It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off — then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me. – Herman Melville, Moby Dick
Call me Ishmael. At least when it comes to driving off depression. No, I’m not a merchant seaman, I’m a bike racer, but the effect is the same. And the ocean Melville referred to as a “vast, watery Kentucky” is a place kindred in spirit to the windswept roads—sun-drenched, rain-pelted, frost-heaved, littered with broken glass, or shining to near perfection—I take to as my own substitute for pistol and ball.
I have come to understand that I do this, riding and racing bicycles, because I have to. Not in some melodramatic sense where I might, for effect, claim to not know who I am without a bicycle between my legs. Quite the contrary: I know exactly who I am, and I don’t function so well without the bicycle.
So I ride. I ride to find balance, I ride to release endorphins; I ride to sleep, and I ride to eat in a somewhat regulated fashion; I ride to manage my time and because it’s more mature than punching the wall; I ride to maintain friendships and to function as part of a team. I ride alone, I ride fast; I ride with people I love, slowly; I ride when I want to, and I ride when I don’t want to at all. It’s just better this way.
Over the years I’ve spent a certain amount of time composing sophisticated and convincing sounding justifications for why I race and train as obsessively as I do. Typically I land on the following undeniable set of facts: before I started riding bikes I weighed 240lbs, smoked cigarettes and was pretty depressed. Now I’m sorta skinny, don’t smoke, and am less depressed, though infamously prone toward existential angst and a good, old-fashioned wobbler now and again. My point is that on my bike I have become a better human. A better dad, a better housekeeper, a better partner of a relationship, a better friend, son, brother, teacher…man. I believe this, I really do. But until this past winter I didn’t realize just how true it was, and how closely the mercury of my soul is now linked with bike racing, for good or ill. Why do I do it? Because I can’t not do it.
Now that’s sort of cliché, right? We all have some sort of superego constructed around our hobbies and passions, and it’s fun to believe, and to crow about, the fact that me-me-beautiful-me just wouldn’t be—couldn’t be!—the same without bike racing or knitting or tiddlywinks or whatever. Most of the time, for most of us, this is a pose, but a harmless one with some useful byproducts like social identification and goal setting. And, more than likely, I’m no different, not as much of a snowflake as I would like to think I am. What I know is that it’s been a long winter, “a damp, drizzly November in my soul” if ever there was one, and now the sun shines nearly every day. Nearly everything of value in life has a tax on it, I suppose. So if the tax levied against me for the privilege of functioning like a normal human is that I have to ride bikes, well, like I said: I ride.
