shadow of a wheel

 made the rare (these days) decision to watch some tv, specifically this recent documentary from pbs - shadow of a wheel - which concerns a group of american teenagers cycling across their country in 1982

loved . i loved it because of the way the documentary managed, somehow, to make both the teenagers and their older selves present at the same time, and thru that i remembered my own teenage self, my own time on the bike, and, like them, the way those experiences manifest themselves in the present. i can't imagine a life without the bike. indeed, i can't imagine what my life would have been like without cycling in it, and everything that lead from that. only books have any equivalency in terms of effect.

an added bonus, and who knows how they got all the permissions, was this is one of the best soundtracked pieces of film i've seen. i knew all the songs even if i couldn't remember who sang them! and there they are, just like i was, numbed into inactivity by music videos, as mtv arrives. as they lie about, moan, sleep, let of fireworks etc i can't think of anything else that quite captures the immediacy of teenagehood, the black and white certainty, the insecurity, the newness.

but after watching it i'm more certain than ever that, after finishing my last zwift target that's it for me with strava, koms, zwift, all of that, and giving myself up to the very thing that got me out on the bike on the first place, the need to be on the road, the need to see what was round the next corner, to be on my own, encountering the world at a pace befitting my years, taking my time, stepping off, seeing the colours. i highly, highly, recommend this film