Sometimes, when I’m about to mount my bike,
someone—almost invariably, someone who doesn’t ride—will spot me and ask,
“Where are you going to ride?”
Sometimes I have a specific destination in
mind. But, as often as not, I have no
particular itinerary, let a landmark toward which my trek will be directed—when
I lift my leg over my saddle.
Sometimes I lie:
“I’m going to the park.” Or the
beach. Or some other seemingly-plausible
terminal or turnaround for an hour or two or more on my bike. But, other times,
I tell state the undeniable fact: “Oh, I don’t know. I’m just going to ride for a bit.”
Perhaps paradoxically, I am most likely to take a
“pointless” ride when I have a set amount of time—say, an hour or two—to
ride. At such times, I simply want to use
my legs as something more than props for keeping me upright on a chair or
standing in front of a classroom. Or I
simply want to experience sun, wind, clouds, heat or cold, or the sounds of
leaves opening themselves or tires hissing on pavement without the filter of a
window or the barrier of walls.
Sometimes I have a vague idea of where I’m going
to ride—say, a general direction. But my
ride is just as likely to be directed by things that have absolutely nothing to
do with my conscious mind.
Sometimes my itinerary has to do with the day’s
weather or season. It could also be
determined by the day of the week or the time of year: I might decide to ride, or not, toward the ocean
because a lot of other people might decide, or not, that it’s the perfect day
to drive that way. Or I might ride in a
loop that will take me into lightly-trafficked or well-lit areas because there
isn’t much daylight left. I have lights
for my bikes, but I still prefer to ride in daylight whenever possible—unless
the night is lit by a bright moon or is simply more pleasant than the
sweltering summer day.
But there are times when my ride is determined by
things even less concrete or more intuitive, depending on your point of view,
than anything I’ve mentioned so far.
Sometimes it seems as if my bike, or the ride itself, is determining my
route. It’s hard to explain to people
who don’t ride, unless they’re writers or artists or other creative
people. Then, I can draw on my own
experience of writing: My poem or essay or whatever I’m writing might start off
as a work that’s ostensibly about some subject or topic or another. But, as I immerse myself in writing, the
piece I’m writing takes on a life of its own and develops, if you will, its own
will, its own wants and needs. An image or even the sound of a word—or the
rhythm or syntax of a line or sentence—can take my work in a direction I hadn’t
envisioned, let alone imagined.
Sometimes I write, or ride, simply because it’s
what I want to do, and nothing else will do.
The destination and scenery don’t matter, only the journey does.
