From the outside, nobody knew anything was wrong.  But my husband and I had been having difficulty communicating for months.  I could feel the verdant bloom that our relationship had grown from shriveling, and there didn’t seem to be anything I could do to halt it.  Neither of us could bridge the growing schism between us – we had become too different from the people we were when our courtship first began.  Our relationship continued to crumble, and I felt like a witness to my own gradual demise.  My state of mind steadily darkened.

By the time I was literally back on my feet in early 2007, I was deeper than I had ever been in the throes of depression.  I had turned so far inward to protect myself from the pain in my life that I feared I would never come back out.  Taking care of the kids and their needs was about the only thing that kept me from losing my mind.  Still, I was glad when they were at school so they would not have to see me in this state, and it was becoming more and more difficult to put on a brave face for them.  Frankly, all I wanted was to be left alone in my dark place.  It was safe there, quiet there, and I could nurture my sadness and let it wash over me with impunity.

One day in April, I found myself in the car, driving north on the interstate, not knowing or caring where I was going.  I felt like I couldn’t breathe; my chest tightened with each passing mile.  I drove for probably 20 minutes, then exited and drove down the main street of a small town.  I found a park where I pulled in and turned off the car.  The anguish that had been building for weeks erupted into wrenching sobs that felt like they were being ripped from my deepest place.  My mind raced through everything that had driven me to this point: the disappointment and pain of watching my marriage collapse; the uncertainty, missteps, and guilt that came with being a parent; the baggage I carried with me from earlier days; the feeling of not being worth it.  I was a complete and utter failure as a mother, a wife, a human being.  I wanted the earth to open beneath me and swallow me up so I didn’t have to feel anymore.  I wished I were dead.

I don’t know how long I sat there, but my sobs eventually quieted, although hot tears of pain and regret still flowed down my cheeks.  I remember staring out the window, trying to think of one good reason to go back home.  I felt defeated and spent in mind, soul, and body.  Finally, I started up the car and headed south, the way I’d come.  I had at last thought of not one, but two reasons to go back home: my children.  They needed me.  And the thought of leaving them was more than I could fathom and kept my tears flowing.  I knew that no matter what else was happening in my life, I had to stay for them.  I also knew I had to figure out how to pull myself out of the deep, deep chasm I had tumbled into, not only for their sake, but also for mine.

Within a month, I had gone to what is now Schlegel Bikes to get fitted for a road bike.  Fit is of primary importance when it comes to selecting the right bike.  Yes, you may LOVE the red one, but if it doesn’t fit you well, you will not like riding it.  Steve Schlegel, the owner, walked me through the fitting process, explaining each measurement as he took it.  Then, based on that information and my description of what I was looking for – not a Jaguar or a Chevy, but a Honda, something reliable and with decent performance capabilities – he made some recommendations.  And that’s how I met my 53 cm, dark-blue-fading-to-black Cannondale Synapse.  The shop had to build one for me, and several days later when it was finished, I went back for my final fitting.

The final fitting involved pedaling the bike while it stood in a trainer, which is a mechanism that allows you to ride indoors while simulating road riding.   The angles of my knees and elbows were measured, and my handlebar and seat height were adjusted accordingly.  I also learned how to clip in and out of my pedals; cycling shoes have cleats that attach to the forefoot to the shoe, and the cleat in turn attaches to its respective pedal for riding.  When you clip in, there is a metallic ‘click’ that tells you the cleat and pedal are attached to one another.  To detach, you twist your foot from the heel, and the cleat detaches with another metallic ‘click’.  This process seems pretty simple when you are at a standstill.  It can be another story entirely while you are in motion.  With both feet clipped into your pedals, you have to make sure you get one unclipped to put it down when you stop.  And if there are many things happening at once and you get distracted, or your body gets its signals crossed and your foot doesn’t cooperate, you may have difficulty getting a foot away from the pedal.  And then you fall over.  Which is embarrassing but usually not injuring.

I took my new road bike home and found a place for it in the garage where it would not get bumped or scraped.  The next day, I put on all my new gear: helmet, jersey, shorts, shoes.  I rolled my bike out of the garage and onto the driveway, where I practiced clipping and unclipping my shoes into and out of the pedals.  Then, after taking a deep breath and checking for cars, I slowly rolled into the street, tentatively pedaling and shifting to get a feel for the bike.  And then I smiled, a big, satisfied smile that felt really good because I didn’t smile much then.  My bike was the smoothest thing I had ever ridden in my life.  I rode up and down the streets of my neighborhood, marveling at the way it pedaled, handled, shifted, and felt.  It was like butter, as the saying goes.  I laughed and felt freer than I had in months.  And I fell in love with my bike.

I felt happy for the first time in a very long time.  I wanted to ride more.  I wanted to do something meaningful and finally sign up for the MS bike ride and ride 150 miles.  I wanted to hang onto the joy I felt that day.  I wanted to find my way out of the dark.

One day not long after that, I went to the bike shop to pick up my bike after it had been given a tune-up.  Bikes need regular maintenance like any other vehicle – a little tweak here, a little lube there – to help things continue to run smoothly, which reduces wear and tear.  My kids were with me, and after we had checked out the bikes displayed in crowded but neat rows in the shop, I asked for mine.

As one of the mechanics brought it out, my son said, That’s my mom’s bike.

The mechanic smiled widely and said, That’s right.  It is your mom’s bike.  You make sure everybody knows it.

While I paid for the tune-up, my kids touched my bike from one end to the other.  I was glad for their interest but also a little anxious.  (Yes, you can touch that, but don’t move that.  Please don’t stick your fingers there.  Etc. Etc.)  It was similar to how I felt about cycling at that point, expectant but nervous.  They helped me wheel the bike out, one at the handlebars and one at the seat.

As I loaded my bike into the car, I told the kids about the Bike MS ride I wanted to do.  I told them that I was really excited about riding my bike more.  And I hoped that one day I would hear them say, Yeah, that’s my mom.  She’s a cyclist.

Of course when I was growing up, nobody I knew wore a bike helmet.  I certainly didn’t.  On the whole, the most dangerous thing I ever encountered on the road might be a patch of loose gravel.  I knew kids who rode all around town not only helmetless, but shoeless.  To be fair, though, we were not going very far, and most of the time we were not going very fast.  And things have changed.  That same road where I went tearing around the corner and down the hill is much more heavily traveled than it used to be.  If I were riding there nowadays, I would absolutely protect my head.

Probably the second most important piece of gear for road cycling is bike shorts.  Yes, the tight ones with that weird pad, the chamois (rhymes with clammy) between the legs and on the butt.  Admittedly, wearing these shorts takes a little getting used to.  My first pair of shorts made me feel like I was wearing a cross between a diaper and a super-duper maxi pad.  Ironically, more padding does not necessarily mean more comfort.  Too little padding may result in a sore butt.  But too much can lead to chafing, saddle sores, and any number of discomforts.  Quality trumps quantity in chamois world.

Some people find getting used to the snugness of bike shorts more daunting than the chamois.  As my friend Monte put it, they show off your ‘stuff’ in a rather obvious way, especially if you are male.  But the snugness actually helps reduce friction and the chance of chafing, plus it increases comfort because you don’t have extra fabric billowing around, which also eliminates the ‘peekaboo’ effect that loose shorts may have.  And of course they show off your cycling legs.  I mean, you’re putting in all those miles, so you might as well have something to show for it.

I’ve been physically active most of my life.  Growing up on a farm with a big yard and endless possibilities for play, my brother and I spent hours outside as kids.  We would play football and baseball, set up croquet in the back yard, pretend we were superheroes and play king of the mountain on dirt piles, take turns spraying the water hose on hot days, shoot baskets in the barn hay loft, ride bikes to the neighbors’, roller skate up and down the sidewalk, even hit golf balls with my dad’s little-used clubs.  I always had scraped knees and dirty hands.

In my early elementary school years, I was a bit on the chubby side despite all my physical activity, probably because of my penchant for sweets.  I ran a little slower than the other girls in my grade, couldn’t jump quite as high, couldn’t throw quite as far.  That began to change in junior high.  I got taller, slimmer, and faster.  I played basketball and ran sprints on the track team.  When I got to high school, I resolved to work hard and made the starting line-up of the basketball team all four years.  I also continued to run and do a couple of field events for the track team.  In between, I ran in my first (and only) 5k race and played some softball.  And one year as a fundraiser for high school band, some of us agreed to do a 10-mile run from our school to the entrance of the state park in a neighboring town.  I didn’t run the entire distance – we all walked at various intervals along the route – but I did beat the guy with whom I’d tagged along to the finish line.

In college there was intramural basketball and softball, and later various co-rec teams.  I took a fencing class, spent one summer swimming laps at the pool, and ran on the all-weather indoor track at night.  Unfortunately, my sporting years came during the ‘no pain, no gain’ era, and the pounding my body took during that time did not do my joints any favors.  Eventually I had to give up running entirely, and even though I missed it sometimes, I compensated by working out at the gym and going for walks.

I’m not sure when my bouts of depression began, but I’ve seen counselors on and off since my late teens.  It wasn’t just the typical teen angst that seems almost a rite of passage.  It was something much deeper and more damaging than that, and it was further fueled by the tumult my brother’s troubles were causing at home.  Many evenings were punctuated by the sounds of my parents arguing with him and each other.  I retreated deep within myself for protection from the storm in my life.  The rare times I felt like myself were when I was out on the basketball court or at a meet running a leg in the 4×200 relay.  My life fell away and it was just me and the physical task at hand.  And in the years that followed, as my depression would periodically rear its ugly head, it was physical activity that always made me feel better, whether walking the dog on a quiet morning or lifting weights with Led Zeppelin filling my ears.  There is, of course, well-documented scientific proof that exercise helps depression by causing the release of endorphins in the brain.  I didn’t know that then; I just knew that exercise made me feel better.

Six years later when I returned to the same university for graduate school, my bike came with me and sometimes served as transport from the townhouse apartment I shared with two roommates to the liberal arts building where I spent most of my time.  On my way home one afternoon, I decided to alter my route from the street to the path that ran parallel to it so I wouldn’t have to dodge traffic.  Instead of waiting for an opening in the curb to get onto the path, I got the brilliant idea of riding over the curb.  A second after my front tire hit it, there was a loud CLUNK.  I made it onto the path and then stopped to have a look.  My front wheel frame was dented from hitting the curb.  Brilliant, I thought.  I managed to get the hobbled bike back to my apartment and then attempted to pound out the dent with a hammer.  The result was not pretty, but it was functional.  Thus was my first go at bicycle repair.

In 1995, I bought myself a new bike.  It was a metallic purple Giant mountain bike.  (For those unfamiliar, Giant was the brand name, not a description of its stature.)  At the time I was sharing an apartment with my future husband, Tony, and one night both of our bikes got stolen from our second-floor balcony where we stored them.  Miraculously, the police recovered his red Schwinn, but my silver no-name was gone for good, which was just as well because the Giant was way better.  I even had a purple helmet to match.

We liked to ride during the winter, which is when the nubby, fat mountain bike tires came in handy on the slushy roads and sidewalks.  We would put on several layers of clothes and warm gloves and those cold-weather headbands that cover your ears and head off down the path that ran behind our apartment complex.  We stayed to the side streets that were less traveled, avoiding the ice but rolling gleefully through the snow.  Afterwards back at our apartment, we would clutch mugs of scalding chocolate hot enough to thaw our frigid fingers.

In a few years, Tony and I ended up living and working in Houston, Texas.  Houston is an immense, sprawling, and car-centered city, and I remember going for a bike ride exactly once during our entire tenure there.  But it was in Houston that the first seed for road cycling was planted in me.  I was working at an investment company at the time, and one of my co-workers was an accomplished triathlete.  One day I heard her trying to talk another co-worker into training for a bike ride called the MS-150, a two-day, 150-mile ride from Houston to Austin that raised money for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.  I’d always liked riding my bike, and I was intrigued by the idea and listened in for a bit, mentally filing the conversation away.

While living in Houston, Tony and I married, and in 2001 his company transferred us to England, where our son was born and I became a full-time, at-home mother.  It was a role I had never anticipated playing, but at the time it made perfect sense because we were overseas.  Plus I was breastfeeding, and even though I found motherhood exhausting and at times baffling, I felt strongly that I wanted to be the one who cared for our son while he was still so small.

In 2003, we were sent back to Houston.  Several months later, I learned that Tony’s company sponsored a team each year for the MS-150, and around February of 2004, e-mails went out announcing that training rides would soon begin.  The prospect of riding 150 miles in two days fascinated and excited me.  Tony had trained for and run two marathons by this time, and I could not join him because my various joints protested mightily when I ran.  But I remembered well that dangerous and free feeling from my earlier bike-riding days.  So I thought about joining the team, but in the end I didn’t.  Even though I greatly wanted to resurrect that dangerous and free feeling, mothering our young son was my first priority, and I felt guilty about wanting something for myself while he still needed me so much.  And frankly, I was afraid of making a fool of myself by not being able to keep up.

Our daughter arrived in 2005, and I began to feel uneasy about my marriage even while I was pregnant.  At first I attributed the increasing erosion of our connection to one another to the stresses of work, family, parenting, and life in general.  I knew that it was not uncommon for couples to go through peaks and valleys, especially as circumstances in the relationship change.  But I also knew that valleys, left unchecked, could sink deeper and deeper.  Unfortunately, it was in this direction that we seemed to be headed.

As I struggled with the travails of motherhood and an increasingly unsteady marriage, in January of 2006, we found ourselves in Oklahoma City.  Tony received a promotion and a transfer to a new position, and the preceding two months had been a stressful whirlwind: our house in Texas was put on the market, which meant working around showings and open houses; we made two trips to Oklahoma, first to explore where we might want to live, and then to house hunt; our son’s birthday, Thanksgiving, and Christmas came and went in close succession; I searched for a preschool that wouldn’t drain our bank account; and I was still breastfeeding our daughter, who was not yet a year old.

While I strove to settle us into our new home, unpacking and organizing our things as I got Jack ensconced in preschool and cared for Baby Anna while Tony traveled for work, I became conscious that my stomach was in a perpetual knot.  I slept restlessly when I slept at all, and my gut was in a state of constant churning that left me feeling sick much of the time.  My doctor referred me to a gastro-intestinal specialist, who scheduled me for a colonoscopy.  After the procedure, the G-I doc said it was refreshing to examine such a pink and healthy colon, something he rarely saw in his line of work.  (I suppose that was meant to make me feel better.)  The usual recommendations for my symptoms – choose healthier foods, exercise regularly – were moot because I did those things already.  So he attributed my ill feelings to stress and told me I needed to relax.  Gee, Doc, ya think?

My son learned to ride with training wheels.  His first bike was bright blue with red lightning bolts on it – not a bad ride for a three-year-old.  He would go tooling down the driveway and then swerve onto the sidewalk, his training wheels clattering as he went.  But he didn’t care.  He just loved riding his bike.  Often he would ride his bike while I walked the dog (and later pushed the stroller carrying his sister), racing ahead of us on our route, then turning to wait for us to catch up.

My daughter inherited her brother’s trike, a sturdy, primary-colored three-wheeler on which she took great joy scooting around.  The summer she was four, we painted up the aforementioned blue bike with red lightning bolts using a can of pale blue spray paint I happened to find in the garage, adding gold accents with another found can of paint.  But she still wouldn’t ride it.  Even with training wheels, it was too wobbly for her liking.  She might take it for one pass around the driveway if I walked along with her, steadying her with my hands, but then she’d go back to the trike.  It felt safer.

My early years were spent in one of those rambling two-story farmhouses that pebble the landscape in central Illinois farm country.  It had a huge yard and a gravel driveway, plus a decently long sidewalk extending from the back door.  I rode my red-and-white tricycle, which had been my brother’s, up and down that sidewalk because the driveway was too bumpy.  When I got older, I held onto the handlebars and placed one foot on the back of the trike, pushing off with the other to make it go, a forerunner to today’s scooters.

One of my earliest memories of being on a bicycle is actually of me riding on the back of my mom’s bike.  It had fenders and one of those rear brackets you could strap stuff to.  She somehow managed to sit me on the bracket and then pedal while I hung on around her waist and extended my feet out and away from the back wheel.  Our nearest neighbor was outside tending her yard as we were about to ride by, so my mom stopped to chat.  When she finished and made ready to take off again, somehow one of my feet got tangled between the spokes of the back wheel.  I yowled in pain, and she immediately pulled me off and hugged me, examining my ankle after calming me down.  Thus was my first cycling accident.

I have a hazy recollection of training wheels and then learning to do without and then graduating to riding on the sparsely traveled rural road by our house.  For my brother and me, sometimes these rides were purely for pleasure, and sometimes they were a means to drop in on one of our more interesting neighbors, Mr. Phillipe.  Mr. Phillipe was an older fellow who lived alone and whose background was a bit vague and intriguing.  He lived about a quarter of a mile down the road and always welcomed us into his house, which was usually in a state of semi-organized disarray.  His stories came from his own life or times past, and he was an expert in local lore and history.  Once he even gave us a taste of the schnapps he often sipped – I think it was peppermint – and that solidified him as one of the coolest people we knew.

The summer before my eighth grade year, we moved up the road about three miles to a newer house that put us closer to the town where my brother and I went to school and where my mom was a teacher.  I started riding my brother’s red ten-speed because he had lost interest.  I rode it up and down and around the country roads that enfolded us, discovering which houses had dogs that would give chase, always mindful of staying well to the side of the road when traversing hills to be clear of oncoming cars.

One of my favorite bike rides in those days was to turn right out of our driveway, go down the hill and over the bridge and up the next hill, and then turn left at the next road.  I would ride up this road a ways, depending on my mood, and then turn around and head back toward home.  The road humped to a downhill just before the intersection, and I would pedal briskly to get up a good head of steam and then coast rapidly over the hump and around the corner, down the hill, and across the bridge.  If I was going fast enough, I could get almost all the way up the hill that led to my driveway on the other side of the bridge without pedaling.  I would do this over and over again some days.  Once my mom remarked that she wasn’t sure if this was safe, that a car could come and not see me and…you get the idea.  I shrugged her off.  Flying around that corner made me feel free and somewhat dangerous.  And I didn’t wear a helmet in those days.

Once in a while on clear, warm days, our dogs would start making a fuss, and I would look out the window to see them trotting down the driveway.  When I would go out to investigate what had caught their interest, I would catch sight of a group of cyclists rolling past.  The dogs rarely chased, instead watching curiously from the side of the road with wagging tails, looking at each other as if to say, ‘What do you suppose THAT was?’  I always wondered where in the world they had come from and where they were going.

Even though we had moved house, I still lived five miles south of town.  My best and oldest friend lived about the same distance north of town.  One summer before either of us could drive, we regularly rode our bikes to the tennis courts by the high school to meet and play a match.  We would serve and volley and discuss the important news of the day, which usually had to do with boys: who we liked, who we didn’t like, who we used to like, who we used to not like.  We would assess their cuteness and the likelihood of them ever noticing us (usually never), dissecting any conversations that may have taken place between us and them.  I liked to play tennis, but I was never very good, and that wasn’t really the point anyway.  The time we spent together helped solidify our friendship into one of the most trusted relationships I’ve ever had.  Eventually, we had to wrap things up and head home before the day got too late.  The hills always seemed a little steeper on the return ride home because I was tired, and I usually had to squirt the last of my water at a dog that insisted on pursuing, but it was worth it.

Remember your first bike?  I don’t.  But I do remember bikes being a big deal.  Somewhere in a family album there is a photo of me and my brother as kids, posing in front of the Christmas tree with wide grins, proudly displaying our new bikes.  Going on a family bike ride was a rare treat, riding bikes to the neighbors’ a fun outing.

Fast forward a few decades.  I’m in my late thirties, married with two children, a dog, and a minivan.  And I wish I were dead.  Every day I stare down the abyss and try to think of a reason not to jump.

I ride my bike, hundreds of miles over weeks and months.  The rhythm of my pedaling and my breathing brings a sense of peace to my troubled mind that otherwise completely eludes me.

This is not going to be a story about how such-and-such person ruined my life.  It’s not going to be a story where I air every piece of dirty laundry in my hamper or flush out every skeleton from my closet.

This is the story of me and my bike.