Lessons from the Ride

My earliest memory of riding a bike is crashing. I was about seven years old, riding down our steep driveway. I went over the handlebars and landed on my head. My parents didn’t put much emphasis on helmets, so there was nothing between the pavement and me. I still have a slight goose egg on my forehead, just inside my hairline. It has almost faded, like my other childhood scars. But my memories are still strong.

After that promising start, my cycling career continued to progress in similar style. As I grew older, I would cruise around the neighborhood with all the other latchkey kids, skidding our back tires and endlessly circling the cul-de-sacs like sharks. We built crude ramps out of old mailboxes and scavenged boards, trying to learn to fly, but mostly just ravaging our knees and elbows. As our leg strength and our courage grew, our circle of exploration slowly increased. Our bikes provided us with our first taste of freedom, independence and, for me, an escape. Those suburban streets are where I learned the first of many lessons that bikes would teach me: you can run away from your problems, but eventually, you will get hungry. Those problems will still be waiting for you when you come home for dinner.

In high school, while my peers were eagerly trading their bikes for cars, I was still pedaling. My friend Andrew and I would ride to local crags to rock climb, pedal across old ATV trails to see where they led, and go down the few mountain bike trails in the area. We had no idea what we were doing, and we weren’t any good, but that didn’t matter. There wasn’t ever a goal; we were simply having fun. By the time college rolled around, I had finally acquired a car, but I still rode my bike everywhere. Andrew and I were roommates for several years, continuing our misadventures. By this time, we had both upgraded to “real road bikes.” They were old, heavy beasts that broke down frequently. They shifted poorly, and the brakes couldn’t always be bothered to respond when called upon. But we loved them. I still vividly remember the day we decided to attempt our first 100-mile ride. Neither one of us had ever ridden a distance anywhere close to that far. We were embarrassingly underprepared. The early miles flew by quickly in a blur of excitement. Around the halfway point, we stopped at a diner to refuel. Neither one of us knew anything about exercise nutrition, but our growling bellies steered us into a booth. We both ordered vegetable plates, feeling that it was important to eat healthy food while exercising. That was the day I discovered the importance of carbohydrates, or more importantly, what happens during a bike ride if you neglect to eat any. Somewhere in the last painful miles of that ride, I learned another important lesson: misery does in fact love company. Suffering is always easier with a good friend.

After college, Andrew and I ended up in different cities. I found myself riding more often with my father and grandfather, who had both been bitten by the cycling bug. Our rides were usually an hour or two in length, following a handful of regular routes through the East Tennessee countryside. All the routes ended on the same road, riding the last few miles back home. Inevitably, my grandfather would attack the last hill with all his strength. He always made his move too far from the top and would start to run out of steam in the home stretch. Every time, my father would patiently wait, giving one strong burst of speed to come around my grandfather and crest the hill ahead of him. I knew better than to participate. The strength of one generational gap might be bearable, but two generations is too much. Once, I asked my grandfather why he kept trying, despite knowing he would lose. His response has always stuck with me: “Winning or losing doesn’t matter. What’s important is that you never, ever stop trying.”

This past January, I awoke to a deep unwell feeling in my lungs. The test results confirmed what I already knew to be true. After almost a year of being careful, Covid had found me. I spent two weeks in quarantine. It was my longest stretch of time away from riding in over four years. During that time, I received the shocking news that my friend, Andrew, had passed away suddenly in his sleep from a massive heart attack. He was 35. The staggering unexpectedness was devastating, made all the worse by my solitude. My first trip outside after quarantine was to Andrew’s memorial service. It felt like the culmination of a turbulent year, like a huge wave of stress, anxiety and anger had finally crested and crashed down on me. I sought the best therapist I knew, my bike, but riding brought no relief. My fitness was diminished, my body tired and not ready to respond to my efforts. The slightest hill would send my heartrate soaring, and my energy levels were easily depleted. To make matters worse, Winter had fully descended. The days were short and very cold. It did not feel like coincidence that we experienced one of the dreariest Winters I can remember. Days and days passed by without an appearance from the sun. The time passed in a haze of melancholy, one grey day bleeding into another.

Gradually, however, the truest lesson I’ve learned from riding bikes proved true: nothing lasts forever. Every climb has a summit, and every rain cloud passes. Slowly, my body began to heal itself and the good rides started to outnumber the bad. The sun came back, and temperatures began to rise. Most importantly, as I came to terms with the passing of my friend, I began to feel my emotional clouds parting as well. While no one truly ever gets over loss, the edges of the wound begin to soften over time as it becomes something more manageable. I am able to look back on our time together, not with the raw pain of grief, but with a more mellow sense of gratitude for our time together.

Now, as Spring has melted into Summer, I find myself returning to the lessons of my youth. I know that I can’t just ride away from the pain in my life, no matter how tempting it might be to try. The strength has returned to my legs, and I find myself seeking out the joy in my riding. I’m exploring more than I have in years, poking down gravel roads and forgotten country lanes. I’ve found a renewed pleasure in riding with others. Metrics like distance or speed matter less to me now; I’m choosing instead to measure my rides in smiles and laughter. Most importantly, I’m choosing to hold my grandfather’s words close to my heart. I won’t stop doing the hard things and seeking out ways to push myself. While I’m not always winning, I won’t stop trying.

– Austin Schreiner, Blackberry Farm Cycling Guide