Let's face it. I love graduate school but sitting at a computer for 8 hours a day isn't exactly good for your health. I've gained a lot of weight since I started graduate school and recently I decided I should do something about it. Disc golf and biking are about the only forms of exercise I like. Disc golf is a lot of fun. There's a new 9-hole course here in State College (the only one). It's not a great course, but it's fun.
But biking is what I've really gotten into lately. I prefer to use the term biking since "cycling" makes me think of skinny people on skinny bikes with aerodynamic helmets going like 60 miles per hour. And none of that would apply to me. Anyway, I've been going on rides several times a week. Here are the reasons I enjoy it so much:
1. Like I said, it's about the only kind of exercise I like. And it feels really good. There's a post-exercise buzz you get that's almost euphoric. And I think I've already lost about 10 pounds in just a few weeks, too.
2. I get to wear spandex. I'm joking. I actually did recently get over my fear of wearing bike shorts and bought a pair. The last time I wore spandex I was like 10 years old or something. Anyway, they're extremely comfortable, no matter how dumb I look. (Another plus is that when I use my Camelbak I feel like I have on a stillsuit like the Fremen in Dune wear).
3. Maybe the biggest reason I like to bike is that I get to be outside. And the more I can get away from cars and roads and houses the better. There's a Pennsylvania game land on the edge of town that I absolutely love to ride in. It's absolutely beautiful. The trails are challenging but not too challenging and there's a nice variety of terrain. Once I feel more comfortable riding there, I want to start riding in Rothrock State Forest, which is apparently really challenging. I think I like to mountain bike so much because I can just be in nature. There is something refreshing and healing about it.
We humans are interesting in that most of our technological advances, designed to improve and simplify our lives, tend to remove us from nature more and more. It's almost like we've become aliens on Earth. In some small way, my bike rides make feel connected to nature again, and remind me that I am not an alien on Earth, but part of it.
I recently read a fantastic article in an independent local newspaper here in Central Pennsylvania. The author offers "a new way to think about how we might respond to climate change." He asks:
Do you live on Earth, or in Earth? Though saying that you live on Earth may sound right, the truth is that we all live in Earth. If you doubt this, go out in the afternoon and lie on your back and look up at the sky. In particular, observe the clouds and consider that, at our latitude, Earth is spinning at more than 500 miles per hour to the east. So why aren’t those clouds up there racing across the sky to the west at hundreds of miles per hour?So what does this have to do with bike riding? I guess riding in nature reminds me that I live in Earth and not on it.
The answer is that all the stuff up there that we blithely refer to as “atmosphere” is part of Earth. Yes, that’s Earth up there! If you still doubt this, hold your breath! Just as a fish is utterly dependent on water for life, our life medium is the atmosphere.
The upshot of all this, in my view, is that we will not make genuine progress in mitigating climate change until we learn to speak of the atmosphere from the inside, understanding it as the breath of life. In short, what is needed is a reverential ecology— a way of seeing that reminds us that Earth doesn’t belong to us, but rather that we belong to Earth!
Let us substitute hubris with humility, recognizing, as David Abrams points out, that “our breathing bodies are simply our part of the exuberant flesh of Earth.”
