Cycling as a Thicc Boi

The Fremont bridge on my way downtown, cycling fast, strangers passed and I’m home now…

Somewhere around 2006, I took the plunge and laid down some coin on a pretty sweet Specialized Allez. As a Texan, I was well aware of the hype surrounding Lance Armstrong (pre-doping discover, obv), but my exposure to it was limited. Like most red-blooded American kids, I’d grown up with a bicycle as my first mode of transportation: the first was a black and gold huffy that looked seriously badass and I loved that bike until it was abruptly stolen from our garage around the age of 7. The next bike I got was a Christmas gift from my parents: a gaudy green, purple, pink labeled 10-speed monstrosity that 4 of the other neighborhood boys had as well. We’d ride the shit out of those all over the neighborhood, a pack of little brown boys exploring the empty lots and tiny wooded areas in Corpus Christi. But that was really the extent of it; I got older, moved a few times, and cars became the focus of transportation.

But during the Armstrong-era, I’d catch bits and pieces of Tour de France coverage. I even learned a few names: Indurain. Lemond. Ullrich. Contador. Cancellara. Boonen. Just by pure luck, I was up early one summer morning and turned on the tv, flipping the channels until I saw the blur of what I learned was called “the peloton”: that mass of densely packed riders hauling ass while jostling for position. I remember sitting down and being mesmerized by just how fucking fast these dudes were going. I’d watch what I could for the next year or so until I caught the bug, deciding that I wanted to buy my own badass bike. $1300 later, I had that bike and began riding again, learning very quickly why cyclists wore the bike shorts (note: those saddles can definitely hurt your grundle). Slowly I accumulated some kit as I rode more and more: first just around the neighborhood, then expanding until I went a whole 10 miles. I’d ride from my mom’s house on Bentsen Road in McAllen, Tx and head all the way down to the old mission at La Lomita. It was one of the first cardio activities I actually enjoyed. Time moved on, I moved to Indiana for graduate school, and the amount of biking I did slowed to a crawl. I would occasionally bike to campus on my Bianchi Pista towards the end of my time there, but that was rare.

My old Kona Jake the Snake. I named it “Leonardo”.

I was living and teaching in Wisconsin a few years ago and would visit my wife every two or three weeks During one of those visits, I traded in a couple of bikes I had laying around for a new Kona Jake the Snake (shout out to Zoey and the crew at Virtuous Cycles in Lafayette, Indiana) and that decision rekindled my love of biking. My wife (who had also purchased herself a bike) and I started going out on longer rides on my visits. We’d bike out towards Fort Ouiatenon, out on barely traveled farm roads, hitting the rolling hills during the summer. On her visits to Dubuque (where I was living at the time), we cycled out to the Mines of Spain and even accidentally did a 43 mile ride, the last 10 miles of which were tense as we’d run out of water and were getting snippy with each other. I even took part in a local Thursday night ride every once in a while. Another move, this time to Seattle, and suddenly I’m living in an area with cycling infrastructure worth a damn. The pandemic hits, my bike gets stolen, a new one is purchased with the insurance money and I’m rolling during the summer. I’m getting back into it and learning to hit the hills.

My ol’ trusty steed out on the Dubuque trail, a year before some asshole would steal it

But cycling can make you feel self conscious. Cycling has largely been a very white, European sport and a large number of bicycles are built with pro cyclists/elite amateurs in mind. Though I’m happy that one of the best cyclists in the world, Nairo Quintana, looks brown like me, I’m a much bigger dude. Years of a sedentary lifestyle while working in academia have chonkified me and when I get the chance to head out onto the Burke-Gilman trail in Seattle and see all the dudes with svelte bodies riding futuristic extremely expensive-ass carbon fiber bikes, it’s hard not to feel like I’m stuffing myself into this lycra. When you look into the history of cycling, you’ll also see that there’s a prevalence of dysmorphic behavior at the professional level: strict adherence to diets, maximizing your power-to-weight ratio, weighing both yourself and the bike, it’s hard not to internalize all of that, even as an amateur. It can feed into your self-loathing when you’re huffing and puffing up a steep ass hill, slowly climbing and some sixty year-old dude just coasts up past you like it’s no big deal. Or when you’re commuting to campus, hitting what you think is a decent speed, and a group of 5 dudes go blazing past you, each one thinner than the last. It can even make you avoid places out of fear that you’ll be laughed out; there’s a company called Rapha that sells really nice cycling shit and they have one of a handful of worldwide stores right here in Seattle. Yet I’ve somewhat avoided going because Rapha is what those pros/elite amateurs wear and there’s always that nightmare scenario in the back of your head where an imaginary employee sneers at you and says, “this store ain’t for you, tubs.”

The aforementioned tubs

But as I said earlier, this is the only cardio I actually enjoy doing; even when I was in cross country, I fucking despised running. Once I’m in my cycling rhythm, I just keep going–it’s what’s helped me learn my way around this city. It lets me find cool little neighborhoods like the one in Lake City that has an Ethiopian restaurant and grocery store right next to a Mexican restaurant. Or the cute little neighborhood of Ridgecrest that has not one, but two brewpubs, a doggie treat store called The Seattle Barkery where our dog is well known by the staff, and even a cool independent movie theater. I always feel better when I get home, a happy kind of exhaustion that you feel when you’ve exerted yourself for a good while. Every shower more relaxing, the food more tasty, the beer extra refreshing. And now that we’ve sold our car, I’ve been using my bike for those short trips to the post office, the pharmacy, or even to pick up food and groceries. Really it’s a way to make my bike more central to my life. Having just turned 40, it’s now more important for me to foster this love of biking, especially considering the prevalence of diabetes and cardiovascular issues in my family.

The new bike.

But the long rides are where I feel best. I pick a trail and just follow, not worrying about where I’m going, just focused on pedaling. On the longer ones I’ve taken to bringing food with me so that I can make sure not to bonk and it makes the ride feel more organic. Though I do like teaching and writing, they’re mentally taxing, and when you’re like me and have a tendency to stay in your head anyway, it can lead to you becoming pretty emotionally cut off. But for me, every ride is an attempt to get into my own rhythm where my head is empty and my eyes are open, taking in the road, the noise, the trees and mountains. So I’ll keep packing myself into those jerseys and bib shorts, clipping into those pedals and heading out on the trails. Who knows, maybe I’ll even take a trip to that store after all…