Becoming a Cyclist on the Long Way Home

“When did you get into cycling?” he asked invitingly. Our wheels hummed side-by-side down a quiet rural highway somewhere in Wyoming, or maybe Nebraska, it’s all a blur. I privately hazarded a guess that this wiry and paternal gentleman had been into cycling longer than I’d been alive. 

The irony of the first answer that popped into my head, “I’m not actually into cycling,” didn’t escape me. My wheels were pointed at the opposite coast thousands of miles away. I was literally cycling at that very moment, and would cycle 3500 miles over 30 days for a back-of-the-pack finish in my first bikepacking race. To utter the words “not into cycling” to a fellow racer would be unthinkable blasphemy. 

So instead I laughed awkwardly and mumbled “last September I guess,” naming the month I painstakingly packed my precious new touring bike into a cardboard box and hopped on a one-way flight to Vietnam. The trip that started it all. 

These days I tell everyone who needs to hear it: a cyclist is anyone who rides a bike. But in truth I pedaled over 10,000 miles before internalizing this for myself. I didn’t feel like “a cyclist” while grinding up the steep hills of northern Vietnam or sweating my way across the Sahara in Egypt and Sudan. Even in my home country I was not “a mountain biker” while scooting along rocky singletrack in the American west.

I preferred the term “traveler.” The bike was almost incidental, a means of long-distance transportation more interesting than a bus. Bikes invited serendipity and engagement into the solitary days of an introvert working through a third-life crisis. Cycling was something I did to explore other places, and myself in them. Cycling was freedom.

Upon returning from each trip I unpacked my trusty companion from her cardboard bike box, made her comfortable in the garage, and left her to rest while I dreamed up the next big adventure. I imagined she was dreaming of the next adventure too. It never occurred to me that she would want to go out for a day ride. I knew she disliked the local suburban sprawl as much as I did, and craved the open backroads of literally anywhere else.

But nothing lasts forever, especially not perpetual motion. There came a time when the cost of all these grand adventures threatened to overshadow their benefit. Husband, house, career, family, friends, and future had all been patient long enough. Very long story short, I set about learning how to stay home for more than a few months at a time and to be happy doing it. 

Naturally I started with bikes. The cycling culture at home was strong, if unfamiliar. All around me people rode bikes for fun and fitness, for just a few hours at a time. They carried no camping gear, no dinner and breakfast, no passport. Yet they seemed happy. What did they know that I was missing?

With an air of ceremony I unmounted my rear rack, removed the cargo cages (the frame bag had to stay) and mounted narrower tires. My bike felt naked, and amazingly light. I sniffed out lower-traffic routes and pored over maps of my neighborhood as if it were a foreign land. I even joined a group ride hoping to find cycling friends, and though I ended up finding a bikepacking buddy instead (oops!) you can’t say I didn’t try.  

Mountain biking was the most challenging new frontier for me, so I finally gave in and bought a hardtail after years of zealous underbiking. I started driving to the trailhead, twenty minutes each way, to ride in circles for a couple hours before driving back home. It seemed a pointless exercise until one day I cleaned that series of tight switchbacks all the way down. Aha! Maybe a line on a map isn’t the only way to measure progress.

Gradually the pieces of bike life and home life fell into place, or close enough. I still love to bikepack when I can, and now I also love to bike. I finally started feeling like “a cyclist” when I started riding less, but more intentionally. In appreciating the more ordinary aspects of cycling I built an interest that is stronger and more resilient, if less fiery and passionate, than my original obsession with freedom.

I went for a bike ride today, straight from my front door. As I clicked in and spun up the pedals, breathless at the top of my steep driveway, I tasted an echo of past adventures and the reasons I sought them out in the first place. 

Riding my bike is the closest I’ll ever get to pausing time. As long as I’m in the saddle (or hiking beside if need be) there is time to think, to feel, to let the knots in my mind relax enough that there is hope of untangling them later. Whether for two hours or two months, cycling gives me a break from the relentless pace of a life that’s always been a little too fast for me. 

Riding my bike invites adventure into ordinary days. My neighborhood ride isn’t as thrilling as pointing my wheels toward an international border, but potential is always there. I seem approachable without a metal cage around me, so a lost driver stops and asks for directions. A road crew motions me around the barricade with a friendly wave. There is always a chance, however small, that I may need to hitchhike home. If that doesn’t count as adventure, what does?

The world is different from the seat of a bike, more interactive and raw. My brain is different while I’m pedaling, more coherent and at peace. The fact that I’ll be home in time for dinner need not detract from any of this.