THE SELECTION
@TRUEBSBECAUSE #BIKEISTHEWAYOFLIFEI mean, I know that for the first time I’ll
be able to devote myself to exploring the
roads and paths and bike lanes and towpaths
and trails around my new home in Easton,
Pennsylvania (and by summer the home to
Bicycling, as well, along with Runner’s World
and Popular Mechanics, in a cool old building
that used to be a bowling alley). I’ll be riding
the bridge across the Delaware a lot, partly
because pedaling over a big river into a dif-
ferent state gives me a thrill that I know to be
both silly and powerful, and partly because
the rural patches of New Jersey up and down
the Delaware are home to short, steep climbs,
gravel and dirt byways, strange and beautiful
twisting lanes that might dead-end or not, odd
towns with weird provenances documented
on roadside signs, the evocative ruins of failed
industrial and farming dreams, and corner
markets, often owned and run by families
who also live in the building, that are not
chain convenience stores, and all of this I will
ride as much as I can because after 25 years of
riding the Lehigh Valley, I am savoring that
delectable unknowing that comes from being
in fresh territory.
I also know that until Bicycling moves from
its temporary spot in an office park, when
the weather and my list of life logistics align,I’ll ride the 20-ish miles to and from
work, mostly along the D&L Trail and
a little on the Saucon Rail Trail and
on a gravel connector I don’t know
the name of but which I will hold in
my heart as long as I hold anything
there because it scoots around the
only real climb and the hellish, high-curbed,
high-trafficked section of the summit that felt
as if it would be my death every time I rode it.
I know I’ll be wasting plenty of time riding
exactly nowhere, coasting and meandering
as many of my new local streets and alleys
as I can, and cutting across ball fields and
golf courses and parking lots, because I love
to spend time on a bicycle this way, stitching
links between idiosyncratic route choices to
the brewery and the ice-cream shop and the
park and the cemetery so I can see certain
murals, or painted doorways, or a dog that
is always in a yard, and in the same knotted
network I’ll spend time and emotional effort
trying to lay in some of the fine art of Strava-
segment-making we all feel we possess. (I’ve
already named my first local segment: Col
du Lege Hill.)
So I know all of that, but I don’t know
where I’ll be riding this year.
What I mean is: What’s my adventure going
to be? This comes to cyclists as naturally as
the need to air our tires. We not only must
explore (which we can do at home) but we
are compelled to ride places that challenge us
to redefine something about ourselves. That
something might be physical, but it is often
more intangible—we bump up against andsometimes get past what we believed were
not only our physical limits but our mental
and our emotional and, on the best rides,
even our (yikes!) spiritual limits. And this
bumping and passing doesn’t have to come
from hardship or strain. It often does, and
in my experience it is always finer for being
marinated in sweat, but the cycling transcen-
dence of our selves can happen when you’re
drinking a(nother) glass of local Chianti at a
dinner table crowded with people you knew
nothing about before you shared a good day
on the bike, or when you are far from home
as alone as you’ve ever been and you stop
to relish or regret some random moment in
some journey that might be going somewhere
or not, and there it is: a stone fountain, or
a stream, or a f ledgling stork, or a valley or
a monolith that reminds you that you were
born, and that you will die, and that it has
been and is and will be the same for all the
others, and that as unassailable as that is, it
does not matter as much as building the best
stone fountain we can in the time we have, or
honoring the creation of the fountain as we
drink from it, or sticking our feet in the cold
stream and for once fully goddamn enjoying
it, or saying what the hell I promise one day
I’ll come back and ride into the far valley or
up to the impossible peak of the mountain
but right now I am alive and on a bicycle
ride and that is enough, that is everything.
So where are you riding this year?Bill Strickland
RIDER-IN-CHIEFI don’t
know where
I’m riding
this year.
12 BICYCLING.COM • ISSUE 1 | 2020
Yeah, our jobs are great but they’re still, you know, jobs. We work so hard at Bicycling that sometimes I have to order the staff to
get out for a ride. This time, I’ve set up two of our crushers, test editor Riley Missel and social editor Katie Fogel, with a Subaru
Outback and directions to get out of town for a weekend and ride. The catch—they don’t get to decide where they go. You do.
Should they hit up roads in your city? Explore some muddy singletrack? Give me your suggestions at [email protected].Where Are
Riley & Katie
Riding?
You decide.