Freddie Mercury wrote a song after watching the Tour de France go by his hotel window. He didn’t want to race. He just wanted to ride where he liked, answer to no one, go his own way. I thought about that this morning pulling out of the driveway.
The chain caught once on the first hill and I remembered how to let it go.
I have not ridden like this in decades. Around town, yes, occasionally, but not turning down a road just to see where it goes, not knowing what the hill will ask of me when I get there. I had it as a kid, had it as a teenager. Somewhere in my forties it got left behind, and skating took its place, and I stopped noticing what I’d set down.
Stoughton is hilly in ways I did not expect. The first one had me leaning forward over the bars, palms pressing down, quads finding a rhythm they haven’t used in a long time. I was paying attention to my breath the way you do when breath actually matters, pulling the good air in, pushing the bad air out. At the top I hit an intersection in a quiet residential stretch a few blocks off Main. I could see down all four directions. Options. That feeling, options in every direction on a Sunday morning in June, was close to what I came here looking for.
The Yahara River runs through all of it, or near enough. I could see it from that hilltop, east down a road that ended at the water. It didn’t pull at me the way it might on a harder day. It just waited. Come down if you want, it seemed to say. Lean over one of the bridges and look into me. Or don’t. Come back when it’s hotter, dip your toes in, feel what cold water does to a tired body. Go enjoy your ride.
There is a park under construction near the river, with signs telling you to stay out, take a different path. I have enough experience with my own body and its limits that I can usually tell when a warning applies to me and when it is a general precaution for people still learning that about themselves. I went through. Found railroad tracks, steep gravel, the sound of individual stones scattering and clicking under the tires as I crossed. On the other side, the Yahara River Trail opened up in three directions at once.
Again, options.
I came at the trail from the back, not lost but not arriving the way anyone plans to arrive. The trail is real, official, on every map. The way I found it this morning is mine.
That is how it works, settling into a place. Not by being told its name. By having a memory located inside it. By knowing what a particular hill asks of your legs, what a particular gravel crossing sounds like, which streets run to water and which ones just run.
Page Street is good for bikes. Wide shoulder on the west side, a lane between the parked cars and the road, and the side streets pitch east toward the river, steep and long, bottoming out at a T just feet from the water. You want your brakes working on those descents. At the bottom you catch a glimpse of the river nestled into a mature neighborhood, and you find yourself wondering what it would be like to step out your front door and throw a small boat in like you were just jumping on your bike.
I brought water this time, and a hat. I didn’t need the water, as it turned out. But knowing it was there was its own kind of good. My keys and phone were in the pack, not rattling loose in a pocket, not something to worry about. Small preparations. Enough to commit to the direction you’re headed without having to manage the obvious problems.
I didn’t make it to Division Street today, where the road drops right to the river and you can stand there and let it do what rivers do. That’s for another day. This morning I let the ride go where it wanted.
It went somewhere I didn’t plan.
That was the whole point.
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