My Love Affair with Cycling

I started biking as a means to an end. It was a way to cut a crappy commute in half and avoid the city bus system that could take an hour and a half to get home. When I started two summers ago, I was riding my Grandpa’s hand-me-down 1997-ish Cannondale road bike, with bright yellow Mizuno running shoes and a navy Jansport backpack that I had bungee-corded to a bike rack. I was a hodge-podge commuter and was somewhat determined to stay that way.

It took some convincing to even get me on a bike. My Dad picked up biking sometime around my middle school years and never looked back. My brother has always been into biking, tagging alongside my Dad on the group rides with Portland Velo, and doing weekend Cycle Oregon rides. Biking was always a father and son thing, and I stayed back. Partially because of the time that competitive swimming took from my high school and college schedule, and partially because of my own fear.

I still remember what I was doing when my mom got the call. I was baking shortbread in the kitchen for my history class. It was a typical winter Oregon day- pouring rain, and I was a freshman in high school at the time. I immediately knew it was bad news from the tension on the phone line, and the look on Moms face. My Dad had been riding with Portland Velo, on his usual Saturday group ride. On that ride, Tim O’Donnell was hit and killed as he attempted to turn left from the lane of travel by a driver illegally attempting to pass a group of five cyclists. My Dad was in that group of riders. Tim was killed instantly by Jennifer Knight, she was not criminally prosecuted for his death. (http://ghostbikes.org/portland/tim-odonnell)

The stark reality of what could have been has never left me. My dad was one of the five cyclists moving to signal a left hand turn, he was a wheel away from Tim. Selfishly, it seems, I was so relieved that the call wasn’t about my Dad. After the incident, I resolved that there was no way I would ever leave the safety of a bike path while cycling.

The summer after my junior year of college, I finally caved and admitted that biking was the best solution to my commute, which was an un-reliable hour and a half bus adventure. I asked to bike with considerable anxiety. Biking will always have some inherent risks, and the worst reality of those risks had just barely grazed my own life. But a bike was my only real option, and fully equipped with my Grandpa’s retrofitted silver lug, I began my commuter adventure.

At first, I was convinced that every motor vehicle was going to kill me, my shifters were so clunky that my foot flew off the pedals every time I had to change gears, and I rode the brakes so hard on the downhill into OHSU I had to change them after a month. Slowly, I gained confidence. My feet still flew off my pedals, but my fear of death-by-commute diminished. It started to be fun, freeing even, to fly by cars stuck in traffic at 5:00. I started thinking about joining my Dad and brother on those Portland Velo rides, and the hills got easier.

The fun ended at the end of July, when, flying down a hill I was originally afraid of, I slammed into the rear-end of a woman backing out of her driveway. I was coming around a blind corner, she wasn’t paying enough attention to the road. After being cleared of head injury, I hobbled away, shaken, but okay. I had a smashed up helmet, a broken finger and very, very bruised legs. For a week there was the number “8" imprinted on my thigh. For a cyclist vs. car battle, I was extremely lucky.

The negative stories provide my cycling background. Biking was, and still sometimes is, scary for me. I was never one of those little kids riding one-handed and recklessly along dirt paths. The summer I started riding, cycling was as much about conquering my fear as it was anything else. My little crash was a reminder of the risks, but also a turning point. I remember my Dad telling me that, regardless of what my Mom thought, I should keep cycling if I wanted to.

Though I wasn’t able to ride much more that summer, the cycling bug had bitten me, bad. I started to think about cycling beyond my commute and the jerky silver bike. I wanted to take biking more seriously, and to show people, that I would get back on and ride, even if it meant I had to mask my anxiety.

After I graduated from Scripps last May, I asked for a pair of bike shorts. I came home from the shop with a shiny new road bike (thanks Dad!). The family joked that this only happened because my Dad couldn’t find an excuse to buy himself another bike. Whatever it was, with his encouragement, I became officially committed to cycling. I started riding with my Dad and brother on the Portland Velo rides, skittishly weaving in and out of packs of people, and trying not to get dropped.

This past summer was a summer of frustration. I cursed the jobs I couldn’t find and the friends who all seemed to be more grown up and put together than I did. It all seemed so unfair. Why didn’t I have a $3,000 a month studio with a view overlooking the bay? I rolled my eyes at the luxury, but a part of me wanted it at the same time.

Through it all I had my “little green monster.” My bike gave me things to get better at that were tangible and measurable. Despite all of my perceived failures, small successes buoyed me, like learning to ride clipless pedals or beating my little brother up a hill.

In October I finally had a job, I moved out of my parents house and into a place in Seattle. Attached to the back of the lilac mini-van was the little green monster.

In Seattle I found the Group Health women’s team, through another bike-obsessed co-worker. I made the impulse decision to join. It took one 15 minute conversation with the president of the club and eight hours of “sleeping on it” and I turned in my kit order five hours before it was due.

Deciding not only to bike, but to race was sudden, and the thought of my first race is both thrilling and terrifying. But joining the team is the best Seattle decision I’ve made so far. So much of what I’ve done and worried about in the past two years is for some future, imaginary self. What classes should I take to be successful? What jobs will look best on my resume? Why am I so awful at networking? But cycling is something I can do for myself, right now, that has no pressure or expectation attached. I have nothing to compare myself to. It is beautiful freedom. It is the reason why I ride with dead speedometer and my eye glaze over when I hear the words “cadence” “watts” and “power-meter.” I’m sure this all will change, as I learn and absorb the infinite amount of information, but for now I am blissfully ignorant.

My bike is what gets me through a monotonous job, and the boredom I have felt almost constantly since graduation. Every Saturday and Sunday I am grateful for having the strength and ability to fly along smooth stretches of pavement. I am grateful for the legs I once thought were too fat, for the lungs strengthened from years of plugging away at a sport I wasn’t very good at anyway, and for the new friends I’m making in a foreign city.

I am very uncertain, like almost every person at 23, about most everything in my life: what to eat, how to save money, how to make friends. But being on a bike is the most pure form of happiness I’ve found, and that gives me certainty.

Saturday, I flew down a hill in my drops, taking wide curves with a little less fear than the last time, and a grin on my face. I know only one thing is certain, that my love of cycling will carry me through the next decade, one mile at a time.