A New Bike

The white bike with the big wheels is my 10-year-old’s new favorite thing. After taking a spin on it the other day, I can understand why. This is a real bike, a big step up from the little mountain bike she’s left behind in the garage, and a million pedal strokes from the training wheels she outgrew years ago.

Little bike, little girl - not long ago

I still remember a couple of my own new bikes from when I was a kid. The first I got when I was around the age my daughter is now. It was a pink Huffy with a giant, puffy seat. I rode it around the driveway, downtown to meet my friend Liz, and through the neighborhood to deliver the afternoon edition along my paper route.

In high school I got my first mountain bike – a Bridgestone MB-6, sleek and dark red with weirdly knobby tires. This bike went with me to college in upstate New York, where I first dabbled in riding singletrack, discovered the joy of careening around corners and flying down hills through the trees, of coming home mud-spattered and tired and happy.

I carted that bike across the country to Colorado when I moved, and it soon became a “townie” fitted with chrome fenders, curved handlebars, and baskets for carrying groceries and whatever else I needed to haul around town. When I moved back East, I had to leave the Bridgestone behind. I hope someone, somewhere is still riding it.

Surely I had other bikes in between the Huffy and the Bridgestone (I have a vague recollection of a 10-speed somewhere in there), but these are the two I remember.

I’m guessing the new (to her) white Cannondale picked up at the bike swap last weekend is going to be one of those bikes for my daughter, that she’ll love this bike even after the shine wears off.

It was all she could talk about on the long drive home from her second soccer game of the day Saturday. My husband and older two children had gone early to the swap and picked it out of the lineup that morning, when Katy and I were on our way to the first soccer game. She couldn’t wait to see it and take it for a spin.

No matter that she’d run who-knows-how-many-miles in two hours of soccer, she popped out of the car as soon as we stopped, took a happy look at the bike, and – after a few quick adjustments – hopped on to do laps up and down the driveway and around the house.

Watching my youngest ride a bike that is bigger than mine, I couldn’t help remembering a few short years ago when I helped a smaller, similarly pony-tailed version of the same girl take her first wobbly driveway laps sans training wheels. Now I’ll be lucky to keep up.

Keeping up is, in large part, the main goal when you’re the littlest. We started taking family bike rides when the kids were little, my husband and I spinning along while the kids figured out how to balance and brake, lean into turns and shift gears, climb hills steadily and descend with confidence. The littlest kid has always had the littlest bike, and she’s always had to pedal that much harder to stay within reach of her brother and sister.

Now the littlest kid has the biggest wheels. She’s already spent hours on her new bike, riding up and down local roads, around the corner to see grandparents, and all over the yard. She’s figured out the gears and tested the brakes and learned how to make smooth, tight turns.

She can’t wait to ride her new bike to school. I’m looking forward to more family biking adventures on the trail – even if I’m now the one with the littlest bike. 

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her blog, Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the May 10, 2019 issue of the Littleton Record.

Farewell to summer

The light is changing, as it does each year when summer reaches towards fall.

In June, we welcome the light as it brightens, sharp sunshine that shimmers with heat and long days and summer plans. In July, it seems the brightness will last forever. And then, suddenly it always seems, it is late August. The dark of night seeps into each day a bit earlier. The sunlight is still strong, but somehow not as energetic as it was a week or two ago. The light is changing.

The first time I really noticed the alteration of late summer light I was on my mountain bike in Colorado, returning to town from a single track ride south of Crested Butte. The light was still bright, but seemed more golden than white as it sifted through the mountains onto the open valley floor. The air was heavy with autumnal hues, even as the grass and sage around us held fast to their summer green. It was almost magical, that light in the mountains, and a sure sign that summer was waning.

There was another ride there, near to my front door, short and mellow, and so a favorite for after-work evening jaunts. This trail looped along a river valley, through patches of aspen trees. A friend dubbed it the yellow room in the in-between season of almost-fall. There was the sweet mustiness then that comes with decaying leaves and cooler nights. The sun sank low over town, through the aspens, their leaves rustling and gilded. The air itself seemed golden there, as the late day, late season sunshine reflected from the winding river like a long, amber ribbon.

The landscape is less open here, in the mountains of New Hampshire, and so the change in light not quite as palpable. But the light is changing. Already we notice the darkness edging in just after dinnertime, the sun lazy in its morning rise, the nights cooler than we are, perhaps, ready to accept.

School starts next week, which means it’s fall, even if we’re still weeks away from Equinox. The ferns in the field have browned. The dense canopy of forest on the mountains, seen from afar, is already dulling from bright green toward muted gold as the leaves start their annual transition to red and yellow and russet.

It is a blessing to live in a place of seasonal changes, to be surprised so often by the signals of the changing seasons, even as we know they’re coming. It is hard to let go of the warmth and light and freedom of summer. This year, particularly, it seems I am not ready for the changes that come with fall: from calm mornings and unscheduled days to school routines and regimented hours, from heat and light to frost on the grass and dark evenings.

Perhaps we’ll squeeze in a little more pool time after school hours, savor a few more popsicles, dig our toes into the sun-warmed sand. But the signs are there; summer is on its way out. The light is changing. I will bask in its golden glow for as long as I can.

Ready to Run

“You are a goddess!” Those are the words embroidered on the inside of my favorite running skirt. Yes, sometimes I run in a skirt. It’s a skort, actually – that fantastic combination of shorts and skirt that has made many a woman feel like a goddess. And it’s what I’ll suit up in Saturday, as I prepare to scramble the height of Cannon Mountain during the 20^th annual Top Notch Triathlon.

As triathlons go, this one is a little bit inside out: racers start with a bike ride that traverses pavement and forest trails en route from downtown Franconia to Echo Lake at the top of Franconia Notch, proceed to a chilly swim across the lake, then scramble up the ski trails of Cannon Mountain. (The traditional triathlon format is swim-cycle-run.) From start to finish, the triathletes will travel a distance of roughly 10 miles – a mere smidgen compared to, say, the 140 miles covered in an Ironman event. In that distance, however, Top Notchers gain a total of 3,320 vertical feet, 2,280 feet in elevation gain in the run alone.

The run alone is what I will do as part of a Top Notch relay team Saturday morning. Many years ago, I completed the entire race as an “iron woman.” I last participated in the Top Notch 10 years ago, before I had three kids, when I was pretty fit and nimble and still in my 20s. At least I thought I was fit then, but climbing the mountain suggested otherwise, as men in spandex passed me left and right on my way to the summit. To say I “ran” up the mountain would be, well, a blatant lie. But I made it, and my team did just fine.

This year, with my mountain and road bikes collecting another layer of dust in the garage (sigh), I’ve taken to lacing up my sneakers in the wee hours of the morning or the rare afternoon I am child-free and running the roads and trails around home.

I’ve been an on-again-off-again jogger since high school, when I would run the mile-and-a-half loop near my house a few times a week between soccer season and track season. In college, I kept up my routine of jogging a mile or two here or there as part of my effort stay in shape for soccer. Eventually, these short runs were replaced by long bike rides on Colorado single track and cross-country ski treks in the mountains.

When I moved back East nearly a dozen years ago, I discovered the challenge and thrill of road biking, then the challenge and thrill of child rearing, which is a workout in itself, but of an entirely different type.

Running fits most easily, for me, into the family scene, and so it has become my workout of choice. I’ve upped the miles of my regular running routes, and running has become something I look forward to, when years ago it was more of a chore. I like pounding the pavement – and even better is running the trails through the woods. I time myself now, striving to go a little faster each run, and I’ve shaved a minute or two (depending on the length of the run) off my mile time.

When I run, my mind settles. Sometimes I actually go for a run just to calm my thoughts. Often I come up with a story idea, or work through a writing challenge I’ve struggled with, while I’m outside, running. I don’t listen to music, preferring the natural sounds around me – be they birdsong or the engine rev of the speedy Subaru with Vermont plates that delivers the paper along one of my routes. I’ve seen moose on my runs, spooked deer and ruffed grouse, and last week came nearly face-to-face with a black bear.

I am no marathoner, but running makes me feel good, strong. Maybe not quite like a goddess, but close enough.

For the past few years I’ve told myself I should do the triathlon again, start to finish. Alas, my swimming is relegated to the odd stroke in the pool as I splash around with the kids, and I’ve just told you about the bikes.

So, I mentioned the idea of putting a team together to an acquaintance who enjoys competing in the wild and wacky sport of cyclocross. She thought it would be good training for her participation in the 24 Hours of Great Glen bike race the following weekend and recruited a friend for the swim. In a matter of a couple of days, we had a team and were registered to race.

On Saturday we’ll join a few hundred other racers, a fun combination of serious athletes, many folks just out for a good time, and a bunch like me – looking for a physical and competitive challenge with a good dose of fun thrown in.

The Top Notch started off as a purely local event two decades ago and now includes competitors from throughout New England and as far afield as Colorado, California, and Florida. There are still plenty of local racers, of course, and many of them often place near or at the top of the score sheet.

I don’t know where our team will land in the standings. I’m hoping to get to the top faster than I did a decade ago, but I don’t know how realistic that is. I do know that, whatever happens, at the end of the day, the inside of my skirt will still say, “You are a goddess.” And that’s pretty good encouragement.