If you know me, you know that riding my bike is a large part of my life. What you may not know is that there is a particular set of memories I have from bike riding that I attribute as one of the more impactful experiences in my life. This post explores the story of that one summer.
Withstanding
If you know Montreal, or most places north enough that have a significant winter, you will understand how thin the summer can be. The days feel almost flimsy, like a window pane where if the wind knocks into it too much it breaks, and winter comes spilling back in. But that first covid summer was thick. You had the impression that all those days had accumulated, unspent, and, layered on top of one another, they obfuscated your view. When I talk to my friends now, many of us don't remember much of that summer.
I remember it, though. I spent most of that summer out on the silver, single-speed road bike that my friend Colin and I built a few years before. In fact, it became (and still remains) the summer I enjoyed the most in recent memory -- wider world events notwithstanding. As weird as it is to say, I found myself thriving, and learning a great deal about myself personally in this situation of upheaval. No one expected to enjoy that summer even a little. Yet, I did.
Waking worlds
Restrictions came and went that summer in Montreal. Whenever they were lifted, riding my bike was the best way I could think of to see the world, during a time when you couldn't count on that. I would wake up early in the morning, so early that I could watch the sun rise from my balcony as I ate breakfast. And then I was gone, for three hours or so, well before the rest of the world woke up.
When I went out on the bike, civilization was never far, but it was always somewhere behind me, it seemed. Most days, I would go out to the easternmost point of Montreal. Here, some smaller rivers converge into the Saint-Lawrence as it washes out to sea. The route I would often take follows the Rivière des Prairies along the north shore of the island. There are fields of reeds next to the water and at one point you can see where the power lines cross the river.
On its way out to the east point, the bike path cuts through a small nature preserve filled with tall, golden grasses. Another path, if you come from the southern shore, diverts through a narrow green corridor that runs beside the commuter rail for a while, nearly unnoticeable. In these places you have the impression that you are somewhere in between worlds.
All the time, there is so much variety of life that you pass, and you feel part of it, even though you are moving through it. But not from far away like behind a train or a car window -- that's what enthralls me about bike riding. Even if for a brief moment, you are part of whatever world you're passing through.
For me, following either one of the two rivers on my rides gave me a sense of place, a feeling of being situated. This frame of reference was important for learning about myself. Personal parts of myself like my response to being alone and my introspective nature were worn down by the events of that year. I needed to see the world from its missing perspective that summer, and my bike brought me to it, even if I didn't know it at the time.
Witnessing
The eastern point was the halfway mark of all my rides. I was often on my own here in the mornings as I rested, which was welcome because it lent itself naturally to reflection. I would walk down on the sand by the riverfront, looking out across a world of waterways, observing how it still drummed on: the waves lapped at the shore, the summer breeze buffeted off the point, and farther out, the current of the Saint-Lawrence carried onward.
I rarely needed more than a few moments of contemplation here. The remainder of my ride lay ahead, and the world I had left behind me at first would now be catching up to me, uncurling from the soil as it woke up. By the time I left from the east point, it seemed almost as if I was participating in this world again, from a different one that I had just stepped out of.
And so it went that I learned a lot about places close to me -- first geographically, then personally -- from riding my bike in those early summer mornings. These places like the green corridor, the nature preserve, and the east point hold parts of me that I've woven there with them. They witnessed something from me, just as I had witnessed something from them.
Today, I still have that silver single-speed bike. The allure of it has never left me, even when practically it's way tougher and heavier to ride than the racing bike I also have now. But it's always the bike I think of when I want to get out and just ride (a philosophy I stole from Thereabouts, my favorite film about bike riding).
A friend once asked me how I don't get bored riding my bike for three hours or so. What is there to be bored by? You are witnessing the world, with yourself in it, as it is moving forward. And this was important, during that summer, when you weren't always sure that it still was.