Wanted.

The things that used to fuel my old zine – coffee, late nights, travel, punk rock and romantic bungling – are things that, for the most part, I don’t do any more. When I see people from those days they inevitably ask me what I’ve been doing since the time I last appeared on their radar. “Not much,” I tend to shrug. And then, with a slight questioning tone, as if it’s totally no big deal, “Riding my bike?” You know, just like people say when they go and roll along the bike paths with their girlfriends, or pedal down to Williamstown for a picnic. That’s totally the image I’m trying to project, even if it isn’t true.

The truth, of course, is much more difficult to comprehend – that I’m spending twenty hours a week training to ride my bike, that I go to the gym and lift things heavier than me; that I wake up early to stink up the end room with my sweat and exertion; that I measure my heart rate every morning to monitor my recovery from the previous day’s training; that I have a coach, a gym trainer, a masseuse, a dietician; that I now know more about my body than I ever have before, and that this knowledge has enabled me to overcome the false separation of body and brain, and finally think about myself as one whole big truth. That’s kind of a big deal, and hard to tell someone who you haven’t seen for four or five years.