A Reflection on Spinning

I've never been a gym person, but laws of exercise have a way of bending around persistent friends.  One of my dearest friends in Luxembourg is a spinning instructor.  Heidi is a hard core athlete but uber encouraging and has excellent taste in music.  It was inevitable. 

Now a year later, I am a spinning veteran.  I know this to be true because I come early to claim “my bike” which is front and center next to several of my American expat friends.   I don’t yet have clip in cycling shoes, but that too is inevitable.

Two bikes down from us is another regular, a French man who looks exactly like Liberace and wears a paisley scarf while spinning.  It’s worth going just for that.

Everyone talks about being “aspirational.” I have an Instagram feed full of aspirational photos (follow Nike, National Geographic, and a few amazing travel photographers and you’ll know what I mean.) I have a smartphone that professes to take me anywhere I want to go (just preferably not outside Luxembourg.)  I stumble on aspirational quotes all over the place.  All these things I try to will into my psyche for safe keeping but mostly it’s a mental exercise.  But one of the things I like about spinning is that for those 60 minutes I’m sitting atop that stationary bike, I feel myself BEING aspirational. 

At the beginning of class, I always seem to notice what’s not perfect (and also kind of dreadful) about the reflection I see in the mirror.  I won’t go into the details.  You get it.  But by the time the sweat is dripping and we’re climbing our umpteenth hill, I see something else in the mirror.  I see myself being strong.  It happens every time.

I was reflecting this week on my Year of Spinning.  I had this lovely thought (okay a few of them in succession) …

Spinning is a lot like life.  In spinning, there are warm-ups, sprints, climbs, steady cadences, and cool downs.  All out sprints (thank goodness) usually only last for short intervals.  No one- not even Heidi-can sprint for the full 60 minutes.  With every arduous climb, there’s a downhill to enjoy and while you don’t know it at the time, your legs are stronger for the next one.  No good spinning teacher would leave them out.  Dancing and singing while spinning is always a good idea.   It’s harder on the climbs, easier on the “jumps” and steady cadences.

Then there are your feet.  Clip in cycling shoes are best but any old pair of tennis shoes will do. The key is that your shoes must be strapped in tight. You can't get leverage or spin efficiently if your straps are loose.  I’ve learned this the hard way.   Likewise, we are locked in – bound - to the foundations, families, and bodies we were given.  Accepting our collective of givens ground us like a strap, but the type of shoe we wear says nothing about how fast and far we might go.

Your hands have a role to play but maybe not the ones you thought.  They are there to guide and balance.  Engaging them to grip the handlebars when the pedaling gets hard only wastes energy and brings tension to your upper body.  It's a good thing to remember when we get our control freak on, perhaps most especially where other people we love and want the best for are involved.  They have to saddle up to their own bikes, which you hope to God is in sight of yours.  Also re: death grip, I'd prefer the work my hands be left open for better business.

During warm-ups, Heidi always has us stretch our arms up and encourages us to make space in our core.  She brings up our posture frequently as we spin.  My belief is that we wired for worship -  to put our hands up in the air.  Whether it’s God or Happiness or Big Ideas, we all worship something.  I also believe that our core – that big cavernous space some of us call our soul – requires engagement and constant attention. Core fitness makes everything we do easier, but it’s also easy to forget about it when you’re pedaling as fast as you can.  We need reminders.

The thing about spinning is that it’s ultimately up to the person to determine their own level of exertion. You get out what you put in.  Having someone to push you helps but really only you know when you are phoning it in.   You control the resistance on your bike, just like we choose in our attitudes, to make the pedaling as easy or difficult as we want.   And constant adjustment is normal. 

During cool down or sun down, we all get the chance to rest.  That’s when you, and only you, know if you’ve given a perfect effort.

Voluminous Love

We cannot see the source of this rushing water

Though we know it to be here

Somewhere upstream

The emancipation of rumblings below the surface

Tears of a glacier racing down to meet us

Clouds bursting open to pile on

In a day where everyone is allergic to something

This water: satisfying for all

Made for us

Yes to quench our thirst

Also to wash, splash and skinny dip

A little further downstream

This tributary grafted with others

Towards the even deeper ocean of love

A Reflection on Growing Old

My Grandmother had a blowout party for her 85th birthday and again for her 90th.  For her 95th, she decided to skip the party in favor of staggered visits by her ten grandchildren.    Being the furthest away by a long shot, I was the last of the grandkids to visit.   It is with some shame that I confess her 96th birthday passed before I finally made the trip to Lawrence, Kansas last month.  Guilt gets us places if not always in a timely manner.

Faye (right front), Diane (right back), Betty (left)

My Grandmother Faye still lives in the house of my childhood memories.   Having outlived three husbands, she now lives alone.   She’s slowly losing her eyesight due to macular degeneration, but otherwise is as healthy as a horse and sharper than our best Monday morning well-rested selves.   She still cooks for herself, buys fresh flowers every week and checks her email every morning on her second iPad.  (Her first iPad had an untimely death from the hood of a car.)  

Soon after I arrived, she asked if I might help her read an email.  It was the minutes from her last Investment Club meeting.  Toward the end of the minutes, under “New Business” I read:

“Faye discussed Mankind Corp (MNKD) which was split off from Merck.  Faye moved to buy 100 shares of MNKD for approximately $5.55 per share.  Kitty seconded the motion.  Motion passed unanimously.  Kitty agreed to add this stock to her watch list.”

I knew my Grandmother was something of a stock junkie, but I had no idea she was still scouting stocks at the age of 96.  With some college and a disposition towards numbers, my Grandmother learned how to analyze stocks in the mid 70s.  She started a subscription to Value Line then (which she continues to receive and study to this day under a magnifying lamp), fired her broker in the 80s, and went on to amass a sizable portfolio from a modest amount of money left to her by her first two husbands.   All on her own.  Buying Intel early helped. 

My Grandmother joined the S&P 20 Investment Group fifteen years.  At the time it was mostly a social gathering of women thirty years her junior.  She boldly suggested that instead of picking stocks based on “gut feel” that maybe they should consult Value Line.  She taught them what she knew.  Each woman is now responsible for tracking and providing monthly read outs on a handful of stocks. Today there’s still wine (and probably Bourbon for Faye) at their gatherings, but now official meeting minutes and more money in the bank.   Trickle down teaching works.

Faye (middle red) with her Investment Club

While her finance gene might not have filtered down to me, her love for words did.  My grandmother writes what she calls “Thoughts in Rhyme”, a poetic hobby that took flight in her 80s and just retired with a birthday rhyme to a friend on his 100th birthday and another friend on his 95nd birthday.  I read several of them.  They are witty and proof that growing old doesn’t mean you have to stop flirting.

I learned all this in the first couple of hours I was there.  My travel companion named guilt quickly melted away as it became clear my Grandmother wasn’t keeping calendar score, only I was.   My siblings and cousins had warmed up all her stories and since I was the closing act, I got a few extra ones.   Two full days of stories.  Her stock prowess and Thoughts in Rhyme was only the tip of her chutzpah iceberg.

The youngest of six children with an abusive and alcoholic father and without two nickels to rub together, Faye Jones Olmsted Bradshaw Jones made a life that defied the hand she was dealt.  Understanding her helped me understand how my Dad - her son that she so wanted to be a girl they kept her in the hospital a couple of extra days to make sure she bonded - found the grit needed to make his way from Kansas to West Point.   It was good to know that when I’m hugging the shore, I can remember I come from a line of people who ventured out of their depth.

As we talked I asked her what she thought was her best decade.  She mulled that one over and responded the next morning with this:  “There wasn’t a best.  Aside from my childhood, it was mostly good all the time.”  Not everyone gets sweeter as they age, but the resilient ones seem too.  You can see it in the retell of their stories where they linger on the good parts and urge you to join them there.  Not that they gloss over the bad parts (of which my Grandmother certainly had her fair share of), but they step over them with an easy nonchalance knowing they were all part of the critical path to a life worth living.

Living independently has helped my Grandmother stay young, but it’s also her chosen interdependence on younger friends like her 66 year old traveling companion and chauffeur Diane, her good-as-gold 50ish female neighbors Deb and Jo, and her equally vivacious 92 year old friend Betty (with younger looking hands than my own) that keep her there.  Together they have viewing parties at my Grandma’s house to watch University of Kansas basketball games and drink 7 and 7s.  It’s a motley crew of ladies who came from different parts of town now banded together in uproarious fun, companionship and love.   Guardian angels in flesh and blood and Jayhawks attire.

Jawhawks Mantle

Early in the game, the Jahawks were losing and my Grandmother needed to pace.  She went out to collect the mail and fell on her way back in the front door.  Before any of us could run to her aid, she assured us: “I’m alright!”  Jo, deferring to me as the granddaughter-in-charge, let me bandage the superficial wound on her arm while my Grandmother carried on cheering.  By morning, she had redressed her bandages before I was even up.

In the NY Times article “The Liberation of Growing Old” Anne Karpf says, “The emerging age acceptance movement neither decries nor denies the aging process.  It recognizes that one can remain vital and present, engaged and curious, indeed continue to grow, until one’s dying breath.”

 She’s right.  I have proof.

Best of 2014

Another Christmas and New Years has passed without a Ballbach Christmas card.  <sigh>  Maybe next year.  In lieu of a letter, here's the best of 2014 posts. 

1. Best Travel Surprise.  Budapest.
2. Most Referenced.  Greece.
3. Most Talked About.  Teen drinking.
4. Best Pictorial.  Croatia and Copenhagen.
5. Best in Humor.  Getting a Luxembourg driver’s license.
6. Best in Sappy.  Dads and boys.
7. Best in Nonfiction.  Mean bus drivers and smart GPS.
8. Best in Travel Writing.  Munich.
9. Editor’s Pick.  London.
10. Blog of the Month.  A good story.

Wishing you reams of good stories in 2015. 

With love, Kate Brett Quinn Colin and Lawton

Soul Cleaning

These little stories keep falling into my lap and so excuse me while I overblog and share.

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I’ve worn contacts - abusively - for years.  Out of necessity, I’ve recently been forced into taking them out at night.  Turns out the buggers want some oxygen.

As a result of my new practice I’ve gotten reacquainted with my glasses in the morning.   Because I’m not yet of Liz Lemon-wearing caliber, there is a lot of eyebrow rubbing and itching behind my ear that causes me momentary bouts of blindness as I pause to have a face-to-face with my spectacles.

This morning, with glasses in my lap, I looked round the room and challenged myself to a game of I Spy. I spied four chairs and a general feeling that the table was cleared.  (It wasn’t.)  That was good enough feedback to reach for my daily devotional and take a moment of quiet.  With the book pressed to my nose, I flipped to January 14 passing through (without self-judgment) the first 13 days I had missed.

The title of the entry was:  “14 January.  Blurry Visions of God.”  I kid you not.  Now I’m not a believer in horoscopes or God intervening to insure the Seahawks win (best fans in the NFL will make that happen), but I do think all of our paths are sprinkled with signs and wonders and every once in a while one of them comes at you like a billboard.  It’s best to sit up and pay attention when that happens.

That C.S. Lewis.  He was such a wise theologian.  “And it a man’s self is not kept clean and bright, his glimpse of God will be blurred – like the Moon seen through a dirty telescope.  That is why horrible nations have horrible religions; they have been looking at God through a dirty lens.”

My first thought was of the religious crazies we saw in Paris last week.  I sat with that one for a while until my anger expanded into a general feeling that I needed to move on.  My second thought was maybe this is why the Christian tradition has always taught confession before petition.  That we can’t find or implore God until we are willing to examine ourselves.  Or if you not religiously inclined, why we need to get our own sh** together before we have any possibility of seeing things right.   That idea applies to the extremists and everyone in between.

I know it’s sappy to tell you that right after I had a little confessional moment, I put my glasses back on.  Things were definitely less blurry … until I teared up.  Because of course, confession is a release – a sending up of a helium balloon that has no way of coming back to you -  and it doesn’t know how not to come through your tear ducts.  

God/healing/inspiration isn’t reserved for the special few, but you do have to be willing to clean out your soul closets if you want to see the fully set table in front of you.  Perhaps with enough cleaning you can even see far enough to your neighbor’s table, set differently but with crumbs under his too.  As C.S. Lewis said so beautifully this morning to me and maybe now to you, “Just as sunlight, though it has no favourites, cannot be reflected in a dirty mirror as clearly as in a clean one.”

It doesn’t matter if it’s been 13 days or 13 years since your last Windex.  What matters is though we may wish it different, the only instrument we have to clean is ourselves.

When the best pictures don't make it to your camera roll

I saw something yesterday.  It was one of those things that didn’t just make me smile.  It made my heart swell big enough that I could feel it in my throat.

Yesterday I went to watch my oldest son’s basketball game – a plan requiring that we be at the gym thirty minutes early.  Taking a seat in the stands, I buried myself in my Kindle as I waited for the game in progress to finish.  Normally this strategy of “ignoring the world around me while I wait” works.  It is harder though to abide in a noisy gym.  

Double checking there was not a French fire drill in progress, I looked up to register the unusual commotion.  No one was moving toward the exit but everyone’s eyes were glued on the court.   A peek at the scoreboard confirmed it was a close game.  The fan appreciation told me there was something more worth watching.  

At first glance, it looked like an ordinary game of big bodied sixteen year old boys.   One of the teams I recognized as being in my son’s club.  The other team was new to me.  Though a player on the other team had just gotten fouled on a very nice move to the hoop, I can say with 100% confidence we weren’t watching the next Lebron James. 

It was the following beat when I understood why the audience was captivated.   Rather than going to the foul line to take his free throws, the big guy positioned one of his teammates on the line.  A highly unusual move to have an understudy take your shots, it did not take any powers of observation to notice that his teammate had down syndrome.  It was also evident how happy he was to be there.  Unskilled but with full-to-bursting effort, he threw up two prayers - both of which missed.  

While the team hustled back on defense, I noticed a second player - not with down syndrome, but some form of intellectual disability.  He was easy to spot as he was taking the mandate to “stay with his man” with an unyielding if not always effective determination.  Rounding out the roster with the big guy and dynamic duo were two more able-bodied and skilled players who helped keep the tempo up and score close.   Against a competitive club team. 

This was not a charity game. 

The dynamo duo kept on with the defensive pressure, passed the ball in and continued to stand-in (90% unsuccessfully) for free throws.  Meanwhile the other three were finding the basket and crashing the boards.   As the game play entered the last period, the dynamic duo subbed out for a new pair of players.  Any assumption that the big guns were coming back was quickly dismissed when one of the guys hugged the scorekeeper to let him know he was coming in and both occasionally needed to be gently but bodily redirected when out of position.  In the flow of the game, the three starters involved their rotating cast in small but meaningful ways.   In return they received a steady stream of high fives and endless encouragement.

The game stayed close.  The club team did not dial down their game.  It was a beautiful thing to watch.  This team of seemingly misfit, certainly unevenly yoked players playing hard and playing together.   Able-bodied young men supported by whole-hearted young men playing a game they clearly all loved.  They won by two points.  Of course they did.   Against a conventional team that wasn’t pandering.  The coach of the club team laid into his team as soon as the buzzer sounded.  As he should.

This was not a charity game. 

This, I think, was a picture of what living with our differences can look like.  When a group of seemingly misfit, certainly unevenly minded/skilled/believing people come together - not in a special summit to celebrate our differences - but when they come together in the real flow of life to accomplish something.  There’s nothing conventional about that. Maybe even a winning formula?

It probably won’t surprise you to hear that the dynamic quad did not wait for the post-game handshake.  They bounded over to the opposing bench to congratulate the team on a game well played.

This morning I read this:  “Let everything be human and flawed, and be completely taken and thankful when it is good.” 

When our hearts are in our throat…  That, I think, is what it feels like to be completely taken when we see something good.   And many of those good things never make it on our camera roll.

Je Suis Charlie

Blowing in the Wind - Ecochic 75/25 by Rosanne on Etsy

I live 2 hours from Paris, but we all live in close proximity to unspeakable evil.

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Howling winds shake the windows

Like bandwagons begging for company

The myth that we can keep ourselves safe

Independent

Without enemies

To not be afraid, yes

In a broken, precarious world

Booming with wonder

Goodness still

Like a fire that must be constantly stoked

Fed by the confidence that justice will prevail

              Some now

                             More later

Better together

The belief that God is in all things

              Not just what I see

                             Or you know

                                           Or what any of us says

Howling winds shake the windows

Rain and hail now too

Let us push our logs inward together

              To increase the heat

                             Towards justice

happy spotting, copenhagen

a post in pictures

Copenhagen is fabulous.  Between my friend Fiona and her Danish husband Rasmus, my expat friend Liesl in Amsterdam, and the local woman who's apartment we rented in Norrebro (stay there!), we had great guidance and lists for places to see and eat.  It's a city with a lot of happy, so rather than tell you about it -- here's some photos that try to capture it.

uh la la

Meyers Bageri Jægersborggade

fairy tale welcome

runaway vegetables

urban playground

talking it out

hawaiiiii

cycling mailman

a view with a smile

birds eye view

safe view

Castle

penguining

driverless metro

snow marching

hang loose

knight in shining armor

legoing

slippery stairway to heaven

merrymaking and sledassisting

all together now

orangesicle and the opera house

take out, part 1

take out, part 2

white out

kid friendly capital of the world

my kid

round and round we go

fishing around

fog

mistletoe

legoing, part 2

thinking

brunching

being danish

public transporting

happy wall

happy meal

happy ending?

holding hands

holding my heart

PDG (public displays of goofing) in kbh

ducky

people watching

mo' modern

bouncing

sea otter puzzling

art

sun setting

celebrating

Munich Encounters

A First Date with Spaten

Ravenous from a 5 ½ hour drive from Luxembourg, food was the first order of business upon arriving in Munich early afternoon.  Though a Hofbrauhaus would do, some of us wanted better which sent us on a trek for Spatenhaus –  a well-known brewery with above average food overlooking the Opera House.  Mingling with locals in their Sunday finest, we scored a prime table in a private nook provided we could finish in 90 minutes.  AS IF that would be a problem with this American crew of boy.  We devoured plates of typical Bavarian food:  goulash, spaetzle, wiener schnitzel, and cucumber salad washed down with an-always-the-right-time pint of the restaurant’s own beer, Spaten-Franziskaner-Bier and a budding notion that we very much liked Munich.

The Arrival of Krampus

Some people are lucky enough to win the lottery and some people land at the right place at the right time even when they have no idea what to make of it.  On our first night, we walked into Munich’s main Christkindlmarkt  just as a herd of costumed beasts – with polices escorts and a mob of camera carrying followers - came charging in our direction.  Adorned in stinky animal hide and carrying a switch, one of the masked beasts gently patted my youngest on the head as he blazed past and the crowd swell continued down market.   Too fast and too weird to make a lasting impression, we drowned our bewilderment in 150g of warm candied almonds.  Later that night, thanks to a serendipitous NY Times article, the mystery of the old and recently revived Bavarian tradition of Krampus (the anti- St. Nicolas) was solved.  The devilish goblins with masked costumes made exclusively from materials and animal hides in the Alps (hence the stink) only show up at the Christkindlmarkts on the second and third Sundays before Christmas.  Lottery-like timing.  [No photos of Krampus were snapped in time.]

From Mine to Massage

We began our experience of the world of science and technology in a fantastic, not-as-claustrophobic-as-feared replica Mine in the basement of the Deutsches Museum, the world’s largest science museum.  From there we barely skimmed the surface of 50 (!) exhibits covering 50,000 square meters in four hours.  One of the children rightly surmised that we’d be wicked smart if could live there.  Landing on the top floor unable to process another scientific fact, we dropped a 2 euro coin in a Motel 6 style massage chair and divvied up the ten minutes between us.  As far as we can tell, no new brain cells resulted from the massage.

Typically Munich

Inspired by the Deutsches Museum, we rolled the dice for a second museum the next day –  the Munich City Museum (Munich Stadtmuseum.)   We toured the “Typically Munich” permanent exhibit, a cultural history of Munich from the beginnings of the city to the present – understood best by those already living in Munich, who unfortunately weren’t there to offer us any explanation of what we were seeing.  Disjointed and not very interesting, we redirected to the National Socialism Exhibit which was better.  Either the excellent City Museum in Amsterdam has ruined us with unrealistic expectations or the much too quiet museum told us that we weren’t all together wrong.

A Trio of Party Santas

Nothing says Christmas spirit like a chorus singing carols from the balcony the Neues Rathaus high above a gazillion wooden stalls selling Christmas wares and crepes with Nutella.    Zigzagging through crowds of people balancing two gluhweins and a kinder punch, I came upon my waiting children just as a trio of party Santas were passing.   More interested in Santa than kinder punch, my youngest shouted Santa’s name.  Clearly in a hurry to a Christmas kid-free bash but obliged by their chosen attire, they stopped, straightened their beards, and offered the young lad a photo.   [One Santa not photoed.]      

Meeting up with Americans

On the U-Bahn (the old but superefficient, not oversubscribed subway) five stops north of Marienplatz, Munich’s central square, given away by voices that carry a youngish retired couple in tennis shoes inquires, “So where in the US are you from?”  Without wanting to overcomplicate, we answer “Seattle, and you?”  “Illinois. Joliet.” “Oh,” we politely respond, “We went to school in Illinois.  Wheaton.”  “Sure.  Wheaton.  We know it.”  Not knowing where to go from there, they quicken their pace and we follow in silence, until they peel off for the Marriot and us for the Melia.

Outdoor Livin’

If ever you wondered how Germans are able to walk in any weather condition, happen upon a German Outdoor Store and be ready to have choice overload and a keyed up husband.   Choosing a down jacket in Germany is like choosing a college in the US.  Way too many options for anyone without a plan or decisive wife.  Except of course when you ask for a snow boot in men, size 14.  Then you have two choices.  Both in black.  (For non sports shopping,  check out Reichenbachstrasse near the Deutsches Museum for some great boutiques.)

Bah Humbug

On a crowded sidewalk in the center of Munich four days before Christmas, as can happen on forced Christmas shopping marches, a brotherly spat broke out.  A fist or two might have been involved.  Obvious immediate parental action was taken diffusing any further altercation while a well-dressed German Grandma - not even in the fray – took it upon herself to shout her angriest German at my already scolded children.  Too bad she wasn’t looking 50 meters later when brotherly love broke out.  [Photo not available.]

German Surfers & Burritos

Sausaged out by the month of December, we bee lined to the neighborhood of Maxvorstadt for lunch at a place called Burrito Company.  With a  total California vibe down to the ordering system,  hot sauce in brown bags on the table, recycling bins, avocados for sale and surfboard in the corner we learned the place was opened by a couple of Germans who spent a few years surfing in California.  They then came back to Munich with an idea to spread burrito goodness.   It worked.

Score!

We made it out to the Allianz Arena for the last tour on the last day before the holiday.  The last English tour was hours before so we settled for the German version, figuring that Football was universal and Dad and Colin’s limited bi/tri-lingualism might suffice.  Dad’s German skills were enough to react to the “I assume everyone here speaks German” that afforded us a bonus, condensed English version at the end of each section of the tour.  We saw the team shower rooms, the tunnel to the field, and learned lots of fun facts about Bayern Munich (team of Lawton's goalie hero.)  We even scored 45 minutes before the start of the tour in an excellent, modern, and interactive team museum.  The boys were in football heaven.

Old Traditions in New Places

Our holiday tradition in Seattle is to go to the Pike's Place Market every Christmas Eve morning with our extended family to hunt and gather for the evening's meal.   We brought that tradition to Munich by doing a similar thing in a fabulous outdoor and indoor market (Schrannenhalle) before driving back to Luxembourg loaded down with goodies for Christmas Eve.   If only we could have transported the extended family.