Chicago Cycling Club

After returning from two weeks in the beer-puddled paradise of Belgium, coming back to the well worn grooves of my ‘real’ life, I’ve found myself in a very real and tangible depression.

I’ve had to stop drinking due to some unsurprising health concerns (‘stop drinking’ = only drink 3 days a week, though this will probably become full time for a spell very shortly) leaving my pleasure centers very thirsty and equally furious at me. Aside from the gaping maw of my empty and angry opiate receptors, or perhaps because of them, my attention span resembles that of one of these 20-year olds running around today, you know the ones, they breast fed on Mountain Dew, came of age after 9/11, think Nirvana is classic rock and have never even heard of Minor Threat.

I feel like a neon, self-reflecting bug zapper, like a rave toy reconditioned for evil. This is a grim prognosis, my friends, these waters are indeed very deep.

So, as I fill my face with pizza and chocolate and cigarettes and sleep, and as I continue to sit inappropriately close to friends while they drink their beer, hoping, in vein, to smell the sweet serpents kiss of effervescent excellence that is my beloved barley beverage, I’ve been trying to come up with new ways to bide my time until death envelopes me in it’s sweet, forgiving embrace. I thought, off hand, I might take some melodrama classes being offered by the local summer stock theater here in the city, but, upon further reflection, it’s probably no use.

Instead I think I may return to a source near to my heart, one that has not been properly dipped into in far too long. Yes, long distance bicycling. Sure, I ride my Jamis to work everyday and occassionally use it as transport to weekend activities. But I miss the days of 30, 40, 60 mile rides. I even miss the centuries now and again. To this day – and I’ve involved myself in many strange and memorable acts – few memories hold as much water for me as the times I’ve travelled between cities and towns with only my bike and what I could carry on it.

And instead of continuing to wait for my lazy and cross-eyed friends to get into bicycling, I do believe it’s time for me to reach out to a group of people already into cycling, people I don’t know, people I can learn from. It’s time to step a little outside my comfort zone and be a stranger amongst humans once again. It’s time I push myself out of this mid-life malaise and rediscover activities to make my nervous system sing once again.

In service of that I’ve found the Chicago Cycling Club. Their website describes them as a varied group of bicycle enthusiasts who participate in 3-4 rides per week of varying intensity. Everything from social rides at a 12-14 mph pace to training rides at a brisk 16-18 mph for 60 miles or more. Their site features a nice scheduling page allowing you to search by dates and types of rides. They offer a decent description of each ride, the average speed and the level of difficulty.

I’ll report back after actually participating in their ride, but right now, that mess of tangled christmas lights laying around upstairs in my head is glowering a little lighter at the prospect of clocking in some real hours on my bike once again.