How it all began-Part 1

I was sick of sitting at my desk.  That’s somewhat ironic, given that that’s what I’m doing right now, so perhaps a better way of putting it is that I was sick of spending multiple hours every day in the same place, doing virtual things, virtually communicating with people, and feeling, quite frankly, wholly unfulfilled.  

There’s a meme floating around out there that basically says ‘Humans weren’t meant to sit in cubicles or offices for a large percentage of their lives and spend the rest of their waking moments worrying about things like car payments and bank balances.’  I could relate.  

Charles Bukowski once said ‘Find what you love and let it kill you.’

Now, I don’t take that to mean: ‘If you love skydiving, go ahead and do so without a parachute.’  Rather, I think Bukowski meant ‘If you love something, do it as often as you can, until you can’t do it anymore.’

For me, the thing I love is to ride my bike.  I particularly love riding my bike for long periods of time, and sometimes to the point of making walking the next day somewhat difficult.  We’ll leave that to the psychiatrists.  

In June of 2024, when I was faced with the very real prospect of being out of work, and therefore out of money, I did what most people do in that situation and I started looking for another job.  I lead development teams…we built software, managed clients, did little mockups of the things we were going to make, and had lots of meetings that probably could have been emails.  I did this all in the sport of ice hockey, which, as a Canadian, can sound like a dream come true for a kid from a small town in Northeastern Ontario.  It certainly did have its incredible moments, but it also had the capability of sucking the life right out of you.  

As I sent off resume after resume, filled out assessment after assessment, and received rejection after rejection, it dawned on me that, at 47 years old, I wanted no part in that world any longer.  I wanted, and very much needed, something different.  

I decided two things:

1.  I would never, ever again be in a position where someone could call me up on a Monday morning and say ‘Hey…for X reason, though she doesn’t know it, your 9 year old daughter now has to worry about starvation.  See ya.’

2. Whatever my next move was, it would involve riding my bike.  A lot.  

I took up cycling late in life, at the ripe age of 43, after an adult life largely spent attending parties and consuming things I probably shouldn’t have.  I took up the sport because time had eroded my youth’s enviably quick metabolism, and I’d thus gotten rather fat.  Keeping up with my then 4 year old daughter was tough, if not impossible.  

Given that there’s no power on earth that will get me into a gym or fitness club, running seemed like something too easy to quit, and swimming was a thing I equated with margaritas, I needed something else, and, after a few nights drinking about it, I settled on cycling.  

I chose it for two principal reasons:

-Cycling does require an initial outlay of money that isn’t insignificant.  If you spend money getting started on something, I figured that a sense of guilt and regret may just be enough to keep you going on days that you just didn’t want to continue.

-Bikes, unlike running shoes, are rather hard to hide. You can’t stuff them in a closet and forget about them.  I’d have to look at the thing and feel either a sense of pride in what I’d accomplished with it, or thoroughly dejected at the fact that I’d failed at something.  

-Cycling requires gear, and as I read a bunch of articles on getting started in the sport, I realized that I was about to enter a world that was a lot bigger than the one that my old BMX and I occupied in the 80s and 90s.  I could really geek out on the tech, and that’s the kind of thing that gets my attention.

So I bought a bike.  A 2019 Specialized Roubaix with Shimano Tiagra, in a size 54, which, the salesperson assured me, was the size I needed (it wasn’t).  I bought the special shoes to go with the special clip-in pedals (which, for reasons that will forever elude me, are called clipless pedals).  I bought the helmet, the gloves, some socks, some sunglasses, and, to my utter horror, some padded Lycra shorts and jerseys, whose principal function at that point in time was to highlight how much I needed to be doing this activity.  

My first ride lasted 2.5km.  I stumbled home and spent the next 45 minutes on the futon in my office trying desperately to fill my lungs with air.  I thought immediately about selling the bike, and maybe I’d just try tennis…or volleyball…or nothing.  Maybe I’d just forget about it all.  

The next morning, I walked into my office, saw the bike, and decided I’d give it another go.  Another 2.5km.  Another 45 minutes feeling like utter death.  

The next day, I did 5km.  Then 8.  Then 10.  Then 20.  

I was figuring out the gearing, proper cadence, when it was appropriate to stand in the saddle, and how I should deal with the fact that taking a single hand off the handlebar to drink water filled me with infinite terror.  Most encouragingly, I didn’t have the embarrassing moment that plagues most beginner cyclists where they forget to unclip from the pedals when stopping and end up falling over sideways.  That came later.  

As the pandemic hit, and cars thinned out in my neighborhood, I spent many hours learning this new craft and reveling in the skills I was learning, the new things I could do, how much further I could go, and how much looser that Lycra felt against my skin.

I was able to ride a little circuit around here that was safe, somewhat pleasant and entirely boring.  

I needed longer rides, in different places, and I needed to ride with other people.  But…where were they?

This answer came to me in the form of a hatchback creeping up behind me as I rode, honking its horn incessantly.  

As any cyclist will tell you, this kind of thing is unlikely to be a harbinger of great things to come, so, as I readied myself of the inevitable confrontation to come, I stopped my bike, reached into my back pocket to grab the multi-tool I planned to use as brass knuckles, and was greeted with ‘Hi…I’m Gerardo.  I ride a bike too.  We should ride together sometime.  By the way, your bike is too big for you.’

cont'd in Part 2