Rest in Peace, Heinz Stucke, Who Saw the World by Bike
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> There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. A life of good days lived in the senses is not enough. The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less; time is ample and its passage sweet. Who would call a day spent reading a good day? But a life spent reading -- that is a good life.
Whether she would have agreed that his was a life of the spirit, I don’t know, but I think so. I know from my own time in the saddle that long trips are sensory primarily in their suffering and the quest for more is sated when the miles and kilometers lose their meaning.
A day spent riding is mostly a waste. A life spent riding, I can only wish for.
Many of us do not regard our lives as so well lived as you think. Honestly, there's something wrong mentally with most people who live like this: people are often fleeing trauma, or they would have problems maintaining normal social bonds if they stayed put. Having to live without local community, spouse, children can leave one feeling unrooted and envious of normies, no matter how beautiful the landscapes we roll across are. Many people who met Heinz Stucke noted that he seemed unhappy.
I once was on an Audax ride with some guy I just met. 12:30 we pick up together at a gas station and decide to share lights, we’re targeting the same stop anyway. Some time before 2 he asks me, in a kind of sincerity that’s hard to find in real life, “what do you tell people when they ask you if it was fun?” I said I usually told them that I learned something. He said he had stopped explaining.
I stopped explaining also at some point. It’s a communion for me with a wildness I will not know in my real life, not without irreversible consequences. I think there’s something wrong with me for wanting it at all, but, at least in this aspect of life, I am committed to living the less examined life.