When I started writing here, I had just turned 57. I’ve got a whole category on this blog called, “Getting Old” (the first piece of which was shortly after I started – going back to June of 2020). Now, I’m sure there are some of you who are willing to say, “Bob, you’re not old!”
Don’t rob me of my reality.
I’m at the point now in life where I can still do some of the “young” things…but they kind of hurt. I’ve cycled for years (but still started too late in life in my opinion), so I know about things like “recovery time,” and let me tell you, the older you get, the longer it takes. Then there’s the effect of heat and humidity. I went out a couple of weekends ago to climb a particularly challenging hill and hit a wall just short of the top. In my “younger” days, I would have powered through; but now I’m a bit wiser. I’m thinking, “Why bother?” I stopped, sat down on the road, and messaged my riding partner.
This was mildly concerning to me at the time because it hadn’t really happened before. I mean, I’ve hit walls, and I’ve powered through them. But this ride I was doing pretty well up to that point. And it didn’t seem too tough environmentally. I should’ve realized though – I was completely soaked through. One of those, “take off your shirt and wring it out” kind of rides. And I’ve never been particularly good about hydrating. Thing is (as Chester reminded me), in high humidity, the body’s cooling system doesn’t work very well. The sweat doesn’t evaporate like it should.
Still, this whole episode brought me new information: I’m getting old. I mean, really.
This whole thing has been a balancing act for quite some time. I’m in the unenviable position of really loving my job (yeah, I know – “Don’t love your job. It’ll never love you back”). Unenviable because it’s kind of that much harder to know when to punch out. I know very well from indirect experience that we aren’t guaranteed a long and healthy retirement, so there’s part of me that knows I shouldn’t wait too long. I guess that’s where loving my job comes in: if I can enjoy doing it, then is it really a bad thing? No. But I can’t forget that there are some things out there that I’d really like to do before that “getting old” thing gets in the way. I’m never going to be able to ride my bike across the United States, but I can certainly ride it across Korea, right?
So sometimes I sit and daydream. Usually about what routes I could be taking – where I could be going. I’ll even go to street view on the maps and see what it might look like in some random place. Bonus if the season is right (winter street views are so dull). But the thing about daydreams is they’re not affected by the heat and humidity. When reality meets them, it’s not always pretty; but still, there’s joy in the escape. And the whole process keeps me thinking, which is something I like – and doing it while I’m on the road is certainly a better thing than pondering someone’s [ultimately irrelevant] tweets (must be why I wrote this).
