Out of Body: My Last Major Bike Ride of the First Summer of the New Me

There are remarkable moments in life that, as they are happening, you know you're living a moment you will never forget. I realized that tonight nearing the end of a 65 minute challenging bike ride. By then I was alone, soaked in sweat with my heart racing and my blood full of exercise-released endorphins. It was pitch black outside and it started to rain. I hadn't felt that alive in many, many years. When you're in those moments, rare as they may be, you welcome the rain. You look at the sky and yell, "Bring it on! I feel incredible!"

With dinner in the oven, I loaded the bikes onto the minivan, picked up my wife from work and we came home to eat supper. The sun sets at 6:25 so we had to be fast to take advantage of what might be the last warm day of Fall.

But it was windy and I headed into it with my daughter towing behind. My heart rate frequently surged past 85% and it was all I could do just to keep going. But we made it to the childrens' play park and I dropped off the wife and kids, detached the ride-on trailer for the first time since I got it a week ago, and rode off back into the night alone to get the minivan.

With the subsiding winds behind me, the trailer no longer dragging on my bike, the streets and pathways empty due to nightfall and my legs thrusting me effortlessly through the blackness, I felt like Superman.

Exhilarated, I thought of myself just three months ago, tentatively opening the shed to look at my once-trusty bicycle, its rear wheel bent. It had sat unused, unloved for the last twelve years. I wondered for the first time if it and I could ever could be one again. After the first try taking it up the street, my legs in pain, my bottom sore, I didn't have a lot of hope, yet I somehow remained determined. Maybe next year, I thought. Maybe if I work hard for a year, I could ride it again.

It's not a cliché, it's not a meaningless expression when I say I couldn't have imagined ever experiencing a moment like that again in my life, only a few months ago. Honestly, I would have given the same weight to someone telling me I'd be an astronaut on the space shuttle.

But with one little step at a time, I built and built and built until I got to this point. If I can go from being a near-invalid to feeling like the world's greatest athlete for a few wonderful minutes in the rain, so can you. Everyone can. You just have to become a believer. To become a believer, you've got to turn off your brain and get out there, do your best, whatever that may be, build on small steps for a little while, and one day when you least expect it, it'll hit you. You'll change and you'll never imagine yourself stopping.