Just Like Riding A Bike

In case you haven't guessed by now, this blog is as much about my own lifelong love/hate relationship with Lady Procrastination than anything else. I haven't so much procrastinated as I have procrastinated about even seeking a solution to my procrastination problem.

A good part of the problem has been physical. I'm a big guy, a big enough guy that guys I thought were big looked at me like I was Godzilla. I'm taller than average, but to be at a healthy weight I think I'd need to be nine-foot-seven. Since this blog is not about playing in the NBA, I think you can figure out that I'm overweight. Being overweight (for those of you water-swilling Speedo-wearing Pilates instructors that might happen to be reading) has its pros and cons. I frequently find that being a 6' 3" bear on the subway means nobody fucks with me when I'm playing Brain Age on my DS. That's a plus. When I get off the train and walk up two flights straight up to the street to go to work, that sucks.

The truth is I'm still mired in bad habits that began when I was young and was sidelined from playing football (I have to say I loved playing and am told I was pretty good, even though I was only 12) because of scoliosis. Coming from a family where everyone is overweight isn't to blame, but it sure didn't help. I've wavered over the years and in the past four or five years have been steadily losing more than I was gaining, just not to the extend I'd like, but still doing so without a plan.

Now that I've been at my new job for two months, the pounds have started to show. My old gig at least kept me on my feet and in motion for most if not all of the day. Now I'm sitting at a desk.

Just over five years ago, I was hired to shoot a cross-country bicycle race called (fittingly enough) Race Across America. I was part of a two-camera crew covering the teams side of the race. I had never heard of the race until two weeks before I was standing in a Holiday Inn parking lot in Portland, Oregon watching these men and women I can only describe as everyday heroes pumping past my lens, grinning through their exertion, too excited to think about the terrifying prospect of racing 3000 miles non-stop to Pensacola, Florida (Here's a shot at the finish line, I'm the goon in the $9 flowered shirt I'd bought across the street). Some of them didn't make it there on their bike, pulling up instead in their team support van to celebrate the finishers. Some of them didn't even make it that far, choosing to turn for home after racking up a 'DNF' (Did Not Finish) next to their name on the standings chart. The following year, one of them didn't make it home at all, losing his life on a stretch of highway in New Mexico to an 18-wheeler. RAAM doesn't race on tracks or on closed roads, but out there on highways, through neighborhoods, across the desert and through the mountains.

I met so many amazing people on that race, all of them there because they were passionate about the sport and the idea that they could take to the road and find out what they were made of. They fell off, got bandaged up and got back on the bike. They scrobbled up meals in seconds and got back on the bike. They slept for twenty minutes and got right back on the bike.

We were driving in the middle of the night through what must have been Oklahoma and caught up to a rider who had lost the ability to keep his head up in a racer's stance. One of his crew members, his former high-school science teacher, devised an impromptu brace of a two-by-four and some duct tape so he could keep racing. He looked like Bob Vila's scarecrow, but there he was riding.

We didn't have it easy ourselves along the way: there were missed turns and bad driving (the third person in our three-man team couldn't shoot video and was there to just drive...and almost killed us all no less than five times over seven days on the road); stretches of time where we couldn't find the next team ahead, only to have to drive back 36 hours to cover the next-closest team; sleep deprivation and arguments over nothing more than what was on the radio. Despite that, I watched these guys ride and thought that I wanted to get on a bike and get fit, not to race 3000 miles, but just to get myself healthy. My partner on the race said I'd be riding the race myself in five years. I doubted that, but I didn't think I'd go that long without getting on my own bike.

I just finished a stretch of late shifts where I was working by myself for the last few hours with minimal work, the perfect time to get some writing in, but I've felt so groggy by the time everyone else leaves that the most I managed was some outlining and spitballing before I'd lose concentration and check the Mets score.

I got tired of that.

Today I bought a bike. I'm playing it safe for now, I only spent a little money, but I hopped on this afternoon and shakily took my first ride up the block in twenty years. It was hot and muggy today, but I'm pretty sure I'd have been sweating as much as I did even in November.

And I can't wait to go back out tomorrow.