tsl

A quick touch on bikes before the harder stuff.

Wearing a skirt is difficult on a typical American-style bike. Investigate European-style bikes instead. Dutch Bikes Seattle may be a good place to start. Look for something with a chainguard to keep your skirt out of the chain and a coatguard to keep it out of the rear wheel. However, Dutch bikes are not made for hills. You may end up with something else that has gearing for hills, then adding some Dutch features for practicality.

The three questions you raise at the end are probably the more difficult to answer, given huge variables of personal outlook, and physical ability. Cultural upbringing and background play a role as well.

I'll avoid all that and address your questions from only my personal experience.

I too am firmly ensconced in middle-age, and took up cycling only four years ago. I've been car-free since 1999, but relied on the bus until I bought a bike.

I've found that perseverance makes things easier. Cycling has taught me the difference between simple hardheadedness and perseverance. The latter is more difficult to come by, yet pays intense rewards in the joy department.

Cycling is not easy, particularly for the returning cyclist who is not in shape. I had to stop and rest halfway home from the bike shop when I rode my bike home on that first day. It's 2/3rds of a mile. It was weeks before I could ride the two miles to work without stopping to rest.

Accomplishing that first goal--riding to work without having to stop and rest--could not have been done had my head been in the clouds of an idyllic cycling world. It's hard work. (Still is four years and 20,000 miles later.)

What helped me in perseverance were several things. My motivations were

• to be able to go beyond the bus routes and a reasonable walk.
• to forestall the cardiac issues that run in my family and took a friend only four years older than I.
• to save money.

This latter one is difficult to achieve. I initially budgeted one year's bus fare for the whole cycling thing--bike, lights, lock, helmet. I blew through that within a month. There were other things I hadn't considered: a tire pump, fenders, luggage rack, realistic lights, puncture-resistant tires. Shortly after that I gave up keep track of the money.

Why? Not because it was distressing to find cycling was more expensive than the bus, but because I was beginning to see the many intangible benefits of cycling.

My world expanded beyond bus routes and schedules. I could go where I want, when I want. Even if, in those early months, I often arrived sore, hot and ready for a nap. I could also go by the route I want, although it took some effort to go off the beaten path.

Fortunately, I passed safely through the period of self-righteousness over non-reliance on dinosaur juice to move myself from point A to point B.

However, I count that as one of the obstacles I've overcome, right along with going against the grain of American culture, a car-fanatic upbringing, and general personal laziness and couch potato lifestyle.

Along the way I've learned how to set and achieve realistic goals, and the difference between those and dreams. I've learned that even a pie-in-the-sky goal is achievable in increments backed by hard work and perserverence.

It was only 27 months after that first ride (the one where I had to stop and rest after 1/3rd of a mile) that I climbed Mt Evans in Colorado, which at 14,160 feet, is the highest paved road in North America. I take perverse pride in that I did it, not with some fancy hill-climbing wonderbike, but with my everyday commuting and errands bike.

It's the daily joys that keep me going, and they're all small ones, difficult to enumerate here at the keyboard.

Yet, I still almost never look forward to lugging my bike down the stairs from my third-floor apartment. I almost never look forward to riding on a rainy, windy or snowy day.

Still, I never have a problem carrying my bike up those same stairs when I get home, and there's no feeling quite like that after a rainy, windy or snowy ride.

But I never forget that it's hard work that gets me there. That's where newbies seem to go off the rails. They seem to expect that like six-year-olds, they can just hop on a bike and ride. You can, but trust me on this, for returning cyclists in our age group, it takes many months and a few thousand miles to get there.