One of the benefits of bike commuting that I sometimes forget amidst my paeans to its practicality and inexpensiveness and all that boring stuff is its physicality. You feel it. And when I mashed my way up the hill tonight and I stood up and I looked a fool because I wanted to outpace 3 cyclists on the other side of the fence (one of whom had a bike polo mallet) and stomped and wheezed, it felt so *right* to be temporarily ensconced in a burst of uncharacteristic effort.
8/26/14
Rides 8/26: Milestones and Minestrone
At every decision point with my bike commuting lately when the binary choice was either "be more comfortable" or "go faster," I've elected for the former and I think to generally good effect. This works well on most days, as I rarely put more of a premium on the few minutes I might save by trying to go faster, preferring much more to make the time I do spend on the bike to be an overall more pleasant experience. But sometimes I do want to try to go faster, though not necessarily because I'm in any particular rush. Sometimes it just feels good to try to make a bike go fast. Not just for the speed either. I mean, you could go fast by taking Southwest from Baltimore to Kansas City, but the swiftness of commercial air travel rarely evokes the same kind of joy that pushing a bike slightly faster can bring, even though it's orders of magnitude slower in actuality.
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Wonderful. I always think of my bike commute as "sensual." The crescendoing song of the cicadas in the summertime, the sensations of the air on my skin, the rhythm of my breath all make me feel very present and alive.
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