Back in the Saddle

I’ve been riding my new bicycle for the past three days, discovering that whatever strength I once had in my legs has fallen victim to years of inactivity. I am left wheezing like the old man I fear I rapidly am becoming.

Fifteen years ago I considered myself a gonzo road warrior, logging two hundred miles a week across flat Florida roads on my eighteen-speed Fuji Touring Series IV. Each evening after work I rode a familiar twenty-mile circuit through the streets of Saint Petersburg. My turn-around was at the edge of Tampa Bay; circling the inverted-pyramid visitor center at the end of the municipal pier, past the Cessna and Piper aircraft at the airport, along the cruise ship port and Coast Guard station, through the FSU Marine Science campus and ending with a long sprint to home in the northwest corner of the city.

On weekends I often rode to Fort Desoto State Park, which spanned the keys at the bottom of the county. It was a thirty-mile journey from the house to the fort. The ride home was occasionally accented by brief tropical squalls that left the asphalt steaming for an hour. Once a month I rode a century, one hundred miles in the saddle that was completed in a painful struggle against muscle fatigue and heat-induced mental confusion. Only during the air-conditioned drive home would I experience a rush of elation and sense of accomplishment.

That was then; now I marvel at how quickly my legs turn to jelly, how intensely my bottom begins to ache, how numb my palms become gripping the handlebar. But as I dismount at the foot of the driveway and remove my helmet, I feel that old familiar grin creep across my face.

Damn, it’s good to be back in the saddle.