In the Distance
Milestones, round numbers, and doing the thing
As anticipated in the previous installment of Loomings, I completed my first century ride, the Seagull Century, on Saturday. 5000 people participated, traversing loops of 63 or 100 miles (really, 101 miles and some change) on Maryland’s eastern shore. The ride, which has been conducted annually for more than twenty years, is a fundraiser for Salisbury University. But more to the point, it seems like a good excuse to gather with like-minded people to do something out of the ordinary.
While I’m not the most social creature on the planet, I will admit that being in company is one of the best ways to do something that is surprising to myself. The last thing I did in this vein, relatively seriously, was a semester-long meditation seminar. Regrettably, I haven’t really stuck with a regular meditation practice, but being on the bike for long stretches of time feels like meditation insofar as it may be the one place I feel like I am anchored very firmly in the present.
Tim Krabbe, journalist and novelist, comments on this phenomenon in his autofiction novel The Rider:
On a bike your consciousness is small. The harder you work, the smaller it gets. Every though that arises is immediately and utterly true, every unexpected event is something you’d known all along but had only orgetten for a moment. A pounding riff from a song, a bit of long division that starts over and over, a magnified anger at someone, is enough to fill your thoughts.
He notes how he expected his hours of training to be a fertile field for story ideas; I expected the same thing. When I was in my most dedicated gym-rat phase—unsurprisingly the same period of time I was drafting Heading North—all of my best ideas came on the treadmill and in the squat rack. And once on a training ride—one of the longer ones—I had a functional thought about some writing project in progress, and I thought I’d reached some kind of breakthrough: here is the point at which the creative mind unlocks. When I’m walking, I have to get past the first mile for this to happen, and things really get good around mile four.
On the bike, that one idea seems to have been an anomaly, and though every fiber of my being recoils from the idea of “unitasking” in this way, I think the separation from the brain’s hamster wheel is the real appeal and benefit. For the 7.5 hours of the century ride, I felt entirely in the present. I had a few short conversations with the friend I rode with, but for the vast majority of the ride, I was alone with my non-thoughts. The sun slanting in a distant break of clouds. A red-tailed hawk folding itself against the sky. A road-killed copperhead, body still ropy and bright. The seeds from a Fig Newton all grainy and delicious. Chewing, swallowing, breathing, pedaling, and trying to do them in the right order but also at the same time. A dozen textures of the road reporting up. No room for to-do lists or brainstorming or anything but the raindrops beaded on my armwarmers.
What I’d love to know is why this is the case. It’s different from the hypervigilance of early rides, when I was strictly focused on the mechanics of what I was doing because I was so afraid of biffing it, and it’s certainly not the same as the effortlessness of truly skilled riders, which, to me, includes anyone who can reach down, remove their bidon, take a drink, and put it back while still moving. It might be the novelty of the thing: I’m in the moment because I haven’t yet forgotten how to be. But what a gift it still feels like.
That, as much as the three-digit number, the milestone-ness of it, feels like the thing to celebrate.
What I’m making: Clockwork: a knit so nice I’m doing it twice. This one is also a gift, so don’t tell anyone. I’m using the same brown as the main color, plus this lovely variegated blue, cream, and rose-brown for the contrasting stripes. The timing of sharing this project is somewhat dictated by my weekend: Clockwork makes for fantastic car-knitting, and I had Friday night’s whole drive to knit. (I was honestly too wiped out on the way home to dig it out.)
What I’m reading: We Ride Upon Sticks by Quan Barry
This is one of those books that has been sitting on my to-read list altogether too long! The premise is both charming and charged—a ne’er-do-well Massachusetts high school field hockey team calls upon some dark powers to turn things around—and though I’m not too far into it, it’s also hilarious. As a former field hockey player, too, I find it a little nostalgic. The treatment of the sport is accurate—enough to put the old burn in my lungs at the mention of running suicides—but there’s also clearly other priorities in the text, too. I am having a great time with this one.
What I’m writing: Here’s my Ploughshares blog piece for Kristine Langley Mahler’s Curing Season: Artifacts. Like the other pieces I’ve written for Pshares, this is between review and craft study, and and Mahler’s doing really fascinating and purposeful work with forms. Check out the essay and then check out Mahler’s lovely essays. Also, since we’re getting into autumn proper, I do want to recommend anyone who might be thinking about writing for the Pshares blog to apply when the call goes out later this fall. It’s been a wonderful experience, and what a delight to get to share thoughts about so many great books!