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Note: This celebration of bicycling is now over four years old. I have moved on in my life, having returned to St. Louis and a more demanding life. Consequently, I don't find myself on a bicycle much any longer. Needless to say, the feelings are still very real....
I have rediscovered the joy and peace of bicycling. Having moved to a small, Illinois community (Newton, IL)from St. Louis, MO, I find I can't rely on Mr. Television for entertainment. Without cable or dish (my choice), I can get about one and three-quarters channels, which exhausts that diversion quickly. Luckily (I think), I brought my long discarded bike with me and began with a few tentative forays around the town. Much to my dismay (but no surprise), I have no endurance and am completely out of shape.
Huffs and puffs notwithstanding, I have persisted with the riding, and now manage 7 to 8 mile loops out into the country. (That is one of the real plus factors living in a rural community, you can be out of town in minutes...even on a bicycle!) And with each trip out and back I gain additional appreciation for the Midwest and its neat farms and gentle landscapes.
I generally take off around 7 P.M. and head south out of town. The country roads I frequent are not heavily used and I pretty much have them to myself. It is wonderful biking for someone so out of shape. The routes I take are all flat, past fields, neat farms and patches of woods or tree lines separating fields or lining creeks. The occasional rabbit hops across the road or through the ditch. About all one hears is birdsong and the wind. After a bit, the "zen" of it takes over and I feel I just want to go on forever. There is a remarkable peace and sense of balance that comes with the steady rhythm of pedaling the bicycle. I always think, "This is quite remarkable." There are no city sounds, no highway sounds, no sirens, no boom boxes or maxi-basses...just the comfortably pastoral, almost timeless landscape of Illinois farm country. The occasional passerby will, like as not, wave at you. I am close to the landscape, actually a part of it, and not simply an observer from behind car glass. I can interact directly with where I am, startling the birds and breathing the wind.
Maybe this is why I left St. Louis and came here to work. It is the quiet; the pace slower; the people friendler. All the standard clichés seem to fit. And these little bike trips seem to encapsulate the whole experience.
I believe too, the rememberance of the joy and freedom a bicycle gave when I was very much younger must add to the experience. That bike, in those long ago days, took me to places I could not attain by foot. The distances were just too much. With the wind in my face and the road (city streets actually) ahead, the possibilities were without limit. There is just a touch of that in this also.