Why I Ride a Bike: Reason #4

Feeling like a badass

I don't often feel this way.  And it isn't something I seek, but there is no denying that riding a bike all year in this environment can make one feel this way.  Coming off the winter months and reading back through my blog, this realization struck me.  I hope people that are in contact with me do not think I have much of an ego, but we all do.  There is always a need to feed that in some form.  Riding is a way I feed that part of me.

I believe the reason this feeling came to my conscience is not only due to me not owning an automobile right now, but also an email I received from one of my customers.  He mentioned seeing my name on the Trans Iowa registration.  Now, this event does not make me feel like a badass as I have never come anywhere close to completing it.  But it does remind me of one of my only "training" rides.  Anyone who knows me knows I do not train.  I ride my bike.  But when I was preparing for Trans Iowa a number of years back, I knew I had to ride outside my normal routine in order to have a chance at it.  This took me to riding roughly one hundred miles one Saturday, in March, maybe 40 degrees, in a wonderfully windy drizzle.  I think back on that ride with great fondness.  It is one thing to ride through town to work in conditions like that.  But to choose to do that and have fun doing it, well, that is a very different thing.  And I did have fun.  I'm not sure why, but it felt great.  Maybe it is more being mental than badass.

But I will continue to ride.  Finding random things along the road, giggling (to myself and out loud), and inflating my ego with all the badassery I can muster.