Passing of Traits

After John and I found out that I was pregnant, we did a lot of wondering about what the little critter in my belly would be like when he/she grew up. We would often refer to our strengths and weaknesses and hoped that the child would get the best of each of us (John's literary mind combined with my math/science prowess), but feared she might get the worst of both of us (poor ability to pick up a foreign language and lack of musical ability for both of us, my poor spelling, and John's disinterest in math).

Now that Cally is here and her personality is just forming, the jury is still out as to her academic and athletic abilities. However, I can only hope that she gets a lot of her dad's enthusiasm and attitude that he showed this past weekend at the Vermont 50 Miler-- a mountain bike race that he partook in on Sunday.

John signed up for this event last May, on a lark. We'd both talked about doing it a few years ago, but always missed the registration (it fills up in about 15 minutes). I have never been a fan of sitting on a bike seat for more than 3 or 4 hours at a time and knew it would be difficult for both of us to get much time on the bike this summer, so I resisted the temptation. Needless to say, the weather, for much of the summer, didn't cooperate with John's "training" for this race. And then, when the weather finally did cooperate, he was so busy with his job, that he couldn't get out much.

And so, with the weather forecast looking grim for yesterday's ride, I tried to convince John not to do the ride. Why would anyone want to spin through, ingest, hike-a-bike- and wallow in mud all day? But John is not one to quit. He's also not one to get caught up with the competitiveness of anything. He knew he could finish. He'd spent long days in the mountains. Another day with adverse conditions was nothing new to him.

Cally and I headed down to Ascutney yesterday, to watch the finish. It started to rain at 2am in the morning and never let up. As more and more bikers came through the finish, the description of the trail conditions went from bad to much, much worse. Our friend, Tyler, had been among the top five riders and then had a tire blow out. Once he changed his tire and got back on his bike, he was in about 20th position (he ended up finishing up in the top ten). He said that the difference in trail conditions, with an additional 15 people having ridden in front of him, was tremendous.......... much slicker, much thicker, much more difficult to ride. So, with 500 bikers and hundreds of runners on the trail, it got to the point where the uphills weren't rideable and the downhills were more akin to skiing or fishtailing in your car.


When John came through the finish line, nearly 10 hours after starting the race, he was filthy, smiling, and ever the optimist. He had probably hiked his bike 20 of the 50 miles (because the trail simply wasn't rideable). He wasn't beaten and hungry like the rest of the riders. He told us he felt like he could ride another 20 miles. And he said it was "fun" and beautiful.

While we can't be certain about Cally's personality and demeanor at this point, I can only hope that she has her father's optimism, sense of fun, noncompetitiveness, and ability to see the glass "half full". I sense she already does have at least a few of these traits.