Nov 10, 2016 4 min read

Among my most prized possessions is my bicycle. It’s a black steel-framed hybrid I bought in 2007 for what was a lot of money back then. Since then I have pedaled that bike from Washington, D.C., to Pittsburgh, have pedaled through the vineyard land of Argentina, through Amish country in Ohio, and on all the trails in Western Pennsylvania. Before the odometer croaked, it read 1,800 miles, and that was five years ago.

“Why do you like it so much?” my daughter asks, each time I ask her to join me for a ride. It’s obvious: the exercise; it gets me outside; I’m pretty good at it.

But my rides this fall, the rides that carried me across miles of crunchy leaves and golden-red light, have made me think harder about her question.

So much of life, especially lately, spins past us at a dizzying pace. Thanks to media, we no longer have to go looking for news or for points of view, because it comes to us. No – it comes at us.

Once, while working as a reporter for a Pittsburgh TV station, I went to the Buhl Planetarium to do a story about cyclones. I can’t remember the context of this assignment, but this was back in the day when we covered stories simply because they were interesting.

At the science center, I climbed into a box used to demonstrate the power of swirling wind. I wore a swishy skirt to work that day. The winds were many miles an hour. I think you can share my mental picture of that. I held on with one hand and tried to keep my skirt corralled with the other.

That’s how life has felt to me lately: me sitting there trying to hold on as everything blows around me. I look around and try to choose what I can control and what I can’t, and how to react. I feel as though I’m at the mercy of the news cyclone, and the news cycle.

Not so on my bike, where life’s aggressive paradigm can be flipped for a while. On my bike, I am pedaling through the world, speeding by while everything else stands still. At a speed of about 14 miles per hour, there’s lots of air swirling past. But I have the feeling not of life swirling past me, but of me swirling through it.

Those of us in Washington County and southern Allegheny County are so fortunate to have the Montour and Panhandle trails. I’ve come to know almost every mile.

I know that near the trailhead in Coraopolis, the stream sparkles in the late afternoon; the Enlow Tunnel is like a cool, damp cellar on hot summer days; some groundhogs are smart enough to wait until you pass before crossing and some are not (there have been a few close calls).

Occasionally I will stop for a look. On a Sunday afternoon last week, the woolly caterpillars were out. Half were all black and half were mostly reddish brown. If the old saw is true that the darker the caterpillar, the colder the winter, then I don’t know what to expect. Even the critters can’t agree this year.

Sadly, it will soon be time to remove the bike rack from my car. Much as I love it, I don’t ride when the weather drops below 55 degrees or so – it’s just too cold. But I see others out there riding, even in the snow and ice. Maybe I should invest in cold-weather riding gear, and keep the bike rack on.

I may need to stop the swirling, like most of us do.

Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.