A Dragon Teaching Pardes to Sing

photo by Kellybug

Sometimes there are concessions that need to be made. Sometimes these concessions, originally thought to be a trade-off of something not quite so good for a more coveted thing that we must give up are thought to be bad-tasting medicine that we must endure. Sometimes that is not true and the concession actually turns out to be a gift.

I took up commuting to work on a bicycle as a trade-off for not being able to walk to the bus stop due to the ravages of arthritis. (I had taken up walking to the bus stop in protest of rising gas prices and the desire to be more physically fit as well as to re-connect with my environment, the weather, and seasonal changes that I'd lost in the comatose practice of driving to work on the same road for twenty-five years.) It turned out to be one of the most profitable "concessions" that I've ever made. Imagine. Something good for me, and good for the environment turns out to be one of the most pleasurable activities of my life.

This triggered another concession that needed to be made. Spending more time on a bicycle means spending less time doing the other things I love. Like writing. Add to this the fact that cramped, arthritic hands can't keep up with the right lobe of my brain that floods the left part of my brain with more images and ideas than can be recorded.

Enter the Sony ICD SX68 DRG digital voice recorder to catch all those loose ends when my fingers can't. Stir the pot also with the bundled software that came with it. Dragon Naturally Speaking 9.5.

The result? While I'm trying to teach the Dragon to speak, I am hoping that the Dragon, in turn, will teach me how to sing.

The learning curve for both of us is steep. It irritates me that Dragon insists and demands that I speak each necessary punctuation mark and that I take the time to spell difficult words slowly and distinctly. I'm sure that my penchant for adverbs and sentences longer than most paragraphs irritates Dragon. Our irritation with one another is not toxic. Indeed, it's more like making a new friend who has to learn the nuances of each other's voice.

Naturally, such a friendship takes time. I'll be missing in action for a few days while the Dragon and I are holed up in a cave marveling at the echoes of our voices, discovering the real meaning of our words, and watching the shadows illuminated by the fire that dance on the walls.

TANGIBLE/INTANGIBLE BENEFITS OF BICYCLE COMMUTING

A record day of 12 miles on the bike.

What to do with a bike on a lunch hour?

How long has it been since you've reclined on a luscious lawn of grass without having to park the car, find a spot, and then fidgeted because you are "supposed" to be doing something else.

On a bike, this is a snap. Put a foot down, stop, and collapse in a bed of Kentucky bluegrass, closely-clipped but not so close that you can't run your fingers through it and ponder how wonderful nature is.

Have you ever noticed that some blades of grass are blue?????

Or pondered the stately, albeit degenerate nature of another relic like yourself?

Or eavesdropped on a conversation between the asparagus and the rhubarb at the Riverfront Farmer's Market?

"Hey Rhubarb! Get a load of that tomato that just walked by!"

Back at work you convince your princely manager that it's a dire emergency that you have your gearing upgraded that afternoon and you need to take a few hours of vacation. Being a Prince with the Wisdom of Solomon, your manager recognizes the earth-shattering need for this emergency vacation leave.

A bus/bike ride to Bikeline, and you want to ring your hands to see Trekkie exposed in such a proctological position before surgery. Howard, the store manager and expert bike mechanic sterilizes his hands with a greasy rag and tells you to come back in two hours.

There's not much to do in downtown Newark, Delaware for two hours. You can watch the paint peel....

You can find faces in the wood of derelict buildings being renovated....

You can shop for items that won't fit in your bicycle saddlebags even if you could afford it...

You can stop in an antique store and ponder that fact that while others were doing drugs and rock and roll you were campaigning for Nixon. And then you can ponder that drugs might have been a wiser choice.

You can meet a little girl with her new puppy Riley (all 6 inches long and 2 pounds of him).

And then you go back to the bike store to gather your reamed and gleamed new gearing system. So Howard sends you out on a test ride and in your exuberance you sail down a road, shifting all the way through the 27 gears and ummmmm.....well accidentally you end up on both large rings and suddenly the gears grind to a stop and you've broken the bike and have to walk it back to the bike store in anticipation of three men who will find the whole thing very amusing.

"Good God, Howard! She did what? And you said with her panniers loaded she'd never make it to the third ring and get in trouble."

So Howard reamed things out again and loosened up the chain so "Rocket Lady, won't get in any more trouble."

Two trips around the Hall Rail to Trail and I went home and collapsed.

TO RIDE THE WIND.....AGAIN

The View from Pardes has turned on a dime, or more precisely it has turned on a 700x32 bicycle tire.

Such moments have a way of sneaking up on you. One minute you are a comatose driver of a car stuck in an interstate gridlock and the next moment, you are discovering that change is as easy as it is sneaky. You never forget how to navigate change…. It’s easy, it’s like riding a bike.

Last year when I turned 62, I realized that I no longer noticed the seasons change and that I was working the majority of my waking hours, passing out in front of the TV, and repeating this day after day.

I attempted to remedy this with mixed results and none of them permanent.

One of my brainstorm solutions was to take the bus to work. This would stick my tongue out at the escalating gasoline prices and it would force me to get some exercise by walking 0.4 miles to the bus stop twice a day.

This was a great plan. I actually started becoming aware of my surroundings again. The weather, the nosey or catatonic or secluded neighbors, and the time on the bus allowed me to read, nap, or fraternize with the myriad of people who ride the bus.

The only snag was the severe spinal and hip arthritis that made even a 0.4 mile walk completely impossible without taking pounds of pain killers.

“I know what to do,” I thought one day as I limped home in pain. “I’LL GET A BIKE AND RIDE TO THE BUS STOP.” The irony is that even if you can’t walk ten steps without severe pain you CAN ride a bicycle for miles and miles with a smile on your face.

Who would have thought that such a utilitarian idea would blossom into an obsessive hobby as that which a bicycle brings into your life.

Such things as gear inches, saddle fit, land topography, the time of sunrise and sunset, and the weather channel became uppermost in my mind.

I splurged and bought a hybrid bike, my beloved Trek 7.6 FX, which would be light enough to lift unto the bus bicycle rack and a bike that had the required granny gears to keep me moving on what were to me the Mt. Everest hills of Delaware.

Within a month I’d lost 25 pounds, significantly lowered my blood pressure, and acquired a sense of contentment that I haven’t felt since that first time I learned to balance a bike and ride with the wind.

More and more Baby Boomers are taking up their bicycles and leaving their pains and worries and distractions behind them and rediscovering their generational pledge to change the world beginning with themselves.

At 30, I resigned from a successful career that had me on the fast track in the chemical industry. I felt like Peggy Lee singing “Is That All There Is,” as I turned in my letter of resignation with the quote from Charles Dubois, “The important thing is this: to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.”

I never regretted that decisive change or the others following it. Indeed, once again, I revel in becoming myself once again but this time from the seat of a bicycle.