I'm currently living in Colorado, and every summer they have something called "Bike to Work Day." It's exactly what it sounds like - a day to encourage everyone to try cycling to their workplace as opposed to driving. When I was studying abroad in the Netherlands I would bike to class in 35°F weather or pouring rain, so eventually I stopped seeing the weather as a good excuse not to bike or walk places. About two weeks before Bike to Work Day some folks in my office started organizing a group ride. I started thinking about joining.
The problem, of course, is that I live in the opposite direction, and that my average morning commute is about 40 minutes by car. But for some reason I really wanted to do it - some mixture of the novelty of Bike to Work Day, the craziness of cycling for two hours to go to work, the camaraderie of being part of the bike-to-work squad, and the challenge of it all.
I told my friends of my plan while we were on Pikes Peak, and they were incredibly supportive of my wild idea. "You backpacked in the Swiss Alps," a friend told me. "You can definitely bike to work."
My friend Anya lives close to me in Fort Collins and wanted to join; she'd ride with me for the first hour or so until she got to her own workplace. The night before Bike to Work Day we borrowed bikes from friends, made a Walmart run to buy cheap helmets, and sat there in the parking lot planning our route. We decided to meet at 4:45 am at my house to start our ride.
We were laughing the next morning at the start of our commute, the absurdity of our plan hitting us in its fullness. The air was crisp and cool, dawn just beginning to break on the horizon. We left town and set out on the road we usually drive to work, speeding down hills, the mountains to our right and the sunrise to our left.
We finally neared Anya's work, but when we were about 2 miles away, her bike broke. We tried our best to fix it and ended up covered in grease, but unfortunately it wasn't rideable. She wished me luck on the rest of the ride and set out to walk the last few miles (she would go on to fix her bike at work and cycle the whole way home!)
So now it was just me. The next few miles were absolutely lovely - I rode through a bike trail that wound next to a roaring river, the morning air still wonderfully cool. But after that things got hard. I had to cycle on the sides of country roads in the middle of nowhere, cars zipping by, and at some points I ended up riding my borrowed cruiser bike through gravel or dirt roads. I was hungry and my legs ached and I was starting to feel a bit light-headed. Suddenly cycling two hours at altitude after not biking for a year seemed like a bit of a questionable decision.
But I'd done it before, hadn't I? I thought back to a Sunday trip my friends and I made to the Kinderdijk while we were living in the Netherlands - we cycled two hours each way on single-speed city bikes and we survived and even had a fun time. If I could do that, I told myself, surely I could do this.
And I did. I made it to work and was 40 minutes early - I had time to shower, enjoy my breakfast at the picnic table outside our office, and grab some coffee before the workday started. Was I exhausted? Yes. But was I happy I did it? Absolutely. Whatever the day held, I was sure I'd be able to take it on - if I could bike 2 hours to work, I felt like I could do anything.
My high school physics teacher used to tell me that the hardest part is always the part you haven't done yet. In one sense this is obvious - when you know how to solve a physics problem it's a lot simpler to do it again, but learning the method for the first time can be challenging. But I honestly think this little line is some of the best advice I've ever received. Biking to work was hard, but I knew I could do it because I'd biked to the Kinderdijk with my friends in the Netherlands. I knew I could do that because I'd backpacked in the Swiss Alps earlier that winter and it was the hardest thing I'd ever done. I didn't know I could do that trip, but I knew I wanted to and that I believed I could, and in the end it was enough.
I think about this at the airport - a two hour flight is nothing compared to my first-ever international flight, a 20-hour trip to Thailand. I think about this as I drive the fourteen hours home from Colorado - I once drove seven from Van Horn to Austin after getting four or five hours of sleep, and if I could do that, I could certainly make this longer road trip. I think about this at work, at school, in my writing. I have done this before, or something like it; the hardest part is the one you haven't yet done. Challenges become easier in familiarity in the same way that a song that once annoyed you becomes the anthem of the summer.
Now, each day on my drive to work, I find myself glimpsing at the bike lanes. I celebrate the people out cycling and give thanks that today I get to be in my car. I find confidence and certainty in myself in the fact that I did that, as crazy as it was. If I could bike to work, then whatever the day holds is possible. It might be hard, but I've done it, and I can do it again.
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