I looked down surprised to see myself in an actual bike lane. What always looked confusing (awkward at best) to me in a car made perfect sense while on my bike as I pre-rode the Tar Heel 10 Miler’s 4-mile course last month in Chapel Hill. I didn’t want the hassle of changing out of bike shorts and jersey, so I wore my khaki shorts and button-down short sleeve shirt. The weather was perfectly cool and I didn’t have to worry about getting all sweaty before heading into the office. I could have been any other UNC Chapel Hill student and in fact, I so wanted to be a student at that moment. I can’t imagine a better way to enjoy a spring day than on a bicycle riding down tree-lined streets by brick sidewalks and buildings and old white wooden houses. The nearly two and a half million dollar price tags on the houses for sale on Ghimghoul Road seemed reasonable for the opportunity to live and bike in such a beautiful town. Riding always puts a smile on my face and riding in Chapel Hill made my smile that day even bigger.
I realized then that somewhere amidst the nearly three hours a day I spend in a car (picking up, dropping off, in to work, home from work, taking the kids to soccer, etc.) I lost the sense of adventure and I have always had while on a bike. From my first childhood adventure when I tied a fishing pole to the top tube of my Schwinn and rode over the mountain ridge to Antietam Lake alone one summer day just to go fishing to my more recent 3-5 hour Sunday “exploration” (and also Ironman Raleigh 2013 training) rides, cycling has always inspired a sense of adventure in me… I wonder what’s down this road? But, the churn of everyday life of appointments and responsibilities and not wanting to be stranded with a double-flat miles from my car when I have to be somewhere at a specific time have relegated me to stationary bikes and the safety of the greenway.
The following Sunday I found myself on the country roads near my house passing the old wooden house covered in vines and slowly being reclaimed by the earth that made the material from which is was first made, the rusted tin roof shed at the other side of another field, the two-story modern art sculpture I once thought was the remains of old stone silo, and finally descending down a long steep hill bracing myself for the swath of cold air that blankets the bridge above the creek bed. These are “my” roads. I look back over my shoulder to check for cars, knowing I will soon swerve around the pothole not yet visible to me. I do not shift gears going up the first part of the next hill because I know the road flattens just around the bend. I pass the familiar farm, the swamp, the pond, the bridge with no shoulder, and the trailer of junk “for sale” parked at the intersection but no one to attend to it.
I get further into the country on less familiar roads and take pictures of things that spark my interest like the white street sign that simply says, Rogers Store, something the internet has no answers for (either Roger or his Store), I strike up a conversation with a man tending to a garden outside his triple-gable house with ornate artwork beneath one of the gables and learn that the triple-gable house was introduced to the South by Quakers from the North as they helped rebuild the South after the Civil War.
I stop to take a picture of a hawk on the ground in a field of high grass and am asked by nearly every cyclist who passes me if I need any help. No. I’m good. Just taking pictures. They ride on, some checking off miles on a planned route that’s part of a training plan to get them through a century or metric century somewhere. Some on a bike for the first time in years, I bet. Others are just enjoying the day like me. I like the fact that cyclists of all kinds check-up on each other. We wave to each other, even on the hills. There’s a friendliness among cyclists which I think comes from just being on a bike. It’s obvious that I’m not the only one who can’t help but smile simply by getting on a bike. If you don’t ride… you should. Who doesn’t want to smile?
