Like Riding a Bike
I am cycling in the balmy air of south Florida with my besties, my oldest friends in the whole wide world. A couple of months ago, my husband, The Man with the Plan, and I stuffed facemasks, Purell, and rubber gloves into our bags and drove south to Florida to hide out at my in-law’s property. At the last minute, we strapped our bikes to the back of the car, too. It’s not like we are avid cyclists, but something about riding a bike in the warm air just sounded like a good idea.
We rediscovered cycling a few years ago, when we found the B&O Trail that weaves through Richland County, close to our farm. The bike path winds over bridges, through corn fields, past barns…. It offers charming views of beautiful pockets of Ohio off the beaten path of highway travel. Peddling through the sleepy Ohio countryside always makes me think back to when I was twenty-five and driving through Austrian wine country with these same friends. As we sat under a vine-covered pergola on a summer afternoon we realized that some of the visitors were passing through on bikes. A bike tour through wine country? The coolest. We vowed to get back there on bikes someday.
We are not in Austrian wine country now, but we are together. Cycling in Miami, is a world tour in itself: Spanish, Yiddish, Portuguese, Russian are all heard on the beachside path ... I pedal on, “Ring, ring! Excuse me! ¡Con permiso!” The other cyclists, the roller bladers, the skateboarders ... they all zoom past us. They are hares to us tortoises and offer us a light breeze in their wake. We chuckle at the skateboarder with the floppy dog in a papoose on his chest, its face peeking out contentedly. We peek in on the babies in strollers with their nannies or their Abuelas cooing at them as they push their way down the path.
Pedaling alongside my friends feels just like it did when we were kids together. Riding around town with friends on bikes ... a hallmark of growing up. I recall the freedom of having wheels to get around town back then with these same gals: the tennis courts for sloppy games that were more laughing than sport, the drug store to check out the latest scent of Bonne Bell Lip Smackers, pedaling backwards on a speed bike while staying in place, or blithely navigating the streets, sitting upright, hands-free. The panic, late at night, frantically riding my ten speed through the dark suburban streets, the whir from the dorky headlight my mom made me buy, trying to get home before my curfew, guided by the dim cone of light before me.
My pals and I are meandering our way along the beach, chatting and laughing, sharing stories the whole way about our respective families, our jobs, our hopes for the future. There goes the Tour de France set, all geared up in tight Spandex, huffing and puffing. Ride on, fellas. For me, cycling is more about taking in the scenery, carrying things in a little basket, using a tiny bell. It’s exercise, a journey, transportation and voyeurism all rolled into one. Unlike walking or, God help me, running, when I am cycling, I can breeze by folks just long enough to pick up fragments of their conversations and imagine their lives.
As I weave my way through the beach crowd with these longtime friends, it occurs to me that cycling is a great metaphor for life. Pedal, pedal, glide ... pedal, pedal, glide ... When the going gets tough, gear down, take a breath and coast. That’s actually my favorite part of cycling -- the ability to stop working while you keep moving. To just cruise. When spinning classes started to be all the rage, I was immediately turned off. “You mean it’s nonstop pedaling? We can’t coast?” I thought. “Well, where’s the fun in that?” That, and the fact that everyone seems to be yelling all the time. It’s like watching The View on a bike. No thanks.
I gaze down the bike path, remembering a trip I took just before the world stood still. I visited Rome with another group of friends and we signed up for a bike tour of the Seven Hills of Rome on “e-bikes”. The bikes looked like clunky normal bikes, but packed an electric punch that effortlessly zoomed us up the hills. I felt like Wonder Woman - flying up the hills like a pro, not needing to stop to push my bike, or even to grunt my way to the top. It was terrific, freeing, empowering and just what my jet-lagged legs needed after a wine-soaked luncheon on the Piazza Navona. My girlfriend who organized that tour absolutely fell in love with the e-bike concept and vowed to purchase such a bike when we returned to our flat Ohio streets. I rendezvoused with her on the west coast of Florida during my stay, and sure enough, she wheeled out her shiny new e-bikes, complete with the padded pants, the donut design bike bell, the basket, and the water bottle holder. We peddled past manicured golf courses and pristine lawns, through a nature preserve with alligators, snowy egrets and herons. A world away from Rome or even the multicultural Babel of Miami Beach, but it was so great to be cycling once again with my good friend. We’ve covered a lot of ground since that bike tour of Rome last year. Who knew then that the road would get so rough?
Pedal, pedal, glide ...
Back on Miami Beach, my childhood friends and I are now sitting in the shade at a too-crowded hotel patio and it feels like high school again. We are sitting away from the cool kids who are making bad choices in the swimming pools and bars nearby. I tug at my shorts as I try to get feeling back in my ... er ... root chakra. (My e-bike friend had the right idea with those padded shorts). We raise a toast to each other, to life, to warm weather, to riding on. We’ve collectively gotten through a lot together, these friends and I: marriage, divorce, illness, childbirth, raising toddlers, burying parents, raising teenagers, nursing ailing siblings, bad haircuts, shopping together, laughter, tears, secrets shared, stories upon stories upon stories.
Pedal, pedal, glide ...
I tip back the icy cocktail and send up a sincere, boozy prayer of thanksgiving for my friends from different stages of life. I am so grateful for good friends, their easy comfort, their ability to smoothly change gears from silly to serious without a glitch. The kinds of friends that you don’t see in forever and when you do, you hop on board, get comfortable and enjoy the ride.
Just like riding a bike.