Or an average of 1.55 hours / day on the bike since moving west. Hill climbs, group rides, lunch rides, dirt rides, recovery rides, mountain pass descents in stinging rain, aimless wiggles down farm roads as the sun tucks behind the foothills.

The racer asks: What are you training for? (Nothing in particular)

The non-racer wrinkles their nose: What are you running from? (Why run when you have a bicycle?)

On my nightstand: Tim Krabbé’s The Rider. Under it The Book of Disquiet. Dollar bills run-through-the-wash as bookmarks.

New York, particularly that New York of name-making and fortune-chasing, works to reduce you to an ego. And a naked ego swells. It distorts and consumes in an attempt to protect itself.

I came here to be a body. Not ego, not mind, just flesh. And sometimes, on my best days, a little less.

A taut sinew, a shortness of breath, a constant pressure on the pedals, a single turn of the cranks.