The Wednesday Ride

I've recently joined an online writing site, Writers Village . I've taken some good courses, both peer-reviewed and facilitated. I did one recently based on the book by Julia Cameron, The Artist's Way. One of this month's classes is "Writing the Memoir", based on Your Life as Story by Tristine Rainer. Since I love personal essay (like, duh, because most of what I post here is just that), I hope to get some good stuff out of it.

I thought I'd share my homework for this week-- nothing profound, just a few thoughts about The Wednesday Ride:


Allen and I ride bikes every Wednesday, after work. “After work” is a loosely applied term, which means “we hope to get out there and get some miles in before the road turns completely black in front of us because we never bring our headlights and the only light we get is the light that shines on our backs as the headlights run up behind us.”

The usual Wednesday ride take-off point has been at the intersection of US-1 and Swamp Park Road, parking in the grass beside the road in front of the train tracks. Sometimes, when we’re setting up our bikes, a freight train comes by, and we have to plug our ears with our fingers to muffle the deafening horn.

This parking area is where the Crazies hang out before and after the ride: a group of guys, cyclists, who spend an hour in a pace line at speeds in excess of 23 miles per hour, attempting to shake each other off the tail of the group. They stand around in the parking area in their flip-flops and spandex after the ride, swilling Gatorade and ribbing each other about their prowess, or lack thereof, in cycling—and elsewhere.

We don’t hang out much there lately. As much as I enjoy the trash-talk and machismo, I have never really been able to keep up with those guys, so I end up riding alone. It’s getting hard for Allen, too—and he’s finally reached the point where he doesn’t want to keep up with them—it just hurts too much.

So we park at the State Park down the road, which has actual bathrooms and a real parking lot. We get there in the evening, and the pavilions and playground that surround the lake are deserted. It’s quiet, and we have the whole park to ourselves.

We have our Wednesday Ride ritual: we pull the bikes off the rack on the tailgate of the truck, and complain about how much our bike rack sucks. We air the tires on our sleek carbon road bikes, the tires making a quick “pop” when you pull the pump from the tire valves. I pad around in my socks, trying to avoid the rocks in the parking lot, as I collect my (very smelly) bike shoes, glasses, and helmet with my (also very smelly)gloves tucked inside. I put my shoes on next-- I love the sound the hard cleats make when they strike the pavement. I check my water bottles, bike computer, and the tires one more time. I buckle my helmet and slide on my gloves, and then hop into the saddle.

If you’re not a roadie, you probably don’t know about clipless pedals, bike pedals which attach to the soles of your bike shoes, this rendering you one with the machine. I do not particularly like to be rendered one with the machine, because I hate to fall over like a bug when I can’t unclip my shoes fast enough, but they do allow you to ride strong and fast. So-‘click’- we’re clipped in and on our way.

The Wednesday Ride must follow this exact route: it’s the law. We must take a right out of the park and onto the road. We wind past the lake and over the dam, past the bass fishermen, up the hill and around the Camp for the Blind. We coast down the small hill to the golf course—if I’m very lucky, we stop in to the pro shop and pick up some tokens so we can hit a bucket of balls at the driving range later.

Then the ride begins in earnest. By now, the afternoon has started to cool off, and we speed up, past the pine trees on either side of the road. The Wednesday Ride always smells like pine trees.

Then we get to the hairy part of the ride: crossing the four lanes of US 1, with its fast-moving tractor trailers barreling towards the interstate a few miles away. I shift down to the little gear so I can stop if I have to. Allen rides circles at the side of the road while he waits for the trucks to pass—I think he’s nuts, and I worry about him falling into the road. I breathe a sign of relief when we’re across the highway, across the train tracks, and onto Swamp Park Road.

Swamp Park Road is named, appropriately enough, after Swamp Park, the little Okefenokee tourist attraction, with its boat tours of the swamp, and its abundance of alligators. We love Swamp Park Road because it’s devoid of cars, flat, and fast. If you are so inclined, you can haul butt, rocket to the entrance of the park, spin around, and rocket back- unless, of course, there’s a head wind.

But, sometimes, we don’t rocket through the place. The Big Fire, which burned in the Okefenokee Swamp a few years ago, and nearly took the town with it, burned the pine trees down. The smoking trees were horrible, but what grew in their place is strangely beautiful. You can see for miles—nothing to impede your view but grass and bushes and the occasional lone Georgia Pine. So we stop, and just look, and are thankful we’re in the Okefenokee Swamp on a Wednesday evening, and watch the blue herons and the red-tailed hawks.

By now, the sun is starting to get very low on the horizon, and I am beginning to get nervous, because I hate riding in the dark. So we pick up the pace, dodging the odd snake crossing the road.

We work together now, intent, and silent. I draft off Allen so I can ride faster, and therefore get back to the truck faster. We spin past the park entrance, down to US 82—the route that must be followed; it’s the law, remember—and then swing back.

Now it is most definitely getting dark, and I am cursing under my breath and swearing that this is the LAST time I will ride this late—EVER—and I can’t believe how stupid this is and try to see the road using the last of the light coming from between the trees.

Finally—we coast back into the parking lot, and do our ritual in reverse. Helmet off, gloves off… but this time, it’s in the dark, and I sometimes can’t see my hands in front of my eyes.

And then we’re finally in the truck, cruising down those same roads that we just biked on, headlights on, back into town, to the Wal-Mart, to the house, to dinner, onto the couch, and then into bed, very tired.

We’ll be back again the next Wednesday, and I will have still forgotten the headlights. So we’ll ride until it’s dark, through the summer and into the fall, until the darkness falls so early that we won’t even have time to get the bikes off the rack before we won’t be able to see. We’ll wait out the winter, and when it’s finally light enough after work, we’ll be back for our ritual Wednesday Night Ride. And my riding will be slower and more tentative after the winter, I am sure, but the road and the Swamp will still be there for us.