Sick of Bikes

Thursday night was lots of miles with the bike gang and plenty of two-wheeled nonsense; Friday was the annual Dead Baby Downhill, all about human-powered mayhem; Saturday, Jen and I rode the tandem through the Arboretum to Ben’s wedding and back, and so yesterday, as I prepared to pedal over to Magnuson Park to catch some of the North American Bike Polo Championships, the question was floated, half in jest, “Don’t you ever get sick of bikes?”

Umm…no?

Sure, there are aspects of cycling I get fed up with—diagnosing those elusive noises emanating from my drive train can get tedious, as can dressing and undressing for rain showers from September through June, and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that fighting a headwind gets old pretty fast. And I definitely get sick of cyclists, especially those who don’t fit my constrained ideal of what a bike rider should be like.

But biking? Not so much.

Pretty much every time I’m pedaling away, I like it. This isn’t to say I’m always delighted to be mashing uphill or thrilled to be doing sphincter aerobics as I weave through traffic, but it is to note that when it comes to the bicycling part of bicycling, I’m almost always the opposite of sick, healthy, I guess.

Like today, I probably ended up riding about 60 miles, just around town, out to Bothell and back and then later, round-trip to West Seattle. There were times that my legs and lungs weren’t completely joyful, but for the most part, I was always glad to be riding.

I experienced the freedom of being able to cover lots and lots of ground under my own power; I savored the sun and mist and drizzle of our late summer weather; and I had a little adventure where I rescued a garter snake from the Burke-Gilman trail where he’d have certainly been run over had I not intervened.

Sick, maybe, but not sick of.