Midday
Midmorning, I may find myself at my desk, the ink of restlessness wicking its way up through my toes, into my feet and legs, staining my lower back with the discomfort of sedentia. I shift and fold my limbs beneath me, making a seat of my own body. I may move my workstation to the floor and sit cross-legged, or kneel in seiza—self-imposed reverence for the idle tasks to which I must attend. But these adjustments are often ineffectual. On the white walls of my room, the shadows of wind-stirred leaves tease like a lover beckoning me to bed. I take the offered hand and follow into the endless arteries of asphalt. Panacea for my malaise.
If it is early enough that the tide of traffic still flows as a monolith into the city, I ride freely abreast it. First past my neighbors’ homes and then our shared park. Out of the saddle, quick up a pitch, wrapping to its opposite side. Bus stops and parking lots, churches and convenience stores, my blood now circulating again. The avenue, from its apex, an arrow, descending. Ahead, the hills rise beneath the observation tower that punctuates their summit. Under red lights signaling to no one, I freewheel through intersections in token obeisance to their jurisdiction, then return to my cadence: heavy legs, light hands on the hoods, over a desolate dune of chipsealed asphalt.
In minutes, beyond the city, through its liminal fringe of quaint houses and into the now-faux farmland that carries those more grand, I follow the subtle S of the parkway in its ascent, climbing again in rhythm with the metered posts of the guardrail. In surface change, I trade smoother road for greater calm still, and at its culmination, I then descend, coasting in weightlessness past the matched stillness of a pond. Or I may choose the hairpin, slingshotting myself down a wide, twisting ribbon, narrowing, then opening and rising upward again. Past the growl of a lone motorcycle, fading back into the wind’s silence, a parked car, or hiker with dog, I may dance fleetingly alongside a mountain bike, the trail beneath it this road’s sister, pushing to the edge of the woods; our pedaling synchronized across the fence of branches, a switchback carrying one out of the other’s sight.
I play the scissor blade, holding myself to the dull underside of the ribbon of these roads, looping them tightly, or pull that same strand taught against the wrapped package of my ride in whole. I will carry myself up to and beside the once-distant tower and, from its base, peer at its spire and through towards the horizon beyond. Aircraft metered in, wheels down, at eye level. Harbor and sea, mountains at their mirror axis. Then descent: spinning for warmth or bloodflow or exhilaration, or all—depending on the season or the day or myself within it. Ejected from the service road, down further still at speed, irrespective of power. In the drops, in a tuck—my chin to the stem—or my chest a parachute. In segments within the sanctuary of lanes and in segments without, a red light the finish: I hold a trackstand or settle onto my top tube, one cleat unclipped and planted, the other still secured against the stationary tension of the rubber to the road.
To fuel, I may pause at a known source of nourishment or, if so moved—by curiosity or waning glycogen stores, or in concert—I may lean opportunistic, resting my bike against a brick facade or plate glass wall in exploration of calories, caffeine, and conversation. And so, I may fall before a familiar face, one I had long wished to know—or one unknown entirely; buoyed by endorphins transmuted from my legs. And afterwards, I may stand beside my bike, in the open air, eyes closed, chin tilted upwards towards the sky, or I may perch, no longer astride, within the membrane of the window, hands clasped in meditation around a warm ceramic vessel, the price of my admission. In returning home, I may reverse my grand départ, traffic now dissolved, or weave my way through backroads to the base of my own and climb the hill to the steps of my home. I dismount and shoulder my bike on to my front door and inside. And at my desk, shadows on the walls no more, the sun now too high in the sky. No longer restive, sitting once again, I carry on.
Written by Chessin Gertler | Photography by Chessin Gertler