If you were to ask me now, what day is it today? I would have a hard time answering you.
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday … ? It’s no longer important, they’ve just became “days”.
Don’t get me wrong though; the thing is that traveling by bicycle gives one a different dimension to the notion of time.
In our “previous/normal” life, there was never enough time, organizing each hour, splitting each minute to make it fit into an overbooked schedule, following the crazy rhythm of our working days, hunting down every moment. We felt that time was always slipping through our fingers (“What, it’s 10pm already??”, “Is it already June??”) Constantly running out of time. Never enough minutes in a day. And the next day, same thing again!
If you were to ask me now, what day is it today? I would have a hard time answering you.
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday … ? It’s no longer important, they’ve just became “days”.
Don’t get me wrong though; the thing is that traveling by bicycle gives one a different dimension to the notion of time.
In our “previous/normal” life, there was never enough time, organizing each hour, splitting each minute to make it fit into an overbooked schedule, following the crazy rhythm of our working days, hunting down every moment. We felt that time was always slipping through our fingers (“What, it’s 10pm already??”, “Is it already June??”) Constantly running out of time. Never enough minutes in a day. And the next day, same thing again!
Then suddenly, on the bike, time ceased to control and tease us. Instead of slipping through our fingers, time wrapped us up with all its complexity, all its meaning.
On the bike, we feel time stretching, slowing down, and we can enjoy it like a brioche just out of the oven. It abounds, flourishes, thrives. We are dazed by it.
At last, time is generous: it allows us to think. Alone with just ourselves for company for many kilometers, so many things happen in our heads! It enables us to discuss, to discover, to learn. It invites us to contemplate. Traveling by bike is a beautiful occasion to reinvent time. Time adjusts to our pedaling movement, it keeps us on the move, not too fast, not too slow. We can enjoy the luxury of stopping and gazing at a breathtaking landscape, of breaking at the sight of wildlife by the side of the road, or simply observing nature around us.
Yes, time is generous!
And for 8 months, we embraced it. Time didn’t shrink in between hours anymore but extended in the circadian rhythms of the sun. Our rhythm was one of daylight and interrupting the wheels’ rotation at sunset was our only restriction. We cycled, moved forward, always in a flowing dynamic, always active.
But then we had to confine ourselves.
We parked our precious bicycles in a corner of a room. Like the entire planet we stopped, no more movement, no more progress. It’s not easy to stop pedaling, the days pass and are all alike, like being trapped in a time loop, a groundhog day.
