By Ollie Vuckovic

My bike is a part of me, and there is a single song of the road humming through us.


I'm tangled on the ground, inextricable from my bike and grotesquely disfigured from an accident. Flesh meets frame, bone and metal collide. My thoughts loop on unwanted images: a car running a red light, hitting a pothole and going flying, colliding with a teammate, a dog running in front of the wheel, taking a corner too tight, wheels sliding out from under me. Nightmares haunt my daytime rides.

Before we became one — back when it was just a fling — I saw my bike as my enemy. It felt unfair that when we finished a ride, I would spend hours recovering and doing homework while it got to sit in the corner and rest, unbothered. I rode like I wanted to punish it, punching my feet into the asphalt below. When I was first learning to climb and the road got too steep for my abilities, I would sometimes pop a wheelie on accident. Pulling on the handlebars with my full force, I would lift the front wheel off the ground and it would come crashing back down a few feet to the right or left, causing me to topple over onto the asphalt. There’s something reassuring about falling on a hill. If you have to choose a time for it to happen, it’s better to do it going five miles an hour rather than twenty.

My riding is jagged. All I hear is the sharp sound of my own breathing. Raspy and wheezing, the sound takes up my headspace. The scenery is usually reduced to a blur of color, but now the minutiae around me have come into focus. I note the small cracks in the asphalt as my head hangs low, lips moving in a prayer for the end. My body rocks with momentum as I stand out of the saddle, pushing the pedals down. If there are no cars, I’ll try and sweep wide, zig and zag up the steepest segments of road. When a car does pass, I jump: the two ton mass of metal just a few feet to my left. One small mistake in my handling would veer me into its path. I focus on keeping my front wheel facing straight, pushing my weight against the handlebars and moving forward.

As I see the road flatten out, I cough up the last vestiges of my energy. The flags and flower boxes of happy suburban houses cheer me on while I suck down the first packaged energy goop I can fish out of my jersey pocket and squirt some water into my mouth. It’s lukewarm but I  savor it anyway. The bike rests between my legs. I cross my arms over the handlebars and lean down, closing my eyes for just a minute.


I named my bike Cherry, for her deep maroon color, but I don’t tell many people that. I used to think it was silly to name an object. But after we’ve spent so much time together it feels wrong to leave her nameless. I think the name gives her a soul. She’s fitted to my body with precision. We were measured with lasers and the eye of an expert who tapped her seat centimeters lower and angled her handlebars a few degrees higher until our geometries aligned. I know when I slip on my cycling shoes and clip myself into the pedals, she and I become a team of tangled fate. If one of us goes down, so does the other.

I pat the side of Cherry’s top tube to wake her up, then I clip in, push off, and we glide away together. I mumble complaints while I wait for the sugar to revive me, but Cherry doesn’t say much. She just carries me along. I can see the bend in the horizon and Cherry picks up speed as the road dips down. Gruesome images flash through my head, so I try imagining my happy place. But, I’m already there.

On the descent, I let my conscious mind hide away in a corner. Everything is moving too fast for any active thought to be helpful. I’m bent low with my face near the bars, elbows angled back. The wind batters at my face and tears bead in the corner of my eye. My knees are angled and braced for impact. My body pushed back into the seat. All I hear is the wind in my ears and the mechanical whizz of the bike. The world blurs around me, but her handlebars stay in focus. A twitch of my fingers and Cherry’s gear shifts lower. I spin my legs and she moves faster. My body leans into the curves of the mountain road and she follows. We avoid debris and cracks in the road that feel imperceptible to me. I trust her judgement.

When the descent levels off and I’m back on flat road, I coast for as long as I can and hope the momentum will carry me all the way to the end of the ride. Eventually, the magic of physics wears off and my legs have to start spinning again. It’s not effortful, but it’s constant. My mind comes out from its hiding spot and takes note of our surroundings. I hear the sounds of my teammates chattering, cars flying past, and the mechanical crunch of the chain potentially signaling danger. I imagine her chain snapping, axles wiggling loose, handlebars popping off, brake pads failing, wheels falling off. I imagine Cherry falling apart under me, piece by piece, until it’s just me and the road and a pile of parts.

I come to a halt. The ride is over. At home, Cherry goes to the corner of my room and sits there, untouched, for the next five months.

These days, I spend a lot of my time training on stationary bikes. On my walks to the gym, I pass by cyclists out for their morning rides and feel a pang of jealousy. Under the cover of dim gym lights, I slip on my cycling shoes and clip myself into the bike. I spin my legs for an hour and check my phone periodically. But when the screen in front of me turns to lush green mountain passes and rolling roads, it feels like my hands start to flicker on the bars. I run through all of the places I’ve looked down at them: a real continent crossed, an imagined shattering.
Here, there are no brakes to squeeze, no curves to lean into, no cars to dodge. I just listen to the pop music blaring in my headphones and wait for the song of the road to pull me back in. ■