A Bicycle Odessey

Things keep coming full circle, as cyclic things often do.


I stepped off my bike on Saturday in a sweat of appreciation. Muscles cramping in gratitude for the care, attention, and countless hours I've devoted during the past few years, I've effectively transformed them from brittle twigs to unrecognizable machines. I stepped off my bike on Saturday with an arms-in-the-air-Tour-de-France-stage-win enthusiasm. I completed this winters first real training ride: an 80 mile spin from downtown San Francisco to Point Reyes, CA and back.

Waking up at 6:30am on a Saturday morning is no easy feat for any college student. As I sat shivering in my doorway, I decided that without a bicycle to ride, my only other excuse to wear all the different layers of spandex I own would be to join the circus and be some kind of disproportionately muscular side-show (anyone seen the Triplets of Belleville?).

Taking 5.5 hours, Brett (the president of my cycling team) and I trudged over countless switchbacks, climbing an estimated 4,000 ft. and descended some huge mountain passes, reaching controlled max speeds of 38 mph. In such an amazing landscape in such perfect weather, it's hard to imagine a time when I've felt more alive.

Upon reaching Point Reyes Station ("Point Reyes" proper is out another hour or two, as it sits on the edge of this thin peninsula that slices into the Pacific), we had to break and fill up our stomachs and water bottles. Though it's a desolate outpost in the middle of nowhere, the streets were crammed with cyclists, all ducking in and out of the one bakery in town, scarfing down whatever carbohydrates they could fit into their stomachs. We quickly ate our pizza and muffins, refilled our bottles and joined the migration back towards the City. When you go north to Point Reyes Station, it seems that most cyclists cut through the woods and mountains whereas when you ride back south, it's an easier route to take the more gental coastal road of Hwy 1.

Again, in times like this the molecules of my hands, legs, body, self mend with the aluminum, carbon, rubber of my bike. Hwy 1 tiptoes down the coast, then shuffles along the water, it's back to a gigantic rock cliff, it's face to the shining Pacific. I don't wear headphones when I ride (the songs I sing in my head are loud enough) but remembered the patriotic lyrics, "From the Mountains to the Prairie, to the Ocean white with foam," as I rode through each geological formation in proper musical order. As if I didn't feel lucky enough to be alive, experiences like this disconnects my brain from feeling the lactic acid burning away at my muscle tissue and fills me with absolute bliss.

If you've got any desire whatsoever of exploring a way to revolutionize your perception of reality or simply air out your Brain from the stresses of life, let me know and I'll show you around on a bike.


This is what my legs are beginning to look like. Geez.