Over the past year,
I’ve cycled 1000+ km.
Cycling is lonely,
but loneliness is also beautiful.

The Trigger

Back in middle school, I’d often cycle to the neighboring town on weekends to hang out with my girlfriend.
The 5km in memory was a journey of dust flying, wildflowers thriving, time flying.

Later in college I also bought a bike at the small grove bike shop.
I carried my roommate Yuxiang more times than my girlfriend.
But in those years there were many bikes and bad locks,
during my four years of college I lost four bikes in a row.
Later when I went back to school and lamented to the underclassmen “bikes were easy to lose on campus,”
from their puzzled eyes,
I saw the gap of eras.
This is shared bikes — the new era’s economy thoroughly impacting the old era’s culture.
Of course, losing bikes isn’t a good piece of old-era culture, not worth missing at all.

After graduating from college, I settled in as a sunshine homebody,
maintaining a high-calorie lifestyle through high metabolism, never seriously exercising again.
—— Until the happy lockdown life of ‘22 lifted me to 80kg.

Maybe found a suitable reason for my exercise persona transformation?
Thinking this, I went to Decathlon for a stroll,
and ordered a road bike online: Decathlon RC100.

Logistics

Cycling is like running, it’s a sport (this sentence is useless).
Cycling differs from running, it needs more logistics work.

The most important thing for cycling is — you need a bike.
There are two common types: road bikes and mountain bikes.
Road bikes generally have drop bars and thin tires, suitable for paved-road cycling,
perfectly fitting urban commuting, morning rides, night rides, and coffee rides.
Mountain bikes generally have flat bars and thick tires, with good shock absorption, suitable for cycling in complex conditions,
very suitable for mountain trails, grasslands, and loaded cycling.
1000+ yuan can buy you a bike with gears that’s pretty good in every aspect.
But if calculated by three-minute enthusiasm, every minute costs several hundred yuan, that’s not cheap.
So in the month before I decided to buy a bike, I rode shared bikes for 30 days:
I had to prove to myself the decision was sustainable.

Besides the bike, the most important equipment is a helmet.
A helmet is somewhat like life insurance:
you don’t hope it’ll come into play,
but when buying you always want to calculate the “ROI.”
In this year’s cycling journey,
besides suppressing my exploding hair,
my helmet played no actual role.
This satisfies me greatly.

The remaining logistics prep roughly falls into three categories: protection, data, consumables.

Protective gear includes gloves, quick-dry clothing, cycling shorts, knee pads, long socks.
These scattered peripherals I acquired one by one along my cycling journey.
Because in actual cycling, I actually experienced hand pain, lots of sweat, ball pain, falls, slippery feet.
Everyone’s actual cycling experience is different.
You either learn to endure, or improve logistics.

Data prep includes scales, fitness bands, cycle computers, heart rate monitors, cadence sensors, etc.
The most exciting was the scale: “I’ve started cycling, you should at least take a few jin off me, right?”
The scale honestly told me: “Your weight hasn’t changed.”
(Cycling really can’t reduce weight, eating less can)
Data is the most honest partner.
Without data, I could only feel I was a noob.
With data, I could quantitatively see how noob I was.

Consumables include but aren’t limited to inner tubes, bananas, sports drinks, etc.
During cycling Suzhou, I tried to count my consumption:
roughly 8L of Kang Shifu iced tea per 100km.

Including the bike, the money spent on cycling this year is around 5000+ yuan.
The money I used to spend on mobile game wives has basically gone to myself this year.

The cycling community, like the PC-building community, also has price-comparison gear-snobs.
But cycling is like running too: the biggest bottleneck is always the rider themselves.

Routes

With the logistics not yet in place,
I impatiently started cycling.
—— Even before the bike I bought online arrived,
I first put on the helmet,
got on a shared bike,
and rode along the routes I’d researched, between work and home.

The route I rode most often back then was from People’s Square (Huangpu District) to Sixth People’s Hospital (Xuhui District),
10km one way, 30+ traffic lights (…), the whole journey about 50 minutes, about 30 minutes excluding stops.

From my personal feel,
20km a day is a very suitable cycling distance:
there’s a certain amount, but not tiring, no need to change clothes specifically, if it’s raining or you have a formal client meeting you can skip cycling.
Commute time is controllable. Only a few dozen minutes more than the subway, but the gain is the experience of going to work facing the sunshine.

The biggest challenge for the work commute is road conditions.
City commute is generally equivalent to being cut off by delivery guys, blocked by illegally parked cars, cut in by pedestrians.
The core is to remember one line: the weak have the moral high ground, but the weak die first.
In any case, hope everyone — walking, cycling, driving — pays attention to safety.

For weekend cycling routes there are many choices.
My two favorite routes are the Longteng Avenue round-trip and the Huangpu River loop.

Longteng Avenue round trip — route goes from the Long Museum to Xupu Bridge.
A round trip is about 14km, a place cycling groups like to go for morning rides.
At 5am, the Xuhui waterfront’s lake surface reflects light golden sunlight.
The morning mist hits each rider’s legs working up the slope.
The neat sound of drums made by the morning ride group turning at intersections is also part of this picture.

The Huangpu River loop is a more leisurely route.
Shanghai has placed many ferry crossings along the Huangpu.
From Sanlin Road ferry to Pudong, all the way to Dongchang Road ferry back to Puxi, is a route I like.
If departing in the early morning, the road is sparsely populated, with occasional cycling clubs riding along together.
One time leaving in the evening, suddenly a downpour — I hid in the storm under the glowing belly of Nanpu Bridge.
The raindrops along with the music in my headphones blended the whole world into the same rhythm.

Like this, non-daily experiences make the daily extra beautiful.

Experience

Over a year of cycling, besides side effects like learning bike repair and reducing fat,
my happiest finding is discovering my “destined sport”:
if there’s a Valhalla with me in it, I’m probably closer to the Rider job class.

Life lies in experience, experience produces memories, memories are happiness, and happiness is life’s beautiful future.

Cycling past Qibao, a dark shadow suddenly swept past in the bright sunshine.
I was stunned for a few seconds before realizing: an airplane’s shadow had just swept across my shoulder.
On the way pedaling back to Minhang, at a red light, a kid sitting backwards on his mom’s motorbike curiously looked at me.
Though I was tightly covered, I tried hard to smile at him, gave him a thumbs up, hoping he’d grow up tall and well.
One morning on the Huangpu River loop, again a sudden rain. A stranger cyclist friend and I hid under an awning chatting for half an hour,
rode half the way together, exchanged WeChat, he invited me to a cycling group, where I met more friends.
Coming back from Suzhou, at a roadside rest station I tiredly stopped.
The waitress-girl was very thoughtful and brought me a small stool, gesturing for me to sit and rest a while.

Overall, cycling is just this kind of ordinary sport:

• Needs investment, but no need to compare.
• Can’t lose weight, but easy to start.
• The journey is lonely, but the world is big.

In the time ahead,
I plan to try the 200km one-day Shanghai-Hangzhou challenge.
If possible, later try Tibet cycling, around-Taiwan-island, cycling in various parts of the world.
But to be fair, it’s still early.
Let me start with commuting~

(end)