One of the sweetest mechanical sounds on Earth is that of a well-adjusted bicycle. For about the tenth time in a handful of days I took my touring bike for a spin around the neighborhood, finally achieving the perfect chorus of tires rolling over pavement, the gentle low rumble of a freshly oiled chain as its rollers slipped over the cogs, and the sound of the wind that flowed past my ears with each turn of the pedals. Nary a squeak or creak to be found, interrupted only by the satisfying “Click clack” of shifting gears: a “call and response” where the click of the shifter at my fingertips triggered an immediate clack from the rear derailleur as it dropped the chain into the next ring on the cassette, the pleasant feel of fresh bar tape under my palms. Gone were the rub in my front disc brake that created a rhythmic but annoying squeak, the creak in the seat post at each pedal stroke, and the gritty roughness of an unclean chain.

It would be hackneyed and trite to attribute zen-like qualities to bicycle maintenance, but there’s a definite satisfaction to identifying a problem, making some adjustments, getting closer to a fix, repeating the process, and then finally achieving success. Bicycles are simple enough that their adjustment is in the realm of anyone who can turn a screwdriver and afford twenty bucks worth of tools, and the knowledge and tools required for complete disassembly can be acquired for not much more.

This effort, probably no more than a couple of hours sprinkled in between a week of work and family obligations was in service of a larger objective: a six-day bicycle trip from Pittsburgh to Washington, DC on the Greater Alleghaney Passage and C&O Towpath trails, supposedly the longest contiguous car-free bicycle trail in the United States.

I’ve wanted to explore these trails with the family for quite a while, but it’s probably about two years too early for my youngest child, so this trip is approximately 30% recon, 70% “escape from COVID-induced stir craziness,” although it may have been “sold” based on flipping those percentages. We’re admittedly incredibly lucky as a family, healthy, gainfully employed, and children slowly returning to a reasonably normal version of school. However the morass of uncertainly and negativity driven by elections, COVID, and general stream of bad news has taken its toll on us, as it seems to have done to the general population evidenced by a tension and rudeness on the roads and in public that I’ve not experienced with this consistency.

It may not be the right answer, but the best answer I’ve got is going out on an adventure where all the nonsense is stripped away, and life becomes little more than eating, propelling oneself under one’s own power towards a distant objective, and finding food and a place to pitch one’s tent along the way. Life gets stripped to its essence, and the garbage that’s injected into our brains become superfluous and distant. I didn’t realize how deeply my soul needed this outlet until I started taking physical steps to prepare for the journey, from pulling camping gear out of storage, to preparing my bicycle and body for the journey.

With T-minus five days until departure to Pittsburgh as I write this, the anticipation is palatable, and like the stereotypical “kid the night before Christmas” I find myself counting the days, and gazing longingly at the growing collection of “stuff” waiting to be packed into panniers and strapped to my bicycle. It’s a wonderful feeling to anticipate a journey, doubly so in a time where so much seems outside our individual spheres of influence, and every action seems fraught and subject to change. The act of loading everything I need to survive and thrive on a bicycle, and being captain of my own destiny is a thought so liberating I almost have to suppress the idea for most of the day lest I lose my ability to focus on much else.

My gear is assembled, the bicycle is tuned to perfection, and my fitness should be appropriate for reasonable 60-mile days. Now it’s a matter of relishing the anticipation in measured doses until that first pedal stroke forward.