Déjà Vu!

All set and ready for an easy, long Sunday ride.

Joy here...I make a big deal about the fact that I never really rode a bike until 2 years ago.  And that's both true and not true.

Like many kids growing up, I learned how to ride a bike.  I could propel myself forward; I could stop when I needed to.  So technically I've ridden a bike for a long, long time.  I just sometimes forget all that in the newness and the excitement of learning how to ride a road bike, how to train, how to manoeuvre etc.

But sometimes memories from the past come crashing back.  All it takes is a song or maybe the smell of something cooking, and you find yourself wrapped up in a memory.  Now that many of my friends are at the stages when they have kids, memory plays funny tricks.  A kid will come home from school having learned a new song, and suddenly, you find yourself singing along to something you haven't thought about in 30 years, knowing all the words, even though if asked, you would have sworn you didn't know those words, but they were there, locked up inside your memories.

Memory is funny that way.

My roomie hamming it up for the camera in front
of the PEI hotel where we worked.  Note the date stamp
of the photo in the bottom right-hand corner...blast from the past
or what???

And my Sunday morning ride turned into a bit of a trip down memory lane.  You see, some 16 years ago, I lived and worked in Prince Edward Island.  I was the best damned waitress that I knew how to be, and I made some amazing friendships, some of which are still going strong after all this time.  On occasion, I would borrow my roomie's bike and ride for about 5kms from the house a bunch of us shared, down the road right beside the beach and the coast, into a trail that wended its way through the pine forest, and back out onto that coastal road again.  It wasn't much of a ride, and I sure didn't know anything about pace, power, or heart rate back then.  I basically just rode so that I could park the bike by a pretty view and take pictures.

And those pictures were stored right in my head until now.

This Sunday I loaded up my cyclo cross bike (like last week), and headed out to complete a 3 hour steady endurance ride as ordered up by my new coach.

The path through the trees in PEI in 1996.

The path through the trees in ON in 2012.

As I rode steadily through the gravel pathway, under the heavy and ominous sky that threatened rain, I seemed to be transported back to myself 16 years ago.  The air was thick and humid, a wetness that seemed familiar, and all around me sang the crickets and cicadas, buzzing their song under the pine trees, as I rolled the bike over the fallen needles on a gravel path, and suddenly a Sunday ride with me on the cusp of turning 36 turned into a Sunday ride with me on the cusp of turning 20.  My whole future lay ahead of me as I pedalled amongst the trees, transported back in time in my mind to when I didn't know who I was, where I was going, or whom I loved.  I felt my younger self within me, full of the fun and adventure of living and working far away from home, making friends and spending most of my days laughing and most of my nights intoxicated.

My roomie's bike that I borrowed.

Now I'm a grown up with a house and a car and a fledgeling consulting company, but all it took was a cloudy, humid day out on a bike through trees that rustled in the wind and brought up memories to take me back to a time and place when I was really just a young girl trying to figure herself out.  And in the end, I'm not so sure that I'm all that different now from that young girl.  There's still so much that I'm trying to figure out, and I guess that's one of life's constants.  You never actually "arrive," but just keep on pedalling and pedalling and pedalling.

Me, pedalling and pedalling.

Over and out,
Joy

My Sunday Cross Bike Ride Stats:
Time:  3 hours
Distance:  68km
Avg Speed:  23km/hr (over gravel)
Avg Heart Rate:  132bpm