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On a bike, alone, you are forced to be in your own head which has served me well whether deliberating over something in my life that is causing emotional angst, or in thinking about what I might do in my classroom on a given day. I've often said some of my best teaching ideas have come to me via the inspiration of the wind in my face, and the exertion's effects on my mind, while commuting to work. Being nimble and spontaneous enough to be open to those inspirations has been a key to my professional success.

There is also a dark side to the forced seclusion of riding a bike alone when dealing with some sort of emotional turmoil. I remember clearly about 16 years ago going through serious emotional pain at the same time that I had signed up and was training for the Death Ride. The amount of hours you have to put in to train for such an event insured many solo rides and many miles. And virtually every time I got on the bike my mind always seemed to go back and fixate on the root cause of my emotional angst. I believe in confronting issues but sometimes the psychological toll of so many hours of obsessing over the problem was not healthy. A group, or social ride, would have been a good release from this obsessive suffering, yet it can be pretty difficult to find someone willing to engage in the sufferfest of 4 or five hours up and down mountains. In hindsight, the obvious solution would have been to not do the Death Ride and thus avoid the pain. But it was a point of pride and physical challenge that perhaps I needed to put myself through to emerge on the other side, hopefully as a better, more empathetic, caring person.