. My hair tickles the bare shoulders of my tank-top clad back, as it is blown about in mini zephyrs-a helmetless delight that I know we can all remember.

Marielle Segarra from Marketplace on NPR just left. She spent the last two days with me working on a profile piece for a broadcast named “The Calling.” It is about people have heeded a calling to switch careers and what that process was like for them. She has aired one in the series about a man working in retail that became a marble maker, another about a nude model who decided it was time to accept his body rather than hide it away and another about a financier, turned professional pianist. All of these people were actively engaged in different professions before something happened that activated them to make a major change. I feel like the thing that I have in common with them is that we were all ignited by people in our lives who encouraged, cheered, supported and understood us, and perhaps, we were willing to take a risk.

It is the feeling of all this support that has left me feeling heady and forgetful. As I ride across the bridge, I am almost afraid to feel such happiness. Almost scared to believe that all the events of the past few years have led me here to this bridge, to this night. All those mountain passes my teenage son and I climbed as we rode across the United States, all the fear that I was awash in again and again-the wild dogs, the cold, the storms-all the emotional intensity I experienced with my son both before, during and after our adventure, and all my own teenage years of feeling like I didn’t fit in. In fact all the wanderings and wonderings of my life, led here.

And it wouldn’t have. Not a chance. Not without friends and family saying, “Do it. You will find your way. You are capable.”

And not without the kindness of all the strangers out there giving us water, rides and places to sleep, and kind words, as we cycled past. And not without people telling me, “You have a book here, something worth saying.” It is because of them that I wrote, “Changing Gears”, and I have not shut up since. (Perhaps they wish I would!)

I realize that I am a bit overly involved with myself right now, “Feeling my oats.” as my father used to say when I was feeling proud and walking with a swagger, but all I really want is for us ALL to feel our oats and to eat up this life. We have all overcome all sorts of challenges and should feel good and encouraged by our resilience.

So, where do these feelings leave me? Of course I want to do it again and again and again. Why wouldn’t I? If challenge and support lead here-to the top of the bridge feeling like I might float away on the most beautiful night ever-why would I ever stop? But, I also want to make sure that I am the kind stranger for other people too, because you never know where a ride or a water or kind words may lead them. The possibilities are incredible.

“The Calling” will be aired in the first two weeks of August. You know far too well that I will let you know the exact date and time as soon as I have it. I am a blabber mouth after all.

• I am excited to bike across South America this winter and would love to hear from anyone who has experience doing such a trip. Chili to Uruguay.

The air is soft. There are swirling little eddies of cool breeze that lap at me and the warm sun seems to coax suppleness from my skin. I had big plans for today, but they are not happening. It is my first day off in what seems like forever. Lighthouse Bikes is hopping, and I have been happily leading tours, changing flats and managing the business nonstop. My book “Changing Gears” is doing well, and I have had a lot of fun giving book talks and reliving Oakley and my bicycle adventure across the United States, but all this has left me a bit exhausted. So today, instead of the big bicycle adventure I had planned, I am tootling around my backyard-harvesting broccoli, scratching my dogs ears and finding that just about anything else seems to be too much effort-except daydreaming-but I am daydreaming big.

Once again I am throwing my hat over the wall and announcing my next adventure to the world at large. This kind of commitment and the threat of public humiliation works for me-it is very motivating. It is not that I don’t yearn for these adventures, it is that without a commitment, life can get in the way-far too easily.

So, here it goes. This coming January, I am hoping to bicycle from Montevideo, Uruguay to Santiago, Chili. We will cross South America from East to West, first pedaling through the Pampas and then hitting the Andes Mountains when our legs are good and strong. I hear it is bafflingly beautiful. And this time, I hope to have a new traveling partner-my oldest son Finn.

He is exactly half my age and he started this whole adventure-parenting thing when he popped into this world 26 years ago. I took him on endless Forced Family Fun expeditions when he was little and I have been waiting for a chance to adventure with him as an adult forever, but he has been too busy. He is hardy, game, competent, compassionate and a great companion. I would love him even if he weren’t my son.

I spoke with Finn about this idea for the first time yesterday and, much to my delight, his eyes lit up and he grinned the same grin he has had since he was a child-it belies a little embarrassment that his excitement has broken through and has shown even when he is trying to be sanguine. He thinks he might be able to take the three-weeks or so off from work that will be necessary complete the route, and if he starts saving now…I just about did a back flip.

Can we pull this off? I think so. I hope so. We will seriously need to brush up on our Spanish and get our legs and bikes in shape. But what better things do I have to do this fall and what an incredible opportunity to share with my son? Will this chance ever come again?

It will be windy, the Andes will be tall, it will rain and we will ache, we will probably get on each other’s last nerve, but the people we will meet and the things we will see and the learning our adventure will bring will be worth every inch. I am over the top excited to hit the trail again.

But, not today. Today, I sit in my backyard and lallygag. Maybe I will put some laundry away-probably not. Maybe I will bike around the island or eat a peach. The air is too sweet to do much else.

Tonight, I stand in front of a room of twenty strangers who have come to hear me give a book talk. I am nervous, but excited to relive my adventure once again by telling tales, showing slides and sharing a chapter from my book “Changing Gears.” It is funny that I used to be so terrified about public speaking and now, it seems easy, playful even.

This is the first time I am presenting without Oakley at my side. Two days ago, we dropped him off to work as a maintenance assistant at a summer camp. True to form we decided to send him off with a long, 14-mile hike in the White Mountains, and today I am staggering around like a duck who needs knee replacements.

I am happy to have him off on his own. It is time for us to both work on our independence. The night we left him, we slept in a little cabin at the camp where he will be staying. I was more than ready to head to bed after our hike, but the moonlight was beckoning, so we ambled out to an open field to let it wash over us. At our backs, the woods rose up and Oak and Maple leaves rustled peacefully in the warm breeze. Before us, new hay stood at attention, seemingly in reverence for the rising full moon, so we followed it’s lead. Fireflies danced along the margin of the field and forest.

“I need this.” said Oakley “This is perfect.”

He is right, it is perfect. This summer he will eat healthy food, work hard, be outdoors and take a much needed break from social media. Yet, I worry. I have managed Oakley’s life so intensely over the last few years that I am full of “What ifs?”

That night, I slept on the floor of his cozy little cabin and in the morning, rose at five to head back home without him. I tried to quietly stuff my sleeping bag, but its crinkles woke him. He looked sleepily at me, then shucked off his own bag to walk my husband and I to our car. We bumped and bumbled against each other as we made our way down the hill through the dew-soaked grass.

“Brush your teeth.”

‘I will.”

“Take your meds.”

“I will.”

“Don’t stay up too late.”

“I won’t mom.”

“Be safe. No dare devil stuff.”

“Mom.”

My eyes filled with tears, but we laughed at my sentimentality. We showed each other our bike tattoos, more for my sake than his, and that was that. We drove away, leaving him to his own adventure and me to mine.

So, here I am, taking my show on the road solo. The folks at this library are a forgiving audience, so I try to crack some jokes (that aren’t that funny,) show some pictures and then open my book to read aloud. All is going well, even without Oakley to hide behind. I am a bold, independent adventurer, and so is he.

In my preparation for tonight, I have used a birthday card as a place marker in my book so that I can easily find the section that I want to share, but as I turn to that page the card tumbles out of the book and on to the floor by my feet. There is no podium, and the folks in the front row are only sitting a few feet away. They can’t help but glance at what I have dropped, and I do as well.

The birthday card has landed face down and with a flash horror, I see that I had written a list on the back. Not just any list, but a list of all the long, overdue medical appointments that I need to make while Oakley isn’t around and I have free time this summer. You guessed it, there in big, bold Sharpie pen, I can read Colonoscopy. Varicose Veins. Eye Doc. Teeth.

My swagger is gone. A blush creeps up my neck and floods my cheeks. As I continue reading, stumbling over a word here and there, I casually try to slide my foot over the card. Luckily, the front row is filled with children and I try to remind myself that, even if they read that list of atrocities, they won’t be surprised. After all, to them I am just a rather crinkly-necked lady, who may very well be of a different species then they. And if their parents read it? All the better. I like keeping it real.

In the end I am laughing and already thinking about who to tell the story to, and you know who I think of first? Oakley-he would think it was a hoot. I am looking forward to the stories he will have for me when we join forces again.

“I am beginning to smell bush pigs”

“No, you’re not.”

“Oh, yes I am, I have been on enough ‘adventures’ with you to know a bush pig when I smell one.”

It is Mother’s Day and I am taking a low-key walk on the sea cliffs in Scarborough, Maine with my family. Mother’s Day seems to be the only time I can really demand a Triple-F day anymore. Forced Family Fun. My adult children and their partners are willing to join me on an outing as long as I stay within certain parameters, which I am, but even so they seem to have a fair amount of trepidation.

“Jonah, this is only a five mile stroll along the coast. Easy-peasy, stop fretting.”

My 24-year-old son Jonah, has come to use “Bush pigs” as short-hand for all the times I have led my family on what was promised to be a walk in the park, but somehow morphed into something far more challenging. It was born on a hike up Granite Mountain in Prescott, Arizona over 15 years ago. I had remembered a lovely boulder scramble up the back side that I had done in college many years before and thought my four young children, my husband and I could quickly reenact it; climbing to the top in an hour or two, where we would be rewarded by, what I remembered, to be fields of tall, golden grasses, snorting javelinas and enormous, gnarly, Live Oaks.

In short, the short scramble turned into bouldering. The bouldering turned into throwing children across deep, rock crevices that were far too wide for them to jump across. The sun set and a cold desert night air filled in, chilling our tanktop-clad selves and we became completely lost. We found absolutely no Elysium fields filled with golden grasses, or any bush pigs on top. Rather, just jumbles of toe-piercing cacti, and unforgiving jagged, granite ankle-twisters.

Luckily, in the final minutes of light, blistered, cold and exhausted, we found the trail and descended down the front side of the mountain. Of course I loved it because-what a story! However, I think that was the day I lost credibility as a tour guide in my family’s eyes. My dreams and reality don’t always jibe.

Anyway, the smell of bush pigs was present on Mother’s Day only because I was unaware that dogs were not allowed on this section of the coast due to nesting sand pipers, we left late and so yes, we were again racing the light, as well as our ferry home and maybe some of us had healing injuries that made walking on the uneven, loose coastal rocks a bit painful-but it sure was beautiful. It was no epic adventure, but I believe there is some mild form of PTSD in my children whenever I get over excited about being in the outdoors and it doesn’t take a lot for them to worry.

My son Jonah, who had first smelled the pigs this day, has an uncanny ability of seeing truth. He edits not only my dream-like outing plans, but he was also my first editor for my book, “Changing Gears.” When I finished the first draft, he plunked himself down on the couch and began reading with a proverbial red pen. (He is an excellent writer)

His comments written along side of the draft, steered me with both humor and intelligence. Much like his trailside comments.

“Mama, do we need to go over apostrophe use again?”

“Mama, too many exclamation points!!!!”

“Be more creative-don’t use cliches.”

“This is NOT a word, not now, not ever.”

“Spellcheck.”

I could not be more grateful for him and all he did for me. He is probably fairly responsible for getting this book published. He keeps me grounded in reality in a gentle, direct manner. Always has-and I hope he always will. My unsung hero. I hope we continue to chase many more bush pigs together.

Check out his current project-Rock Salt Journal. It is an online bi-annual magazine focused New England Literature.

Today is the day. My book “Changing Gears” is out. I feel like it is my birthday, graduation, anniversary and Mother’s Day all in one. I believe I am what some would call titillated.

Yesterday, I celebrated by taking a long, 70-mile bike ride through the White Mountains with only the company of chipmunks and Pileated Woodpeckers. It was a beautiful, warm spring day and I gulped in the smells of warm pine-needled forest floors, wet-mossy streams and the earth coming to life. The sights of bluets, forsythia and daffodils and the tenderest of translucent green leaves peeking out from their buds made the land seem to glow from within.

All through the ride my head was full of gratitude for all the people that have supported this journey. So many people have encouraged me and put up with my totally self-indulgent, self-centered musings that I am overwhelmed. I can only hope that I have learned through them how important support for each other can be. I came home exhausted, but only in body, inside I felt incredibly alive and awake.

This morning, when I mentioned to my son Oakley what was happening today he beamed. He is still so proud. We took pictures in the back yard with our book. I cautioned him that people might start taking to him about the ride again, and he said that he didn’t mind a bit. This journey has gotten us through a lot. It feels like it is the center of our compass and we still hold on to it and refer back to it again and again on good days and bad. “Remember how… remember when…remember who we are?”

So, thank you. Really, truly thank you. When I listened to a bit of the book on Audible this morning, I am embarrassed to say that I cried a little. Not because I was sad, but because my heart was so full that it couldn’t hold any more. A little bit had to slip out of my eyes.

If you are interested in reading the book, please buy or order it from your local bookstore. If that is not possible, it is available for purchase on Amazon and Audible or you can order it directly through Familius Press at https://www.familius.com/book/changing-gears/

And lastly, please come celebrate with us! My book launch is May 26^th at 7PM at Lighthouse Bikes, 72 Ocean St Unit 106, South Portland, Maine 04106. Oakley and I will be giving a brief talk with a Q&A and a signing. Makes me nervous as anything, but I have definitly learned that being uncomfortable is often what growing it is all about.

For those eager to continue helping please consider:

-Share this title with as many people as possible. A quick note to friends and family can go a long way in getting it out there. If you are able-please spread the word.

-Sharing your favorite quote from the book on social media platforms with #(ChangingGears)

-Let me know which blogs, podcasts, and shows you think would enjoy my book! Better yet, give them a heads-up that they should read my work.

-Ask your local library or bookstore to purchase and stock Changing Gears

-Leave a review on Goodreads, Barnes and Noble, and Amazon- you can even copy and paste the review from one platform onto the other two!

 Please shoot me an email leahdaylcsw@gmail.com to let me know your thoughts about the book and to share your reviews, so that I may express my thanks to you, personally.

Please reach out to my publicist Jaiden at Jaiden@familius.com with any questions about my book. Okay, now I will pipe down.

Thank you for humoring me,

Leah

Warning: This post contains expletives.

The other day, I was walking through Portland with my dog Georgie. My head was in the clouds and I was in a stupor of exhaustion and smugness. Life has been busy-filled with new beginnings; my book “Changing Gears” is launching, my bike shop, Lighthouse Bikes, is going through its seasonal ramp up and it is spring. Green leaves poking out from their buds, longer days and wisps of warmth demand longer hikes and bike rides and attendant new sore muscles.

In my haze of self satisfaction, I crossed the road in front of me, ten-feet before reaching the crosswalk. I suppose I expected the sparse, lazy traffic to make way for my queenly self. How wrong I was.

“Use the fucking crosswalk, you old bitch!” I spun in my tracks-struck dumb to see a young man, lean out a passenger side window and flip me off. I wave of emotion swept through me.
I stood there, momentarily frozen, while I tried to make sense of what he had just said. He was right-I should have used the crosswalk. “Use the Fing crosswalk!”, that might have been appropriate. And calling me a bitch? Fine-rude but fine. My shock and indignation were really because he had called me old. I have never been called old before-well that is a lie-maybe by my daughter-but I thought she was joking in a teenagery way. His words washed through me. Old. Somebody viewed me as old. Was I old?

I walked the rest of the way home mulling this over and wondering why it bothered me so much and I realized that it was because comparatively, it is true. I am old and in our culture-for a woman especially, that is one ugly thing to be. Not to worry, hot on the heals of this realization I decided that there was only one thing to be done. I was going to reclaim it. Make it mine. Celebrate it for what it truly is.

I AM OLD, and smarter for it and braver, and more compassionate and worldly and eager to engage in life. I AM OLD, and I don’t want to waste a minute of it doing unsatisfying, unimportant things. I AM OLD, and my hormones no longer control the way my body feels and or my emotions. I AM OLD, and I can understand different views and opinions because life has proven to be complicated. I AM OLD, and I have deep and meaningful relationships. I AM OLD, and I am on fire-in more ways than one. And as for being a bitch? Bitches are tough and fierce! You don’t really want to mess with them.

How lucky I am to be both,! I should really be thanking that gentleman for the reminder. I suppose he was really just trying to keep me safe, and shouting out to me of some of my finest assets. He also helped me come up with the title for my next book. I have been ruminating on it for quite some time. It will be about female adventures, midlife changes and aging without shame. A book about many things we never talk about, but it sure would help if we did.

“Old Bitch!” What do you think? I am excited to get started.

My dog, Georgie, is leaping in corkscrews, thundering his paws against my hips again and again as I swing the gate open and enter my front yard. I try to pull my bike in behind me as quick as I can so that he doesn’t escape. ”No, Georgie.” I scold, “Don’t jump up.” but I am a bad puppy trainer and I give him kisses on his forehead as I chastise him. He is too cute, with his big floppy paws and overgrown teenage exuberance, for me to ever really be angry with him.

I start up the front steps, thinking about what to make for dinner, while trying not to trip over his puppy love when I see a telltale box on the front mat. I know instantly by both its physical heft and its attending emotional weight that it is my new book, Changing Gears. I wasn’t expecting it quite yet, but there it is, surprising me in its solidity.

I pick it up, brush Georgie to the side with my new myopic focus and carry it in to the kitchen counter. There, I quickly grab a long bread knife and slice through the packing tape along the sides, breathless and a little …afraid?

Sure enough, when I unfold the box there are ten copies. My heart beats crookedly as I stare at the cover. Here is the fruition of so much; the bicycling adventure, the writing and the parenting of my rascally teenage son, Oakley-who comes running.

“What did you get?” he elbows in, always eager to get front row seats on all incoming packages. He is not all together unlike Georgie, both in his teenage exuberance and his lack of spatial awareness. ”It is the book! Let me see one.” He rips one from the box and flips through the pages. He reads the cover. “A desperate mother and a distant teen? That is you-desperate!” and he laughs.

Immediately, his phone is out and he is taking pictures and instagramming about it. He posts to the world about how proud he is, and he grins from ear to ear. I grin too, but what I am feeling is a lot more complicated than pure excitement.

I realize, really for the first time, that while I wrote this book about Oakley and I, I was writing a letter, or telling a story to my best friend. It was an intimate tale about the love and challenge of parenting my child, and now, here it was, for the whole world to see; the two of us-splayed wide open. I realize that I had not only invited the world into my heart, but also gave it front row seats to my and Oakley’s struggles. I feel queasy. Would Oakley ever forgive me? Was it okay to share so much? He had known the book was coming and we had discussed what it was about, but it feels so difFerent to hold it.

Oakley takes a copy, plunks himself down on the couch and begins to read. As I watch him, my breath catches in my chest. All I can do is hope that he can understand what my intentions were.

I do believe that sharing is how we support each other. How we learn from each other. How we connect through our mutual humanness. Isolation is a killer and connection can save lives, right? Oakley’s eyes are riveted to the page and mine are riveted on him. Concern wrinkles his brow and I am sure my brow mirrors his. “Mom, why did you say that I have severe ADHD? Why did you say that I have academic challenges?”

“Because you do, and that is okay. It is nothing to be embarrassed about. You are the hero of the book. It says right on the cover that I am the desperate one. I was trying to share our truth and I couldn’t lie.”

“It makes me uncomfortable.”

“Me too, this feels really exposing.”

“Yeah. it’s weird.” he says. My queasy feeling becomes more like a roiling in my guts.

I continue watching him read. Have I made a mistake? But a moment later he smiles, then he lets out a chuckle. “This is funny, you remember that crazy bike stop owner?” He doesn’t wait for a response, just keeps reading and I watch his eyes begin to light up and to dance from word to word.

“Oaks, are you okay with it being about some hard stuff?”

‘Yeah, it is fine. I really like it. I sounds just like me.”

He reads it that afternoon and takes it to bed with him that night and finishes it the next day. He voices no more concerns, only points out a discrepancies, “It was not ten miles…it was eight!” and in the end he announces that it was a great book and that he loves it.

And so, dear reader, with all due respect, I don’t care what you think, because the most important critic has given me his praises. I do hope you like it, I do hope you enjoy our journey and I do hope you laugh, cringe and hope along with us-but his review will always matter the most to me.

It will be available for purchase on May 10th. Thank you.

My mid-western roots are firing shaming pistons into my heart as I write this, but it is true; I just went biking in Cozumel, Mexico. There is no denying it—it was over the top, perfect.

As many of you know, I live on a small island off the coast of Maine. There is a four-mile loop road here that follows the shore and is beautiful for biking—most of the time.

In the summer wafts of beach rose and sea salt fill the air, and translucent waves crash against the jagged coastline. Beautiful. In the fall, the sky is a rich blue, and the golden beach grasses and tangles of yellow and crimson bittersweet rustle in freshening wind. Invigorating. In the winter, the trees, rocks and waves stand up starkly—refusing to bend to the weather and remind me that I shouldn’t either. I love it all.

But then comes the spring or should I say, the non-season in Maine. The playful ice and snow are gone, yet it is far too cold for anything to grow. It is a long, long pregnant pause that lasts from March to late May. That is not to say it doesn’t have its beauty and fun; maple sugaring for example and…and…you got me.

So, recently when we were told by the airlines that our pandemic-era travel vouchers were about the expire, making a trip to another island possible–a tropical one—I didn’t mind a bit.

Upon arriving, we played in the water, snorkeled and burnt our ghost-like northern skin, but when I heard that I could rent a bike to ride around the island, I couldn’t resist; this was my kind of early spring biking.

Early the next morning, I snuck out of the house while the heat of the sun had not yet gathered its full force to radiate not just down from the sky but up from the pavement creating its daily heat sandwich and climbed on to my lovely,  rental, 7-speed, Specialized beach cruiser. A beauty that I had for the day at $15.

I quietly pedaled through the cool, sleepy streets of the town, seeing few people other than a couple of bleary-eyed school children  locking the wrought iron gates to their yards behind them as they sallied forth into the day. I called out a few tentative “Holas!” and “Buenos Dias!” and received sleepy grins and waves. Before long I found myself leaving the residential area behind and heading out on a bike trail that circles the island.

Cozumel’s ahead of its time. Not only have they chosen to protect 70% of their island, making a choice to only develop 30 %, they have also turned an old road around the island into a 40-mile, car-free bicycle loop. As I cycled along the eastern side of the island, I was surrounded by thick jungle on both sides that opened occasionally to give access to the white beaches and turquoise waters of the Caribbean. Not a house, not a billboard, not a bit of industry. The water here was the clearest that I have ever seen. It did not have the commanding waves like the Gulf of Maine, rather just a gentle, lulling pull that begged me to swim again and again. On I pedaled dipping in and out of the shade of palmettos, monster leaf plants and other solidarity giants, flirting with the shadows as long as possible.

Eventually, I left them behind and popped out on the western side of the island. Here the sun reigned. Instead of the gray rocks of Maine, there were miles upon miles of uninterrupted sand interspersed between points of pitted limestone. There were no tall trees here, but rather hardy shrubs like sea grape, with their vivid green, wax-covered leaves that have evolved to hoard all the water they can. It seemed like light and saturated color radiated from every direction. I played a game with myself, trying to name all the colors, but I lost. Giant iguanas and their smaller cousins crossed the road fromtime to time, but they were my only company, the only traffic.

20 miles further on I turned from the beach and headed back towards town. Here I passed a bee sanctuary for the endemic Cozumel honey bees that have no stingers and create the famed Mayan Melipona honey. I passed Mayan ruins and then a few ranches and small farms that gave way to small tiendas and tequila tasting tours. The bicycle trail ended, but the bicycle route continued on the road. A whole lane was given just to bikes and as the the road became busier I was struck by how much respect cyclists where given. Maybe it’s because grandmothers cycle here, and families with kids riding double and triple, and workmen hauling the tools and wares on cargo bikes. It is not a leisure activity—it is a necessity—and so it is treated as such. Cars give cyclists ample room. They do not crowd you or even pass you, but rather drive at a reasonable bike-friendly speed. They are also prevented from traveling too fast because of frequent speed bumps.  They do not honk at you, but always seem to cede the way, acknowledging that we are all in this transportation thing together, and why rush?

When I finally reached the western side of the island, I wiggled a little while further down to the north because I can’t seem to stop looking around corners, rounding out my ride to 50 miles. 

This island is not as different from my island up north as I might have thought. A different color palette maybe, a little bigger and warmer perhaps, but the elements are the same. The sea, the sun and the life, all doing what they can to make their way and find harmony in their interweaving.