it's all relative

I have two sisters. One is dysfunctional and no one in the family has talked to her in many years. The other one lives in San Jose. She's been in CA since the early-80s. We are complete opposites. And she's eleven years older than me, so we don't have the bond (good or bad) of typical sisters. She's more like an aunt or another more-distant relative.

When I first moved to San Jose, I stayed with her for a few weeks until I found an apartment. And we were friends for that first year while I was living in San Jose. We would rollerblade together and drink beer and smoke cigarettes and hike and drink wine and smoke cigarettes and ride bikes and drink cocktails and smoke cigarettes. Then I moved north and she became distant.

She's an extremely successful financial accountant person in corporate America. She makes oodles of money and spends oodles of money (mostly on vacations and spas and stuff like that).

When I started Velo Girls, I tried to encourage my sister to come out, ride with us, and make some friends. She's never really had many friends and was going through a divorce and I thought it would be good for her. She wasn't interested. I've invited her to come see me race. She wasn't interested. I've tried to go visit her. She wasn't interested.

We seemed to get a bit closer after my mother died in 2003, but that's faded now. She does her thing, I do mine, and n'er the twain do meet. I occassionally get an email from her at the holidays or my birthday. At Christmas, she emailed me from Fiji. She's been there a bunch of times and loves it.

I got an email from my sister yesterday telling me she's retiring in April and wants to hire me to coach her (and help her find a bike). In a follow-up email, she told me she's planning to relocate to Fiji.

Since I feel about 30, that would make her 41, right? And she's retiring? Wow! Maybe I'll have to start visiting her for holidays since I don't think I'll ever be able to afford to retire.