Learning to Cycle

Clark Gudas

During the pandemic, I taught myself how to ride a bike. This interactive story takes from that experience, inviting you on a ride through the streets of Boston, Massachusetts, as you learn to cycle anew.

Again, you fell off your bike. You wobbled too much, you crashed. Now, you lay alone in an empty parking lot on Boston’s west side, elbows bloody, dazed. It’s a blue & beautiful summer day, but you are outside of all beauty and blueness. This is because people can see your blood mingling with the puddles. People can see the hot tarmac baking your body. Your skin will heal, but this shame buries splinter-deep. You wish you had learned how to ride a bike before your mid-twenties, and as the chain spins to a stop, you wonder: Is it too late? Is there any balance within me?

You want to be able to bike to work. You want to feel at peace commuting through Central Square & the pedestrian masses—just you and your machine, making journeys in a new place. But this shame is full of reasons to want otherwise: people can see you/you’re not good enough/you are becoming a vessel of failure… This is a Ceaseless Noise ringing in your head, blocking you out from the summer day.

But maybe it’s okay. Touch your face. Make sure your helmet is on. You focus on the raw sting in your elbow because it reminds you:

Your body is here. Your body is here. It’s a start.

Do you want to disentangle, stand up and try again?

YES

Silence the Ceaseless Noise

You try to silence the Ceaseless Noise, but the static sound rages back into your skull in the same moment.

The Noise really wants you to be ashamed of this one. Can you break through the Noise this time? Can you reclaim your attention and feel the day’s beauty & blueness?

You and your attention have been a beautiful team before. You can be a beautiful team again.

You are bleeding onto the pavement from your elbow.

Will you stand up and ride?

YES

You disentangle your limbs and stand up with a groan.

Muscles ache. Elbows sting. Breathless and red-faced, you ignore how your feet line themselves up to walk home. Instead, you pick up your bike — a speckled Cannondale with runner wheels — and say, “Focus.” Mary Oliver wrote that attention is the beginning of devotion, and you like how this idea charges you up, places you back on your feet. You step back on the bike. Fatigue, and pain, and shame occupy the seat where your body must be. With one swift heave, you push them away and cycle again.

You barely catch the pedal in time to avoid falling. Turn your legs. Listen to the suck and sigh of your breath. Wonder about the eternity left in the bike chain. You grunt and push and lean and hope and sweat, and the Noise recedes as you dodge potholes and duck poop. Your limbs are tired, sweat sheens your face, but you are staying upright. In fact, the faster you pedal, the easier it is to stop wobbling. Each pedal stroke becomes a prayer of thanks in repeat: thank you for keeping me in motion, thank you, thank you, thank you.

You draw deeper breaths and exhale fuller than before. There is a meditative quality to riding in circles in this parking lot, but don’t get too comfortable. The Noise is trailing you, and it’s eager to catch up If allowed, it will sit on your back tire. It will make your hair fall out.

If you go somewhere else, maybe it won’t follow you.

Bike in the street — you want to practice commuting

Bike the river trail — you’re looking for a scenic route

You peel away and ride bravely into the neighborhood, where children jump rope and cars pull to the side to let one another by. Destination: work.

This is a calm, quiet space, but you are always one wrong turn from danger. Is this a good idea? Stay calm. Pay attention. The road eventually spits you out at a five-way intersection where the streetlight is giving you the green “Go!” but the intersection is filled with traffic. Horns squeal. Semis inch along. At the crosswalks, pedestrians pile up and wait for release. This is a traffic jam—a gridlock of frustration and missed appointments, a momentary clot in a major artery for the city’s little organisms.

You are content to wait it out, but another biker surprises you by pulling up on your side and tapping on your shoulder. “There’s safety in numbers,” they say before pedaling between two stalled cars. “Let’s flow!”

This biker seems to see a course through the chaos. And they seem to be trusting you to follow.

Against your better judgment, flow with them

Turn around and bike the scenic river trail instead

Eager to flow, you follow.

The biker leads you down the center line, through a maze of stalled cars packed tight under the stoplights. Your handlebars wobble and you scream internally — you don’t have time to think, you only have time to flow, to move on instinct. In this moment: blaring horns, your breath, snack-sized bits of phone conversation. As a necessity of survival you tune into the rhythms of the city so you can anticipate them: your pounding heart as you pedal through clouds of carbon dioxide, the hymn of honking, the dispersion of pedestrian footsteps, a flash of a car stereo. You gasp each time you swerve around a car bumper, or straddle the checkered line between bus and horse trailer. The traffic may be stalled, but this moment is filled with cadence and motion. The blue and beautiful world has a beat the same way your heart does, and you realize you’re merging with it — you are part of the bike, the breath, and the present.

The jam has blocked traffic down to the next intersection. You have no choice but to pedal beyond your boundaries and roll with the rhythm of your feet. The tires hum on the street, and you wobble inches from nearby cars. You are in control. You are out of control. You are in/out of control.

In the midst of your flow, the Ceaseless Noise tries to override your attention and reestablish itself as priority one. A spike of shame reminds you that you are visible, vulnerable, judgeable, and screamingly inept as you ride within a hand’s reach of nearby vehicles.

In front of you is a dump truck hauling gravel. It could crush you and not realize it. The other biker is far ahead. You are alone. You must try to block out the Noise and get past this rolling tonnage.

Ride past, focusing on the truck’s side mirror

You focus on the truck’s side mirror and pedal slowly past. Hot exhaust bakes your skin. You wonder if it’s going to pin you against another car, but it stays still as you pedal along. You safely pedal beyond the dump truck and through the traffic jam.

That was so easy! The worst of the jam is behind you, and some pleasant endorphins are rewarding you for survival. The rest of the ride passes in peace — you exit the flow state and breathe a little easier.

Trouble arises not long after. The Noise wants your attention back, and it wants it now. Shame decides to roar out of your head and manifest physically in the street, dressed in buckle-belted black slacks and a jean jacket. It rides in circles around you, doing wheelies on a tandem bike with no one in the front seat.

“You’ve forgotten me,” the Noise says. “You’ve forgotten how ridiculous you look on that bike! Time to run back to the safety of your room. Now.”

You blink; the Noise has a bony, hard-jawed face, stuck in permanent laughter. Is this real? You hop on your bike and try to escape, but it follows. It chases you through alleyways and around traffic, laughing at you. Horns blare as you cut off cars and trucks, and their horns only make the Noise more potent, the shame more real. Everyone can see you. Soon it starts screaming, and the breaths you take become a response to something beyond the needs of lungs and blood. You think of the shame of your earlier fall; shame generally; a lifetime of it. It has stopped you from many things: your mouth is a cemetery of words, your body is action’s tomb. Will it stop you now? The environment is a blur of color and smell. Even in the empty street you feel pinched into smallness; even in escape, you are panicking.

The Noise is on your back tire.

You can no longer escape. You must address this.

Try to attain a critical distance from this shame — it is a part of this world, like the sweat in your eyes and the air on your skin.

You peel away and ride onto the river trail, where couples go on walks and the trees are alive with shimmering light and a great rush of wind-rustle.

Along the ride: canopy treetops, big river gurgling, little children on scooters. The path is well paved, and the gurgle of the river is a pleasant white noise. With so many people around you, you have to be careful. Is this a good idea? Stay calm. Pay attention.

Your path leads you through arboretums and gardens, parks and fields, until you find yourself pedaling towards a hill rising over the horizon. It is probably one-hundred feet to the top. You have no reason to make this difficult climb. Your calves are ringing with exhaustion, and your elbow stings from your earlier fall.

Climb the hill

Turn around and practice your commute

You climb the hill.

You shift into low-gear, speed into the hill, and let inertia lift you. You like believing you are worthy of such lift, but when the inertia wears off, you are pedaling slowly, in a stiff manner, achieving less ground-per-second than before. Your handlebars wobble and you consider how humiliating this feels—but you don’t have time to think, you only have time to flow, to move through the pain and act on the instinct that says “Forward.” Your knees strain. Every foot of elevation saps strength from your legs and breath from your lungs. The worst of all is the extreme vulnerability—runners pass you by, surely making judgments. With them, the Noise rings in your ears once more. It tells you: This is humiliating. Save your dignity. Go home.

Climb higher

Turn around and practice commuting in the street

You continue climbing the hill.

You are out of breath, out of strength, and you move at a crawl. You pedal beyond your boundaries and roll with the rhythm of your feet. The tires hum on the pavement, and you wobble. You are in control. You are out of control. You are in/out of control.

You reach the top. The moment comes without thrill or reward, only the sober relief of not having failed. You slow to a stop, lean back, and try to control your breath. From here: hills, the skyline, the esplanade. There is no trace of cloud — sky, sky, sky. You can point to the neighborhoods you’ve only seen on Google maps, how they shift and blend into each other. When you’re ready, you can head back down.

Glide down the hill

You breathe in, lean over the crest, and glide down the other side.

You rocket back to earth, wind whipping by your face. Oh my god, this is so fun! For this brief time, you are a part of something greater: the bike, the breath, and the journey. You and the machine are melding. As you coast to the bottom of the hill, your speed levels out and some pleasant endorphins are rewarding you for survival. You exit the Flow state and breathe a little easier.

Just when you’re ready to bike home, trouble arises. The Noise wants your attention back, and it wants it now. Shame decides to roar out of your head and manifest physically in the street, dressed in buckle-belted black slacks and a jean jacket. It rides in circles around you, doing wheelies on a tandem bike with no one in the front seat.

“You’ve forgotten me,” the Noise says. “You’ve forgotten how ridiculous you look on that bike! Time to run back to the safety of your room. Now.”

You blink; the Noise has a bony, hard-jawed face, stuck in permanent laughter. Is this real? You hop on your bike and try to escape, but it follows. It chases you through alleyways and around traffic, laughing at you. Horns blare as you cut off cars and trucks, and their horns only make the Noise more potent, the shame more real. Everyone can see you. Soon it starts screaming, and the breaths you take become a response to something beyond the needs of lungs and blood. You think of the shame of your earlier fall; shame generally; a lifetime of it. It has stopped you from many things: your mouth is a cemetery of words, your body action’s tomb. Will it stop you now? The environment is a blur of color and smell. Even in the empty street you feel pinched into smallness; even in escape, you are panicking.

The Noise is on your back tire.

You can no longer escape. You must address this.

Try to attain a critical distance from this shame — it is a part of this world, like the sweat in your eyes and the air on your skin.

You attain critical distance from this shame.

“There is suffering.” You have read that Buddhists separate themselves from emotion with this statement, letting it exist outside of the body so it may come and go like waves. The Noise is already outside of you, wanting back in. How do you make it stay out? You suck in a much-needed breath and stabilize your oxygen flow. Breathe in, breath out. There is noise, there is shame. It belongs to the same world as the squirrels and the bike you ride.

You steady your breath, and realize this shame feels a little unnecessary. Nobody who sees you on this bike will remember you. And you enjoy biking, don’t you? Who cares who can see you?

Upon this realization, the Noise rolls by you on its tandem bike, sweeping by with speed down the road and beyond. It’s laughter trails off. It doesn’t turn to acknowledge you. It rides on, smaller and smaller in the distance, until it is a rumble on the edge of experience. Then, there is no Noise at all.

The street is empty. No one is around, no cars. Silence, silence. It’s a silence that contains a set of rhythms that help you relax in this post-Noise state: the visual lineup of house stoops, the grass in its lawns, the small whir of your bike wheels.

What happened to the Noise?

You have stopped hearing it for the time being. It will probably return, as it always does. But for now, you, your body, and your attention are moving in complementary rhythms — you’re a team again. You are learning how to cycle.

You have so much to tell your friends — you discovered new neighborhoods and found lovely vistas and made mental notes of new restaurants to check out. You felt, and this may be the most important part, like you belonged to the great ecosystem of people in this exciting new city: people organizing, people moving, people dreaming, people helping.

Bike home.

With composure and cool, you bike home.

Cars speed by you down Galen Street — Prudential Tower stands sentinel above Boston’s low brick tenements and tire warehouses. When you reach home and your feet hit the ground, your soles are warm. Something exciting is moving through you. You feel as if your attention and your body are merged.

It bears repeating: in this moment, you, your body, and your thoughts are moving along at complementary rhythms.

You like this feeling. You want more. Can you have more?

You ask, “Can I have more?”

The moment you ask for more, the feeling dissipates. But this is not the end by any means — good feelings will come and go, just as the Ceaseless Noise will come and go. You are in/out of control. For now, take off your helmet. Step in the shower, you smell horrible. Tomorrow, you can strap on your helmet, kick up your bike stand, and say, “again!”

Learn to cycle again

References

Mary Oliver, Upstream: Selected Essays, 2016.

Ajahn Sumedho, The Four Noble Truths, 1992.

Related Resources

Henry Lefebrve, Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time, and Everyday Life, 1992.

Terry Barensten, dangerous & meditative NYC cycling