It’s something else, this cycling lark. The feeling of breeze running through your hair and around your moving body sometimes borderlines on the erotic, although I wouldn’t tell anyone else that I said that lest it gets around!
As I pass by, I love to see how the great outdoors brings out smiles and playfulness in other people – the courting couples on park benches, rowdy children playing with stick swords and tired Mums relieved to be sharing their latest story about how they discovered George strangling the family dog or Louise exploring her creativity with pancake mix on the kitchen floor. I think this experience may be what Buddhists call ‘Mudita’, a term for “Finding joy in the happiness and success of others”. Despite all this privileged insight into people’s lives, cyclists remain barely noticeable, more like passing vehicles than ‘real people’ and not having to interact, which I suspect is just what a lot of us would prefer. I do however have another reason for not wanting to engage.
Just 20 minutes ago, I was in mind-boggling pain from an old biking injury that left me with a dodgy spine. This time I’ve been stuck at home for 3 days with my ability to function at the end of the scale that should be labelled ‘Zombie’… It resurfaces particularly badly from time to time, just to tell me that I’ve been a complete plonker by overdoing things again “But I need a life just like everyone else and I was enjoying myself”, I protest. “That’s not the point” it replies. But right now, I’m ecstatic to be back ‘in the saddle’ so to speak.
“So how come you can cycle?” I hear you ask? Well, …. that’s a wonder to me too. You know when you bang your funny bone and no amount of someone telling you that you’ve hit the jackpot is going to cut the mustard, until that is, that pesky pain is no more. So you rub your elbow like it’s gone out of fashion and that clever brain of yours gets distracted from the pain and helps you to feel a lot better. Chronic pain (wherever it may happen to lurk) can be like hitting your funny bone, but that unpleasant sensation hangs around for a lot longer. Cycling for me is a powerful distraction, like rubbing your elbow, only this time I’m focusing on those endless circles that you make with your legs and the living greenness and gorgeousness around me also makes my experience a hell of a lot easier to bear.
To top it off, endorphins, the powerful natural ‘high’ produced by exercise, are supposedly six times more powerful than the drug morphine. So maybe, my opening confession should not surprise you after all!
