It is amazing how our perceptions of birthdays change as we age.
When you were young, it was the one day of the year on which the Earth revolved around you. Your friends and family sing songs in your honor, shower you with presents, and serve you your favorite food — sugar. It was your favorite day, and you looked forward to it year-round.
As a teenager, you were probably too cool to hang out with your family on your birthday. The expectation of gifts and cake still existed, because it was still your day, but the list of people you want to share your day with was culled, dramatically.
In your twenties, the gifts mostly disappear, but your friends and the family you want to see celebrate with you by allowing you to get absolutely wrecked without judgment. This might continue beyond your twenties.
To some, it becomes just another day, while others expect the Earth to revolve around them for that one day for his or her entire life. For most of us though, how we celebrate birthdays evolves as we do.
Last year, on my 32nd birthday, I decided to celebrate it in a way that I had never celebrated anything before, by taking a long bike ride.
As you may recall from Chapter One, my goal in my first year of cycling was to ride my bike from West Dundee, Illinois to St. Charles, Illinois and back, but my efforts were thwarted by an injury that required me to take a break from riding. That was my goal for this ride. I was going to finally achieve it by riding to Mount Saint Mary Park, eating lunch in the park, and then riding home, and I made it to the park…and it was easy as hell.
Ten months removed from my painful, four-mile birth into cycling, I had ridden half of my planned 30-mile trip with ease. So instead of stopping there, I kept on heading south along the river to Geneva. When I got to this tranquil little island park (which is appropriately named “Island Park”), I stopped and ate my lunch (a couple of granola bars), took an embarrassing selfie (not pictured), and rode home. In all, it was 34 miles, and it was the longest bike ride of my life.
The next day, I drove to the spot where I had turned around and continued south to Batavia, but this time I was running.
This year I did pretty much the same thing. I prepped with a juice cleanse for the three days prior (more on that eventually), and on my birthday itself, I ran 1.3 miles to maintain my 23-day run streak (more on that eventually) and then headed out on the trail on my bike. This time instead of riding to Geneva, I rode to West Chicago and back.
So why am I celebrating with hours of exercise instead of getting blotto?
In previous years, when I would raise a glass, I was not raising it to “another year.” I was raising it to numb the pain (as described in Prologue and Chapter 4). Not only is that no longer necessary, but it is incongruous with how I want my life to be.
I am no longer celebrating my birth; I am celebrating my rebirth. (Forgive my melodrama, but I cannot resist parallelism.) I am celebrating my health – both physical and mental. Mostly I am celebrating that life is staggeringly improbable, and even though it is ultimately unpredictable, the profound changes I have made over the last couple of years potentially have allowed me to ride just a little bit longer.
One Man Wrecking Machine 