On the bike, space and time can be interchangeable
In Pennsylvania, Germany, Slovakia and many other places I have ridden, the distance between crests of rolling hills is often about a half mile. At an 18mph average speed, that means the distance from hill crest to hill crest is three and a half minutes.
I am re-reading the book "Time and the Art of Living" by Robert Grudin. The book is a meditation on time and the realities and paradoxes of life within time. Grudin writes about the experience of runners on regular routes passing landmarks and knowing that passing a mailbox or an intersection is marker both of time and of distance.
Twice every week for the past twenty years when I am in Lancaster, I ride a 35-mile route with a group of friends. The route goes from Lancaster city through Millersville to Safe Harbor Park, up a long climb to Highville, a fast descent down Turkey Hill, then five miles of flat road along the Susquehanna River, then back through Millersville and home.
From the time the ride leaves at 4 p.m. until the riders split up back in Millersville, I know the time and the distance I have travelled from riding the same route over and over. The exact speed of the ride each day depends on which riders show up. I know that on a day Brad shows up we will descend Turkey Hill at just before 5 p.m. Without Brad, it might 5:04 that we roll down the longest descent.
In addition to time and distance melding, deep emotion changes time perception. Joy erases time, making a single moment seem to stand still: filled to bursting with happiness, and then making hours disappear in joy. That joy makes a single moment spread into the future.
In the same way, pain can turn seconds into hours. The agony of a broken bone has turned seconds into hours for me many times.
When I learned to swim six years ago, the 25-yard pool at the Lancaster YMCA became a metronome for me. I found I could not count laps reliably, but I knew that three minutes was 100 yards so I could track distance on the clock. I went from swimming a quarter mile, to a half mile to a mile and longer, tracking my distance with the clock on the wall.
Since I did not have to think about distance, I could distract myself from the boredom of swimming in a poll by counting or doing squares in my head in other languages. If I did the squares to 5000 in French it was twenty minutes, close to a half mile. In Russian, it was 35 minutes, a kilometer or a little more. Two squared, four. Three, nine. Four, sixteen. Nine, Eighty-one. Twenty, Four Hundred. Forty-four, 1,936. In Russian: два, четыре; три, дебять; сорок йетыре, один тыцяча девятсот тридцать шесть.
Although I have traveled the equivalent of several trips around the world on the Amtrak Keystone train between Lancaster and Philadelphia, time and space do not merge on train trips. At least for me, the seven stops from Lancaster to Philadelphia are time markers, not distance. Eleven minutes to Ardmore, 12 more to Paoli, five to Exton, seven to Downingtown, seven to Coatsville, five to Parksburg, then 18 more minutes to Lancaster--and vice versa. The only distance I feel is Philadelphia to Lancaster or vice versa: on the train, off the train.
But after a decade of riding the train, I decided I could ride to work once in a while. I would ride from Lancaster to Philadelphia along route 30. Every station from Lancaster to Philadelphia except Parksburg is on the Route 30. When I rode, the train stations became time and distance markers on the trip. In the past dozen years I have made the trip maybe 50 times. On the bike, those stations take on new significance.
When I pass Coatsville station I am past the longest hill on the entire route. The rest is flat. At Downingtown, I am halfway. If I reach Downingtown in two hours, I will be in Philadelphia in four hours. At Exton, I can get on the bike trail, add 10 miles to the trip and stay off the busiest roads. Usually I just keep going on Route 30. Paoli is the beginning of the heaviest traffic. Ardmore is close to the Philadelphia City line. Once I am in West Philadelphia the traffic is less, but the roads are terrible--trolley tracks and potholes.
I am writing this on the train from Philadelphia to Lancaster. The trip is 75 minutes to write or read. I am in a warm, metal cylinder on a cold night traveling a mile a minute. No distance. Just time. When I leave the train I will get on my single-speed bike and ride two very cold miles to my house. Nine minutes. I can picture every yard of that trip in my mind.
