Bicycle

He wasn’t fast. He wasn’t racing. There was no crowd, no peloton, no finish line. Just a single rider in a red jacket, slowly making his way up the ramp with the morning light at his back.

I took the photo because it didn’t feel like sport. It felt like something quieter. The kind of repetition that builds into ritual. The kind of ride that’s not about fitness or medals—but about showing up, again and again, no matter the weather, no matter the hour.

There’s a lot said about cycling: the tech, the stats, the watts and splits. But this image reminded me that, at its heart, cycling isn’t a competition. It’s a decision. One you make every day—to keep moving forward, to keep climbing, even when the climb is only a bridge, even when no one’s watching.

The curved line painted on the pavement could almost be a thought. Wandering, looping, finding its way toward elevation. The sign says “pedestrian area,” the ramp says “cyclists only.” But the body on the bike says: I go where I go, because I need to go.

There’s no age in this photo. No boundary, no limit. The man could be 25 or 75. What matters is the motion. And the solitude. Because in cycling, the toughest opponent is never the wind or the hill. It’s the voice that tells you to stop.

And today, like every other ride before this one, he didn’t.