The Speed that is Possible

Sometimes when I ride I am a man on a bicycle. I sit up and my head swivels to take in storefronts and pedestrians and trees. I grip the handlebars with fists at the end of arms held stiff by locked elbows. I pedal and coast and pedal and coast. I chug up hills and lift my body off the seat. The bicycle leans first this way, then the other, back and forth until I am at the top, where I pause, panting but puffed with the accomplishment and look around to see if anyone has noticed my triumph over gravity. I am careful but I let my mind wander. I think about what I am going to cook myself for dinner: “Macaroni and cheese? No, burritos.” I think about the current object of affection, if there is one, and review our last interaction, scouring for hints to intentions or expectations or the future. I carry on an imaginary dialogue in which I am clever and charming and she drowns in me. Maybe I have a basket full of groceries or library books to return. When I reach my destination, I carefully lock my bicycle to a street sign or lamppost or carry it up the stairs of my building.

Other times I am not a man on a bicycle. The machine and I have fused into a being of pure motion and reflex. Amongst calculations of position and vector there is no room for plans and girls. The bicycle and I, we are a rocket, we are a jet, we are a comet, we are sound waves that are unscathable. We dart past parked cars and into turn lanes. We swoop around children crossing the street and confused, barking dogs that do not mean to hurt us but whose canine brains can not grasp what could possibly be moving so fast. Our heart and legs are pumping and our chain orbits the gears faster and faster, pulling the teeth of the sprockets and the back wheel spins and we move.

Our face is grim and our eyes squinting, scanning peripheries for danger. A car pulling out sees us and jolts to a halt as red brake lights ignite. Green to yellow, we hunker down and dig our toes into the pedals and clear the intersection just after the light has gone red but before the sluggish cars can react. The cars and their drivers cannot know what we are, have no way of knowing. To them we are a surprise, a sharp inhalation of breath, a streak and then we have disappeared. They worry that they will hit us, will damage us, that a brush with their fender will cripple us and send us to the pavement, but we know, as the cracked concrete uncoils below, we know that we are untouchable. We know what the cars will do before they do it and we are ready. The ground that is a blur below us is only for our tires, the rest of us will never touch it. It is not meant for us.

We are a flash on the side of the street, sometimes in the middle, but always on the street, not on the sidewalk, never on the sidewalk. That is where the people are. They are smaller than the cars and they do not move fast, cannot move fast, or will not, we are not sure. What we know is that they are best avoided because they are unpredictable. They will panic when they see us and will not just let us roar by, but will try to get out of the way and we will hit them because they are stupid and they think that we do not know what we are doing. We stay on the street and go fast, always faster and faster and never slowing down unless we have to, unless there is no possible curve or angle or maneuver we can make. When there is no escape and we are fenced in, we slow but as soon as we are clear we pump and push and spin and we are going fast again.

Often we do not know where we are going. It is almost as if we have some mystical connection to the city, that through our tires’ contact with the ground, instinctual knowledge of thoroughfares and distances flows through us. We do not have errands to run. We are not conducting business. We are cutting through the air like a knife because that is what we do, that is what we must do. There is nothing else that we can do. This is who we are. It is the actualization of our primary cause. We are, therefore, we are fast. We are pushed on and on, faster and faster by a passion and a fire burning in our marrow and in the very air in our tires. This is how we know that we are alive, to see the world blur into streaks to our right and our left and to feel our speed humming through us.

When we get to the park, the one by the lake that is all green and grass and trees and dogs, we swing one leg over our frame and coast with both feet on one pedal until we run out of momentum and collapse on the soft turf. We are panting and puffing and our limbs and tires are hot and we sweat. We lay on our back and look at the sky, at the bright blue, so blue it makes our eyes lost in it and we can not see the other side but we try and try and can not tear our eyes away and we peer into the huge brilliant nothing that is everything. The sun is there and it is not like us but we like how it feels on our skin and on our paint. It dries our sweat and makes us smile and the breeze ruffles our hair and feels like the air rushing past when we were a rocket, a jet, a comet, but like a baby of that air. It knows only a hint of the speed that is possible. We also see the clouds. They make us smile. They are so round and fat and the way they float without seeming to move at all makes us think that they know both nothing and everything about being fast. Like Zen masters, they watch us from above, smiling at how fast we can be, smiling at how much faster we could be, not judging us for how we are sometimes slow, but just smiling and smiling. We feel their distant benevolence and think that if anything understands us it is probably the clouds.

We close our eyes and can see the shadows, the traces of the cars, the people, the obstacles we have just navigated and the street, always the street, the two lines, parallel but intersecting somewhere, somewhere out there, somewhere we have to find, have to get to, have to get to now, have to be at this very moment! We do not know if we will ever get there. There is a nagging feeling that we will not, that there might not really be such a place, but we are young and fast and we will see that feeling proved wrong.