In summer 2019, I bought a brand new, mid-range adventure bike. It had drop bars, hydraulic brakes, and a carbon fiber fork. It was the best bike I had ever owned, replacing a steel mountain bike from the 80’s built by a long bankrupt company that I took for free when a lost and found sale failed to get rid of it. That mountain bike was acquired my freshman year in college, making it to a year after my last, in 2019. That firetruck red mountain I converted into a singlespeed became the “bike zero” of my biking passion.
That summer, I “bikepacked” for the first time. Crossing the 140 mile Denali highway with (at the time) a friend over the course of 3 days. There was no previous experience that I had that could have prepared me for what I felt. The second day required covering 85 miles; The most I had biked before that was barely 50 miles, and on only flat pavement. The Denali Highway is a mostly gravel, incredibly potholed, and endlessly hilly road that goes from above the treeline to Denali’s foothills. Whatever it was I felt after that second day at 2 am after 85 miles and a couple of rainstorms and darkness, I fell in love.
At the beginning of 2020, I acquired a Surly Pugsley frame with the intention of building it up into a complete bike. That endeavor took almost a year and a half (That thing itself deserves its own post. Eventually.) Later that summer, I biked 2 one hundred plus mile routes, raced down double track, and trudged through muddy spruce forests. Hailed on a few times. There was a crash or two, but luckily no stitches were needed. The next winter I finished the fatbike I was building, and rode in the cold.
Why do I ride? Besides the fact that biking probably saved me a few dozen dollars on fuel (and CO2 emmissions) and the fact that when a human is on a bike, they are the most efficient animal on earth, besides all of that, it might be boiled down to the idiom “more miles, more smiles.” The scenery is great, the feel of sending it down a hill with some buddies is like no other, and a beer or two at the end is undoubtededly enjoyable. It could be that simple, but it doesn’t explain what makes it worth it to go through physical pain like that from biting hail or numbing cold or the inevitable breathlessness of climbing a hill.
Sometimes why I ride is pushing myself for the eternal question of “what is possible?” The anwswer to that question could be why I pushed through the hail and climbed all those hills. It could explain why I wanted to ride just under 130 miles in 12 hours.
Sometimes why I ride is control. Many people today probably could ride over 100 miles in a day, provided a decent bike, a good saddle, and an okay padded pair of pants. What prevents that is the thought that 100 miles is somehow unachievable. It takes control of fluid and food intake, cadence, exertion, and many other minutia. Without control, it could be very easy for oneself to tire out too quickly or experience painful cramps. If I am able to control what I have the capability to do, then I can go farther than ever before.
Sometimes why I ride is spite. Not very long ago, I was exiting an abusive relationship. I had heard, more than a few times, those hurtful words from my former partner, “you won’t do much without me.” There are times when, for whatever reason, I just want to prove that wrong.
Why I ride is to heal and become a better, stronger version of myself. There will be a day where I can ride without a thought of spite; I will have healed to the point where that is no longer how I feel. I ride to push myself to become stronger, both within the physical and the mindfull. I ride to do my part to reduce CO2 emmissions and to enjoy a beer. The story of hike-a-bike for several miles through mud is a good one to tell people. Sometimes, why I ride is a mix of everything.
What else would it drive a person to bike a 100 miles, anyway?