These days, I’m lucky enough to have the majority of my writing find a home outside this newsletter. But, admitedly, I haven’t been writing all that much. At least not for public consumption. I’ve been busy. I’ve also been outside. Read on for more on that. As always, I’m on Instagram @ morajez and VolitionAthletics if you want more day to day content. Cheers.
One thing I loathe about the image I’ve managed to create for myself is the idea that I solely like bikes. Let me be clear– I love bikes. I love their mechanical simplicity. I love how they can engender a sense of agency and self-reliance. I love their accessibility and ease of use. I love a lot of things about a set of metal tubes and two wheels. But, at the end of the day, what keeps me grounded in the activity is the fact that it’s a means to an end. My friend Dave once managed to lift the blinders permanently glued to my face by saying, ‘Dude, you’re kind of the most extreme person I know.’ And he’s right. I cannot do (most) things without fully committing. I am truly passionate or I am simply not. For better or worse, it’s both my best and worst quality.
Within that comes the understanding that I’ve done a lot of things. I’ve skied, surfed, swam, ran. Played lacrosse, soccer, and a wide variety of ball sports. I’ve written about sports, social issues, philosophy, and film. Started and contributed to successful and unsuccessful media ventures. The list goes on. When I get obsessed with something, it’s hard to see the forest for the trees. I commit and do so earnestly. I think it’s fair to say I’ve done the same with bikes. I am fully in it. But, after almost four years, I’m convinced this may be here to stay, largely because, again, it’s a means to an end. By some act of God, I realized I shouldn’t turn this new passion into a form of competition. The thing I like most about it is simply proving things to myself. Being intentional with what and how I go about the activity.
Having always considered myself an outdoor person, it wasn’t until I found the bike that I could definitively call myself one. In its most basic form, the bike is a means to immersing yourself in the outdoor world. Having spent an average of 10-15 hours a week outside for the last 2-3 years, you start to notice things. You notice the trees. The blooming flowers, the grass, the bugs, the height of a shadow, the incremental passing of, yes, seasons– even here in Florida. You become a part of the world– the real one, at least. As someone who has struggled a lot with issues centered around anxiety, depression, self-loathing, etc., the best form of amelioration has come as a result of the bike, but not the thing unto itself. It has come from being a part of the aforementioned world. Of truly knowing when the days are shorter. When the energy of our very reality is ebbing, and when it is flowing. Now, that may sound very hippy-dippy to some of you, but, not only have I maintained stone-cold sobriety from any and all substances save for coffee for quite some time now, it is also the point. Being part of a greater system and accepting your place within it is a powerful thing.
I think a lot of us imagine the magnitude and complexity of our sadness to not only be immeasurable, but largely unrequited. That the ‘solution’ to our doldrums need be magnificent, incomprehensible, and truly unfathomable to be countered. But it’s on days like today, the first of our Florida fall, that I’m reminded of the power of a cool breeze. Of a long shadow. Of a shorter day. To borrow from the longstanding philosophical tradition of undermining the power and capacity of language– words do not do these physical phenomena justice. What, exactly, a cool fall breeze accompanied by the dying rays of an early fall evening catalyzes within the mind escapes science. Escapes language. Escapes comprehension.
One of my favorite quotes, and one that has stuck with me through the same amount of time cycling has is from the early 19th-century landscape painter Thomas Cole. ‘We are still in Eden; the wall that shuts us out is our own ignorance and folly.’ My thinking upon those words has cemented my outlook on our place in this world. Where people, amid a climate catastrophe of our own creation, are often seen as a sort of virus, a disease, an unnatural presence in the natural world– I think that’s far too convenient and self-deprecating an answer. We are a part of this incredible, organic, self-sustaining system. One that provides in ways both obvious and not. Within that, we are one of, if not, the only species within it with enough sentience and understanding to appreciate it. The point– dare I arrive at it– of all of this, is to appreciate it.
If nothing else, the bike has helped me realize that.
I’ll see ya out there.
Takes a BIG man to give you that objective assessment of your extremism.