My New Hat.
Last weekend, I bought a new hat.
When I went through a tough breakup nearly a year ago, I ended up with more baggage in my hands than I remember going in with. I was mired in that sinkhole of depression and self-loathing that tends to clasp to your ankles, dragging behind you and scuffing the floors as you walk.
I remember so clearly the heavy weight of my breath as it tumbled out of every sigh and I remember how difficult it was to shirk – even for a minute. I would lay down to nap and my brain gave wind to some kind of perverse pinwheel of images, flickering scenes of my grief and shame in front of me unendingly. With no escape (or, as a friend later describe it, ‘positive distraction’), these impulses quickly made me profoundly sore.
It was then that, in a desperate plea to find some grounding, I packed my car up and went back to my hometown outside of Philadelphia for a few days. There, my good friend Mike and I spent some time getting our hands greasy and building what would soon become that little plastic table that pizza delivery guys sit gingerly in the middle of your pizza.
My bike. It was a lime green and black Trek from 1992, and it was my very first road bike. Bicyclists have legends about how, when you first sit on a road bike and start pounding on the gears, your heart turns to jelly and you instantly fall in love with them – and it was astonishingly true. I fell in wobbly, uneasy and chain-slippingly powerful love with the machine.
Through the days following in that summer, I rode each night to power through that sulky, craggy mess of emotions and gone-wrongs – and it worked. I felt something new and something exciting, after having felt positively nothing for so long. Each time I rode, I grew closer to other bike people in Pittsburgh and eventually grew to become someone who, just two years prior, I insisted that I had neither the interest nor money to become: a guy who was in love with bicycles.
Last Friday, I dragged my bike out of my living room and rode it through town, sweating, cranking and listening to my back ache in terror. I was wearing a cycling cap I had bought just that morning, and as I rode, I felt like a different person – a determined person. When I wore that hat, I felt cool. I had more energy, I rode faster, and I blew by casual riders with aptitude and confidence. It made me happy, and I felt so free, I didn’t recognize myself at first.
Each time I fit that tight hat onto my head and roll out onto the street, I feel disconnected from the nervous, anxious and self-conscious Mitch that stares at the world from behind a set of worn-out glasses – I feel like a savvy, controlled and cultured son of the road.
And, as I rode towards the sun and let my new hat shield my eyes, I thought, “maybe there’s nothing wrong with buying a new hat.”
