Bicycles and Me, A Love Story

Disclaimer: This post will have little to nothing to do with photography.

I’m not sure when we were first introduced, bicycles and me, but I’m sure I was very young. Like any kid and his bike, we became friends. We explored the dirt trails that reached out into the eastern hardwood forests near my family’s home in Pennsylvania. Later, graduated to a road bike, my friend Kyle and I would head out for long rides on the backroads of Lancaster County. We’d pretend we were racing the Tour de France, celebrate the ascension of the steepest hills, and revel as we sped down. Fast, so fast.

I continued to ride through High School, though with less enthusiasm. I’d moved to Oklahoma then, and the endless, straight and flat roads were monotonous, the wind when it turned against me, draining. During summers spent in the Rockies of southern Colorado, I tried mountain biking, and rediscovered the pleasure I’d felt as a kid on BMX bike. The rocky trails, the forests, the jeep roads that climbed and climbed high into the mountains, and I felt that nothing could be better. Perhaps it couldn’t.

But summer would end, I’d return to the plains for my final years of High School and like a summer, teenage romance, the glitter would fade.

In college in Olympia Washington, I rode again. My first week at the Evergreen State College I went out of a ride with a group of other new students, where we explored the winding logging roads of the Black Hills just outside of town. I can still smell the cool, wet air of that morning. It was overcast, as so many days are in the Pacific Northwest, and the aroma of the Douglas Firs, Western Hemlock, and Red Cedar clung to my nostrils. Scudding clouds gripped the tree tops as we splashed through axle deep puddles, spraying our entire bodies with cool, brown water. We climbed high into the hills and descended in a flurry of show-off speeds right to the gravel and barnacle beaches of Eld Inlet, filthy and smiling.

But then the bike and I took a hiatus. We didn’t break it off entirely, but we started spending more time apart. Climbing mountains and backpacking replaced wheeled travel as my first passions and I returned to the bike mostly in a utilitarian way, commuting between campus and town.

In Alaska, where I headed after college, I still rode a bit, though even less. Until something clicked, a desire to do something that had never interested me before: to race. And I did, albeit slowly, and at the back of the pack. First on a mountain bike, getting trounced, utterly, in my first race.

But I kept riding, transferring to skis during the long winter. The next year I upgraded my mountain bike, and rode even more. Again I tried my hand at racing taking on a series of mountain bike races at which I’d lost so miserably the year before. But this time something was different, I was not fast, no, I was no so fortunate as that, but I was no longer the slowest. Most importantly, I’d found an entirely new level of joy in the sport.

Then a bizarre notion to race an Ironman Triathlon hit me. And in a rare moment of follow-through and perseverance, I did. I trained relentlessly for a solid year, I bought a beautiful road bike upon which I spent hours and hours, almost entirely alone. I became a (slow) athlete. Thanksgiving weekend of 2010 in Cozumel Mexico, I swam 2.4 miles, biked 112, and then ran a full marathon, back to back. Nothing has been the same since.

In the years that followed road biking dominated my interests, and I found a new group of friends, all as a result of our shared passion in riding skinny-tired bikes. I raced in our small series of road races, and started to get faster. No longer the slow guy, I found my place, instead as the fastest of the slow guys.

Winter I found was far too long to be off the bike so I bought a fat tired mountain bike, and within a few months raced the White Mountains 100, a hundred-mile race through the White Mountain National Recreation Area north of Fairbanks. There were moments in that race when I flew, effortlessly across miles and miles of snowy trails. And other moments where I struggled, gasped, and was forced to sit down, unable to so much as push my bike another foot. I hated it, and loved hating it, and loved it purely, all at the same time.

Now, another year or two on, and I find myself, still, utterly smitten by bikes. On Tuesday nights a group of riding friends and I get together at my local bike shop, Goldstream Sports and head out for a couple of hours on our fat bikes. These are men (and occasional women) who I know because of bikes. I know their preference when it comes to brands, I know whether they are fast climbers or careless descenders, I know who can beat me up the hill, but who I can drop on the flats. These men are my friends, but I know them only through the lens of the bike, and for many, I do not even know the names of their wives, girlfriends or children. It is a strange, simple, and good kind of friendship.

Last night we started from the shop and ascended in a long winding S curve up a set of back roads to the top of Ester Dome. I’m a poor climber, but tried to hide my hard effort in attempted conversation.

Occasionally the group would separate by a few bike lengths and I’d find myself following the blinking tail light of the guy in front of me. My breath was coming fast, steady but fast, riding in what athletes call Lactate Threshold, that point just a hair’s breath away from pain. Air comes in, huff. Air goes out, puff. Huff-puff, Huff-puff. Again, again, again, again. Counting breaths, the trail beneath my wheels slowly passing by, the distant lights of town seeming to sink bit by bit into the growing valley. Huff-puff-huff-puff.

Atop Ester Dome, we turned down the infamous Chute, a stretch of steep, straight trail that plunges down the side of the dome. We descended the soft snow, our rear tires sliding as we braked hard to keep from flying out of control. A few hundred feet below, we regrouped where the trail swung into the woods, the smell of burning brakes hung in the air.

There I took the lead, letting my size work to my advantage as I plunged down the snowmachine trail. My world became the path, its curves, the dark swirling trees that passed to my side. Everything faded except the patch of light from my headlight on the trail ahead. I experienced fear, daring, speed, thrill but above all, exaltation.

When I stopped a mile or two down the trail to allow us to regroup, I realized that during that descent I was experiencing nothing, nothing except the moment. That is a rare thing, and perhaps one of the reasons that I love cycling so much. It provides a gateway to those moments of mindless mindfulness.

A half hour later we were back at the shop, loading bikes into cars and dispersing, knowing that next Tuesday, we’ll do it all again.

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