I crossed the Manhattan Bridge, whipped the bike through the crosswalk, past the gaggle of high school girls, onto the bikepath that runs between the steel girders and the water. The strudel of shadows lain along the length of the bridge. Gorgeous.
The bicycle is wheels and cogs and aluminum tubes and rubber. It’s enamel and screws and clips and cables. It’s compressed air. Tension, torque. It’s a machine, and when I’m on the saddle, my feet connected to the pedals, I’m a machine too. I know of people who talk about being in tune with their cars—one with the road and all that smack. But not directly like this: you are the engine, your legs the pistons. Your heart—its heart. When you’re going, I mean really going, so that the green of the hedges and the yellow light meld into messy soup and houses look like gobs of white paint, legs hauling, so you can’t tell one muscle moment from the next, it’s then that you’re more bicycle than human. It’s the moment of sky, wheels, road. One great exhilarating revolution. To be the machine is to obliterate consciousness.
