When I wrote my first Thanksgiving post more than 15 years ago, I felt driven to express my gratitude for a friend who was moving away. We’d pedaled thousands of miles together and in that time shared laughs, sweat and more than a few curse words—at each other. I recall that I couldn’t convince myself that there was a legitimate reason why my feelings for him were so strong and further, why I thought the bike was the reason why.
I didn’t know then neuroscientists theorize that when sharing flow with another person our bodies releases oxytocin. Often referred to as the love hormone, mothers release oxytocin when babies nurse, helping to bond mother and child. The connection hasn’t been proven yet, but it the elements fit together in an elegant way.
What I did know was that cycling had given me that friendship. Cycling gave me a body I felt at peace with. Nothing else in my life has recharged wonder as predictably as cycling. It could be the view from the top of a climb that I’ve seen a thousand times, but as we say, “It never gets old.”
We joke that cycling is an addiction and there’s no doubt that if I stopped riding, I’d go through withdrawal. Kidding that it has a hold over us like nicotine has over a smoker is good for a laugh, but the comparison ends there. A true addiction makes life smaller. We contract and contract, retreating from the world, from the things we love.
Cycling acts in a way that is antithetical to addition; it has made my life bigger, has helped me embrace the world. From inspiring me to go to the Alps or to spend a weekend at a scout camp, cycling has given me places large and small. It opened me to new foods, some good, some bad: chews, red wine; I’ll let you decide which is which. Cycling lit such a fire in me that I realized for the first time a desire to work hard at something in order to improve my ability. The dividends that paid collect like a compound interest for the soul.
Cycling helped me find the love of my life. That’s plenty, isn’t it? If it gave me nothing else, I’d be ahead by a lifetime.
When I wrote my first Thanksgiving post, I never considered it would become a personal tradition, but a pattern emerged. And I’m aware I missed some years in there—times when I simply didn’t feel sufficient gratitude and I was unwilling to offer up fraudulent thanks and insult my audience. This has grown into a measure of how clearly I see my life, as the question is never whether or not I have anything to be grateful for—there’s plenty for me to give thanks for every single day—no, the trick is whether or not my head is screwed on the right way so that I can see reality as, well, reality.
And cycling has done nothing so reliably as help me to center, to gather myself mentally and return me to an often hectic life basking in the afterglow of inner peace. I’d like to pay that gratitude forward by any method I can; and that’s much of what my career as a writer has been about—articulating the value we assign to cycling, but sometimes struggle to convey to others—but this is one tab I’ll never settle to my satisfaction. Thanks for reading.
Always a massive pleasure to read you. Thanks.