Out(-)Pedaling My Demons

I’m home for the first time in two weeks. After my last home weekend, I brought my bike back to Forest Grove with me– during the first week, we experienced a record heat wave, and my bike languished in the haze, but this week, after a three-day campout with 37 teenagers and some worn-out staff, I was so socially overwhelmed that I had no choice but to jump on my bike and crank for the hills.

Forest Grove is a small town surrounded by working farms. Once you get a mile from the university, there is nothing but fields and irrigation systems. Heading south down B Street, I passed a paddock full of bison: this is the West, I guess?

I pushed as hard and fast as I could for a long time. Five or six miles out from town, though, I started to get nervous about the condition of my bike. It’s kind of a piece of shit, anyway: an ancient mountain bike frame made out of what feels like lead, with cheap parts, street tires, and a rear wheel that is off-true (it was the only thing I could afford at the Community Cycling Center when I first arrived in Portland two years ago). I’d been so eager to just ride away that I’d neglected to bring my flat kit, and the shoulder of Old Highway 47 is littered with broken bottles. I realized that, during all my urban bike exploring, I am generally close enough to the public transit system that I can jump on a bus if anything breaks. Now I didn’t even have my phone, or my wallet for that matter. If something happened, my only recourse would be to hitch a ride from one of the leering men in pickup trucks with boat trailers that kept buzzing me at 50 miles an hour. After another mile or so of worrying, I turned east again to loop back towards town.

Despite the fear of technical failure, it’s hard to express how euphoric I felt being back on my bike again. It was actually sort of a scary, manic joy, not quite under control. After a few weeks of running on caffeine and anxiety rather than sleep, the bike ride was an erratic pendular swing, and I rolled back onto campus sweaty, wild-eyed, and slightly unhinged, gibbering about bikes to the students and staff I encountered all the way back to the dorm.

Sometimes we ride, I think, the same way we write, or fuck: as the expression of spasmodic, self-destructive impulse. Last night, home again, I slept like I was dead.

P.S. Willie? Does that rabbit belong to you? Just don’t start photoshopping my cleavage again…