Matters of the Heart

The cyclists I admire most are the ones who pedal many miles a day, a mileage that, at the end of a month, reaches astronomical values.
These cyclists don’t have my admiration, they have my respect, a huge respect, by the way.
No, my cyclist heroes are the ones who don’t have cars by choice or, a supreme act of heroism and love for their principles, who sold their car or, to mark even more this separation, abandoned it somewhere.
These ones I regard as initiates in the long way of the pedal priesthood.
We should follow their example, trying to learn their teachings and gather strength to take this essential step, the step towards freedom.
I confess I’ve already tried. Some time ago I took heart and advertised my car for sale in the newspaper. A Beetle 68, my first car. This Beetle also belonged to my father, and I considered leaving it to my son.
In my desire for purification, however, I came to the conclusion that I couldn’t remain attached to this emotionalism. In the name of the new order that should be established and the new life that I would start, getting rid of that car was mandatory.
Something inside me reacted, though.
I started to feel a traitor of the trust that I had put on the Beetle and the Beetle on me for so long. My God, how many things had we lived together, how could I abandon it in the name of the cycling faith? I decided, then, fearing that some buyer might show up, not to answer the phone for a week. This didn’t prevent that, after a while, someone interested in buying the Beetle appeared:
- Is it there where a Beetle is being sold?
- No, you might have the wrong number.
- What’s the number there?
I had to lie and gave him a different number
Since the phone rang again, I spent another week without answering it.
After some time, I started using it once more, but this didn’t take away the feeling that at any moment, maybe even in the middle of the night, someone might call:
- Is it there where a Beetle is being sold?
After that, I decided to live with my bicycles and my cars. Yes, cars, because I ended up buying others. All of them old, because I don’t look for anything in a car but what a bicycle can’t offer me. I’d say, thus, that it’s a settled matter: I don’t feel guilty for not being always on a bicycle. Maybe it’s even because of this that I feel so much pleasure when I get on one.
(photo: Gustavo)