Marisa the optimist when her car died: Time to be a cyclist! We’ll make the best of this situation! I’ve wanted to do this forever, anyway! This is going to be amazing! It’s going to push my limits! I’m going to get healthier! I’m going to save the environment! I’m going to see all sorts of weird and wonderful parts of the city! I can just bike to go camping! This is going to help me so much with my time management! I can just walk to get groceries! My arms are gonna be buff! I’m going to feel so free!
Marisa the human: can I actually be a cyclist? C’mon; wipe the tears away and make the best of this situation. It’s been a really long time since that dream; are you sure you want it? This is going to be hard. This is going to push my limits. I’m going to be a lot more tired. What does it matter to the planet if I’m just one person “saving the environment?” The city isn’t bike friendly. Where the fuck is camping within 50 flat miles of Los Angeles!? *Writes in journal: day 265. Late again. To everything.* Maybe I don’t have to eat. My arms are so weak. I feel so stuck.
Monday night, my father and step-mother (who I met just 11 years ago) offered me to drive their newly extra car home from my holiday trip up to the Pacific Northwest. “Cancel your return flight,” he said. “You can drive the Yaris home.”
It’s mine if I want it.
I froze. For one, this was a huge and overwhelming symbolic gesture. A surprise adult child was difficult for my step-mom to wrap her (big) heart around and we’ve only recently begun to get close. Acceptance alone has been transformative, nonetheless generosity of this scale. Processing was necessary.
But, also, do I want a car? I just chose not to have one for financial, environmental, and personal goals’ sake. I am attached to the idea of becoming a cyclist and pedestrian.
“I will find a way to fix the Honda,” my dad said. “In the mean time, you can have the Yaris to drive around for groceries and to camp in.”
My eyes welled up, and the answer was there. I want a car. The same one I have in my garage, on her death bed. But also, any vehicle that can enable me to make the most of my time away from my 9 to 5 and escape into the outdoors, away from the concrete of the city.
It’s been a month since my last ride into work. I’m my own harshest critic. Although I am aware that I can look at the once as a success (once last month is more time than the half the month before, and the zero the month before that), my unfortunate default is to harshly order myself to do better. I just still don’t know how to talk to myself. We’re working on it.
I may want to be a bikepacker and to be able to take my time getting from point A to B. But I’ve also been told the way to become a cyclist is to start small and have micro-goals.
I can still do this lifestyle thing, cycling and walking a majority of time. And I will. But, come the new year, instead of being “stuck” in the city because of workweek and transportation limitations, I will be free again to explore the places that are, for now, too ambitious for me to reach by bike.
I slept like a baby knowing I’d be back on the road and able to take off whenever I choose, independent of anyone else’s desire to do the same.
the RAMBLE 