The Breakaway(114)

Every Saturday, Abby led her riders on different loops through the park, past the Please Touch Museum and the Japanese Tea House and the Belmont Plateau. Once a month, when the ride was over, they’d go to a coffee shop and listen to a guest speaker, typically one of Abby’s friends, or a friend of a friend: a psychologist who talked about self-esteem, a nutritionist who talked about eating to be healthy and strong, a teacher who discussed note-taking strategies and good study habits. Abby thought about what she wished she’d known, or been told, when she was their age, and tried to find people who could fill in those blanks. Even though she knew some of the girls were facing challenges she couldn’t imagine, she knew, or at least hoped, that riding a bike would give them some respite, and the speakers would give them some knowledge, and those things, combined, would give them some strength.

Eileen had sent her, without comment, Sebastian’s article about the Empire State Trail ride when it had been published, three weeks after the trip had ended. Abby had held her breath, imagining the worst, but the story was a straightforward travelogue about the trail, the riding conditions, the different trips you could take and the different outfitters that led them. The photographs were all shots of Lincoln or Sebastian on the trail, and what looked like handout art from the New York State tourism board. There was a single mention of Breakaway, and no mention at all of Abby. She’d thought about writing to him, to tell him she’d enjoyed the story, but decided not to. He had her number. If he wanted to get in touch, he could. But, as the months went on, he didn’t. Abby did her best to forget him and move on.

Then, one Sunday morning in August, almost a year after the last time she’d seen him, a story landed in her inbox. Lincoln had sent it. Thought you’d want to see this, he’d written. Hope you’re well. Abby had swallowed hard and clicked the link. The headline read THE BREAKAWAY, and the byline was Sebastian Piersall.

Abby sank down in her office chair and began to read.

The best trips can change you. You start off in one place, as one version of yourself, and you end up, days or weeks or months or even years later, not just having been somewhere else, but, maybe, having become someone else. Hopefully someone better. You’ve been new places, you’ve seen new things, you’ve faced challenges and overcome them. All of that, ideally, leaves you new and improved… or, if not completely new, at least somewhat improved.

That’s how it went for me.

Last August, at the end of the summer, I rode my bike from Midtown Manhattan to the Canadian border. I wrote about the route, the scenery, the history of the Empire State Trail, the various outfitters that run trips and the small towns and big cities you’ll see along the way.

What I didn’t mention in that story was that I started off the ride in disgrace; in the midst of a public shaming that commenced the second day of my ride.

All through my twenties, and into my thirties, I’d been active on the dating apps, meeting different women every weekend. I didn’t see the harm in it—I was having a good time. Then one of my dates got together with her friends, and seven out of eight of them realized they’d spent time with me (you can insert your own air quotes around “meeting” and “spent time with me”). Cue the social media mob. For a few days back then, I was the Internet’s main character. I trended on Twitter; I made a few late-night-comedians’ monologues. I was a cautionary tale; a target; a punch line in padded shorts.

You can google it. I’ll wait.

If there’s one thing biking is good for, it’s giving you time to be alone with your thoughts… especially if you’re riding through the woods of upstate New York, where the scenery’s pretty but not especially exciting, and you’re undisturbed by cars, or people, with nothing to focus on but whatever’s going on in your brain. As the miles unspooled, I went through all the stages of grief: denial (this can’t be happening!), anger (I didn’t do anything wrong!), bargaining (maybe if I post an apology this will all go away), depression (my love life is over), worse depression (my entire life is over), and, finally, acceptance—as in, maybe I did do something wrong. Maybe I need to think about why I felt the need to behave like a kid who’d just stepped into Baskin-Robbins and was determined to sample all thirty-one flavors before he left. Maybe I need to, as the saying goes, do some work on myself. Maybe there’s a problem here.

That mess was compounded by the fact that the ride leader was a woman I’d met, years before. We had met the old-fashioned way: in a bar, at the tail end of a bachelorette party. We didn’t spend much time together, but I felt an immediate connection with her, a sense of I want to know this person, and I want her to know me. I’d never felt like that before. But I didn’t get her number. I didn’t expect to ever see her again. When it turned out that she was the one leading this bike trip, I felt incredibly lucky, that the Universe was giving me another chance. When the scandal began, I felt incredibly un-lucky, that this woman was seeing me in the worst light possible. I thought she would never trust me… and, worse, that she’d be right not to trust me.

I knew that it was time to make changes. And, as it turned out, the two weeks on my bike were just the start of my journey. Without going into the goopy, woo-woo therapy-speak details, I spent the next weeks and months working on myself, trying to figure out why I’d had bountiful sex but very little intimacy. Some of it had to do with my family, and some of it had to do with toxic masculinity, living in a culture that rewards men for conquests when what we’re really doing is hiding, avoiding, refusing to be vulnerable—which is, of course, a thing you need real strength to do.