I need a new goal

I don’t set goals very often and when I do, they are usually vague. I remember when something really clicked with me about the enormity of nuclear weapons, in 1972, and I wrote to myself, I want to do something about that. I gravitated to the nuclear disarmament movement and ended up working for a dozen years at the premier antinuclear journal, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

My vague goal-setting doesn’t always work out that well. I decided to write a book a number of years ago and did, but when I couldn’t interest an agent or publisher in it, I, too, lost interest. By that time the book didn’t quite hit the target of what I thought I needed to express. The topic still interested me but I wasn’t satisfied with my treatment of it. I didn’t mind setting it aside.

The goals I set late last winter were more modest and more specific. I decided to write a blog and bike a century. You see, I have succeeded in both of those.

The blog goes on. I do not have great ambitions for it. It sustains and entertains me and a few of my friends, known and unknown. It does not yet suggest further goals.

The century is done. I could keep doing centuries and I may, but that kind of repetition doesn’t count as goal-setting, in my opinion. You set goals to kick it up a notch, expand your horizons and capacities, achieve something new.

I’ve often thought goal-setting is overrated. I have often thought I am not ambitious. I have often thought goal-setting can keep you from focusing on the present, where I happily live. But now I am wondering about all of this.

I am really proud of that century. I did something I didn’t think I could do, even halfway through the ride itself. I had biked a century twice before but not for 10 years. I remember thinking after the last time, I don’t ever want to do this again.

I don’t feel that way this time, and the very fact that I am not put off by the experience, difficult as it was, suggests that it has opened a window in my soul. Something new is there.

The modest, specific goals I set this year have not been entirely future-oriented; they have kept me focused on the present. They have introduced regular practices. And both have produced some needed growth.

The blog addresses my sensitivity and perfectionism around writing. I’ve been shy about my personal writing, both yearning for response and fearing it. Oh, what a trial it was, trying to interest the cold, commercial publishing world in that book that exposed my soul! On the other hand, writing “under the table,” as the Russians say, in a journal or for myself alone, wasn’t quite enough. This blog is a happy medium, pun intended.

The century goal and the training it required, besides making me physically stronger, addressed my tendency to give up easily. I’ve even blogged about the joys of quitting. But sometimes persistence is good and I could use more practice in that.

I have another modest goal in mind, related to biking, that I want to think about for a few days before setting it out here. It’s one that also might leverage some growth.

Century plus

I told Vic well into our century training that I would only be able to go the full hundred under perfect conditions: sunny, cool, no wind. The forecast for yesterday was chilly rain, gusty wind, maybe even thunderstorms. Yikes.

Rather than give up before we even started we bought more gear. In Ann Arbor, where I spent the week helping with Hazel, I went to REI and bought a blue, stuffable rain jacket. On Saturday when we registered for the ride and got our arm bands, Vic bought an even lighter-weight, bright yellow biking jacket. I bought knee warmers.

When I wore my blue jacket on a 10-mile ride on Saturday I discovered that it contained my sweat very effectively. I was soon soaked from the inside. So much for trying to adapt hiking gear for biking. I’d wear my flimsy red biking jacket and stuff the blue one in a pocket in case of a real downpour.

I was up early on Sunday, jittery.  I could hardly eat my pancakes and hard-boiled egg. I almost left my helmet behind. The weather looked like it was living up to its promise but it wasn’t raining at the moment and we got to the start in Three Oaks and set off before 8. A few blocks down the street I discovered my hands were bare. We circled back to the car. My gloves weren’t there. Then I realized I’d stuffed them in a jacket pocket. Bike gear has pockets in the back and you forget what’s there. But that’s how nervous I was.

The Apple Cider Century has more than 5,000 registrants every year. Thank goodness they don’t all start out at once, or take the same routes—the 15 and 25 go one way, the 37 and 50 another, and the 62-75-100 yet another. And because of the weather a lot of people who had registered didn’t show up at all. I might not have if I hadn’t made such a big deal of doing this, counting it as something of a life decision, blogging about it and all. Nevertheless, the roads were crowded at first, people passing way too close.

Five miles into the ride it started to rain. And although it stopped now and then and wasn’t heavy much of the time, it pretty much rained for the next 6 hours. Temperatures in the 50s.

The weather and the doubts—Can I really do this? Is this really stupid or what?—made the 28 miles to the first sag stop really long. We were ready for the snacks and the port-a-potty. Avoiding the apples and cider, I chose the snacks that would sit best on my tummy—hot potato soup, grapes, nuts, and sesame sticks--and recharged my water bottle with yucky red Gatorade. I took precautionary Advil.

Sags really help. The calories go straight to the legs, which, after a few minutes off the bike, are ready to forgive you for this foolishness and get back to work.

The second stretch went by more quickly but by the time we arrived at the next sag the rain was picking up again and I got cold as soon as I got off the bike. This place had indoor restrooms. In the ladies’ room the hand dryers were going perpetually and it was toasty. It was hard to go back outside into the cold rain.

To make things harder this stop was only 11 miles from our house. I could have biked home directly to a hot shower for a total of 65 miles—more than a metric century. But that was hardly longer than I’d gone on a practice ride. I was determined to make at least 75--and I was sure, at this point, that I would not go farther. Vic, though, was determined to make 100.

Chilled to the bone, I pulled out my blue rain jacket and put it over the red one, which wasn’t very water resistant. It warmed me up. We set out for the decision point some 10 miles down the road, where the 75 route went left and the 100 went right. My legs and I had decided we would most definitely go left. They were tired. Every little hill was a mountain. I was feeling the handicap of my hybrid bike versus the thin-wheeled road bikes that were passing me speedily up the hills--though I would coast past some on the way down. Nobody was going the long routes with a hybrid.

And then the rain stopped. It had stopped before but this time the clouds were lifting. We reached the 75-100 decision point. I took off my rain jacket and debated with Vic. He was ready to go farther. I thought about getting back to the car and waiting for several hours for him to finish and wondering, while I waited, whether I actually could have gone the distance. My knees were feeling ok. My tush was feeling ok. Didn’t I owe these faithful body parts something for cooperating?

I decided to go the distance. Vic promised to wait for me at the top of every hill if necessary.

The stop to debate the decision was enough to recharge my legs. The rain was definitely over and the sun came out for a few minutes now and then. We were now in vineyard and orchard territory. We would get whiffs of cheap bathroom deodorizer—and then realized it was real grape fragrance, coming from grapes ready to harvest. Apple trees sagged with fruit. Soybean fields were golden. I began, at the 65-mile mark, to enjoy the ride.

The fun lasted through the next sag, which, at 80 miles, was only for those going the full 100. Everybody was upbeat. The rain had stopped! Our friends who had peeled off at 62 or 75 had missed the best part! We were going to make it! Only 20 miles to go!

 Feeling optimistic at 80 miles

We were wrong. The finish line was not 20 miles away. We rode into a headwind 18 miles to the final sag  and learned, to our dismay, that Three Oaks was still 8 miles away, into the wind, of course. Something was not adding up.

By this time I was hurting all over—my tush, my shoulders, my knees, even the left knee, which had never hurt before. I tucked up behind Vic and let him draft me when I could keep up but mostly I couldn’t. At some point he yelled, “One hundred!” when we were still miles away from town. I could happily have stopped right there in the middle of nowhere.

It was nice that some bystanders were watching us pass and cheering us on. It helped. When we finally got to Three Oaks, we arrived to lots of cheers.

I was ready to cry. And when I peeled myself off my bike, with real difficulty, I was grouchy. What were they thinking, making us go more than 100 miles?

It turns out that the organizers had not planned for a detour at the start of the ride, which they put in at the last minute because of road construction when the route was already set and marked. Officially, we rode 106.3 miles.

As if we needed just a little extra challenge.

Lessons on wheels

The century ride is one week away. I’m as ready as I’m going to get so we’ll see.

On my ride today I was thinking about what I’ve learned during this summer of training. They seem like life lessons as much as lessons in how to train for a physical endeavor.

1. Set your intention. It’s not all mental but a lot of it is. As our weekly long rides got longer, each one seemed just about as far as I could go but then the next week I would go at least 5 miles farther, and it wasn’t just because I was stronger. It was because I raised the mental bar a notch. I thought, 25 miles today. And then 40 miles several weeks later. And 60 miles.

This applies to shorter rides, too. Last Monday we set out for a 20-mile ride. Halfway through Vic decided he wanted to check out something farther down the road and we ended up going 30 miles. My legs felt betrayed: “You didn’t ask us to do this!” They turned each hill into a mountain and slowed me way down. And the legs have been pouting all week, fussing over my right knee and insisting on extra days of rest.

2. Rest is as important as the exercise itself, but not too much of it. My training schedule called for starting out with 4 rides a week and increasing to 5. Maybe it’s my age, but 5 was too much. I had more energy if I rested nearly every other day. On the other hand, I took a week off around Labor Day to be with the family and because the training was getting boring. And then I caught a cold, which extended the break another week. It was very, very hard to get back on the bike after that and I still can think of all kinds of excuses not to. Well, one week to go!

3. Don’t compare. My last century ride was 10 years ago so I’m not thinking of trying to better my time or even match it. But my brother Dale, who challenged me to do this in the first place, has been fussing all summer about how poorly he’s doing in his training. He averaged 16 mph on a century 4 years ago and can’t come close to that this year even on shorter rides. So I wasn’t surprised when he announced recently that he’s dropping out. His excuse is that Judy, his wife, is in the mood to take a road trip to the Canadian Rockies and they have to get started right now. Yeah, right.

4. Have a buddy. Dale lives too far away to be a riding buddy but Vic has been a patient companion  on the long rides. He has even delayed getting a new bike so we’ll stay more evenly matched in speed. It really helps. And I am inspired to be faithful in doing the short rides on my own so that I can keep up with him on the long ones--at least on the straightaways and downhills.

But you, dear readers, are also buddies. You are cheering me on and it helps.

5. Discipline begets discipline and slacking begets slacking. I observed the latter in the last few days. I’ve been slacking off the biking, and then I found myself watching hours and hours of TLC TV, you know, bad bride shows and What Not to Wear. And devouring a whole box of sour cream donut holes. Recent scientific studies of willpower point out this obvious fact: discipline is a muscle that becomes stronger with use and affects all parts of your life.

Enough of the donut holes. I was back on the bike today. I'm raising the mental bar to 100 miles.

A meaningful life

I didn’t note the name of the philosopher whose blog I was reading in the NY Times several days ago and so I can’t find it to quote him. But I’ve been thinking about his statement about what constitutes a meaningful life.

It was something like, “when subjective meaningfulness meets objective meaningfulness.” In other words, when the way you live feels meaningful to you, and it also is judged meaningful by others, or society.

Collecting Tiddlywinks may feel meaningful to you but society probably wouldn’t agree, so by this standard that wouldn’t count as a meaningful life pursuit, even if you threw your heart into it. Likewise, if you lead a life of service to others and are a role model to the young, but your life depresses you, it is not a meaningful life.

And maybe that’s ok. Maybe you don’t care about meaningful living but I do, and I’ve been thinking about what gives my life meaning ever since I read that. I find a bit of a disconnect between what feels meaningful and what others might judge meaningful, and I do some of both. I wonder if putting them together is what gives my life meaning, overall?

I suppose what society might judge most meaningful about my life is my work as an environmentalist and, before that, in the peace movement and antinuclear field. I have put myself in a position to do such work because it is almost a sine qua non that my professional work carry meaning. And I do it well. But I have never taken a lot of visceral satisfaction in that work. I am happy doing it part time. I am not, like most of my colleagues, a workaholic, dedicating myself to it heart and soul. Which is probably why I don’t have a lot of stellar accomplishments to point to and those I have, I don’t feel like pointing to or even remembering. I have an awful time putting together a resumé. Glad I don’t have to do it often these days.

Is this a sign that I am in the wrong line of work? I’ve often wondered but keep coming back to the fact that it is important to me to be of service to the Earth and people in my work and I do my level, humble best, as part of teams and causes greater than myself. But at the end of the day that work often leaves me tired and needing a pick-me-up.

The things I do as pick-me-ups are where life feels most meaningful:

·      Cooking a quick lunch out of nothing again today—bowls of a thick stew of Amish noodles, some beef broth from the bottom of the freezer, a huge onion, leftover squash, hot pepper, parsley, a squeeze of lemon, which Vic pronounced good. “Sort of like stroganoff without the sour cream.”

·      A skype conversation with the nearly verbal granddaughter. She laughs, uses sign language, blowing kisses, offering me blueberries through the computer screen.

·      A bike ride farther than I have gone before. 59 miles last weekend. Does society count this meaningful? I suppose, if it keeps me fit and helps me live longer. But that’s not why I do it. I’m not even sure why I do it.

·      Sitting down to write this blog, which, as far as I can tell, has a tiny but perhaps faithful readership. Hardly anybody ever comments. It probably doesn’t reach the norm of meaningful activity as far as the larger society is concerned. But it feels important to me.

These things feel good to me and they balance out my life. The whole package—the “important” stuff and the more private pleasures—adds up to a meaningful life.

Poltergeist

Last week during the visit of the Ann Arbor family, two objects disappeared. I’m not blaming the family or any of its members. I’m just saying, there were visitors present when it happened and I don’t know what, if anything, that had to do with it.

The first lost item was the remote for the Blu-Ray. At first we thought Hazel must be responsible. She could have picked it up off the coffeetable and deposited it somewhere. Anywhere. Though we had been keeping our adoring eyes on her, perhaps in an unguarded instant she had spirited it off and dropped it in a cupboard or wastebasket or, or . . . .

We searched the house, the cupboards, all the anywheres and somewheres, high and low, over several days. The remote never turned up.

The day after they left I discovered that one of my new sports bras was missing. Like the Blu-Ray remote, without which we could not watch streaming movies or DVDs with subtitles, this was a valued piece of property. I’d discovered a style with perfect fit and comfort. It was not cheap. I searched high and low, in and out, in imagined and unimaginable places (keeping my eye peeled for the remote at the same time).

Hazel had not been in my bedroom or closet. I had not laundered this bra or taken it off in any odd place. It had been in my closet, in one of only two possible locations. It was gone.

After several days of nagging, repetitive searching for both these items I casually googled “disappearing objects” and came across the usual commonsensical admonitions about absentmindedness and theft.

Who would steal a bra and a remote? Where could we have misplaced them, that we hadn’t already searched?

There was also predictable nonsense about poltergeists, and lots of anecdotes about evaporating keys and disappearing and reappearing silverware. One mild instruction caught my attention.

The chances of the problem being a ghost or poltergeist are slim... but what if it is? Others who have had this kind of problem with unseen entities have had success with confronting them about it. When something disappears, talk aloud to the entity, saying something like, "Whoever you are, I do not appreciate that you take my things, even if you do sometimes return them. This is my house, and you are welcome to visit here as long as you do not cause disturbances, frighten me or my family, or take my possessions. Do not take them anymore." Be very firm in speaking with them, as if you are talking to a child whose behavior you want to change. You may need to repeat the admonition a few times before it has its desired effect.

I read this aloud to Vic last night and we laughed, and then I repeated it to the “entity,” with special emphasis on how much I wanted my expensive, comfortable sports bra back.

Several hours later I was checking email just before going to bed. Vic called from another room, “Have you heard from the poltergeist yet?”

“No,” I started to answer but before I got the word out my vision slid a few inches to the side and I saw the missing bra. It was on the floor right next to my chair, lying on top of the tangle of cords of computer, phone, modem, and printer.

There is no way it would have been there for nearly a week and I just didn’t see it. There is no way it could have gotten there in the first place. You may doubt this but I assure you, it is true.

And creepy! I proclaimed my heartfelt thanks. We had a good, if nervous laugh. I had some trouble going to sleep, imagining entities.

We both pleaded for the remote, but we’re still waiting.

Saved by kale

My friend Carolyn says if the Messiah were to come as a plant it would be kale. I suppose she means that we would all be saved if we believed in kale. This has some truth to it; kale is one of the most nutrient-dense foods on the planet. But for many people, kale is an acquired taste that they haven’t acquired.

I tried for years to eat my quota of kale but encountered its inherent contradiction. If you eat it raw or cook it only until it’s bright green it’s really hard to chew. If you cook it until it’s tender it becomes gray-green and odiferously cabbagey. That is ok if you mask the sulfurous compounds with ham hocks, vinegar, hot pepper and other components of yummy overcooked southern-type greens. And if you don’t care about the nutrients that have cooked away. But what is the point of eating a nutrient-dense food if you boil away the nutrients?

A year ago August my friend Dawn, who effortlessly cooks any type of cuisine with all types of ingredients, was visiting to meet our new granddaughter.  My friendship with Dawn began years ago in Africa when Hazel's mommy was an infant herself. I remember Dawn making Greek taramosalata from scratch in Lubumbashi, Congo; showing me how to pound garlic out of its skins; and introducing me to the many uses of lemon zest.

It was the beginning of high kale season and we were making dinner together. Dawn asked me how I wanted her to prepare the kale. “However you want, dearie,” I said, knowing that whatever she came up with would taste great.

She said, “Well, I usually sauté some onions and garlic and steam the kale with that for a few minutes then chop it in the food processor.”

Ah! Duh. End of kale dilemma. Use the food processor to help you chew.

The results were outstanding, and together we discovered something else. If you season the kale with hot pepper and serve it over rice, you have an approximation of sombé, the manioc greens we used to love in Congo. Manioc greens required long boiling followed by pounding in a mortar and pestle with palm nuts. Now and then we would hire our house servant’s wife to make sombé for us, along with chicken in palm oil and tomatoes. It took no time at all to acquire that taste.

Dawn’s food-processor kale was only a distant low-fat relative of the rich genuine article but it was yummy in its own way. Especially topped with hot sauce and crushed peanuts.

Unfortunately, our CSA farm this year has no kale and I can’t bring myself to buy it from the supermarket. But I called our farmer of last year, who wasn’t running a CSA this year, and asked if she had any to spare. She did.

And so last evening, when I was all alone after a lovely long weekend with the family, I consoled myself with an all-you-can-eat dinner of kale and peanuts on brown rice--and I was saved.

Making meals out of nothing

My most popular post of all time is How to make a meal out of nothing. Every week it is the top  pageview on my stats page. Why is this?

I thought perhaps somebody had posted a reference to it, you know, read this clever post by this wonderful writer. But no. There is no referring site. Instead, people are finding this post by searching for information on “how to make a meal out of nothing.”

Or as some have put it, “how to create a meal with whatevers,” “how to make a meal without meat,” or “a meal out of nuffin.”

Perhaps it is a sign of the times. Cupboards are bare. People are having to make do with nothing.

A slightly more cheerful interpretation is that somebody gets home from work, too exhausted to assemble the ingredients for a decent meal, and resorts to the internet. I got nuffin. Tell me what to make of it. If so, it is also a sign of the times that such persons are not just picking up carry-out.

I am neither cash poor nor pressed for time. I wrote that piece as entertainment, not instruction. If anything it is a lesson in how it can be more fun to be frugal and creative than to go out and shop for all the ingredients you think you need to make a meal.

And it is a talent I have. I can make decent, sometimes wonderful meals out of next to nothing. I pride myself on using what’s on hand and serving up every last vegetable before it wilts. I could play that stump-the-cook game I used to hear on the radio in which callers describe the contents of their cupboards and fridge and the expert cook tells them what to make with it. Although as I recall, the expert got to add an ingredient or two. I wouldn’t even have to do that.

I did the search myself to see what else would come up if you googled “how to make a meal out of nothing.” All of the other first-page results were more serious than mine, straightforward how-to’s on making meals from nothing.

Some were not helpful at all. Like the one that told you how to stock your cupboards and fridge so you could always make something from nothing. Always have eggs and lemons and pasta and canned tomatoes and parmesan etc. etc. on hand. Come on. That is not a bare cupboard.

One post reflected my approach but put it in the form of straight instruction: It said things like “look thoroughly with both eyes,” “raid the freezer,” and “get creative.” But it also said, “grow your own herbs,” which takes some forethought. Likewise, “get in the habit of stocking up on staples.”

I didn’t purport to tell anybody how to do this. I just tried to show that it might be fun and possible and what the heck.

But it is probably true that what is fun for me is necessity for many in these tough times.