This article first appeared in issue 69 of Singletrack Magazine. Subscribers have full access to all Singletrack articles past and present. Learn more from about our subscriptions offers:
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Happy New Year everyone! If you’ve not made any resolutions, here’s one for you: Ride More. To help you on your way, we bring you the ever inspirational Jenn’s words from issue 69. Read it, then ride.
Escape
Words by Jenn, Pictures by Sam Needham
Riding bikes was simpler when it was just riding bikes. I have to look a long way back to remember it, in fact I’m not absolutely sure that I’m not looking so far back that I can’t remember it and instead am just borrowing someone else’s rose-tinted daydream, but there we go; one daydream is as good as another and regardless of whose it was I’m sure that at some point we did just get up in the morning, look out of the window, pull on an appropriate t-shirt and ride.
Now, we look out of the window and wonder about whether or not we can afford the fuel to drive to the ride at the weekend; we take forever to decide a day and a ride and a route, let alone who to do it with; it takes an hour to get the layers right and then another hour when we step onto the doorstep to find it’s too hot, cold or rainy so have to start the whole protracted process all over again, complete with coffee; we faff for England and then realise a minute into the ride that this wasn’t where we want to be right now at all and all that energy pressed into thought was a total waste of time.
Or we just look out of the window.
The office faces the hills and the sun shines low on the valley walls. The windowsills are deep and the strip-lights make the days as long as we need them to be and the windows don’t open to the breeze. We rest our chins on our hands and press our noses to the glass every now and then and think about riding on the hills we can see from the door.
It’s not enough. Living is noisy, and staring out of the window every once in a while is not enough to shut it up.
Phones ring, traffic crawls. Voices laugh and disagree, shout sometimes, get angry. Mail drops onto doormats with the weight of worry banging the letterbox shut and keys write the matrix for you. Life doesn’t just try and get in the way; it IS in the way, with all of its obligations and necessities, it’s enough to make it through another day’s carousel without falling off it halfway through and concussing yourself in the process. The wind blows and the birds sing and below it all is your heartbeat, barely audible amongst the din.
Thankfully, the heart is patient and also, going nowhere on its own.
First, though, there is the immoveable wall of life to get through. Bricks beyond weight, layer upon layer of obligation from all corners. No cement required, these are stones of grit and granite, laid end on end with practised ease until, like the daydream of the way we were, no-one knows where they came from in the first place. Growing taller with every day that passes, barriers of plans and regrets lying in your path and waiting to be scaled on your way to becoming a better rounded individual with a better rounded life.
Who wants to be rounded? Corners are useful. Corners give you something to turn. Sharp edges slice through the soft stuff and blunt themselves on the hard, ready to be keen again; edges give you something to test yourself against and come up wanting but also, sometimes, come up on top of. You can try to do everything, please everyone, be all things to all people but given that most people don’t know what they want half the time anyway then what’s the point in spreading yourself thin? Focus on the small things, the things you do well; be the thing that makes you happy and leave your mind open to the possibilities that may be just beyond your reach.
Still: put your face right up close to the oldest wall you can find and the light will find a way through. It’s not dark but green and grey; it looks like it feels, cool and damp and soft, and in between are slices of luminous, life-giving white. In the gaps of silence between the necessary, we ride.
An hour here and an hour there is enough to keep the edge keen. It feels as though it’s stolen time but in truth these moments of to and fro are the only time there is, once life kicks in for real. Can you call yourself a rider if all you do is ride to and from the office three days a week? Yes, if the pedal strokes empty your mind and the rain on your face makes you smile, even when you’re not smiling. What you are is not in what you wear, what you ride or even whom you do it with; what you are is defined by what you need.
Worth it, then, the being that little bit late, the missing supper, the getting up painfully early and stubbing your toe on the doorstep on the way out of the house in a clumsy effort to be quiet, to see the sun rise and the grass grow and the days grow a little shorter, hour by hour. If only because you know that they’ll be getting longer again very soon.
You won’t see that, looking out of the window. Go and ride your bike.
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