Why I love biking

I click on my pedal and the world changes. It is no longer the job of deadlines, status reports, endless meetings and justifying the inequities of a market, the economy or the idiosyncrasies of a shifting customer base. I am on my bike. My private heaven, my private hell.

As I pedal that first stroke, then a second, I know my world is now open to the unknown, the uncharted, even through I am doing a familiar ride, only forty miles, if I feel good sixty miles.

But the day is cloudy.

A mist permeated my windshield while I was driving to the trail. But I have to ride today.

I just have to. It’s been six days, three with a cold that zapped my energy, three with the lethargic feel of a cold spring. Lethargy breeds lethargy, and I am not immune. But I miss the warmer weather, the longer days, the rides, the races, the smell of sweat, passing the guy that passed you and thought that they completely smoked you. And you get back behind them, pass them to taunt them, wait like a predator for their attack, only to then completely destroy them in a sprint.

But that is only a faint memory in a day like this, cloudy, shitty and you think you are the only one crazy enough, mad enough, fanatic enough to take the bike out and dare to push the gods of nature and have a decent ride.

I have to ride today. My mind is buzzing, my feelings disorganized and I know the focus of the bike can, as it usually has before bringing everything together. It is not just a fact that I love biking, it is at the center of what keeps me sane, focus, disciplined, yet true to myself.

The slight drizzle has lifted. So it’s a go. I don’t usually like to start a ride wet. I don’t know why that is, since once I am out there, it no longer matters, but I can’t start wet.

I roll. I see my heart rate begin to climb. I look at my revolutions per minute and they are at eighties climbing into the nineties. It is going to be a good ride. There are not a lot of people on the trail today. No families in comfort bikes and little girls with perky pony tails and bikes with white tires. No pink today. Bless their hearts, but in the trail they are the cause of most accidents.

It’s cloudy, cold and clammy. But I don’t care. I have a vest, long sleeves, but I feel it is warm enough to have no leg warmers. Besides, once the engine is pumping it needs nothing to be warm.

I can’t believe that only four years ago I was in days like this on my couch, bitching about lousy TV, coughing still from quitting smoking and wondering if there was an alternative to switching channels. I worked, I went home. I worked, I had drinks with the guys, watched football, basketball, baseball games, and spent time with the wife.

Biking was something you did as a kid, as a teen, but then you grew up, you became an adult. Then no more. I biked and ran through my twenties. Back then I lusted after a Peugeot, but I could only afford that new and coming American brand that some of the bike mechanics liked. So I bought one from them, a company called Trek. The bike was absolutely cool. It was state of the art steel. In my first week riding, a bus came so close to me, the draft and a slight contact with it, blew me off the road. I didn’t want to scratch my new bike, so I swiveled in mid-air, landed on my back and rolled almost to an erect position. I was lucky to land on a piece of grass in front of a MacDonald’s. But perhaps what saved me was the desire to protect my new bike, and while airborne I shifted my body. I wanted to cuss the bus driver, but he never saw me. So using the gained adrenaline, I pumped and pumped every pedal until there was no more anger and I was home.

Today is a get to find my center ride. There have been too many days of cold, rain, ice, and excuses. The pounds are starting to add on as well. I must go. Oh, yes, Lance went through the North Carolina mountains with Bob Roll in the rain to find his center and then go back and become the legend that he had become. But I am not doing this to become a legend. It is deeper, more basic, more personal. Attrition, I work and get fatter and twitchy angry. Or I bike, I get energy and endorphin, calmness.

No drops of rain hit my face anymore. But it is still cold and I can feel it in my lungs. But as I warm up it all becomes a sweet sensation and I am ready to push it. I grab my aero bars and bring the legs up as far as I can thrust, finding a balance yet pushing harder and harder. I pass the few people on the trail as if they were snap shots standing still in the memory of the moment. I breathe harder and I begin to feel alive.

Five years ago I smoked, was overweight, did nothing but worked and more work, pretended to take care of myself, and practically did nothing outside of the house, other than cut grass. My excuse for sport was trying to buy a boat to water-ski from one of my friends. We went to the lake, drank beers, ate potato chips with dip, ate pâté on crackers and floated on the water while our stomachs grew, our arteries got harder, and we began to look like the middle age men we were, but were convinced we were not.

I had a rude awakening. My wife’s father, who was close to me, died of lung cancer three weeks after he was diagnosed. It gave a new meaning to finding an alternative to what I was doing. Instead I got fatter after I quit smoking and more disappointed as to where my life was going.

Then at a friend’s party, he showed me his new acquisition. And this is a guy with a boat and a Harley, and what he showed me was a bike – no engine, no chrome, no power source, just you. He said that he remembered our rides when we were young and that he wanted to recapture some of that. I laughed at the time, trying to be cordial, but somehow it burned the idea deep inside of me again. I remembered pushing my Trek up hills, the steel metal twisting with every push, yet getting me there. But I got older, busier with life. I remember my own dad recriminating me for spending that much money on a useless bike. Bikes are for children, he told me several times, dismissive, with his sense of always being right, and inflicting as much physiological pain as he was capable of doing. Yet, I wanted that feeling again.

Then another friend got a mountain bike, and three months later he shattered all his front teeth pulling a stunt in his own driveway.

But now I had to have one. I went to the bike shop. I wanted everything, suspension, good gears, the works. I looked at one corner of the shop, where they kept the road bikes and they were four times more expensive, yet looked much more simpler, less high tech. I bought a mountain bike.

My life suddenly changed. Instead of trying to find a good movie on TV, I planned my excursion up in the North Georgia Mountains with great detail. I even developed a route around the house that allowed me to never touch a road, glide through perfectly manicured suburban landscapes and find a part with gravel. I even discovered around a school some single track that was challenging enough to get my blood going.

I did two years of this. Loved every second. But had way too many accidents. It became not an issue of whether I would fall or not, but where will I would get hurt, what area of my body would be bloody today. The adrenaline rush was worth it, but, but, I am not getting any younger. And every time you go out there you want to push it. Go down that steep hill at full throttle, climb along a ledge. Think a gravel road is a highway and go down at almost 40 miles an hour only to end up underneath a car in a curve.

I then discovered the trail. Or what I called the Zen moment. I took my bike there and didn’t have to worry about cars hitting me or going Kamikaze down a cliff. But that was the problem with a mountain bike. The bike wants the challenge of the downhill, not the straight road. But I kept going. Only to see these mirages pass me. Men and women, not in the baggy pants of mountain biking, but slick spandex so tight to their bodies that you could see the contours of their bodies. And they proudly wore loud colors, with the names of sponsors and teams, moving advertisements for products I didn’t even know, Saeco, Mapei, Ibanesto, ONCE or more familiar, but I had no idea what in the hell they had to do with biking, like 7-Eleven, Motorola. I also saw a barrage of US Postal Service. I guess they didn’t know what going postal meant. No, they were the proudest. Always on Treks, my old bike, but with a new sense of pride and purpose. I had a lot to learn.

They passed me at such ferocious speed that I felt like a guy on a lawn mower pretending to compete with Ferraris.

I have finally warmed up, so I am upping my tempo. The temperature has gone down. So I am pedaling harder and harder. I am warm again. I don’t want to look at my heart rate, cadence, speed. At this moment I want to feel the muscle, the oxygen go in, the heart pump the blood, the artery carry the energy and in a syncopated philharmonic, it brings me to a state that can only describe as awe. And my mind no longer thinks. It just is. And it’s a complete sense of bliss. I am floating, I am flying, but I am a rapacious bird, looking for a kill.

I had to get a road bike. My awesome mountain bike, a model that had won championships a year before, no longer felt adequate. I wanted to know what those guys and women with their mouths wide open, and eyes full of glee were experiencing that I didn’t. All I felt was my stubby tires making noises as I pushed and pushed to cover a few miles.

I dusted my Trek. Now old, grinded-until-you-found-it technology. But I could feel the difference. Before I was the engine that could, but had to try hard. Now I was a sailboat cutting through the wind. I still tried hard, even harder, but suddenly I was no longer on the ground, I was flying, I was Icarus in glee. I flew and only through thin millimeter wires, and thumb wide tires I connected to the earth, and nothing more.

The other riders still passed me with impunity, but I had to realize that to undo it, to bring down decades of smoking, working late and eating pizza for dinner, channel surfing, luscious dining experiences at expensive restaurants offering real butter, succulent sauces, and cholesterol dripping dishes, I had to do something radical.

And radical I became.

I don’t compete. I just love the sport. I love the local athletes that practice it like Jose Grajales. I love our legends like Lance, or comeback kids like Bobby Julich. I’ve learned this little by little. But what I love about all of them is how humble they all are. They don’t proclaim how they are going to beat the shit out of everybody, or burst into testosterone driven tirades. No. They know this is about humbling yourself to the bike, to the idea. This is the closest we have today to chivalry. The ultimate honor, the ultimate sacrifice. The ultimate respect for that guy behind you, or the one in front of you. Just look at Lance and Jan in several tours. Lance waited for Jan, Jan waited for Lance. Fight, fair and square.

I have reached turn back point at 20 miles. I has been drizzling for a while, but I am warm and I feel good, so I decide to go for an extra 10 miles, that will make this a 60 mile ride

Now it is time to do tempo, at least for me. I am not a pro. I don’t compete. But I make the best of what makes this sport so great, we are the fans that actually practice the sport. Fanatically enough to pour our guts out climbing Brasstown Bald, just to see Lance and Grajales and an entourage of riders climb it.

I love going into a bike shop. I have nothing to buy. They know my bike, anyways. But the smell of gears permeate the air. And that you can talk to someone and say world like "La Mongie" or "Alp de’ Hues" and they know what it means. Hey, football fans, baseball fans wear the Jerseys, they are proud of their teams. So am I of mine. Even if nobody knows or understands what ONCE means, or Venga, Venga, Venga, or Avanti, or Allez means. Or the meaning that finishing other that first has a meaning. I love the sport because they are cerebral, minds over body. And even when you saw Lance give a tour of his house in Verona, you could tell the pride he had in his paintings, his antiques, and the things that brought hundreds of years of human existence, history, into one place. That impressed the shit out of me.

On the way back from my ride, the drizzle has become a constant pounding of rain with cross winds and pelting hits of rain. This is miserable. My fingers are numb. So I pedal harder, just to stay warm. Maybe today was a mistake. My cold can come back into a pneumonia. It has happened before. But today I am going to pound the pedals. I need to feel my blood circulating, my breath taking the oxygen in. I am the engine. I must go. It’s like a friend was asking in a coffee shop we usually go after a ride. And he asks the meaning of life. Why do we exist. Why all this mess. Why, why, why!

And I said, not thinking, just as we would have launched into an attack.

Because we can.

And we can be, as long as you feel alive.

The way back from my ride is so far, everything I hated about biking. I am totally wet, cross winds pound and makes pedaling difficult. One of my knees fells funny. Shit, why do I do this? Why the sense of sacrifice? For what? I am cold as shit. But I go. Sheets of rain hit me with impunity. I even feel my throat acting a little funny.

Then it happens. God says no to the moment. Or more succinctly, I am going to unleash everything I have here right now. I can only see about ten yards ahead. Everything else is white with rain and cold.

At this point the only thing you can do is keep warm. And the only way to do that is push harder, or give up.

Then that through that I could have chosen to be home, warm flipping channels creeps in. We could have gone to our favorite restaurant and drank Mimosas through the afternoon. But no, I went out on a bad day. My feet are wet and I feel the gushing cold and water come in and out of shoes. Then, and this happen when you ride in the cold, suddenly your energy is sapped. While in the summer you can do 80 miles and know your center, and get back with enough energy to kick someone’s butt. Now the cold eats something of that. And I am hurting. Questioning. Wondering why in the hell I decided to ride today.

But it suddenly hits me, as I ask one leg and then the other if they want to be with me. And I breathe and breathe harder, against the lactic acid, against the cold, against the preconceived notions that a middle aged man is just a big fat flab from here on. Of course, that is just a reflection of me.

Now the rain decides to bring every thing it has on me. My first question is why did I ride today. Hell, This is hell.

But I am going downhill in an area that I usually enjoy pushing that little extra.

So I do.

The cross winds hit me hard. The bike seems out of control. The cold water hits my face. And I push.

Then it hits me.

This is by far the most horrible ride, I’ve had. I am pushing everything I have just to fighting the cold wind, the rain pelting my eyes, the cold bones, the sudden lightning, a sore thought creeping in and yet something keeps me going.

The blood circulates, the lungs keep deep gushes of air coming in, the heart pumps.

And I feel suddenly alive. One with everything that is wrong. One with everything that is right. And I must go faster, faster.

And I just go.

And in the mist of the rain, cold and wind I realize something that is simple yet complicated. That I am alive. Not the okay, I can take my pulse and look at myself alive, but the pushing to the extreme of your existence, I am alive. This gives me a rush so powerful that I up my tempo, pedal up, pedal down, heart rate goes up to 90 percent of my max, I breathe as hard as I can.

The cold fades away, everything fades away. From here on is totally mental, mind over body, engine, muscle, breathing. The image of sprinters with their mouths agape flash through my mind. We are one. Harder, harder, harder. It’s in there. You can find it, push it. Take it to whatever level you want as long as you understand the limitations of your body, and then push it, and push it hard.

Yes, I am alive. And I understand perhaps not the meaning of life, but the meaning it has to me. Why do I exist? I answer as I take a deep breath, and push down on my legs with impunity.

Because I can.

It’s that simple.

And that is why I love biking.