A Moving Meditation: Biking Along the Hudson River

My alarm goes off at 6:00 AM just as the early morning sun floods my bedroom. I check the surface of the Hudson River below my window, and I’m happy to see only a few wind-created ripples. The forest of trees at the bottom of my building is also still.

*Excerpted from: The Optimism Cure

No wind this morning means it will be a biking day. I open my weather app and see that it is 45° now. It will take several hours to reach 50°. My girlfriend and I haven’t yet biked the river path at a temperature below than 60°, and I wonder if we can do it. I think back to March of 2020. We knew the pandemic was starting but had no idea of its severity. On March 8th, I had celebrated my 80th birthday at a riverside restaurant with a brunch for fifty friends and family members.

After the brunch I walked out on the deck and looked down the paved path that extended along the river to the edge of Jersey City’s Liberty Park, about 12 miles south of the restaurant. My girlfriend and I had biked on the path, I on my heavy, solid bike and she on a shiny aluminum lightweight bike. I loved these rides, but I knew my heavy bike was holding me back. I decided what I wanted for birthday: a new carbon fiber bike.

In Piermont, a river town along the Hudson, streams of bikers passed me on their way north. They wore snazzy biking attire, with special shoes clamped onto their pedals and bulging packs strapped on their backs. Their beautiful lightweight carbon fiber bikes made easy work of steep hills. Even a slight upward grade would force me off my heavy steel bike, and I would have to push it up to the top. Talk about embarrassing! Now at 80, I decided to spend the big bucks for a carbon fiber bike.

The Health Benefits of Biking

According to the Better Health Channel, regular biking is primarily an aerobic activity. One’s heart, blood vessels and lungs are exercised during cycling. Biking requires breathing more deeply than walking. There are numerous benefits from regular cycling: increased cardiovascular fitness … increased muscle strength and flexibility … improved joint mobility … decreased stress levels, and depression … improved posture and coordination …strengthened bones

Cycling also burns body fat. A half-hour bike ride every day burns nearly 11 pounds of fat over a year. A 2011 study in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports reported that 16 cycling-specific studies showed “a clear positive relationship between cycling and all-cause mortality, cancer mortality, and cancer morbidity among middle-aged to elderly subjects.”

As I read about the benefits of biking, I became convinced that I could do myself a lot of good by adding a daily bike ride to my exercise regimen. And the Hudson River path, wide and flat and with the most beautiful views I’ve ever seen of New York City’s skyline, was waiting for me.

Buying My New Bike

When Monday arrived, I went to a bike shop and learned that that carbon fiber bikes ranged in price from about $1,600 up to $12,000. I asked to see the least expensive one and liked it immediately.

All the other bikes I had ever owned had gears both in the front and back, but this had an 11- gear mechanism on the rear wheel. It also had disc brakes and tires designed so that only a quarter inch of tread actually contacted the road. The bike was beautiful: blue and shiny and light in weight. I loved it and bought it. Because I have a chronic neck issue, I asked the salesman to raise the handlebars so that I would not have to bend over while riding.

By that time the pandemic was in full force, the experts had put forth differing opinions about whether one should wear a face mask on a bike, or how distant from other riders and pedestrians you should stay. I decided to ride without a mask. I kept it on my handlebars for when I stopped or encountered slow moving bikers or pedestrians.

I ramped up my riding as winter approached. I rode nearly every day in September and October. I noticed changes in my body: my legs were becoming more muscled, and I was losing weight, about eight pounds by mid-October. I was able to climb stairs without getting winded, which is useful as I live on the 17th floor of an apartment house and the elevators occasionally break down.

After five months of steady biking, I had lost nine pounds without changing my eating habits. In fact, I ate more than before I started biking, because I was burning a lot of energy. As I got leaner, I also got more muscular. I ignored the anecdotal evidence that suggests eliminating alcohol while biking to lose weight. Having a daily late afternoon cognac was too comfortable a habit to change.

A Moving Meditation

It is chilly this morning, about 47o. Gliding effortlessly along the Hudson River path feels magical. My bike and I are in the moment and the moment is sweet. The slight bumps from the uneven surface of the path remind me that I am tethered to the bike by the Earth’s gravity. Yet I can fly over the path with ease, leaning into the curves and feeling the bike turn itself. I feel young and free when I’m on my bike.

The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus, if he were alive today, might remind us that we cannot bike twice along the same river. This accurately describes my experience: either I change from day to day or the river changes. Or both of us change. Biking has changed me. It has become my moving meditation. After a few minutes of riding, I get into a flow state. I stop thinking about everyday concerns. The clouds, the barges and tugboats on the river, the New York skyline and the Verrazano bridge in the distance dispel my thoughts. My consciousness expands as I watch the river flow by.

I pass the food pier which on weekends houses food trucks offering pizza, ice cream treats and skewered chicken. On a typical Saturday we will encounter hundreds of joggers, couples walking slowly and holding hands, parents pushing baby carriages or biking with babies in carriers. Many of these people will be speaking in foreign tongues. A few fishermen are chatting in an unfamiliar language, with their rods leaning on the railing waiting for a fish to bite. I asked one whether they eat the fish they pull from the dark river water. He showed me a few blue claw crabs that he had caught in a trap and said, “These I will eat. Not the fish!”

I feel part of a community: the bikers, the walkers, the joggers, the lovers, the parents pushing strollers, the weightlifters who work out in the playground, the fishermen, the people sunning themselves on benches or sitting in the parks.

Most are friendly. When somebody is too close to the middle of the path and I want to pass them, I’ll ring my bell. They usually move over, and I shout a “thank you.”

One Saturday my girlfriend and I stopped for pizza on the food pier, and a bearded man about my age pulled up and said hello. We noticed that he had something lashed to his bike rack and we asked him about it. “Oh, that’s my tent.” He said, “I just biked down from Maine. It took me three weeks and I slept in peoples’ yards and campsites. I didn’t go indoors for the whole trip.”

He told us that his wife had passed away a few months earlier and this trip was his way of healing from her death. This resonated with me, as I had lost my wife to cancer three years before. I was still feeling the pain of bereavement. Biking had helped me get through the first year after her death.

So, get a bike if you don’t already have one. Find a beautiful bike path of your own. The world will seem more pleasant to live in. And as you effortlessly lean into the curves, the tires grasping the pavement, you will feel truly alive.

*Excerpted from: The Optimism Cure