The Seat of a bicycle

Sierra Nevada Mountains, Spain

​On the seat of a bicycle, there is no barrier between the traveler and the surrounding landscapes and communities. One could travel by car to see the world, I suppose. And when the scenery is redundant and the neighborhoods seem a little sketchy, I suppose they can simply roll up the windows, press the lock button and get lost in the radio just as well.
 
On a bicycle, everything is wide-open and unfiltered. There is not a glass-shield protecting the traveler from the outside, but a 360-degree view invigorating sight, smell and sound, at times almost too intoxicating to take in all at once.
 
There is no plastic box sheltering the traveler from the outside world. On a bicycle, you’re just out there. You’re in it. Good and bad, the world is up-close.
 
Perhaps, this is why the bicycle is my favorite method of travel. I’ve taken plenty of car road trips in my 30 years on Earth. Pacific Highway 1, through the Gulf Coastal Plains, around the Grand Canyon. Several jaunts from my home in Texas to the mountains of New Mexico, to the white sands of coastal Florida and across the border into Mexico. And I can’t forget the countless commutes through the dull, flat lands of Arkansas to the beautiful green hills of Tennessee, where I would travel back and forth between holidays home in Texas and college semesters in Cookeville, Tennessee.
 
In the climate controlled seat of a car, be it driver, passenger, or the motion-sickening back seat, I’ve distracted myself from endless road miles in a multitude of ways. As an annoying kid not allowed to say the word “bored,” my siblings and I played road games, told stories and watched cartoons on one of those old TV’s that used to be in the back of suburbans. You know, the car televisions used in emergent situations like, when one leg crossed the boundary into another sibling’s seat and a blood-curdling screaming-fest distracted  any measure of safe driving. As a teenager, the driver seat was a concert stage with a one-man audience. It was a smoking lounge on wheels, a sanctuary away from parents, a place to host friends and tell secrets.
 
As an adult, the car has become an entirely comatose thing. If it weren’t for thought-provoking podcasts and a good Spotify playlist to engage the lifeless commuter, I can not think of a more humdrum activity daily a part of modern Western society. I’ve had entire car rides where I can’t remember a single event that happened from departure to arrival. It’s like I spaced out, followed the flow of traffic and magically appeared at my destination. Not even certain if a single thought entered my mind during the trip. At least, not one memorable.
 
And then there’s the whole environmental cost of single-person transit that is just nearly impossible to get away from. Tearing people away from their cars in America is like asking a Texan to stop buying guns. We just love toting around in a lifeless box of empty thoughts and monotonous scenery, ignoring the rotating wheels rotating us like cogs in the machine.
 
But I’ll have none of that. I’d much rather be exposed to the gravest elements of nature on a bicycle than sit idly behind a wheel wondering why my life feels so ordinary. I want to experience life. I mean, really experience it. I want to feel the crisp morning air awaken my face, I want to hear the newspaper go “ka-plunk” when the newspaper boy throws it on a doorstep, I want to listen to the repetitious beep of a crosswalk signal and say, “Good morning” to the pedestrian crossing the street.
 
This is where the bicycle is king. There is no better seat than the seat of a bicycle. Unlike a car, you are not just passing the outside world and making quick observations, you are a part of the outside world. If a skunk was freshly killed, you’ll be the first to know on the seat of a bicycle. If rain is in the forecast, that fresh, earthy petrichor will stimulate your senses and send rustling through your bag for a rain jacket. Even the snow sends warnings, as the cold air is met by humidity and you are caught somewhere between the chilled air and warm blood, in the center of it all.
 
It’s not always pleasant. The cold wind breaks against the cyclist and if not dressed accordingly, it burns. A different kind of burning sensation occurs in the thighs, hips and legs as the cyclist uses their body as a method of transport. Sometimes through long distances, sometimes up hills, sometimes on already tired legs, mind, spirit.

Netherlands

The bicycle asks more of the traveler than say, the car. It asks for discipline, to keep waking up and choosing a more difficult method of transport. It asks for a physical commitment, to use the body to propel the vehicle forward. It asks for vulnerability, as this way of travel is fully exposed to barreling winds, blazing heat, blistering cold, and all the bastards out on the road.  
 
One time while biking to my morning class, utilizing the only mode of transportation I owned during this particular time in college, a truck full of clowns passed by me and I suppose, thought it would be funny to unload a carton of eggs on an innocent bystander. One after another, I was splattered from head to toe in pungent, raw eggs. I quickly went inside the Kroger grocery store up the road to see if I could wash off in the bathroom sink. Instead, I stared myself in the mirror, dried egg yolk stuck to my face, hair, clothes and I cried. Then, I biked back home to change clothes, inevitably late to class.
 
So, there’s assholes out on the road. Sometimes they cut you off, yell things at you, or, in my case- throw a dozen eggs your way. My favorite, most common asshole-move out on the road, is when someone yells out their window, “GET ON THE SIDEWALK!” It’s usually comes with an accompanied noun like, “idiot,” “jerk,” “fucker.” You name it, I've heard it. To set the record straight before moving any further, I just want every hot-headed four-wheeled roads-men who’s ever yelled at a cyclist to get off the road to know these two important things. First, anytime you yell at a cyclist, just know you are scaring the living hell out of them. That goes for anyone who honks, yells or makes any sudden loud noise while passing a cyclist- even if it’s in good spirits. It comes as a jolting shock to one traveling on a much slower and much more exposed vehicle than you. Second, and let this one sink in for the bicycle-hater sitting in the back.... it is illegal for a cyclist to ride on the sidewalk. The sidewalk is for pedestrians, a much slower form of transportation than a bicycle. Minus the highway, the road is a shared space for bicyclists, motorcycles and cars. Remember this, next time you are antsy to pass a cyclist, blow exhaust in their face, or desperate to take your misguided anger out on a more vulnerable law-abiding vehicle.... it is illegal for bicyclists to ride on the sidewalk. Nail that one in your head and let’s never yell it outside of your car again. Now, if only we could address bicycling infrastructure, but sadly, that’s a whole different beast.
 
Needless to say, riding a bicycle is not as easy and not as forgiving as driving a car. Naturally, if you get hit while riding a bicycle, the chance of injury, even death, is much greater. The bicycle asks more from the cyclist, but let me tell you, it is worth it.
 
I’ll never forget my first bicycle. A classic, 1987 Bianchi, a French bike painted with a unique shade of turquoise called Celeste. Even the water bottle cages were painted black and splashed in Celeste, and so were the leather straps of the caged pedals this classic color. I found the bike on a Craigslist ad, it had been sitting in someone’s garage for years and held all its original parts. Why it wasn’t being used, I’ll never understand, maybe the bike awaited an owner who would love it to the degree that I would at the time- a young, college student, hopelessly wondering through life and eager to tie her identity to an eclectic object like an old Bianchi.
 
This steel-framed beauty with drop-down handles bars and suicide-shifters on the lower part of the frame was my companion. Daily, I’d ride to and from school, about three miles each way from my first-ever apartment with my Australian roommate, a tennis player on the college team with me, who also happened to be a well-known DJ, making our apartment the place for dance parties. But back to the bicycle.
 
For the first time ever, I learned that there is an entire journey from point A to point B that is often missed while driving a car. The things I would see from a seat of bicycle made me ache for what all I had been missing before I knew this form of transportation in such an intimate way. One day I watched a squirrel as it stood tall, frozen and eyes-widened as its entire life passed before it’s eyes, staring straight into the screeching wheel of a massive vehicle that stopped millimeters in front of the stunned creature. I don’t know why the squirrel refused to move, but I had never seen such a stark expression on animal’s face before and I don’t think the driver in the car had any idea how close it was to making squirrel jerky.
 
It was like I had a super power, I had eyes to see a part of the world that was un-seeable outside of the seat of a bicycle. This excited me to no end. I was a college athlete, and should have been more rigid in my schedule, but having trained at a tennis academy since I was a single-digit age, I think I was burnt out from living a one-dimensional lifestyle. Suddenly, here was this mobile machine that took me anywhere I wanted to go. All the back alleys and quaint farm roads I would have never discovered in a big vehicle. I would spend my days after school and tennis practice just wondering around town, finding cool back roads, discovering waterfalls, landing at farm stands to collect a daily harvest. I was boundless, I was free, it was liberating.
 
And the feeling that would come over me as I learned to bike fast was something like invincibility. Five minutes ‘til class starts? No problem. I would zip across town like it was mine for the taking. Thirty minutes until practice? That’s plenty of time to rush home for lunch. I was unstoppable on my bike. At least, that’s the image I had for myself.
 
I liken my relationship with my first-ever bicycle with many hard-core motorcyclist’s relationship with their bike. It’s a lifestyle. It’s an attitude. It’s an attire. In those days, I wore the same leather boots, black Levi’s jeans and blue jean jacket, no matter the weather. I strutted in a place just like I owned it, just like I expected every male specimen there to fall on their knees. I was Katie, the hard-core bicyclist, ready to take on the world all by myself. Even if the sexiest man, the head of the environmental club, the guy who went rock-climbing trips, spent his weekend in the woods, played in a band after school... even if that guy offered me a ride, I would say no. Because me and my bike, we were an independent force.
 
This was a point of pride for me. And I thought I was the coolest. I even had this T-shirt I wore to class, bra-less to fit my "don't give a shit" vice. It was red with a screen-print of a bicycle, underneath it said, “My other vehicle is my two fucking legs.”
 
Maybe I was delusional. But I guess that’s what happens when you’re in love. And I was, I was in love with feeling alive.
 
That’s what I don’t get out of a car, that rush, that sense of freedom, that sense of identity, that visceral experience of truly being in the elements, truly experiencing the world. For me, that can only be found on the seat of a bicycle.
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