As You Bike It

What would Lance do? The thought flashed through my head about the time a tour bus whooshed by three feet to my left, splashing rain and rocking the air in waves, wobbling my front wheel crazily toward the swollen canal rushing way too close to my right foot. My glasses were fogged, the sky was blue-black with a sick tinge of yellow, I was nine miles into a 50-mile bike ride that I knew ended with a two-mile climb, and my new over-the-shoulder spandex biking pants—which the guides had urged me to buy, and which made me look like Spider-Man in his pension years—were beginning to chafe. “The first rule of biking,” said Jessica, one of the trip leaders, “is no underwear.” It’s not as sexy as it sounds. A huge garbage truck veered near to avoid colliding with a white Fiat passing on a curve in the driving rain. What would Lance do? I knew what he would do, and I was determined to do the same, if at all possible. In the meantime, I opened my mouth to the rain, then—contemplating six more days of biking through this “tranquil” region of Italy, as the catalog described it—screamed to the heavens: “This is insane!” … Back to Article