Faith of the Nightrider

Sorry, but I'm not talking about David Hasselhof's personal theology, or anything nearing the worship of K.I.T.T. (though really, that's one badass car). I'm talking about what it's like to ride at night, with cars warping time as they fly by, and with a tiny dot of visible road ten feet ahead at unbelievable speeds. In those moments, I am reminded of how gooey I am, really. And I'm reminded how the difference between my bike and a spear, is as little as a crash at the right speed and angle to impale me.

But hey, that's half the point!

Truth is, I took up cycling as an adult just two years ago, so I'm still a noob to it all. But part of why I took it up was because I started making a conscious effort to live more dangerously... riskily... or boldly... however you wanna put it, I wanted to do stupid, reckless stuff. Like riding at stupid speeds down a tight, muddy hillside in the middle of a thunderstorm. Or like the time I ended up waist-deep in the middle of basically rapids, holding my bike above my head, with the pebbles beneath my feet quickly slipping away, one at a time. Or like night-riding.

To be fair, it's not that stupid. It's not, as long as you're well enough equipped or accessorized. You know, lights and whatnot. I, however, am questionably equipped, and there are several points where I scan the roadside for bail-out areas if I should suddenly hit a pothole at thirty thousand miles per hour and have to jump toward something softer than asphalt.

But the entire process of doing reckless things has a few interesting results. First of all, I start to feel indestructible. I spend a lot of my thoughts reminding myself that I have health insurance, and that I can recover from pretty much anything that can happen to me, and I have a lot of practice keeping myself from thinking about getting trapped under a car's drive wheel for five miles. And that, folks, that's an important life skill. Practical and applicable.

Something else, though, it does to me. With a mediocre or just plain bad light, you never see what's coming until it's too late. So I plan and keep my eyes open, looking for any sign of cracks or potholes well ahead of me so I can react in time. But when it comes down to it, I never have more than a fraction of a second to react, and that's so much like life in general. I make all my plans, do my best to see the future, do my best to make my future happen, plan for the worst and hope for the best. But when it comes down to it, I'm riding through life, downhill, at breakneck speeds and leaning over the handlebars, with no time to react.

Now that's an exercise in faith. Take that, Hoff (not K.I.T.T. though, I won't mess with him). 

Drum Song (Post One!)

I was on my way home from work today, and I drove past a group of five or seven touring cyclists. They looked like Gypsies, hairy and hodgepodge. From the tail to the lead, each bike was weighed down, heavy with spare clothes, tents, sleeping mats and one guitar to share. They carried each their own worlds with them, and it showed. Besides the grime building up on every man, woman, and bicycle, every rider had the same distant gaze fixed on their face; that look acquired only when one's goal is nowhere in sight, and hasn't been for miles and hours on end. Even,  their leader, built so strong from God knows how many centuries behind her cranks, wore that same worn, longing gaze.

Still, like a circus, I wanted to ride away with them (hey guys, i have a bike - like me!).

Sure, i was listening to The Temper Trap's "Drum Song," and i was hungry as a rabid dog, and have a brand new bicycle, and it was quite literally magic hour, but still, i'm not convinced i was entirely irrational. Well, save the image of them as a group of Arkansas-based gypsy-cyclists-circus clowns, and the urge to join them was quite reasonable.

Cycling, after all, is about pure, hardcore freedom.

Think about it; the very nature of every single race is to be ahead, to separate yourself, to see none ahead of you and be alone in your vision. Separation and the open road mean you aren't being bogged down (literally not bumping elbows with everybody else of average capability). Ergo, performance in a race equals freedom.

And what about our collective experience with riding? For many of us, cycling, riding that first Huffy, was our earliest experience with truly separating from our parents. Freedom. As we learned to ride, we learned to find our own ways to the grocery store, school (the arcade, honestly), or our friends' houses. Before long, we would come to terms with the fact that it was the ride itself that drew us into late summer hours, and we would find ourselves just... riding. Riding wherever flight took us any given day, till the sunlight fell short of our drive and we had to fumble home in thick twilight.

And then there's the very process of learning to ride without training wheels. Our parents of choice (dad, in my case) would hold us steady, pushing us along, swearing all the while that we could do it. It may as well have been magic, for all we understood cycling at that age (still is magic to me). But in that moment, when our parents let go, we faced all the fear and disbelief that Lief Erickson encountered when setting sail from Iceland to Odin knows where, on the verge of true freedom and revelation. Even as we pedaled, we turned our disbelief and fear (there's no way that's possible!) into reality, magic into marvel (it works, I don't know how, but it works!). I never wanted my training wheels taken off. Speaks volumes of whatever about me.

Bicycles don't come with kickstands any more, not once you're an adult. Their very nature as machines is violated when they're stationary. Even motionless, they seem to fly. Mine does, anyway. There is something about bicycles, good bicycles, that stirs in us something old, that flight for freedom. This blog is an exploration of exactly that.