There was a time I wondered, how long can I keep this up? At what point do I get too old, too slow, to realistically do the same sort of rides I’ve done most of my life.

Things like, when will I look back and think, hmm, that was my last-ever 100 mile ride? (Think it was about two years ago, and I’m guessing I’ve still got a couple years at least where that ought to be possible… in general, distance isn’t an issue for me. Steep climbs, on the other hand, that’s another thing).

One of the most-obvious changes is that I no longer look forward to nasty weather forecasts. For years, decades, there was an appeal to riding when nobody else wanted to be out there riding. It could be 40 degrees and dumping, howling wind, and I’d be out there. There was an appeal to the absurd. Going to sleep with rain pounding against the windows gave so much more to look forward to than a normal cold winter ride (and generally, if it was raining, it was too warm for their to be ice on the roads).

And snow! It doesn’t snow often around here, but when it does, it makes for a very special bike ride. I remember riding up Kings Mtn one morning and seeing (and feeling) the transition and rain turned to snow as I climbed. That’s something I’ll never forget. Or when we were up on Skyline and built a small snow man in the Skegg’s Point parking lot, not realizing our gloves were getting soaked through, making for one of the most-painful descents ever as our hands felt like ice. And the time we discovered that bike tires are skinny enough they punch through the snow and find the pavement, offering traction that cars didn’t have. The cars were literally sliding around while we were doing just fine. Providing we avoided the cars that were sliding around.

But starting last year, the rain rides were cut back dramatically. I wimped out, choosing to do Zwift rides on a trainer in the comfort of my family room. It’s time on the bike, yes, but it’s really not the same.

On more normal, nice days, the challenge is now finishing the ride in time to get to work and open the shop. It took 40 years for that to become an issue, but here it is. Back in the day, we’d reliably end the ride (at Olive Hill & Canada) between 9:18-9:22. Now, a “fast” ride might finish by 9:30, with some as late as 9:40, maybe even later. Regarding Kings, I still have memory of the days where, sick as a dog, there was still no way I’d be slower than 30 minutes. Today? It can be an effort to make sure it’s under 40!

It’s still wonderful being out there. I still have yet to feel, after finishing a ride, that I wished I’d either not ridden at all or spent the time on a trainer. I hope that never changes.

Tough to explain how it was an accomplishment to get up Kings this morning in 47 minutes but that’s all Kevin’s knee would allow. In retrospect we should have stayed down low, but this was going to be Kevin’s last ride for a week and a half (he and his girlfriend are heading to Disneyworld next week for a much-needed break). It was interesting to note that, even at such a slow speed, my breathing was still quite audible and slightly labored. Very much looking forward to the latest series of lung tests starting towards the end of this month!

Distractions. Never could I imagine so many things going on all at once. My wife’s battle with Stage IV breast cancer, which has spread to one of her lungs… if not for Keytruda, she’d probably not be around. Having to constantly monitor blood work, making sure she’s healthy enough to handle more poison pumped into her system, and hoping she ends up one of the many Keytruda miracles who were given a very short time to live but keep pushing that expiration date out, over and over and over again. Tough figuring out what to plan for… how far in advance you can organize a vacation, and having to think about whether a vacation could be costly not just in terms of $$$ but also the ramifications of missing a treatment that in retrospect shouldn’t have been missed. You just can’t know.

And then there’s my mom, being treated for lymphoma that somehow found its way to her central nervous system, something so rare it wasn’t even considered a possibility when they were looking at a mass adjacent to her brain that was causing language and motor skill issues. An awful lot of doctor visits, treatments, hospital stays and planning that, just like with my wife, don’t have the luxury of being able to deal with when convenient. You just have to make time for it. She is, thankfully, doing remarkably well. The irony is that, had the doctors realized the mass adjacent to her brain was from her lymphoma issue and not “just” a meningioma, they might not have operated, and had they not operated, instead of being in a really good place right now, she’d have been on a steadily deteriorating path. At 93, they tend not to offer up somewhat heroic operations (like brain surgery) if there’s anything making it more complex. Complex health issues and 93 year old patients normally don’t have great outcomes. But that’s the thing. They don’t know my mom. Her own mother lived to be 102 after all!

And now son Kevin’s knee, which is happening at the same time he’s also experiencing a pretty heavy uptick in seizure frequency. And daughter Becky’s shoulder surgeries.

It’s a lot of stuff all at once, and it’s not just affecting my riding, but also the business. It’s really tough trying to feel creative and enhance marketing efforts needed to bring customers into the store when all this is going on. It’s not exactly how I thought things would be at 68.

But ultimately I do have to keep a focus on riding. There’s that objects-in-motion-tend-to-stay-in-motion thing. My health is much better when I push my physical limits. There’s a feeling of control in a world where so many things seem beyond my control. It all also reminds me that writing is something I need to keep up as well.