“I’m fine. But I’m having a bit of an emergency,” Lizzie said. “Work related, not health related,” she quickly added. “It’s a Breakaway thing.”
It took Abby a few seconds to remember that Breakaway was one of Lizzie’s employers, a bicycle touring company that hired Lizzie to lead trips in the summer. Or, at least, they had hired Lizzie to lead summer trips in the pre-COVID years.
“So listen.” Lizzie was speaking quickly. Possibly she was imagining that if she delivered her request fast enough, Abby wouldn’t say no. “Marj just called me. They’re running a trip from New York City to Niagara Falls, and the guy who was supposed to lead it flaked at the last minute. The trip leaves Sunday, and they’re desperate.”
“Sunday as in this Sunday? As in, four days from now Sunday?”
“Yup. Is there any chance—any chance at all—that you’d lead it?” Lizzie sounded a little breathless after blurting out her pitch. “You’d be saving Marj’s life.”
This wasn’t the first time Lizzie had asked her to lead a Breakaway trip. Abby had always turned her down. But that night, out on the sidewalk, with Mark waiting for her at their table, Abby found her heart was beating quickly. Part of her—most of her—was thinking No way, while another part—the dark, frightened part that had been pulsing, quietly but emphatically in her brain as soon as Mark had started talking about Abby’s lease—was thinking, Yes, you can.
Instead of the no Lizzie was surely expecting, Abby said, “I haven’t ever led a bike trip.”
“You lead rides all the time!” Lizzie countered.
This was true. At least once a month, on a weekday morning, Abby would lead a group of eight or ten fellow members of the Bicycle Club of Philadelphia on a twenty-five- or thirty-mile jaunt that always included a stop at a farmers market or a restaurant or a coffee shop. “Okay, but those are just rides, not an entire trip.”
“And what is a trip, but consecutive days of rides?” Lizzie asked rhetorically. “Listen. You know how to manage a group of riders. You know how to change a flat. And it’s a supported trip, so you don’t have to help set up tents, or cook over a campfire. The guy driving the sag wagon is great—I’ve worked with him before. It’s two weeks. Fourteen people. Very reasonable mileage. And Marj said she’d pay two thousand dollars.”
Abby licked her lips. Two thousand dollars wasn’t much less than she earned for an entire month at Pup Jawn.
“And you’re not doing anything pressing at the moment, right?”
Abby slumped against the restaurant’s brick wall. “No. Not now, and not ever.”
“Stop that,” Lizzie said sharply. “You can have your existential crisis later. Right now, just tell me if you can do this or not.”
“How many people have you and Marj already tried?”
“Not important,” said Lizzie. Translation: lots.
Abby considered. Riding her bike was her favorite thing in the world. It had been, ever since she was a girl… and she loved bike trips. She was rarely happier than when she got to load her gear and her clothes into panniers and head out for an all-day, sixty-or seventy-mile ride, on paved rail-to-trail pathways, or packed dirt towpaths or back roads or on the wide shoulders of busy city streets, alone or with a friend or with a group. She loved how it felt when she was starting out, when the sun was just coming up and the streets were quiet and it felt like she had the whole world to herself. She loved how it felt when the ride was over, and she’d climb off her bike, take a long, hot shower, rinse the road grit and sunscreen off her arms and legs and scrub away the grease that her chain left on the inside of her right calf as the aches in her legs and in the small of her back faded. She loved the first sip of beer, the first bite of pizza, after a long day in the saddle, and the feeling of climbing into her sleeping bag in her tent or tucking herself under the covers in a hotel room and falling into sound, dreamless sleep.
Even though she’d never led a trip, Abby knew that she was at least somewhat qualified. She’d been through her club’s ride-leader training, and she’d taken a class at her local bike shop, where she’d learned basic safety and repairs and first aid.
Abby looked through the restaurant’s windows. She could see Mark, at their table, looking at his phone, smiling at the server as she refilled Abby’s water. “How many people did you say?” she heard herself asking.