The joy of riding
Two tires, two legs, one way to escape
I bounced my bike down the driveway, turned it through the loop in my cul-de-sac and pointed it toward my early morning workout. The headlight strapped to my handlebars cast a narrow beam, lighting up what I needed to see and no more.
I pedaled across the busy street and onto the sidewalk; even though I had lights in front and back, I felt safer off of the road. Drivers at 5 a.m. have no expectation they will have to share the road with bikers, and I didn’t want to experience their surprise the hard way.
I turned left and had barely straightened my bike out when a black-and-white blur flashed in front of me low to the ground. I thought it was a cat until I got a better look at its gait. It was a skunk, running across the street, toward my backyard. Better now that I’m no longer there, I thought.
Even at this hour, the St. Louis humidity was stifling. But riding in the dark made me forget that. The air felt cool even though I knew damn well it wasn’t. A slight breeze, real or imagined, tickled my arms as I turned right onto a greenway that cuts through a wooded park.
After the dull roar of the traffic, the screech of the cicadas was overpowering. I bet the nocturnal animals that populate the woods wish they would shut the hell up.
Three sets of eyes glowed in the dark as a family of deer standing on the asphalt path turned to look at me. They waited a beat and then disappeared into the woods. A second later, a fourth deer followed. I missed hitting that one by about 15 feet. A few minutes later, I saw a fifth deer, this one far off in the distance.
Under my tires, rocks, sticks and other debris popped and cracked and shot out. I could see only the major obstacles. I rode over the rest. I emerged from the darkness of the park onto a well-lit community college campus. Soon my ride was over, and I was bummed about it.
My basement and garage are littered with athletic gear I no longer use. The golf clubs I once lugged around weekly now get used yearly if that. I haven’t touched my spikes since finishing an assignment last spring in which I tried and failed to become an average high school athlete at 48. My softball glove hasn’t caught anything since my church team disbanded eight years ago. My SCUBA gear … well I can’t find that; maybe I actually threw it away.
But I have ridden my bike steadily for several years. I already have completed three 250-plus mile rides, and now I’m training for an assignment I call 50-50-50. In celebration of my 50th birthday in October, I’m going to hike 50 miles, bike 50 miles and canoe 50 miles, all in one epic trip in Wisconsin in two weeks. I’m looking forward to the bike part the most.
I had my bike in the shop for a pre-trip tune-up the other day, and I told the clerk about 50-50-50. She said on her birthday, she added 100 to her age, and rode that many miles … I love that idea and might steal it around my actual birthday.
There’s something primal about getting from point A to point B, the farther the better, using only your own power (and gravity). There’s something carefree about hearing the wind whistle through your helmet and something cathartic about getting on my bike stressed, putting in a good hour or six, and getting off of it unstressed.
Those are all part of what I love about bike riding. But they are not the main reason. During a time in American history marked by fits and starts, by life feeling like an endless parade of up, down, stop, over which we have no control, I take delight in going at my own pace. I love beginning my rides when I want, ending them when I want, and getting to my destination not when I have to or even want to, but simply when I do.
On every great bike ride, I eventually find a state of independence that keeps bringing me back to the saddle. I found it late in the afternoon on the first day as we approached Chillicothe, where we would spend the night after logging one hundred miles. Seven friends rode far ahead of me. They cut the path for me, and I took comfort from that. They would stop and/or turn back if there was a closed road or danger or something else blocking our forward progress. If they ran into trouble, I would arrive soon to help them. Another friend brought up the rear behind me. I cut the path for him, and he would be there soon to help me if I needed it.
“It’s both freedom and security,” says Dave Fiedler, the author and cyclist who designed this route for the Missouri Highway 36 Heritage Alliance in 2012. I interviewed him before and after the ride. Before, he got me excited to go. After, he was excited to hear about it. “You can have that sense of independence, but you know if something goes wrong, you’re not on your own.”
Wrapped in a freedom-security cocoon—protected by friends in front and back—I alternately rode as fast and as slow as I wanted. I ate when I was hungry (peanut butter M&Ms) and drank (red Gatorade) when I was thirsty. It’s not that there were no ups, downs, or stops. It’s that I had agency in completing them.
Occasionally I looked back both to see how far I had come and to make sure my friend Brady Nelson was there. But life is best lived with eyes forward, so I focused on the next little bit in front of me.
The road unspooled toward me, long, gray, undulating, coming only as fast as I would let it. I lost myself in imagining I could freeze time right now, or rather, that time would go on exactly like this. I wanted to go at exactly this speed in exactly this weather with exactly these friends. There was nothing I would change, not even the hills.
This reverie went on for who knows how long. It broke when I saw a flicker of movement to my right. Out of the marsh arose a heron, blue-gray like the storm clouds that troubled me that morning. It flew behind me. I craned my head to watch it go, though not for long, as I can’t ride straight with my head swiveled, and I didn’t want to survive the intersections in St. Joseph only to ride into traffic.
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50-50-50 is the first trip of a travel-adventure company a friend and I have formed. Keep an eye out here for future adventures.
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I love this quote from Steven MacDonald, and based on what I heard after publishing it in a previous newsletter, so do a lot of you: “The suffering is what makes life beautiful. A lot of people don’t have any desire to appreciate life like that. They’d rather sit in a chair and watch TV. People who really aspire to suck as much life out of life as they can are people that in the end are ultimately happy. Adversity creates the best memories.”
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