Mindfuck

This week I came back to Boston for the first time since I moved to San Francisco about 16 months ago. In all that time I had never had the desire to visit, especially since I was afraid that seeing many of my old friends would reopen wounds that were still tender. But it had to happen eventually, and so last Friday night I boarded a plane to revisit the site of the worst 6 months of my adult life. I had mostly put the past out of my head (fresh starts are good for that), and it wasn't until the week before my flight that I even let my mind return to everything that's happened over the last 2 years. I hardly recognized myself in that confused, anxious, downtrodden version of Claire that suffered through January until June 2010. I was happier, optimistic, much more self-confident, and richer. I had also started wearing "girl bras" rather than walking around with the sports bra "boob loaf" all the time, which makes me feel like a lot more of a grown-up (even though the bras come from the girls' section of Target). Life was good and I had moved on.

One of the first things I did once I'd landed was to contact Michelle for a trail run. Talking to her and then Big Red the following morning gave me the warm fuzzy feeling that you get from hanging out with people who truly love you and bring out the best in you. Red, Michelle, and I had a synergistic summer in 2008 where we all pushed each other to the best fitness of our lives, and reliving those days was nothing but sweet. Once I saw Michelle and Big Red again, I couldn't believe how much I realized that I missed them.

That night I went out to dinner with the Rockstar Housemate who kept me from cracking up completely in those months after the break-up. It was an unseasonably warm night, and I was feeling all warm and fuzzy inside knowing that Rockstar Housemate was one of the people who had seen me at my worst and still seemed to enjoy hanging out with me. "How's the house?" I eventually ventured to ask. "Is it still a shithole, or have you guys done some work on it?" To be honest, I didn't even know if he still lived with Lindsey. Did I care?

"That ratty blue couch is still in the living room. With the third housemate came another dog, so there's room for two people in the middle of the couch with a dog on each side." It didn't take a genius to deduce that Lindsey's new girlfriend had moved in to the shithole house. I decided that what I was feeling was more than not caring. I really, really didn't want to hear anything about it. Not that I was jealous that her new girlfriend had slipped right into my spot in the shitty life that Lindsey was stuck in, but more that hearing anything about her filled me with so much revulsion that I wanted to run out of the restaurant screaming. I changed the subject.

But the flood gates had been opened. As I visited people over the next few days, everyone wanted to tell me about her, talk shit on her new girlfriend, and in general relive my former disgraces without my even asking. "Have you been seeing Lindsey since you've been back? Because if you have, I'm going to punch you in the face," said her former housemate (the one she lived with before we moved in with the Rockstar. I find it gratifying that people who lived with us in both houses all came down on my side.) "She really downgraded on her new girlfriend," he offered. "Have you ever seen Pink Floyd's The Wall? You know those people with no faces that they put into the meat grinder? She looks like one of those. NO! You know what she looks like? Did you ever watch the Muppets? You know that Muppet with the long blonde hair that sings in Animal's band? She looks like that!"

"I don't care, Rich," I told him (I don't remember what nickname I gave him in the past).

"Have you been to the shop yet?"

"I don't want to go to the shop. No one works there anymore that I can't see outside the shop." He paid me no mind and called. "Hey, is 'One-Bike Lindsey' working today? No? She's off till Tuesday? Great! Thanks."

So despite my protests, after pumpkin shopping Rich took a left out of the parking lot rather than going straight back to the house and dragged me to the shop. I hardly recognized anyone on staff other than twiggy and an annoying little compulsive liar that they called Gnome. Not to let things go by unnoticed, Rich gathered everyone around and said, "This is Lindsey's ex. Isn't she hotter than the new girl?"I wanted the earth to swallow me up.

"Yeah, her new girlfriend is weird. So you dated Linsey, huh? How did that go? I thought you moved out of state," said the new retail manager. Really? After all this time and all the hours in the saddle with all these people, this is who I am? Frankly, I was surprised that I'd come up at all. I was under the impression that I was a subject that just wasn't brought up around Her Royal Highness anymore.

"I came out ahead in that transaction," I said. "I got to move to California and be happy and she got to stay here with her shitty life." And then I refused to answer any more questions. It came out bitter, but sheesh, is there a way to come out of that situation sounding classy and gracious?

When you haven't seen someone in awhile, it turns out that they don't want to know about all the cool things that are going on in your life since you left, they want to fill you in on what's been going on in the place that you left in your absence. Piece by piece, people started telling me more and more about Lindsey. Slick told me that he had seen her at a cyclocross race and she was interested in buying a cross bike, but then had wandered off when he was trying to introduce her to reps. Typical, half-baked ideas and no fucking follow-through, my mind griped before I noticed how pissed I was getting and changed my mental subject. King of the Bike Geeks asked me if I'd seen her, and then told me it was probably a good idea that I'd called ahead to make sure that she wasn't working that day. Do you still believe the fucking ridiculous lies that she told about me? Do the years of riding next to you and chatting with you over a work bench mean nothing to you? You used to respect me and be one of the biggest advocates of my riding back in the day, I thought, and then made myself stop before I got too upset. Michelle told me that she'd named her new dog after Michelle's own dog. I don't know why this made me furious, but it did. Teen Idol told me that after his bike accident a year ago that put him in a wheelchair, she had basically dropped him. How can someone be such a fair weather friend that they can't even come see their best friend every once in awhile, just because he's in a wheelchair? She didn't even spend her dad's last Christmas with him! What kind of soul-less person does that? my mind screeched. Instead I gave him a hug and told him to keep on his physical therapy because the next time I was home, I wanted to go on a walk with him. And when Rockstar Housemate told me that her new girlfriend is a personal trainer I absolutely lost it. "Listen! I don't want to hear about her anymore! I don't want to hear that she's doing well, I don't want to hear that she's doing badly. I have moved on, and I just don't want to go there anymore!" It was true. I really, really didn't care what she was up to, but hearing that she was the same old flakey, lazy, condescending, unreliable, entitled, retarded douche that she'd always been just put me back into a head space that I never wanted to revisit. The thought actually crossed my mind to egg her house, although I knew it would be more fun to fantasize about than to actually do it. It just didn't seem fair that someone should be allowed to hurt another person so much and then have absolutely no repercussions on her life, and just replace me like an old iPod. I had to get out of here!

On my second-to-last night home it was all getting to be too much. I'd been hanging out with people nonstop since I landed and I just needed some quiet time. While we were visiting my grandmother, my mom must have asked me 5 times over the course of the afternoon whether I was coming home for dinner. "No, mom, I don't think so."

"Oh? Who are you going to see?"

"I don't know, Mom." Which she heard as, 'I'm still free, why don't you invite me for dinner again.' Finally I told her, "Tell you what, if I haven't called by the time you've made dinner, then just assume that I'm not coming." I'd hung out with her every day since I arrived, and my mom's not the kind of mom that you can be best friends with. You've always got to filter what you say to her so that she won't worry or pry.

I finally broke free from my mom, and ignored the 2 voicemails she left in quick succession, "So will you be coming home for dinner?" A few hours later drove to the Whole Foods to get a salad before I hunkered down in the hotel to watch some Netflix. It was 7:45, so I figured she would already be at home cooking or eating, so there was no chance I'd run into her. And then I looked up and... there were my mom and dad coming right for me. Are you serious?! I had to get out of this small town as fast as I could. "Hi hon," mom said. "What are you up to tonight?"

"Just chilling." Now this is the point where my mom should have figured out that I was here in Whole Foods getting food for myself because I would rather spend the night alone than come home and have an uncomfortable dinner with her and dad.

"Are you coming over for dinner?" she asked. Oh my god, I'm never coming home again! I thought.

After three days of revisiting my old life, it was time to check out of the hotel and spend my final day at my parents' house. The hotel was about 8 miles from my mom and dad's house and right smack in the middle were Lindsey's house and Lindsey's work. I couldn't avoid one without passing the other. My luck couldn't hold out. After checking out of the hotel I stopped by a Starbucks that I never go to. I swung into the parking space, and in the second before my car came to a complete stop, I looked into the car facing me, and there in the passenger seat not 10 feet away was fucking Lindsey with her girlfriend in the driver's seat. In a flash my eyes registered her smile and the familiar way that she sipped her coffee and then my fight or flight instinct kicked in.

Before my eyes even had much time to focus, I threw the car in reverse and gunned it out of the space and across the parking lot. I didn't know what to do, but priority number one was not having to see her or have her get a good look at me. I couldn't be trusted not to be a total bitch and my hands couldn't be trusted not to shake. In fact, they were already shaking like crazy as I threw the car into drive and floored it across the parking lot to where I hoped there was an exit. There was no exit, so I just parked in the far corner of the parking lot with my hands shaking until I was pretty sure they would have left. Who cared if she recognized me, who cared if she walked into work and said, "I think I just saw Claire," and someone said, "Yeah, she's been coming by all weekend." Had I run away because I was ashamed of anything that had happened over a year ago? Hell no, she was the one that owed me an apology.

The reason why I sat in the car behind the dumpster in that parking lot was because if we were face to face and she asked me, "How are you?" Or even if she saw me at a distance, there would be no way for me to express to her how well I'm doing and how much I now despise the despicable life that she's still stuck in. And I realized that until I can face her without shoving in her face what a loser she is, I wouldn't be fit to face her at all. So what if I make three times what she does? So what if I live in this beautiful place? So what if I'm out doing all the types of events she only talks about? There is absolutely no way to express all that stuff without undermining it by being obviously boastful and bitter.

Hiding out in the Starbucks parking lot made me realize another thing, too. That I still wasn't as confident as I would like to be. You can make all the money in the world and your phone can be ringing off the hook with people who want your time, but until you have the confidence to walk past your ex girlfriend and not even care if she's looking, then you've still got some work to do.

Grizzley Claire

Once upon a time, long, long ago in the summer of 2008 Shane and I heard of the Grizzly Century in the mountains between Yosemite and Sierra national parks. Shane rode it that year with a terrible cold and after hill after hill of harrowing climbing (as described by him) he finally abandoned the race somewhere before the final peak, not wanting to descend in the snow with his tuberculosis-like cough. He was sick for months after that, and this is the point where I suppose I should admit that he'd called me to ask if I thought he should ride that day and I'd told him to harden the fuck up and be a man. My curiosity was piqued, of course. I had meant to do the ride last year, but this is Northern California and people flaked on me. I was too poor last year to do the ride anyway. This year I put out the word on Facebook and one person was as intrigued as I was. It should be no surprise that it was Me in Boy Form, Counterpart Chris.

The original plan was to drive the 4 hours down to the race the night before and then just sleep in the car... and then reason won out. I looked at about 5 different hotel reservation sites to find a hotel near North Fork, CA. Mostly they seemed pretty expensive bed and breakfast type places, and then finally I found a cheap Motel 6 right in North Fork for about $60/night. Score! I got half way through booking before I realized that I was booking a hotel in North Fork, PENNSYLVANIA. Shit. I started again with the zip code, and again Hotels.com directed me to PA. I did a Google map search and all the hotels that showed up within 100 miles said "call for reservations." I'm a 21st century kind of gal, and I don't make 15 phone calls to comparison shop for hotel rooms. I do not even like to use my phone for calling. Twenty-first century fail.

There were more fails when it came to planning. "If the ride starts at about 7, then we should be done by about noon, one o'clock at the latest, so we can request a late check-out and come back and shower..." Counterpart Chris suggested.

"Uh, Chris, have you seen the course profile? There must be 8,000' of climbing in the first 80 miles. I can ride a sub-five century, but not over mountains. I was figuring more like 7-8 hours." I was beginning to fear that this ride would be ruined by trying to race through it in time to not have to pay for a second night at the hotel. When the cheapest hotel I could find was an hour from the start, I breathed a sigh of relief. There was absolutely no way we could get to a hotel an hour away and shower in time for a late check-out. I was free to enjoy the ride again.

We arrived at the start and rolled out a leisurely 20 minutes late after buying cartoon jerseys with bears on them. Mine had a bear making sushi and licking his fingers in a somewhat salacious way if you have the mind of a 13-year-old boy, which I do. The first incline hit after about a mile, and Couterpart Chris blasted off. I sat there grinding away on my pedals and breathing hard but refusing to sprint off after him. I could only lose that game, and I would rather hand him the car key in the first 5 miles rather than chase after him for the next 95 and dig myself into a hole I couldn't get out of. The day before I'd ridden a spin class (my 5th of 6 that week) on a CycleOps bike with a real power meter. I'd been crushed when the girl next to me was pushing the same power on the interval sets and didn't seem to be working as hard as I was. I too had become an "average" cyclist, and I had to respect my limitations with 75 miles of climbing ahead of me.

Counterpart Chris finally slowed down for me and I offered him the car keys if he wanted to go on ahead. He declined and we started climbing the first major climb from 2500' to 4500'. After awhile Counterpart Chris said, "Oh my god, when is this going to end?"

"Didn't you look at the elevation profile?" I asked.

"No." (And this is why we're the same person.)

"We're climbing pretty much straight through from mile 1 to mile 75 at 75000', then there's a 5000' drop over 10 miles and it's all flat home. I'm thinking of this as a 75-mile climb, and any downhills we get in between are bonus miles. This is going to be one of those 7 mph centuries." Silence. "Chris, how do you play the alphabet game?" I asked.

"You take turns and each person has to say a word that starts with the same letter. I played for five hours once. Mouse."

"Map."

"Mold."

"Musty..."

And much of the conversation for the day continued like that. When we spread out a bit or on the downhills we would have some time to think of new words, and then we'd pass each other again and yell out:

"Muckraker!"

"Moron!"

"Mastodon!"

"Mucus!"

"MULLET!"

People always knew that we were coming, and after recovering from the initial shock of a couple of kids riding by yelling, "Molester!" "Masturbate!" I think they figured out the rules of the game.

"Hey, it's the kids with the word game!" they would say.

The alphabet game ate up the first 60 miles or so of the ride, and we hardly noticed all the climbing. The views were typical California spectacular, with wooded mountains and those knobby glacial rocks that Yosemite is famous for sticking up out of the landscape. We took lots of pictures, but Counterpart Chris lost his camera somewhere between the ride and San Francisco, and I had an iPhone emergency and had to do a factory reset and lost ALL my pictures since 2009. I will instead tell you what pictures I would have put in here: Note: this is the one surviving picture from the trip.

We got to the top of the first peak where they were serving... lunch? "What mile are we at?" Counterpart Chris asked.

"Uhhh, 27," I told him.

There was an overlook and Counterpart Chris asked a stranger to take our picture. "Bend over, Chris," I told him. Then I stood behind him. Insert picture I'm describing here. Instead I will put a picture of something else. The people around us were shocked, and not in that good-natured kind of way.

"I'm glad that it's not the other way around!" one woman said.

"I think they're homophobic," Counterpart Chris whispered to me later.

"Aw, come on people," I said. "It's for Facebook. You've got to say something like, 'How did the hill go Chris?'" Sheesh, it wasn't Chris and I who had something up our butts.

I stuffed myself with baclava, nutella, and grapes and Counterpart Chris munched on potatoes for awhile before we got back on our bikes. Counterpart Chris is one of those people who can't eat anything. He's gluten intolerant, violently allergic to dairy, and eggs don't sit too well with him either. Plus, he's got a "no high-fructose corn syrup" policy, which is always good to have but was limiting his fueling options. As we picked our way higher and higher up the hill, we were each banking more and more "M" words as Counterpart Chris drifted back for longer and longer periods of time. Because I have grown up in the past few years, I didn't want to rub it in his face because he really did look like hell and I knew the day would come when I was feeling like hell and he would have to wait for me. When that day came, I knew that I didn't want him rubbing my nose in it.

"How are you doing?" I asked.

"If you drop me, I'll see you at the top," he said, which all endurophiles know means, 'Fuck off, I'm not in my happy place and I'm going to punch you if you try to help me.'

"What's the matter? You want some spice drops?" (Some things never change with me.)

"No, if I don't take a crap soon I think I'm going to die."

We hadn't seen a porta potty since lunch, and when we passed the 60-mile rest stop and there were still no facilities, I urged him to do it in the woods.

"What will I wipe with?!"

"C'mon! A leaf! What's worse, wiping with a big ol' leaf or shitting your pants. Just go! How do you think the bears do it???" In recent years I have also amended Claire's Number 1 Rule of Public Pooping: "Don't" to Claire's Number 1 Rule of Public Pooping: "Don't Unless You Will Be Done Before You Can Find Your Page/Load Angry Birds." Chris's angry turds could clearly beat Angry Birds in a race. "Hell, even I shit in the woods las week!" (It's true. Another life experience I can cross off the list.) So finally I stood at the side of the road and smiled and waved as people rode by while Counterpart Chris had a bear in the woods moment.

On the final climb up to 7500' I turned around to share a word like "Marjoram" or something and Counterpart Chris just wasn't there anymore. I had no idea how long he'd been gone and couldn't be 100% sure he was behind me and not in front of me. Anyway, this was the first time all day that I'd wished I'd had more gears. We had been climbing hills that were made for lots of traffic up until this point, but this was more like a service road that didn't bother to carve the flattest path but just followed the contours of the hill, which sometimes got uncomfortably steep. It was just hard enough that I didn't want to give up my mojo and wait for my brother from another mother. When we reached an impromptu water stop about 5 miles from the summit, it took Counterpart Chris several minutes to catch up and when he did he looked ashen and his lips were a funny color. I forced an Odwalla bar on him, despite his gluten thing because it looked like it was either going to be stomach discomfort or a long wait for the SAG van out in the middle of nowhere. He chose stomach discomfort. It was enough to get us both to the top of the hill where there was another spread of fresh fruit, baclava, and potatoes.

We had heard that there was a bad crash down the hill, so we decided to chill in the last rest stop for a bit to let them clear the road. They had a little fire going in a habachi, and next to it there was a pile of wood and... a hatchet!!! "Look, Chris! An axe!" I squealed, grabbing it.

"Uhhhh... be careful with that!"

I inexpertly raised the hatchet above my head and brought it down with pitiful force on a log. I think the log survived. Truth be told, I was too scared to chop hard. Weapons scare me, even hatchets. "Take a picture of me with it!" I said.

So Counterpart Chris took a picture of me looking WAY too excited holding an axe, and then made me put it down. Around that time a big ol' Jeep pulled up with a very dead buck tied to the roof. It was all covered in blood and stuff. I'm not so sensitive to the loss of an animal life as I used to be, so instead of mourning the deer like I would a cute puppy in an ASPCA poster, I just thought it was disgusting. I mean, come on. It's a carcas! And you strapped it to the roof of your car. How's that any different from picking up road kill at the side of the road (it's perfectly good meat, right? It didn't die of a disease or anything) or frying up your neighbor's dog because you're low on hamburger meat? "Hey, Earl! I just stepped on a huge roach! Go get me a cracker!"

Now that we were at the summit, we had a 12-mile, 5000' descent and then a 15-mile flat ride around the lake back to the start. On the downhill I tried to practice my countersteering by pressing on the inside drops, but even though they say it's supposed to be much more stable than being in the hoods, I just couldn't commit to being away from my brakes on a long descent and wound up descending at a comfortable 30 mph rather than pushing it to a pulse-racing 35-40 mph. Where did my huge balls go?

And that's pretty much it. We rode the rest of the way in, Counterpart Chris came back from his bonk. I murdered all the popcorn I could at the finish. Chris accidentally forgot his jersey in the school bathroom (which is why there are no pictures). I stripped down to nothing to change in the parking lot to save myself a trip back to the school, and was only vaguely worried about being entered into the sexual offenders registry for exposing myself on school property. Then we stopped at a Chipotle on the way home and I got terrible heart burn (something that happens to me about once every 2 years). Then we both got grouchy by the time we hit San Francisco again.

The End!

(By the way, does anyone know how to resize images in Google Chrome for Mac?)