A secular humanist, a witty existentialist, and from time to time, a psychologically unstable biological mess, I like to wander the mountains of the Wasatch on my bike. I also like to drink beer, fight cancer, write poetry, and continually rewire my life to avoid hypocrites, idiots, and mean people. I follow my heart – even when it takes me to places I shouldn’t go. And I believe that a bike ride can reorder the measure of beauty and grace in the universe. Biking offers a tangible hope that even in the midst of grief and difficulty and loss, you can still choose to find joy, create laughter, and be fully alive.

I remember last year’s 24 hour race, how the bidirectional, opposing headwind blew right through me, how my fingers ached with the mind-numbing cold, how shivers began to rise through my undefended flesh. I remember the pain, the mental and physical anguish, the legs flailing around in not so much a pedal stroke as a potential spontaneous dismemberment, indefinitely postponed. And I remember my clenched fears, when loneliness came stalking under midnight and moon with a longing so poignant, it closed my throat. Breathing in and breathing out. Until there was nothing but breath holding me together, and I could see that terrible figure, hand beckoning, eyes blinking in the cold dark. The past rose around me – that portion of the world where you face up to a bitter kind of regret – a sense that things have happened to you that you would not have chosen, the knowledge that the highest daily dose of ibuprofen is not nearly enough, and deeper revelations which are almost unsustainable in your mind.

They say the never-ending sweep of the cranks can drive a person insane. But you don't have to believe that, and nor does that bright blue elephant that just cycled past.

And then, my shivering pain must have jarred the morning into movement, because dawn is prying itself up and over the horizon, and sun is spilling brightness back into the world. The desert is waking up around me - the silhouette of a flying owl with a small struggling life in its talons, a desert fox floating over the open landscape, and me, on my bike.

I move in silence, open up my cadence and leap. Throwing my head back. Biking with enough energy to contain everything, waking every muscle, pushing myself into extremity and grace until it feels as if I could throw myself out of my body like an arrow. Until it feels as if I could almost understand the kind of courage it takes to claim your happiness in life.  

In that silent confrontation with the landscape, I find a place where all outer activity stops, where all self necessities have no reach at all, where a relationship with the unknown is absolutely and utterly necessary. Instead of finding shelter and safety, I find an invitation to increasing depths of vulnerability that, in the end, keep everything alive.

It's a metaphor of human existence, riding a bike in a 24 hour race. It is the great act of reminding people that they are at this astonishing frontier of experience.

And if that isn't bad enough, it's also a bloody long time to be on a bike. 

I have more loving to do in this lifetime. And more biking.  

Wherever you are on your journey, inhabit it as fully as you can.