Lost living rooms and Highways

I received this email on Saturday evening from Maya Stein.

Greetings, "Lost Highways & Living Rooms" contributors! I'm excited and delighted to report that the book is finally, finally ready! I've received preliminary copies and I'm thrilled to see your contribution in print at long last. Some of you may have already purchased copies of the book (I just announced it last week on my 10-line Tuesday newsletter), but just in case others have not received word about where to get them, I wanted to direct you to the right place. 

Lost Highways and Living Rooms is a compilation of writing created from Maya Stein's "Tour de Word" workshops in the fall of 2010, as well as contributions from readers of her ongoing 10-line Tuesday weekly poetry newsletter. The two-month tour took Maya on a circumnavigational trip around the United States and parts of Ontario, where she facilitated nearly 30 workshops for children, teens, and adults. Lost Highways & Living Rooms features poetry, fiction, and non-fiction from more than 60 contributors ages 8-80."

Maya Stein publishes an article every Tuesday that contains 10 lines.  10 line Tuesday's.

I started following her back in 2010 and she solicited people that were following her to submit an article for an anthology of stories she was compiling as she traveled across the country.

I wrote something and submitted it for her book and forgot all about it.  I was very excited when I discovered on Saturday that my work, my art is now published.  I am a published author of a short story.  How cool is that and at the same time terrifying?!!

My musing's and thoughts that are published here are read by a small group of people, mostly family and friends and many might not be read at all

Now a story that I wrote, may be read by many and again maybe no one will read it.  The purpose of doing the work, is to do the work and let go of the attachment as to how many will read it, how many will  like it, how many might comment on it, how many might hate it...

The story that I wrote followed Maya Stein's 10 line Tuesday format.  It is a short story and a story that I wrote about Kelly.

I will publish the story that I wrote her on my blog at some point.  For now I am going to savor the fact that I am a contributing author to Maya Stein's anthology series.

I have created art in the world.

This is one of the first articles of  Maya's that I read from her 10 line Tuesday series.

Katrina

"No one really understands the Atlantic

the way k. did - vast, impossible nothingness,

a chilling void where echoes of

island rum jubilation and coconut revelry

nagged like the Sirens, like a playground taunt.

No wonder she hit land so fast,

barreling over the Gulf like a rabid thing,

full of electric yearning for some honest-to-God company,

a sense of brief, knowable longing.

So much like all of us."~Maya Stein

Tweet

Trepidation

Tonight is the pairing ceremony where I will find out which young person I am going to be mentor for the next 12 months.

I am incredibly stressed out and nervous about this process.

The mentor training I took earlier this year and the launch course two weeks ago feel like it happened such a long time ago.

I feel woefully unprepared right now.

Can I do this?

Can I make a difference?

Do I have anything to offer a young person?

Will my young person hate me and quit the program because they are paired with me?

Yikes.

One of the other mentors I met at the launch course has a great acryonym for F.E.A.R

He describes fear as a fantasy expectation appearing real.

I hope that is all this is. Is this jus  another story my physcotic 24 x 7  roommate has planted in my head?

Most of the things I spend so much time and energy worrying about never come to pass and yet I I continue on  in my story.

More to come.

Tweet

How do you train for a Century ride without a bike?

I am really on a roll right now, but my bicycles are not.

I noticed that the bike I had rode in the Copper Triangle in a couple of week ago was not functioning properly. The back wheel was sticking so I had to use my other bike, which was badly in need of a tune up.

I rode in the Span the Rockies ride last Sunday in Boulder Colorado. This was a really small ride that offered a 75K, a 130K and a 200K choice of distances.

I opted for the 130K(80.9) miles.

Most of the climbing occurred in the first 28 miles of the ride, but oh what a climb there was in the last mile or so of Left Hand Canyon.

I have a bicycle with a triple chain ring, which a serious cyclist would scoff at, but for a not very strong cyclist it keeps me on the road and help me be a more effective climber.

Problem is that I resist using the easier gear even though I know I am simply not a strong enough cyclist to take on steep ascents without it.

Left Hand Canyon is a fairly steady 16 mile climb. I did the first 9 miles of the climb in the big ring of my bike, which was a disastrous course of action. So at about the 21 mile mark of the ride, I relented and shifted into the middle ring of my bike, but by this time my legs were already burning.

The last time I rode in Left Hand Canyon was the year I was training for the 2003 Century ride and six years later, I had totally forgotten how much the road was about to turn up hill.

As the grade in the road began to increase, so did the burning in my legs and I began to feel very uneasy.

I am pretty sure at this point I was the last ride that was doing the 130K ride. I had not seen another cyclist with a number on their bike for a long time.

Six years ago, I thought of myself as a pretty good climber. Now I can't remember why I used to think of myself that way.

There were times during the climb, I could not turn my pedals over and I had to stop and rest even in my "Granny gear". I was spent.

Each time I tried to get back in the saddle and start riding again, I struggled getting my shoes clipped into my pedals. For some reason I could not get clipped in and I felt very fearful of falling again. I looked for a flatter spot to get back on my bike and continued to struggle.

For the first time that I can remember, I felt totally afraid as I failed repeatedly in my efforts to start pedaling again.

I don't know how many times I had to stop. As other cyclists zoomed by me, I pretended that I had stopped to drink some water and enjoy the scenery. I did get some good pictures at least out of my folly.


The last mile was so hard. Again I had to get off my bike and push it up the hill. Never have I had to this before. I felt like crying. I felt totally defeated.

Finally I made it to the top of the climb and mercifully encountered a 1/2 mile descent to the aid station.

Before starting a good stretch of descent, I put my jacket back on as it was quite windy and a bit chilly. Even during the descent I did not feel well. Any time I had to pedal for any amount of time felt horrible. My legs were shot.

I wondered how am I going to get back to the start line. I did not enjoy the descent. There were part of the road that had little or no shoulder and to make things worse the descent was into a head wind and a cross wind which really affects your balance on the bike.

I continued even during the descent to get off my bike and rest and take some pictures.



I was so relieved to make it to the next aid station at the 55 mile mark. There was only about a marathon left to pedal and would be mostly flat with a few rolling hills. My legs finally were feeling better where I could pedal again.

I chatted for a mile or so with a young man who was training for his first Ironman in November. It was the first time all day I was not riding entirely by myself. It was nice to have some company, but we soon turned different directions and I was by myself again.

A volunteer at the last aid station told me there were 15 miles to go. We headed east into a very uninteresting part of the ride. Ugh. Now there was not even any scenery to distract myself with.

Shortly before the 75 mile mark I almost stopped at a 7-11 to get something cold to drink. Any excuse to get off the bike. I decided to forge on. After a brief stop at a light, I crossed the intersection at Arapahoe and headed towards Baseline Road.

200 yards or so, something went horribly wrong. Suddenly I could not pedal. My chain locked up. I got clipped out of my pedals without falling and looked down at my bike. The jacket I had worn during the descent had fallen out of my jersey pocket landed on my chain and in a matter or seconds tore the derailleur off my bike.

I struggled to free my jacket from the chain. I had to remove the rear wheel and after finally freeing my jacket from a jacket eating chain, I knew the damage to my bike was beyond repair.

I was done riding for the day. I was still 6+ miles away from my car.

I was barely able to reattach the wheel to my bike and I set off to walk back to my car.

I pushed my bike on a very busy street in Bolder, sadly holding on to the chain of my bike.

I walked about two miles when a nice young man in a convertible offered to help me get my bike back to my car. He was willing to let my throw his bike in the back seat of a really nice convertible. I found out later the reason he had stopped was because I was wearing my Team In Training cycling jersey and he was a former participant. Go Team!!!

I finally made it back to my car after another misadventure with my bike.

What is up with all of these accidents? Out of the last 3 weeks, I have managed to bend a wheel, break a spoke during a fall when my chain slipped going up a steep incline, because I did not shift into a ring where I would be able to keep my pedals turning over.

Tripped on some uneven pavement while running, the next week and now this. The only good thing was this week I managed to break my consecutive week of falling streak.

However I am now 4 weeks away from a Century ride that I have been training for since May 9th and I don't have a bike.

I took in my Fuji bike tonight and luckily that will only cost $20.00 to true the wheel and replace a broken spoke.

I fear my Bianchi bike will be much more expensive to repair along with my confidence.

Can I really take on the Big Nasty in 4 weeks? Am I strong enough physically to do this?

I honestly do not know the answer right now.

Tweet

What a week

This was a week filled with many different thoughts and emotions, fear, sadness, relief(sort of), ambivalence, uncertainty...

First off on the medical front.

Results of the CT scan came back good. The nodules that had been detected on the earlier chest x-ray have been there for years and are not growing.

Blood work and chest/CT scans show no indication that the sarcoidosis has come out of remission.

I had a thallium treadmill test on Wednesday. This is a treadmill test where you are injected with a small dose of nuclear medicine which helps monitor the blood flow to the muscles of the heart and would help pinpoint any abnormalities or possible indicate a form of coronary disease.

Naturally when I was on the treadmill my heart did not skyrocket. The test normally takes 10 minutes to reach the target heart rate and I went well past the 10 minute mark before I reached the target heart rate of 152 bpm. My EKG was completely normal and I tested at the high end of the fitness level for people that are 30-39 years old. They also told me that my heart rate of recovery was very good. Most people recover about 10-20 bpm and my heart rate had dropped to 100 in 60 seconds. Now this is all very good news as it ruled out any form of coronary heart trouble.

Unanswered still is what is causing all of the aching legs, rapid heart rate, cramping, feelings of malaise. Not sure at this point what the next steps the doctor will take or if there will be further testing he might pursue.

One of my worst fears came to pass earlier this week at work. There had been a flurry of "fire drills" going on at work, numerous cryptic requests from upper management for information.

Thursday morning, the first wave of layoffs in my company began. There were five people in my suite who received the bad news that their jobs had been eliminated. 60 positions in Denver had been eliminated and 200 across the company. There seems to be no end to the bad news. Layoffs are part of the daily news, but it never seems real. Thursday it became real. I lost a colleague that I had worked with for 17 years. We had played golf together over the years. He was a trusted friend. The first day I started my job as a programmer in 1991 this person went out of his way to welcome me and offer his support. When I considered taking another job years ago, he was a trusted advisor in a decision I agonized over.

While I survived the first round of layoffs, I am sure there will be more to come. Our stock was trading around 30.00 in August and last week closed around 11.00.

It will feel strange at work for some time if it ever feels normal again.

I will miss my friend and many other colleagues that I didn't get a chance to say goodbye to.

What will this week bring?

Tweet