The Daily Commute
I ride my bike to the Olympic Oval in Calgary twice a day, most days. It’s this commute that allows me to slow things down, let go of stress and pressure that seems to build more and more these days. Each time I spin the wheels west to the rink I find something new along the way: a hawk screeches from a rooftop as if to say hello; the lady with her kids is sometimes there smiling at me; the man who landscapes an entire community of condos is busy working, but not too busy to say ‘hi’. So many small things that make me smile as I pedal towards another torturous training session. Some days I’m filled with fatigue and angst, even completely unmotivated for what lay ahead; other days I’m bursting at the seams with energy that I can’t wait to unleash on the ice, in the weight room or on the bike. No matter the day, or the feeling, I really do enjoy that time to myself when my senses are heightened.
This morning was no exception. In the dark morning hours of this late autumn, pre-time-change days of late sun and oddly long evenings, I pedalled along gingerly. Each revolution sent daggers of pain through my legs from the day prior’s weight lifting session. In the dark, I approached the oval.
Just ahead was person pushing a bike, loaded with a rather large object. The closer I got, I realized it was a woman wheeling her bicycle, and her young son running beside. Actually, he was skipping. The object on her bike was a bag. Hockey stick in hand, the boy would sprint ahead, look back at his Mom, giddy with joy, and she would smile back. He was off to the oval to play hockey on one of the smaller rinks inside the 400m surface I skate circle after circle on, each and every day.
Speculation makes me think that this family did not have a car, and the Mom was doing what she could to get her kid to that rink. They appeared to be of very modest means, the bag on the back of the old bike not being of the official hockey sort, though surely stuffed with hockey gear.
I couldn’t help but think of all the times my Mom made it work for me, back on the cold, Winnipeg mornings. Be it by car pooling or driving me herself, she always made the time for sport because she knew it was something that I liked to do. The joy in that little boy’s skip made me feel happy for him and happy inside that I, too, was off to ‘play’.
I shared this story with teammate Kristina Groves. She laughed and told me about what she witnessed on her bike ride into the oval this morning: a hockey day lugging his unmotivated son’s bag to the rink. The kid sulked behind dressed with all the best hockey gear and the Dad led the way.
What a contrast.
I fell in the first few laps of skating today, making the bizarre mistake of not putting my blade on the ice when crossing over in the turn, flying bum-first into the protective padding. I got up, laughed it off, and got right back into the train of black skinsuits skating in synchronicity.
Nothing was going to ruin the impact of that little boy’s joy on my day!
