It's been a busy summer. I got married, went to Jamaica and Nova Scotia, started BikeFriday (it's this Friday - what are YOU doing on your bike on Friday?), and have planned more things that I'll be adding to this site this fall and over the winter.

I ride a heavy cheap steel mountainbike - a typical "utility cyclist", I guess - loaded with atleast one pannier in my travels to work daily and on good days, to other places (like the Islands) - and my bike has felt like a utility recently - it gets me where I'm going, quickly and cheaply, but the joy was missing - perhaps I've been thinking too much about work and other non-bike things?

This morning, for some reason, the pure joy I experience on my bike returned. If you bike regularly you know what I'm talking about.

It's the feeling you had when, as a kid, you learned to ride down your whole street with no hands. The feeling of "poppin' a wheelie" for a long distance... maybe even going around a corner.

It may be the feeling of freedom (and that's part of it - being free to go wherever you want - not stuck in a car or behind other cars), but there is more to it.

This morning, despite running late and "cranking it" extra hard through Riverdale and eastern downtown, my body found an extra reserve of energy somewhere for my jaunt across Carlton and College Streets.

I floated through stopped traffic, looking over my shoulder at the cars and other cyclists floating along behind me as I passed illegally parked trucks, tourist buses and Wheeltrans vehicles.

My legs didn't feel the extra effort as I accelerated through green lights or eased over the streetcar tracks (after a shoulder check, of course) to pass a large parked truck, or shifted slightly... almost imperceptibly... on my seat, changing the course of my tires enough to avoid a large shard of glass.

It may be a combination of endorphins and adrenalin and joy and freedom all mixed up together.

Whatever it is, it feels great, and I missed it.

It's why I bike as much as I can, and why I bike year-round, for it happens in the winter too.

Despite the danger of cars, the potholes, the blown tires, the rogue pedestrians (which I don't mind, as long as I can avoid them), the sweaty summer days and the frigid winter nights - this feeling is the feeling that brings me back to my bike day after day.

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4 Comment(s) so far:

I love mornings like that!

By  Andrew, at 9:29 AM  

sometimes when I feel some extra ooomph in my legs I can think back and trace it to a huge meal of pasta a night or two earlier.
I actually had the opposite last night though - grinding my way on my mountain bike from Danforth Go station to Queen and Parliament, I felt like was 80, and was happy to doddle behind another (slow) cyclist for a while.

By  Tuco, at 12:33 PM  

Exactly. I know those rides - the physical energy of moving, the constant thinking about how to get ahead and stay safe and not piss anyone off.

By  GMD, at 12:58 PM  

Two nights ago, coming back from a vigil on University, riding West on Richmond in stop-and-go traffic, then west on King... adrenaline rush hour!

By  John Spragge, at 11:53 AM