Tomorrow, we ride
BrizTreadley is my new website about cycling in Brisbane.
This is NOT a training diary, or to record my events history. It’s a place to tell stories of why I ride, and why riding is good.
It is to practice writing-as-advocacy.
Writing about cycling is a bit like writing about music, or art. It’s very difficult to adequately translate a subjective physical experience via words into something accessible and meaningful.
And yet there are plenty of people trying to make a living writing about music. And even some trying to write about art.
I’m not trying to make a living writing about cycling. But I am going to start trying to write down why I ride and what I find to be good about cycling, as part of my contribution to cycling advocacy.
Some of what I do in my role as Development Officer for Bicycle Queensland can be a bit joyless. Meetings with infrastructure project teams to ensure that the needs of cyclists are catered for, can be a bit like banging your head against a brick wall. Answering the phone and talking to a member of the public who is buying a bike or annoyed with a bike shop, or angry at motorists, or the City Council, or even angry at Bicycle Queensland.
To be sustainable for me, this sort of advocacy must be continually replenished by the goodness I get from getting on my bike and going for a ride.
Jean Bobet was a pro racer in Europe in the 1950s. He rode in teams with his much more famous brother Louison Bobet, the first man to win three Tours de France in a row. Jean Bobet recently released a memoir of his racing days and his relationship with Louison, titled ‘Tomorrow We Ride’.
The title gives a hint of how cycling can be at the same time all about routine, the mundane and the banal, and yet still be fulfilling, life-affirming and just a whole lot of fun.
‘Tomorrow We Ride’ refers to the Bobet brothers going for a ride together every Sunday (when possible) for their whole adult lives. There is partnership, companionship, tradition, affection, brotherliness, mateship, friendship. And I’m not projecting or over-reading, it’s all spelled out in Bobet’s book.
I have found that even when not a word is said on a bike ride, there can be togetherness and belonging. A group ride is easier than just a ride with two or three. The group flattens out the differences in ability, shares the work around, and makes things easier for all.
When it’s just two out on the road, the same ride can be a beautiful cruise for one rider, while the other is dying a slow death of burning thighs and gasping lungs. Add a third into the mix and the possibilities and variations magnify even further.
There’s resentment and anger, there’s harmony and unity. There is a relationship, fostered and growing or fraying and weakened.
All in the simple act of getting on a bike and pedalling along the road with another person.
And all of this — contradiction and possibility — makes up some part of why I’m addicted to cycling.