Something About Bikes

A cyclist for a day

From a motorway overpass, I can see how an unexpected congestion sends swarms of hurrying traffic onto the back road I need to take. Not ideal, I frown. But it’s only a handful of kilometers. I imagine that I would get through the winding, gently sloped stretch briskly and with ease. Turns out, my ego was writing checks my body can’t cash. The inclines are longer and they feel steeper than they looked from afar. Burning lungs and aching thighs wake me up from all my ambitious dreaming. Briskly enough and with ease, indeed.

Drivers have to slow down behind me. I feel bad about being a rolling obstacle for others. I try to stick to the road shoulder but there’s not much of it left here. My self-sabotaging mind quickly fills with guilt and tells me that I’m in everyone’s way and that they curse at me. This doesn’t feel like the fun bicycle ride I pictured. Drama queen, I know. But then a voice comes out. Dude, you belong here just like everybody else! You can’t change the fact that you’re in traffic? Change the way you feel about being in traffic instead.

It works. I ease off the pedals. I settle into a pace that I can actually sustain. I make slow but steady progress. And with each passing kilometer, I feel more and more clearly that this little trip is exactly what I want to be doing right now. Apparently, what I needed when swapping a motorcycle for a bicycle was swapping my mindset, too. Duh. Genius.

On two wheels

The last time I cycled this road was the summer of 2021. Back then, a one-week visit to Slovakia unexpectedly turned into a one-month affair (remember COVID surprises?). Being stuck without much to do, and with my motorcycle locked in a garage two thousand kilometers away, I turned to a bicycle once again. The one that I had bought years ago and that spent most of them in a basement, neglected and almost forgotten. Getting on it was like getting on a time machine. It instantly woke up a little kid in me. During that summer, every ride felt like a little adventure again. City streets, forest trails, country roads, bicycle paths. Taking off for trips. Taking pictures. Taking breaks. Riding wherever, whenever. Getting a sense of freedom, autonomy and independence in times when all three felt in such short supply.

Bikes have always meant freedom for me. Any bikes. Anytime. As a means of everyday adventures, they trump cars every time. Sure, they can also mean an occasional scar or two. My favorite is the one on the chin. A doctor had to make six stitches there after I fell off my beloved little machine with Bordeaux-red frame and fat tires. I was about four and I cried buckets. When I was ten and I first sat on a moped for the very first time, I sure enough crashed. Poor little babetta. She took it alright though. During a motorcycle training, I dropped a three-hundred-kilo Triumph cruiser with my instructor on it. Nothing stopped me from riding. If anything, those occasional mishaps just made me more careful.

The last of the sluggish ascents gets me to a pass rising on the edge of the city limits. The view opens onto the communist-era suburbs to the right, and the consumer-era department stores to the left. Between, as if drawn with a giant ruler, a long stretch of smooth tarmac. Time for some downhill for a change. I happily let the gravity do the work. I revel in the free acceleration. The wheels are buzzing. The rushing air conveniently cools down my sweaty skin. I feel the familiar thrill.

There’s nothing else quite like going places on two wheels. It’s like I’m not held back by the physical limits of walking anymore, and not yet bound by strict rules for cars. On any day, a bike easily takes me farther, faster than my best stride ever could, while still giving me freedom to stop or even park (nearly) everywhere I want. However, I suspect that some of the reasons why I so readily ride a two-wheeler go beyond such practicalities. Maybe that fascination touches deeper. Into the magic of moving through space without touching the ground.

Sure, I experience that in cars and trains, too. I can literally fly in planes. But those are merely moving cabins. It’s the cabin, not me, that’s moving through the immediate environment. I just happen to sit in it. The air around me is still. Speeding up doesn’t make me feel colder. Gazing through windscreens doesn’t water my eyes with tears.

But when I ride on two wheels, it’s different. As the speed rises, the temperature on my skin drops. The wind around my ears gets louder. My body is sensing every aspect of being in motion except for one – direct contact with the terrain below. My feet are off the ground. I may be supported by the bike’s frame and seat but technically, my feet are suspended in the air. My body is not physically moving on the surface of the Earth. It’s gliding over it.

A city break

After coasting down the wide suburban avenue, I finally meet with a proper bicycle path. Across a busy street onto a paved river embankment, and then only a minute or two before the sighting of a small picnic area makes me spontaneously decide to take a break and get a bite to eat. A couple of sheltered tables with benches sit next to a large, half-empty parking lot, somewhat squeezed between the river and a busy suburban street. From my backpack, I take out a neatly packed lunch and a bottle of tap water. With my feet resting, I chew on thick chops of Italian hard salami with slices of two-day-old bread. I gradually slip into the state of transient tiredness and relaxation. It’s a kind of mood that shifts the outside world into a parallel reality. I watch people going about their late afternoon business but we don’t seem to inhabit the same universe. An invisible boundary separates their world from mine. Strange.

I look at my phone. A friend sends me a message about how stressful her day at work has been. I realize I can’t relate. I can’t feel what she’s feeling. And I’m truly astonished by that realization. Because I actually pride myself for being an empath. My empathy even tends to overplay it most of the time. And suddenly it’s nowhere to be found. I can’t get it for all the love or money in the world. Is this some major outage of emotional connection to someone in another universe? Possibly. But I still want to be supportive. I want to respond. And I definitely don’t want to reply with just an emoji. (How do you make one waving from a parallel universe, anyway?) I need to find some actual words. I look around for clues but the street life doesn’t offer any. So, I turn the attention inwards. From my memory, I swiftly recall any number of days when I felt stressed out. When I found myself pushed to a level of desperation I didn’t know I could ever reach. It doesn’t take long to paint that image in vivid detail. And with that, I instantly sense a ripple of nausea. Ever so slight, ever so distant, ever so real. I quickly type a message “I feel you”, and I hastily back away from memory lane. It’s not safe there. 

Whatever happens

I put the phone back into my pocket, stretch my legs and get back in the saddle. The warm asphalt feels smooth as I ride across town. The world around me becomes real again. Very real, actually. The main road heading south is no country lane. It’s a major trucking route, and it has virtually no shoulder. I keep as close to the edge of the road as possible but it’s barely enough. I become intensely aware of my fragility. Each time I hear an engine sound approaching, a disturbing thought creeps in almost inevitably. If one of these drivers makes a mistake at the wrong moment, I am history. I spend an unpleasant minute flirting with this notion before I realize how unfruitful it is to give it my time and energy. It’s much more useful to accept the situation.

“Whatever happens, happens,” I hear myself say aloud. I even briefly raise my shoulders as if to shrug off the unsettling what-ifs. I expect the good feeling to return right away. But it doesn’t happen. The discomfort still bites. How come? I’ve accepted the danger and dealt with the fear, haven’t I? So what is it then? I mull over the whole thing again. The fear for safety may be just an instinct that simply feeds off a sensory overload. What’s beyond? That would be my ego. Scared? No, not really. More like unwittingly oppressed by all those roaring trucks and swooshing cars. It behaves like someone who’s being disparaged. By who? It can’t be the passing drivers. None of them does anything to my ego. None of them could. I’m the only one who can speak to it. It’s no one else but me who says that I’m the weakest thing on this road. And that biting discomfort is my desire to fight it. Damn!

So, it’s been me this whole time. One of my identities victimizing another. That’s what makes me wish I had my own motor right now. It tells me to think of how awesome it would be sitting on the slick, lime-green Kawasaki. I briefly give in. I recall days when I zip along busy roads on my Lim like we’re some perfectly synchronized machine-organism, teeming with power and agility. When I overtake heavy trucks with calculated confidence. On those days, nothing seems impossible. Not a single hurdle in life looks too difficult to overcome.

Well, that’s not gonna happen today, I comment in my mind as I return to my present reality. There’s no option to switch to a faster line. No extra horsepower. No taking control that way. The sensible thing to do here and now is move over, keep pedaling, and stop torturing myself that I must let everyone pass. It may sound ridiculous but for someone who spends much of his life trying to get ahead (again, the rabbit hole), that’s a hell of an uncomfortable lesson. So much so, I’m forced to contemplate my psychological vulnerability rather than physical fragility. Wonderful. It isn’t courage which replaces fear, after all. It’s acceptance.

Predictably, that’s where I struggle the most. This exact skill of letting go of a nagging need to control everything all the time. I’m never really sure how to go about a situation when a surrender is inescapable. The problem could be that I often refuse to recognize something’s unavoidable or irreparable. When is the right time to stop fighting and start accepting? The answer is blindingly obvious when I’m riding this bike inches from the edge of the road. But generally in life? To me, there isn’t always such a clear-cut boundary. How do I recognize a moment when it’s okay to stop pushing it and let whatever pass? It’s seldom evident, isn’t it? Or is it? What if it actually always is like when I’m on the road? What if the right way is always to move at my own pace? Who said life is a race? What if it’s merely a bike trip?

“Whatever happens, happens.” Did I say it out loud again? I grin. Rather madly, I suppose. But who cares?

Picture perfect

I keep pedaling at my pace down the valley. I raise my head and soak up the scenery of forested slopes. Soon, I reach the right turn into a side road. I pass a few houses of a small village. The road then becomes an aging lane across a rolling farmland, leading up to a tucked-away lake. For me, this opens a previously unseen corner. I stop and sit down on a wooden bench. It’s a truly idyllic view. The lake sits beautifully amidst gentle hills and meadows. Created by a small dam, the reservoir has formed as if intended to perfectly fit the frame of a green landscape, with the terrain opening up towards the south. A mixture of trees covers about half of the lake’s perimeter, while the other half is carpeted with lush green pastures. Around the shore, small campers and a few cars of anglers are scattered in a handful of little clusters. There are barely any voices to be heard. For long minutes, chirping birds and the occasional splash of a fish breaking the surface are the only sounds. A pair of ducks glide across the water. I feel like I could sit here for hours. Maybe I can come here with my tent someday.

For today, it’s time to leave the scene. The wind has died down. Behind a web of thin clouds, the sun is inching its way towards the western horizon. That’s where I’m heading, too. Ahead of me remain the last few kilometers through a valley meandering between low hills. I enter the shade under a canopy of trees. I walk the bike across a shallow stream. I mostly push it over the roots and rocks along the forest trail. I instinctively wonder how Lim would fare here. She’s no off-road machine but I guess she would do alright. We seem to always get through anything. Maybe slower than most. Maybe taking a detour now and then. But there ain’t no terrain stopping us.

Out in the open, I’m unable to keep my eyes off a velvety look of sunlit pastures around me. I barely manage to stay upright on a grassy path. My head keeps turning. I might have stepped into some impressionist’s painting. The day’s grand finale. Unbeknownst to me that just up the road from here, yet another picture awaits. When I arrive, I find Lim resting on her side stand, bathing in the warm light of the golden hour. I give it a minute. Tension dissipates, muscles relax. I absorb the familiar sensations of jelly legs, sweaty t-shirt, and a slightly sunburned face. Then I almost instinctively lean the bicycle next to Lim. For a photograph. As if to answer a question about something. Something about myself, probably.

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