My soul bike

As a boy I liked riding a bike, but I was never passionate about the bike itself, and I hated cyclists with their hideous multicolored kits plastered with ugly logos. But life is built in very strange ways, and when I realized that jogging wasn’t ideal for my fragile knees and I was advised to try cycling, I bought a €100 clunker and gave it a go, also encouraged by my wife Milena. After riding from Assisi to Spoleto — my first 60 km — I thought “huh, interesting.” Then one Sunday on that same clunker (for the record, a 2010 Atala hybrid), I did 93 km from Rome to Ostia and back: when I got home I had a high fever and aches everywhere, and as I crawled into bed with a 1000 mg paracetamol I knew I had a new, irresistible passion. It was 2018, and I still didn’t know that the worst and most difficult period of my entire life was about to begin.

In June 2018 I decided to step things up, and thanks to the advice of a bike fitter I bought a Cube Nuroad Race in size 53, a quick gravel bike with a sporty character, well suited to my physical build. I’d have to wait for it until November though, quickly setting aside any hopes of riding it during the summer. Then at the end of September came an unexpected and terrible blow: the fierce, aggressive return of the illness my wife had already faced and fought with wonderful results 4 years earlier. The situation became very difficult almost immediately, and in the middle of this mess, in November, I got the call that my bike had arrived. I went to pick it up without joy — actually convinced I had done something stupid, given the circumstances. But taking advantage of the rare moments I could carve out for myself, I tried to let go, and in those very few chances I had to use the bike I realized it was doing me good: I could let the pain and exhaustion I was piling up in those terrible days breathe, without sinking under their weight. I could lighten the load without hiding from the suffering and without resisting it. But this was only the beginning.

On April 23, 2019, Milena was gone, leaving me alone with my 50 years — turned just ten days earlier — and with what remains of my life. On May 1 I got back on the bike after a very long time, and riding the Tiber cycle path all the way to Fiumicino, in long stretches of absolute solitude I talked to myself out loud, I screamed, I cried, I let out so much of the pain I carried inside as I struggled along among the stones and the unmown reeds. That day, in those moments, I understood that this silly two-wheeled thing with pedals would be the best tool — alongside the love of family and friends — to face the terrifying, unfillable void left by my wonderful wife.

So I dedicate this blog to Milena, along with the small or large journeys I will try to make on my bike and that I’ll write about here — a path that has little to do with geography, and a great deal to do with the soul. Mine, and hers, riding with me.