One of the recurring themes to cycling posts here on Applied Life is my ongoing search for opportunities to use my trike as transport. I mentioned recently that, despite the other challenges with our worldwide pandemic, one of the effects of sheltering at and working from home is that it affords increased opportunities for riding. Those combined factors have led me rather predictably to choose to more frequently ride, rather than drive, to check the PO Box I keep for work.
...I seem to have outsmarted myself.
While I’m enjoying my riding, it has seemed of late that I have less to think about on my rides, fewer observations about the countryside, less musing on the emergence and progress of the season. This is unusual for me, and those components are always part of what I enjoy about cycling - the fact that cycling is an activity that takes out into the world, making you a part of it. I had started to wonder why this would be - was cycling starting to lose its allure?
That seemed unlikely, so I took a closer look at my riding patterns in Cyclemeter, and there it was:
I’m almost always riding the same route now.
You might think that would be obvious, but one has a tendency to lose track of these things when in the thick of it, and to overemphasize the exceptions. If you’d asked me to casually talk about my rides over the past month I’d say that I rode to the post office a few times, but then I’d tell you about my trip to the Hennepin Canal Trail and about riding in to get gas for the mower. But when I actually look at the month in Cyclemeter, what is see is that I rode 14 times, and that 10 of those 14 rides - 71% - were virtually identical rides to the post office.
What’s more, two of the other four rides were slightly longer routes that also took me to the post office. I’d added them in for a bit of variety and increased distance, but they still cover much of the same territory. For those doing the math, that means the two standouts that I mentioned above - Hennepin and the gas trip - are the only two rides that were to different destinations.
The only two.
Looking back at April finds a similar story. I may have gotten myself so focused on using my trike for transport that I’ve ridden myself into a bit of a rut.
This is easily rectified, fortunately enough - I have lots of routes mapped out around the area, lots of countryside to ride through. But it does make me wonder a bit about what happens with folks who cycle for transport on a more regular basis. I know from years of experience that driving the same route to work every day results in an overlearning effect, where the task becomes so automatic that one finds it hard to remember things from the trip - you look back on the drive and wonder "did I stop at that stop sign at the corner...?"
Given the number of variables involved in road cycling - the elements, the road imperfections, the automotive traffic, the chasing of dogs - it seems unlikely that one could quite reach the same effect. But a route can, apparently, reach the point where it becomes mundane. I’ll have to remain on guard for that.
And now it’s time to ride... to somewhere different.