This blog isn't really cycling related, so my apologies.
Cycling is a beautiful metaphor for life. And that's where it ends. Over the last month I was handed a bloody good lesson; that life (to quote myself) "is fleeting, harsh and nail-biting stuff with zero warranty".
Enough metaphors and literary devices. My daughter contracted a perfect storm pneumonia that landed her and ourselves in the hospital. And it got better. However, a call from the hospital questioning the x-rays and eluding to anyone's worst nightmare, let alone a 5 year old's, blew us to kingdom come. Weeks of living in hope amongst shredded reason and demented outcomes does nothing for you and everything at the same time. Sleep? Macbeth got more. Reason? Don't be daft. Reason doesn't work when reason is the only answer. Try reasoning at 3am when the bedroom ceiling is a cinema screen playing all the movies you hate but have to view. So what is to be taken that is good? Scanned to within an inch of her life, my daughter is going to be fine. And those things that broke inside us (everyone breaks) will heal despite the pain.
But I've realised that there's no escape. Cycling? It might keep me healthy but it takes from my family and buggerin off for a whole day to fulfil a dead dream is no longer justifiable. Wine? Numbness is dumbness. Reading? Escape is running away from now. Writing? Pulling the wool over my own eyes.
No. Reality is where it's all at. Living in the now is all the rage. And if anyone has rage right now.... I could make nandrolone look like a placebo.
It's ok. I'm not going to save the world or set out to reform you. Instead I'm going to point out that there's those around us that ARE reality. My friends that have the nightmare but are smiling at it's bastard's grin. Or those who's kids have gone down a rocky road that makes my last few weeks look like a summer meadow filled with unicorns and rainbows in comparison. I love you guys. I love your love for life and belief in it. What you are doing/have done is awesome.
If you are reading this... just sit for a minute now and mull it over. Who is suffering? There's always someone in the back of your head that rings alarm bells. Text them. Ring them. Message them. Call in. Tell them in your own way that they are beautiful and necessary. Tell them to fight. Tell them what every day having them around really means. Even if just for 5 minutes out of our manic lives... tell them.
After a month of emptiness (And I mean the darkest, foreboding hell) I appreciate what has been left to us. I would love to continue my stark atheism and derogatory nature towards all incantation and biblical contradiction. Instead, I find myself indebted to some God that listened to my honest and tearful begging before countless dawns. I owe so many colleagues, friends and family, random, caring strangers too... the cliche says 'the list goes on '... that right now I am just a little overwhelmed. But yez know who you are. And I used to carry a carcinogenic hatred to the ends of the earth, remember? Today, that black energy has been supplanted by good. I've learned through a time forged on the hot-plate of darkest hell that somewhere there are beautiful people with a candle for a heart that are there to see us through. And that... that is life's beauty.
Thursday, May 24, 2018
Monday, May 7, 2018
Old time Wexican stand off.
I hadn't had the easiest two weeks leading up to yesterday's race, the Frank O' Rourke memorial in my home county. A week ago my daughter wound up in hospital with pneumonia and in the previous week I'd had that seasonal pain-in-the-face (No the farmers aren't pulling silage yet), actually it was sinusitis. I felt more than a little sheepish signing on. A couple of easy spins in ten days hardly qualified me as a contender. Maybe marshalling would have been a better option? How do you disappoint all those smiling faces; the people who've relied on you and given a damn?
Scarier than my impending retirement (that I seem to be dragging the ass out of) was the bunch of cyclists in my race. You see, the Christian Brothers may have hit me 35 years ago as a reminder that my maths ability was Neanderthal, but on yesterday's start line I did a quick calculation and worked out that more than half wouldn't have had the pleasure of knowing/ racing with/ been on the receiving end of the rapier wit of... Frank O'Rourke. That scared me because I don't fit in anymore. Bygone era and all that. Frank tore strips off me in races more than 15 years ago. At about twice my age. He helped us all to race hard and smart. One of only a handful of Wexford men that did it all in Irish cycling circles. And when I went to his removal I just remember feeling a little lost.
And that's ages ago. Most of us have grown up. A lot of us have come back to cycling. The races we did have died. And now I feel like a Luddite, not wanting change. Too happy to sip red wine and wear rose tinted glasses.
So Frank took a break from his celestial chaingang yesterday afternoon and cycled beside me on the back road. It was obvious to him I'd burned all my matches just getting to the race. A waste. So he channelled his raspy-voiced spirit into a couple of buckos that escaped up the road, buckos who subsequently handed us our asses and a lesson in grit and spit. All thanks to Frank mind... for that was how he rode.
So I can do two things. I can call it a day, grab a bag of Amber Leaf and some skins and sit on my front doorstep regaling passers-by with stories of valour and bravery on the roads to nowhere. Or see out the season with Frank's attitude in my head. What have I to lose? I know its hard to keep going and justify racing. But I feel it would be even harder to simply fade out. Harder in the long run. So what's the plan? Yesterday I met a whole bunch of people that maybe don't race so much as they used to but when they did... they did. And most of them knew Frank. And I feel I let them down. I've only got a few races left. Why not rewind the newsreel to the good old days? Give those folks a show? Failing that, for nothing else than to remind myself (when I am smoking roll-ups on the doorstep) that I tried hard. That I made the race. That something I did, counted. Aggression, surprise, cunning... just to utter those words, thrills me.
So what if lots of those I raced against yesterday have no clue who the race was in memory of? That's just time. No reason though not to get back in there and remind them of his legacy. Wexford cycling was full of attacking, have-a-go heroes when I got stuck in. Why can't we see a little of that again?
I was tired yesterday but a little rest and we'll get going again. There was no way I'd miss the race though. No way. Annual Pilgrimage to one of my religious icons.
That era is what got me through life. I can't thank Frank and his kind enough. All of those leagues and line-outs are like a giant tattoo on the inside of my skin, a deep, personal homage to a magical time. When I hang up my racing wheels I'll make sure the hubs are rough from thousands of miles in slop and rain and peeling heat. I imagine the rims will be scored and scoured thin from stopping and cornering, the spokes brittle from inertia. Twenty weeks to say goodbye in a manner that befits my beginnings. Sounds like a challenge.
Sorry about yesterday Frank. It won't happen again.
Scarier than my impending retirement (that I seem to be dragging the ass out of) was the bunch of cyclists in my race. You see, the Christian Brothers may have hit me 35 years ago as a reminder that my maths ability was Neanderthal, but on yesterday's start line I did a quick calculation and worked out that more than half wouldn't have had the pleasure of knowing/ racing with/ been on the receiving end of the rapier wit of... Frank O'Rourke. That scared me because I don't fit in anymore. Bygone era and all that. Frank tore strips off me in races more than 15 years ago. At about twice my age. He helped us all to race hard and smart. One of only a handful of Wexford men that did it all in Irish cycling circles. And when I went to his removal I just remember feeling a little lost.
And that's ages ago. Most of us have grown up. A lot of us have come back to cycling. The races we did have died. And now I feel like a Luddite, not wanting change. Too happy to sip red wine and wear rose tinted glasses.
So Frank took a break from his celestial chaingang yesterday afternoon and cycled beside me on the back road. It was obvious to him I'd burned all my matches just getting to the race. A waste. So he channelled his raspy-voiced spirit into a couple of buckos that escaped up the road, buckos who subsequently handed us our asses and a lesson in grit and spit. All thanks to Frank mind... for that was how he rode.
So I can do two things. I can call it a day, grab a bag of Amber Leaf and some skins and sit on my front doorstep regaling passers-by with stories of valour and bravery on the roads to nowhere. Or see out the season with Frank's attitude in my head. What have I to lose? I know its hard to keep going and justify racing. But I feel it would be even harder to simply fade out. Harder in the long run. So what's the plan? Yesterday I met a whole bunch of people that maybe don't race so much as they used to but when they did... they did. And most of them knew Frank. And I feel I let them down. I've only got a few races left. Why not rewind the newsreel to the good old days? Give those folks a show? Failing that, for nothing else than to remind myself (when I am smoking roll-ups on the doorstep) that I tried hard. That I made the race. That something I did, counted. Aggression, surprise, cunning... just to utter those words, thrills me.
So what if lots of those I raced against yesterday have no clue who the race was in memory of? That's just time. No reason though not to get back in there and remind them of his legacy. Wexford cycling was full of attacking, have-a-go heroes when I got stuck in. Why can't we see a little of that again?
I was tired yesterday but a little rest and we'll get going again. There was no way I'd miss the race though. No way. Annual Pilgrimage to one of my religious icons.
That era is what got me through life. I can't thank Frank and his kind enough. All of those leagues and line-outs are like a giant tattoo on the inside of my skin, a deep, personal homage to a magical time. When I hang up my racing wheels I'll make sure the hubs are rough from thousands of miles in slop and rain and peeling heat. I imagine the rims will be scored and scoured thin from stopping and cornering, the spokes brittle from inertia. Twenty weeks to say goodbye in a manner that befits my beginnings. Sounds like a challenge.
Sorry about yesterday Frank. It won't happen again.
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