Riding Outdoors: After 350 Days Indoors it was a Big Deal

This week I went riding outdoors. While this may not seem like a big deal, it was.

April 21 2020 until April 7 2021 riding indoors!

Here is the Strava badge with my most recent outdoor rides, with four this week and one way back on 21 April 2020, 350 days ago. Why the gap?

On that day in April 2020 I had left home amidst considerable uncertainty about the virus and with a great deal of trepidation. In those early days of the Pandemic, we didn’t have a clue how it spread, what was safe, and how to avoid getting it.
An emergency call had been issued for blood donors and, after weighing the risks, I suited up with a makeshift mask made from a neck buff. The plan was to ride across a deserted New York City, through Central Park, and then into the Port Authority Midtown Bus Terminal to donate blood.

Two things traumatized me that morning: 1) with no traffic, many of the remaining vehicles seemed to forget the city-wide 25 mph speed limit and I was almost hit several times by cars running lights and covidiots driving like maniacs; 2) a woman with a bad cough was directed by the NY Blood Center staff to sit down several feet from me while I waited to donate. Shit.
I was freaked out. The technicians wouldn’t allow me to donate for more than twenty minutes, while we waited for my heart rate (normally 49 bpm) to drop below 100, the maximum that they would allow. My whole nervous system was out of whack; afraid of catching the virus, and still recovering from my close calls with speeding cars in a post-apocalyptic Manhattan. Following some emergency pranayama (deep breaths), I regained my cool.
After dropping off my pint of red, having done my civic duty and dissuaded from riding my bicycle after the donation, I hauled my bicycle onto the 6 Train for a frightening ride underground on an excruciatingly long, last subway ride home.

That was my last ride outdoors in 2020.

These were the days of news reports from overcrowded emergency rooms, ambulances taking hours (if ever) to arrive at calls, and (as I have written about in The Rebuild) a healthcare system unlikely to welcome anyone dressed in Lycra with a busted collarbone following a bicycle mishap. With an irrational phobia of hypoxia and stories of patients struggling for breath, I resigned myself to avoiding the risk of contracting the virus all costs. Following media speculation on whether heavy-breathing cyclists could spread clouds of the virus on each exhalation, I chose to exercise the Precautionary Principle and not exercise outdoors, turning instead to online fitness classes.

During the year indoors, from 17 March 2020 when I returned home after abandoning my tour up the Natchez Trace until this week, more than 380 days later, I had been outside less than ten times, only for essential trips to doctor’s appointments, to give blood, to pick up things at the pharmacy, and finally two trips to the Javits Center for jabs of the Pfizer vaccine on February 10th and March 3rd. And, on each of those adventures outside of our apartment in the Bronx, the sensory overload was off putting.

So, getting on a bicycle this week and heading outdoors to ride, fully vaccinated, in the bustling city was a big deal.

I should have eased into it a bit, rather than doing my first ride on the hectic streets of the Bronx. On Monday I rode for two hours outside, down to Randalls Island and back, totally overwhelmed by the noise, irritated by block after block of double-parked cars in the bike lanes, and frightened that a couple of hours in the sun (even covered with SPF50 sunscreen) would turn my vampire-white skin, which hadn’t seen the sun since the last time the planet had circled it, bright red. I survived, realized that the Bronx was an advanced level of reality for which I was not prepared, and I planned a second assault on the outdoors in a more relaxed, rural setting. Obviously, those mental muscles that deal with sensory overload, had atrophied.

On Wednesday, two days later, following a MetroNorth train ride to Purdys, about 50 km north of the Bronx, I found my mojo on the bike, flying down the North County and South Country Trails far away from traffic on a particularly splendid Spring day, riding 66 km in about three hours. Yes, after training indoors for a year, the engine is fine despite the car being in the garage for far too long.