Biker chick

Several years ago I had the esteemed fortune to be visiting London and staying with my friend Jon, whose favorite hobby is riding his motorcycle. Even more fortunate was the fact that Jon invited me to take a motorcycle tour of London. So I hopped on the back, put on a helmet, and off we went for the better part of an hour, before ending at a tapas bar in Islington to get dinner with another friend. When we got off the bike, Jon told me just why he likes riding a motorcycle so much: “it clears the cobwebs out”, he said.

This is an epithet that’s stuck with me ever since, because it’s such a perfect description for the sensation of mental cleansing you feel after speeding through the open air. And recently it’s popped into my head again because that’s exactly the way I feel when I am zipping down one of the local roads on my bicycle.

I’d heard that Peace Corps gives Madagascar volunteers bikes, but didn’t think much of it until I got to site and realized just how vital a bike is, especially in the Sud Est. My house is about a 30 minute walk from the center of town (and therefore the market, the post office, the office where I work, and the taxi-brousse station). But on a bike, it takes a mere 10 minutes. And when I go to my banking town, Farafangana, I always take my bike so that I can make the quick trip to the beach for a splash in the Indian Ocean. Plus, the towns down here in the southeast are all so spread out, so not having a bike makes getting around town much more difficult.

But more than just a simple mode of transportation, I’ve realized how much joy I find in riding my bike. Maybe that it brings out a childlike sense of adventure, reminiscent of when my set of wheels was pink and had streamers on the handlebars, or maybe it’s that it provides me a vehicle for one of my favorite activities—exploring—but whatever it is, I find that I always look forward to getting in the saddle.

Recently I’ve been trying to push myself on longer and longer rides to both get in shape as well as find a fun weekend activity. My recent accomplishment involved biking 25km roundtrip on a back road to find the beach, and then biking 55km roundtrip the next day on a little jaunt with my friend Matt. I arrived home after this ride—my longest to date—feeling a sense of pleasant exhaustion and proud self-accomplishment.  The road leading out of my town, the Route Nationale 12, is paved but extremely hilly, so although it offers beautiful vistas and views of the ocean off in the distance, it’s a punishing ride. But on this trip, I managed to bike up every single hill, without stopping to walk once. (Ok sure, I had to crank the gears all the way down to make it up, but I’d rather go in ‘granny gear’ than walk.) Biking here in Madagascar, especially the southeast, has also brought some uniques challenges that I've proud to have conquered: I've had to become mahay (skilled) at adventurous routes that include biking up sandy hills and down rocky ones. To get to my house I have to bike up an extremely sandy hill, which I'm able to make it up about 60-70% of the time without stopping-- and whenever I do, it feels like a little victory.

My ultimate goal is to be able to bike 100km in one day, and I have a little more work to do to get in shape for this. But I’ve been enjoying using biking as a mode of exercise, because my hip is still messed up from marathon training and I can’t run like I used to be able to. And even more than just a form of exercise, I relish the chance the clear out the cobwebs.