Elizabeth Tracey

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The Simplest Things: Notes on RAGBRAI LII

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Day 0 (Hawarden to Orange City–22 Miles)

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I keep too many lists. My thoughts organize themselves into elaborate, exhaustive categories, corralling my plans and whims and worries into clusters, processing threats as they come in, generating intricate worst-case scenarios without cause. “It’s just information,” someone told me once–maybe a friend, probably a therapist–after I’d tried and failed to break the habit.

Things I Want to Eat Right Now: frozen grapes, cold applesauce with cinnamon, cheesecake and canned cherries from the grocery store.

Things I’d Rather Be Doing: napping on my couch, lying in front of a box fan, standing beneath a piping-hot showerhead with an ice cube in my mouth.

Things That Might Kill Me: a crop-dusting plane falling from the sky, a nasty, crack-my-head-open fall onto asphalt, a swerving pickup, this stupid bike.

I call her Godzilla, and when I’m not tasked with getting her all the way across the state of Iowa, the two of us get along. She’s a steel Rockhopper, with Klunker bars and faded pink grips and a gleaming teal paint job. I should have opted for the feather-light road bike in my basement, but I made a list about that too, all the reasons I hated it.

And anyway, it isn’t Godzilla’s fault, this mess. My wife Anna and I had a number of reasons for committing to RAGBRAI this year, and none of them had anything to do with the mileage. Anna has always loved bikes–whether she’s working on one, riding one, or building one up–and I’m an Iowa native. RAGBRAI, the Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa, was one of my childhood’s tall tales that was actually true. I grew up knowing all about it, how 20,000 cyclists would ride across the state each summer, from the Missouri River to the Mississippi. We lived in the northeastern part of the state, my parents settling in Cedar Falls when I was six-years-old, and every once in a while, the ride would route through my hometown. Thousands of cyclists would flood the streets, spilling onto the college campus where my parents worked, pouring into the grocery stores and gas stations and restaurants, their bicycles leaning in stacks against every telephone pole in town. Cyclists in colorful jerseys and chamois shorts would flock to Casey’s, tottering across the pavement in their cycling shoes. They’d slam bottles of Gatorade, the gas pumps crowded with bicycles, their riders buying breakfast pizza and candy bars and Red Bull, everything but the usual best sellers, cigarettes and gasoline.

When the ride’s organizers released the route earlier in the year, and I saw my hometown listed as one of the overnight stops, Anna and I signed up. We had a group of friends going with us. My parents were excited to cheer us on. Anna got excited about her bike build, and the camping gear we’d both need, and I saw it as an Iowan’s rite of passage, akin to buying a corndog at the state fair, or detasseling over summer break.

There were so many things that made sense about the trip, I didn’t think about the things that made no sense at all. I didn’t, that is, until we stepped off the Amtrak, hopped into our friends’ van at the Omaha station, and made our way to the Missouri River.

That’s when the reality of the decision really set in, when the 400-mile ride became not just another underlined item on the Summer Trips and July Goals and This Week lists in my brain, but something I’d actually have to do.

I’ve never been comfortable on a bike. I’m the type of rider to brake on a downhill, knowing little about how to enjoy that wobbly, whooshing feeling, and only slightly more about how to survive it. I brake on turns too, even the widest ones. I’m afraid of sewer grates and potholes and sandy patches. There are too many risks to name them all. I’ve put them on a list.

On that first day, after I dipped my back tire in the Missouri River, took a video of Anna dipping hers, and our group set out for Orange City, the doubt hit me harder than the head wind.

Now, only two miles from the starting city, a lollipop-shaped water tower swelling on the horizon, I really don’t know if I have it in me, if my will is stronger than my nerves. I liked the idea of carrying out the ride’s tire-dip tradition, of honoring the state’s bookending rivers by dipping my back tire in the Missouri, and my front tire in the Mississippi, even if this year’s route didn’t begin at the state’s westernmost edge. That’s why we’re out here on Day 0, logging an extra twenty-two miles, but now I’m doubting the extra mileage. I’ve got that achy, agitated feeling all over, like I drank too much coffee and clenched my jaw for too long, and we haven’t even started. My teeth hurt. My head. My hands. I hold on too tightly–to all of it. I don’t know how to trust.

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Day 1 (Orange City to Milford–72 Miles)

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I grew up with a needling sense of foreboding. I’d lie awake at night, watching the headlights of passing cars arc across my bedroom ceiling, wondering if some masked man might be watching me from a tree outside my window. I was afraid of germs, and centipedes, and scraped-up knees. Stomachaches. Nightmares. The dark.

When my wristwatch buzzes at 5:40, that familiar sense of foreboding awakens with me, crouching in the inky shadows of my tent. I sit up. I shine my phone’s flashlight into the darkness, careful to avoid my sleeping wife, and peer through one of the tent flaps at the sea of RAGRBRAI campers all around us. There’s the drone of a dozen zippers as nearby campers pack up their things. They hoist duffel bags onto their backs and head for the two pack-mule semis in the parking lot. A lengthy Day One To-Dos list compiles itself as I peer through the tent flap, jaw sore, left ear ringing, like a submariner gazing into the murky depths of the ocean: change my clothes and brush my teeth, tear down camp, load my gear onto the truck, find water, find food, find a bathroom, apply sunscreen, caffeinate. When I’ve accomplished those things, the real work begins–we’ve got seventy-two miles to knock out today.

Some of our friends took off early, empty patches in the surrounding grass where their tents were last night. Anna has never been a morning person, so the two of us opted to leave with the second group. I agreed to this, but as the clock ticks toward seven, there’s an urgency to my movements. I’m swiping at the dew on Godzilla’s black saddle, stuffing her frame bag with a rain jacket and sunscreen, stashing gummy candy and turkey sticks into the zipper bag velcroed to her handlebars. I’m afraid of failing, of the sun setting when I’m still thirty miles out. I don’t want to end up needing RAGRBAI’s emergency transport vehicle, the SAG Wagon, especially not on the first day.

The first twenty miles aren’t so bad. The sky is overcast, a steady threat of rain keeping the temperature cool. We spend too much time at the first town along the route, me wasting daylight in a long line for coffee, my friends squandering theirs at a food truck for tater tots, Anna finding a bowl of cereal at a church and wondering what’s taking us all so long. My cell reception is spotty. My quads are burning. Pesky images of my bike tipping over, with me right along with it, flit around the corners of my mind like gnats.

As it turns out, seventy-two miles is a lot. I grow antsy as the day wears on, too tired and too hungry and much too dehydrated not to stop as we pass through each tiny town on the route, concerned when we pull onto the side of the road that we won’t make it to the host town before dark. I slather sunscreen on the backs of my hands. My dry eye flares up. I drink a Gatorade, limp and exhausted, at a food stand eight miles out.

Those last few miles are brutal. An oppressive sort of heat pushes through the clouds. My legs burn. My skin. My sit bones cry out each time I remount my bike. There’s a killer hill right at the end. I push a little harder, pedaling alongside a friend who’s heard I’m a strong climber. I live up to my reputation. I’ve got too much pride to let the fatigue hold me back.

There’s a rush of relief as I crest the hill, and the road evens out. My friend throws his head back and howls with joy. I hold tight to my handlebars, watching him in my peripheral vision, eyes fixed on the road in front of me, marveling at how freely he celebrates the moment.

There’s no plummeting hill on the other side of the ascent; we’ve arrived in Milford. It’s nearing six in the evening, but we’re in good company, hundreds of cyclists rolling into town alongside us. We have friends hosting us tonight, and so we head for their house, the promise of a hot shower pushing us those few extra blocks. It’s a bear getting our gear from camp to the house, but we manage it. Anna and I set up our tent alongside our friends’ in the backyard. I slam a cold bottle of water, and she does too. There aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done.

We almost miss the spaghetti dinner at a church nearby, our group arriving just before they’ve run out of food. The parishioners heap a pile of noodles onto our plates. “We ran out of marinara about an hour ago,” one of them says, but we don’t care, so long as they’ve got carbs to give us. For a few minutes, no one speaks, everyone tucked into their food, butter and basil and oregano ruling the day. As the plates around me empty, the group talks about what time to get going the next morning, what the route looks like tomorrow, who’s going to attempt the gravel sections and who’s keeping to the pavement.

No one voices their fears about crashing, not even when the gravel discussion starts up. Instead, they all make it sound like it’s going to be fun, as if plowing through pebbles isn’t tempting fate, one of those overconfident pleas for punishment. By my calculations, riding 400 miles without a wreck must be some kind of rarity, a virtual impossibility with gravel portions factored into the equation, and I’ve never considered myself a lucky person. Still, I’m not a quitter, and I don’t want to end up on the SAG. Back home in Colorado, I’m accustom to hard work, whether I’m hiking up a mountain, running a 5K, or lifting weights at the gym. My resting heart rate hovers just below fifty beats per minute. With a heap of strenuous, high-altitude training on my side, sore quads and sit bones aside, I know my body can do this.

But I’m not so sure about my brain. It’s exhausting, battling the onslaught of what-ifs as I’m riding, the images my mind conjures of grisly crashes and blaring sirens and ambulance rides to the hospital. There’s also the loss of control, that terrifying, plunging feeling as I fly downhill, a feeling that leaves me shaky and lightheaded, like I downed a shot of tequila and climbed onto a carousel. My hands are sore from gripping the handlebars. The ache in my jaw has worked its way up to my temples. As my friends finish off plates of blueberry pie, I make a frantic list in my brain, All the Ways I Might Fail.

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Day 2 (Milford to Estherville–40 Miles)

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It’s a beer garden that wrecks Day 2.

Things start out well. Our group sleeps in, reveling in the day’s manageable mileage, and awakens to hot coffee and a cool breeze. Our host family has prepared egg casserole and pumpkin donuts for us, and we eat together in the front yard. In the soft light of early morning, forty miles doesn’t sound so bad.

When our group arrives at the gravel, feeling less courageous and more determined not to ruin the fun, I follow Anna onto the dusty road. I hold on tight, careful not to brake when I don’t have traction, taking the downhills at a snail pace and catching up when the ground levels out. One of my friends rides without his hands, snapping pictures of us with his phone, proof we can present at one of the evening expos for RABBRAI’s coveted gravel patch. I manage a quick wave when he takes my picture, the other hand gripping Godzilla’s pink grips, fingers ghost-white and trembling.

When the route spits us back out on the pavement, relief zips through my whole body. Our group is in high spirits–my friends from the fun of it all, me from having thwarted disaster–when we reach the beer garden.

And that’s when I opt for a plastic cup of some pink, fruity sour instead of lunch. Riding the high of having outwitted the concussions, split lips, and busted elbows headed my way, I flop into the grass alongside my friends. I unbuckle my helmet and swap sips of my sour for IPAs, stouts, and wheat ales. The alcohol amplifies the relief, my nervous system lazy and sparkling, and for a few moments, there aren’t any lists. I notice the velvety grass beneath my palms, the gentle breeze, how the sun filters through the leafy branches above us. I stare into the sky, enjoying the chatter of my friends around me, reveling in my quiet mind.

But by the end of the day, when the beer is long gone, and we’ve still got ten miles to go, there’s a headache plodding across my forehead, and exhaustion multiplying in my muscle tissue. I’m in a bitter, nasty mood, and I make another list as I’m riding, Better Ways to Burn PTO: booking a whale-watching cruise along Alaska’s coastline, hunting shells up and down Monterey Bay, exploring Montreal like we did last summer, with plates of poutine, strolls through city parks, and croissants each morning.

Finally, Godzilla and I limp into Estherville. I get my gear off the semis and set up camp. Anna finds a local pool, and I hole up in our tent, reading a grisly crime novel about wealth and misery.

That evening, I make up for the alcohol-over-sustenance error, eating my weight in roast corn, bagged salad, and the Chinese food served at Hy-Vee. We sit at a table in the grocery store, buttery corn and a bottle of Pepsi lifting my spirits, laughing alongside my friends as my hunger dissipates. There’s a shopping cart toward the back of the store, stuffed to bursting with ears of corn, a sign tacked to it: “DO NOT TOUCH. For Ragbrai.”

I snap a picture and send it to my parents, remembering how I used to ride cross-legged in the shopping cart, stacking the canned goods by size, shuffling the produce into a pile, and pushing the cereal boxes together like textbooks.

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Day 3 (Estherville to Forest City–74 Miles)

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“I think this thing is 85% suffering,” Anna says, as we’re midway through the week’s longest day, a seventy-four-mile ride through farmland. Fields of corn and soy stretch for miles on either side of us, rippling like waves against the strong, gritty wind. I don’t know if I feel landlocked or adrift.

Our group split off this morning. Some people wanted to get going around five. Some wanted to complete the gravel portion of the route, or the optional century ride. One of our friends is training for Leadville, a demanding, one-hundred-mile race in Colorado, and he wanted to use the century route as a training ride. Around seven this morning, Anna and I took off at our own pace. We considered the hundred-miler, but she wasn’t set on it, and I didn’t want to push my luck.

“Eighty five seems a little low.” I crack a smile. Neither of us understand the people who do this every year. I fiercely need a shower. I’m tired of drinking sun-baked water and stuffing almonds in my mouth, even when I’m too hot to feel hunger. My calves are sunburned, the backs of my hands, the tender skin between my helmet and sunglasses. If my sit bones could scream, they’d have gone hoarse by now.

We find brownie sundaes and roast beef sandwiches and ice-cold Gatorade along the way. I eat Nerd Clusters from Godzilla’s front zipper pouch. The route is largely flat, but it doesn’t matter. The head wind is relentless, and I’m terrified of blowing off my bike. I imagine Piglet in that Winnie the Pooh story about the blustery day, how a gust of wind yanked the poor thing up into the sky, scarf be damned, how nothing could keep him tethered to the earth. I hold tight to Godzilla, relieved for a moment I chose such a heavy bike, and by the end of the day, as I’m threading the poles through our tent’s slippery housing, my hands are cramping and achy and stiff.

Still, there’s a sense of accomplishment that softens my nerves. When we’re set up, we find another spaghetti dinner, a slice of pie, and the community pool. We joke about how the town’s going to have to drain the damn thing when we’re through with it. I imagine a slimy film of sweat, sunscreen, and chamois butter coating the water slide. There’s a giant windmill just outside camp, its giant, snow-white propellers circling slowly. I hear it turning as I fall asleep.

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Day 4 (Forest City to Iowa Falls–71 Miles

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On the fourth day, the forecast predicts high temperatures, humid air, and an another unrelenting head wind. I find a damp towel–because nothing dries in corn-sweat country–and swipe it across Godzilla’s saddle, a piece of dried mango clamped between my teeth. I’m getting better at this fueling thing.

Anna and I set out around seven, following the winding ribbon of cyclists leaving town. We find our friends at the first town, while we’re eating sour straws and pie and searching for an air-conditioned library. I learn to draft off the cyclist in front of me, our group forming a train to battle the head wind. It’s miserably hot. I dowse my head with water. I buy icy bottles of water and Gatorade from local stands along the route. I never need to pee.

Later, my friends will swear the descent into Iowa Falls was almost worth the work it took to get there, but I’ll hear none of it. Sure, the ride into town is beautiful, lush and vibrant and bending, with a stunning view of the water, but there’s a wicked curve on the final hill. My friends take off, flying down it with their shirts billowing like sails. I inch myself to the right, panic mounting in my chest, and take it slow. I squeeze the brakes. I make a list as I chug along, All the Ways I Might Die: someone crashing into my back tire, losing my balance on the turn, shooting off the road into the water, suffering a stress-induced heart attack. Deadly scenarios fly about my mind, a hundred buzzing, angry hornets. I hold so tightly to the handlebars, even my forearms ache as I ride into town. The ringing in my ear starts up, hissing and whispering and sneering at me.

We have a place to stay in Iowa Falls tonight. Our host family offers to load our camping gear into their car and drive it to their place, and all we have to do is follow on our bikes. When we’re eating burgers in their backyard, my friend says she heard me on that final hill.

“What did I say?”

“I couldn’t make it out.” She thinks I was fussing over Anna, worrying after her as she took off down the hill. But I rarely worry about Anna on a bicycle.

“I was probably giving myself a pep talk.” The idea that my neuroses may have made their way out of my head into words sends a flush all through me. Don’t freak out, I probably said, willing myself not to panic, Hold it together. Everything’s fine.

There’s a violent thunderstorm that night, our group huddled in tents in our host family’s backyard when it hits. Thunder rolls across a flashing sky. Rain slaps the sides of the tent in heavy, soaking sheets. I imagine a bolt of lightning striking the tent, how it would feel crackling through my bloodstream, if I’d feel like I were electric, or just dying.

With sleeping bags pinned to our chests, Anna and I rush to the house, where our host family beckons us inside and sets us up on a couch in the basement. I lie there in the dark, listening to the thunder growl and roll and rumble.

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Day 5 (Iowa Falls to Cedar Falls–50 Miles)

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I lived in Cedar Falls until I was eighteen. On breaks throughout my college years, I’d return to my hometown, grabbing coffee with my mom at our favorite spot downtown, jogging along the nature trails in my neighborhood, watching black and white films with my dad in the evenings. I’d sleep upstairs on a futon, only venturing downstairs to my old bedroom, piled high with boxes and extra furniture, if I were looking for something. Sometimes I’d stand in that room, looking at the desk plastered with stickers, or the shelf of childhood trinkets, and wonder what people really meant when they’d say things about wishing they were kids again. I didn’t have a care in the world. I’ve heard that one a few times. But I’m not sure I’ve ever known what that’s like, not as a kid, not as an adult, not ever. I remember my obsessive hand washing in third grade, how I’d call my teacher at her house in fifth, afraid I’d misunderstood the homework assignment, the way I’d pick at my plate of penne noodles in seventh, my stomach too tied up to eat them. I’m not sure why I’ve never known peace, be it genetics, a chemical imbalance, something in my past, or some combination of all those things. In my thirties now, the reason doesn’t matter so much as the cost.

But on this temperate afternoon, as last night’s thunderstorms fade into memory, and the skies are a blazing blue, I ride into my hometown on a high. I feel lighter than I have all week, the ride’s longest days behind me, the possibility of finishing this thing closer and more tangible than it’s ever been. Anna takes a video of me soaring beneath Cedar Falls’s welcome banner. Families watch from their driveways. There are kids holding signs, sprinklers set up along the curbs, lemonade stands with towers of paper cups atop them. I watch downtown come into view, the Cedar River flowing alongside it, hundreds of cyclists riding down the streets I walked as a kid. Anna and I stay with my family that evening. The commute to their house adds another six miles round-trip to our journey, but we’re flying on our way there. We hardly notice the extra distance.

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Day 6 (Cedar Falls to Oelwein–41 Miles)

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“It’s like a music festival for fit people.” My sister Devin sits in the grass next to me as we pass a buttery ear of corn back and forth. She joined us on the ride today, having come to Cedar Falls a few days prior to help our parents clear out her old bedroom. Dad will pick her up in Oelwein this evening.

“It feels like a different world, doesn’t it?” I reach for the corn. Anna naps beside me beneath a giant oak tree. Devin was quick to pick up the shorthand, what it meant when a cyclist shouted, “Rumbles!” or “Car back!” or “Bikes on!” Someone had barked at her for drifting to the right at the start of the ride, but by the time we’re twenty miles out, she’s acclimated to the chaos.

I’ll miss parts of this when it’s over, like the state troopers directing traffic at every intersection, how for all the lists I’ve compiled since we started, I haven’t worried once about getting hit by a car. I’ll miss how the rest of the world feels far away, my job and my schedule and all my daily tasks. Once or twice, I’ve entertained the idea of doing this thing a second time, taken with the sense of impending accomplishment.

“We should light ‘em on fire.” Devin turns the ear of corn in her fingers until she’s found an uneaten patch. She’s referring to the notebooks unearthed from the back of her bedroom closet. Some of them are mine.

I remember the pages I’d filled with lists, back when I still hoped writing them down might dislodge them from my brain–Things That Might Give Me Cancer, Things I Shouldn’t Eat Anymore, Things to Do Before I Die. I imagine, for the first time in a long time, a world without any lists at all. I imagine chucking those journals into the flames, spine first, without once cracking them open.

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Day 7 (Oelwein to Guttenberg–62 Miles)

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When my watch buzzes at 5:40 on the ride’s final day, I know what lies ahead before I’m fully awake. Today’s sixty-plus-mile route involves more elevation gain than any other day, over two-thousand feet. There’s rain in the forecast. I’m sore, sunburned, and dead tired, but I awaken unintimidated. I’ve ridden more miles than today’s route demands three times this week alone. I’m not afraid of elevation; I live in Colorado. And even if today zaps the last of my strength, I don’t need to save any of it. By this time tomorrow, I’ll be sleeping soundly through sunrise.

I reach around in the dark for my clothes. I tear down camp, spit toothpaste into the grass, load my bags onto the truck, all the things I do every morning. Anna and I grab breakfast at a Casey’s on the way out of town. We stop in the first town for muffins, the second town for a Red Bull, the third town for acai bowls. When we’re about twenty miles out, as we’re rolling through Amish country, the rain starts.

It soaks my clothes and pools in my shoes. It spatters the road in front of me, the backs of my hands, my lenses, rolling in fat drops into my eyes. There’s an enormous hill, about a half-mile long, with a false peak toward the top. As I crest its highest point, I grip the handlebars so hard, my achy hands feel as if they’ve cemented themselves in place.

And then the downhill begins, and it goes on, and on, and on. A fluttery panic takes flight in my chest, a flurry of butterflies caught in the mesh netting of my rib cage. The rain obscures my vision. That signature wobble moves from the bike tires into the frame as I accelerate. It moves into my arms and ankles and knees. A tremble starts up in my limbs. My muscles turn to gelatin. I imagine crashing, the phantom feeling of my bike tire slipping out from under me running on a loop in my brain. I cling to my bike’s pink grips. A whimper escapes my lips. Riders fly past me on all sides, shouting, “On your right!” and “On your left!” It feels like I’m one micromovement away from losing my balance. I can’t look over my shoulder for fear of crashing head-first into the pavement. I try to slow down, squeezing the life out of my brakes as riders fly around me, whooping, heads down, loving every minute of this dramatic, swooping hill.

Not me.

No, the damn thing makes me cry.

I didn’t break down once on the ride, not when I was working myself up about worst-case scenarios, not when those monstrous seventy-mile days were looming large in front of me, not even when I was nauseous, or battling heat exhaustion, or getting my ass kicked by the head wind.

No.

It’s the fear that gets me. It always has been.

Anna’s often said how she admires me, because I’m afraid of so many things, and I do them anyway–highway driving, rock climbing, parallel parking, public speaking. But holding onto all that crackling, pent-up energy takes its toll. Sometimes, that looks like spending a day in front of the TV, or sleeping through the afternoon, or walking out of the grocery store without any of the things I came for.

And sometimes, it looks like blubbering my heart out, fingers clamped around my handlebars, eyes burning, lips salty, whimpering into the chaotic joy of RAGBRAI LII coming to a close, while hundreds of jaunty cyclists fly past in streaks of raucous, colorful blurs.

Even as it’s happening, even as my nervous system is screaming at me–All the Things That Might Kill Me!!–I see the humor in this moment, shimmering around the terror of it all. I scoot down the hill as slowly as I can, fighting my momentum all the way, rainwater in my Crocs, socks squelching, tears on my face, the terror uncoiling like a spring, leaving my body with every whimper and watery blink.

As I reach the bottom of the hill, I see Anna pulled over, waiting for me. We ride together the next few miles. She takes it slow on the next hill to keep me company. The sun breaks through the clouds. My clothes stick to me like cling wrap, but my skin dries. My Crocs too. Slowly, my spirits lift. The end is so close, I can feel it, like a brush of something wondrous on my skin.

On the final hill, as we’re leaving Amish country for the Mississippi, I encourage Anna to go on ahead of me. “Enjoy it,” I say, and so she takes off, shirt billowing, her bike flying down the final hill.

I take it slow, hands aching, wet brakes squealing, a dizzying tremble in all my limbs. The bike swerves and wiggles and sways when I hold onto it too tightly, and no, I never reach any amount of peace in that space. My brain invents impending concussions, elbows stripped of their skin, my white tee shredded to bits by the pavement. But I don’t crash–not once, in fact–and when the Mississippi comes into view, and the crowd thins into the winding tire-dip line, another wave of emotion hits me. It isn’t relief, though that’ll catch up to me at some point.

It’s pride.

I think of my younger self with her endless lists of fears, warping her world into something solely wicked, and tragic, and unbearably fragile. I think of my nervous system, how it demands so much of me. How the simplest things have made me brave. I stare out at the Mississippi, remembering how stranded I felt on the other end of the state only days ago, how I’m not trapped at all–not by danger, not by my circumstances, not even by my brain–how I’m scared, and that isn’t the same thing at all.

I find Anna waiting for me, and we file into the tire-dip line. My phone searches for a signal, Guttenberg’s cell towers overwhelmed by the thousands of cyclists calling their families and friends with updates, check-ins, and meet-up questions. Finally, a call goes through, and we find our friends in line. We snap a picture, shoulder to shoulder, with the Mississippi lapping at our front tires.

In the coming days, I’ll make a dozen more lists. I’ll add to the ones already on my mind’s mighty spreadsheet. I’ll calculate the threats as they come in–crashing my car on the way to the grocery store, choking on a piece of chicken at my favorite Mediterranean restaurant, suffering from anaphylaxis on a walk after a bee sting. Most of the time, that sense of foreboding will stick with me, peering from the shadows with a devilish glint in its eye. And most of the time, I’ll get in my car, and I’ll eat at my favorite places, and I’ll go on my walks just the same, holding much too tightly to every moment, terrified and buzzing and alive.

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