Canter Bridge

It wouldn’t be good to resist the Autumn light that makes it easier than normal to get out on the bike and onto the Monon Trail. In a few weeks, Winter will have us scavenging for motivation like junk-yard raccoons. Today tosses the thing in front of us like a juicy sirloin. Don’t waste the moment, I tell myself.

After a month of travel and bad sleep, the belly fills up the Lycra biker’s shirt a bit more amply than in the heat of summer. Dressing up like a biker in form-fit color is one of the few acceptable spaces for a man of conventional preferences to strike out in just this way. But there are lots of other splashes of yellows and blues on bikers of all ages, many shapes, and both genders on the Monon this afternoon. I’m in good company.

Tooling north on a gentle upward slope at a decent pace, the landscape unfolds before one as though in slow motion while objects and persons closer in pass in a blur. I notice, as I often do, the high percentage of fit people on the Trail, but at speed they pass too quickly to stand out as individuals.

Overtaking is a different matter. You see the bike in front of you and its rider. You study him or her and the foot-, skate-, and bike traffic coming the other way to make sure you can pass without crashing into someone and dramatically decreasing their quality of life. You take the rider in, sometimes drafting long enough before passing to make out the make and quality of his ride.

The man in front of me takes up the space of two normal bikers. Looking like a man who overcame some wasting childhood disease that should have left him sedentary, his legs bow outward as matching curves. His pace is good. He’s clearly put in his miles on a bike. I admire his toughness even as I marvel at the spectacle—not too strong a word—of those bowed legs, churning away.

The image springs to mind of the old school buses that in years past ran the uphill route between Liberia, in Costa Rica’s Guanacaste province, and San José, that country’s capital high up on the Central Valley. Overtaking those rides in my relatively nimble Nissan Sentra, I used to marvel at how a vehicle so badly out of line could drive—most of the time—in a straight line down the highway. Often it was impossible to see one side of the bus while you could read the lettering on the other side from behind the thing.

A man like this pedaling his way north on the Monon looks a lot like that: remarkably odd form, unbendable determination, day-at-a-time ethos. I almost stop to phone my New Jersey-bound friend Kevin Jezequel to savor the memory, but decide to conserve what’s left of my cell phone in case I need it farther out.

In the shady, red-and-yellow Autumnal path north of Carmel, I spy two women walking toward me, each with a dog on a leash. As I approach, their gait looks strong, accustomed to the Trail. Although I can’t make out any features, one could charitably observe that these two friends seem to be enjoying their afternoon in the dawn rather than the dusk of middle age. Probably theirs is a daily ritual of exercise and friendship. Likely they do not know which they value more.

One of the dogs bobs strangely as he goes, though I can’t yet tell why. As I pass, I note that he has just three legs, yet labors on as a happy member of his foursomely pack. It reminds of nothing so much as my fellow biking novice Eddy, who in my absence and at this very moment is suffering on the mountains around Asheville, North Carolina in the company of two-wheeler phenoms Todd Rankin and John Bernard. Eddie and I look a lot like that dog when tooling along in our foursome.

Coming home, my Rhodesian Ridgebacks romp energetically in the front yard in what remains of this beautiful Fall day.

One can imagine better things in all sorts of ways. But on this afternoon, when the midwestern Autumn makes a man feel like Adam taking in his Garden, this day is good, worthy of—as Leonard Cohen or the Canadian Tenors might have it—a ‘broken Hallelujah’.