My younger son, doing his best impression of a kickstand.

The bike I ride now is a Trek Soho, an upright five-speed with flat handlebars. With disc brakes and an internal gear hub, it’s good for commuting, picking up groceries, and not lying to myself that I might at any moment tackle a single-track trail. In a way, it’s as tricked-out as my old banana-seat Schwinn, with fenders, an aluminum rack for pannier bags, and a ringy-dingy bell that is as useful as it is embarrassing. Oh, and it’s got a homemade growler carrier.

 

It’s just a paintcan with some bolts and bungee cords, but it is the perfect way to ferry a growler of beer and feel virtuous about it. (Long ago I noticed that if you drive to the store in the middle of the week to buy beer, you feel kind of scummy. But if you bike to the store, then you feel hip and virtuous!).

 

I would like to say that I made the carrier with my father, because that would mirror the earlier episode about repairing the brake light with him. In addition to showing some personal growth on my part, it would be a feel-good father-and-son moment. A confession: that’s how I wrote it in an earlier draft of this piece, but when I imagined my dad seeing this on Facebook and leaving a comment like YOU SHOULD REALLY TELL THE TRUTH BRYAN, I decided to tell the truth.

 

My dad built that growler carrier for me. (Thanks, Dad.) This is one difference between writing essays and fiction. Sometimes your real life character doesn’t actually develop. But on the plus side, sometimes you’re not disillusioned with a father figure.  

 

                                               *     *     *  

 

The summer I got the Soho was the summer I got back into biking. And cooking. I read biking magazines and blogs. I started thinking about longer bike trips. I bought new cookbooks, got a new grill, played around with deep dish recipes. It might not sound that exciting, but it had been a while since I’d been able to cultivate a hobby. How long? The last cookbook I’d gotten had a gift receipt taped to the back: 2004. The year my second son was born.

 

Now, nine years later, the boys didn’t require constant attention. I had a little space to discover myself. I love my sons, but I felt more alive that summer than I had in years.

 

                                                 *     *     *

 

Sometimes now I ride alone. Something about the smoothness of the ride, circles moving in circles, is hypnotic. I understand how it made my boys fall asleep. Riding alone can put me in a state of semi-conscious bliss. It feels like “flow,” that term coined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi to describe a mental state of complete focus. Flow is about complete immersion in an activity and a falling-away of self-consciousness. You lose yourself, in the best way.

 

But that’s not exactly what happens to me on a bike. I feel joy, but not challenge. I zone out, not focus in. What I experience isn’t flow; I’d call it drift.

 

Still, I’ll take it. My life has enough challenge and focus. Escaping my self-consciousness is a gift. Escaping everyone else to be alone for a while is another kind of gift.

 

The way I ride a bike is an affront to modern life: unhurried, unharried, unelectric, uninterrupted, aimless and harmless.

 

It’s peace.

 

Or maybe it’s erasure. Mere absence. Irresponsibility.

Or are these just different names for the same thing?