"We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures." ~Thornton Wilder
Today, I rode home from work on my bike, Sandy. We got caught in an epic down pour, and I
couldn’t be happier about it.
She is a great companion for daily
adventures! I spend most of my career
thinking about how to appropriately analyze and utilize information. But life can’t always be lived by processing
information in such a systematic manner.
Sometimes the most important gifts, the most beautiful moments come from
just trusting ourselves to know what we need or want without over thinking things.
That is what happened when I bought Sandy the Bike. I hadn’t owned a bike since I was a teenager;
and have been known to get scared and intentionally bail off of a bike in a
preemptive move to avoid uncontrolled crashing. So, you can understand why riding a bike in
NYC would seem like a scary and stupid proposition. Or so I thought, until……Hurricane Sandy. After a week of hellish bus commuting post-hurricane,
I was completely fed-up! Staggering into
the office after a retched 3-hour bus trip, my co-worker casually commented,
“this is why I love to bike commute...”.
Something in me snapped - I decided to buy a bike… the next day, without
a doubt, I would become a bike commuter; and the sooner, the better. It actually took me 2 full days to find the
right bike, but within 72 hours of my decision I had practiced and geared up for
a 14-mile round-trip work commute.
My co-workers and a few friends were mystified, perhaps
horrified. Their advice ranged from, “…don’t
make a drastic purchasing decision during a time of stress” to “but you don’t
ride bikes, and it will be dangerous, you could get hurt”. Still others were
very supportive: “what a great source of exercise!”, “go for it – why not?!”. I knew that I wanted a new way to explore my
city, I didn’t want to be beholden to other forms of transit any longer, and I LOVE
a challenge – Illogical/impulsive/impractical or not, I just knew that I wanted this, no other information needed. Now, my bike commute is one of the happiest parts
of my weeks, even in a summer down pour!
Today, for example, despite collecting precise information
about the weather forecast, I found myself pushing on for 30 minutes in the
rain (soaking wet and laughing about it most of the way). I finally had to take
shelter at a bus stop when I could no longer see clearly. At the bus stop, I met another cyclist who
was waiting out the storm. For twenty
minutes I had an amazing conversation with a new friend – he worked in Rwanda;
he and his girlfriend were thinking of moving to CO, where I am from; we
exchanged stories of culture-shock upon returning to NYC; NYC burnout symptoms;
etc. Such enjoyable, spontaneous
conversations rarely happen between New Yorkers, unless the
conditions are just right (or just awful enough). It was a wonderful evening, full
of life’s magic; and all because of my uniformed, under-analyzed decision to
embrace my pal Sandy in my life.
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