FLASH-POINT BLOGGER: SUSANNA LOEWY

Last summer, I had the most amazing legs.

I mean, really - I biked across the country (from Jacksonville, FL to San Francisco, CA), and by the time I had reached Santa Fe, NM, my legs were freaking awesome.

None of my pants fit, mind you (strong quads=big quads=pants not fitting up and over your butt), but jeez... I had some kick-ass muscles, and I liked wearing skirts.

Now, I put on my spandex to go on the first ride of the season (I know, I know - it's been WAY too long), and as I get on my bike and glance down at my legs, I can't help but feel a bit mortified by the lack of muscle tone.

Yeah, I taught spinning classes all year. Yeah, I went on a week-long biking tour over winter break. But the truth is that it takes a good month of solid biking to build up the kind of leg that makes you look like a real athlete. When am I going to have another MONTH to just. bike.? Ever? God, I miss it. Biking makes you feel so free, so void of problems and responsibilities and scandal.

But actually, what I miss most is the feeling that I was doing something great. I was biking across the US with a bunch of idealistic 20-somethings, and I was having the time of my life.

I'm happy right now (and my beautiful pink Orbea Diva with FP80 wheels is a lot easier to ride than the entry level bike Bike and Build gave me), but there is definitely a part of me that wishes I was still sleeping on church floors and consuming 5,000 calories of junk food a day.

And yeah, I definitely miss those huge biking legs.

Over the summer, as I biked across the country, I discovered so much. I learned about the overwhelming poverty across the country, I began to understand the principles of other religions and lifestyles, and I got to see scenery I didn't even know existed prior to starting out on the summer trek.

I met some wonderful people, and all in all - I had the best summer of my life.

But amongst those 32 people with whom I pedaled across the country, one in particular really stands out. And here's a surprise - it's not my boyfriend, who I did actually meet on the trip.

It was the 2008 Bike and Build Southern Route resident bike mechanic; let's call him Jordan.

From the very beginning, Jordan established himself as the person who knew the most about bikes. He could of course change a flat tire in less than 2 minutes, but that's not special in and of itself (hell, by mid-summer, when I had become the person who was most plagued by flat tires, I could do that too). But Jordan could do more; Jordan could do it all. When my cleat (and hence my shoe) got stuck on my pedal on Day 2 of riding, he managed to detach it, when everyone else just averted their eyes and looked at me with a worried glance.

Every night, Jordan tweaked his bike. He kept perfect care of it; he never would have allowed the drippings of lunchtime peanut butter and jelly that were coating my derailleur. His bike was always fine tuned, and his biking was most certainly better for it.

Because that's perhaps one of the most valuable lessons I learned from Jordan... If you treat your equipment well, you'll inevitably be a better biker. You and your bike will be better friends, the gears won't break as you're attempting to summit that last mountain of the day, and maybe, just maybe, you'll get fewer flats if you do a cursory check of your tires before you leave. And consequently, you'll be a faster biker, you'll enjoy biking more, and on a cross country bike trip (or a race, or a biking experience of any kind, really), you'll just be a happier person.

But Jordan was more than just a casual repairman. As the summer went on and the bike casualties increased, Jordan took care of everyone, being kind about having to stop on the road, and never once allowing his eyes to roll towards the back of his head, even though I'm sure his exasperation was reaching its limit.

And besides all that, Jordan was pretty damn cool. In his past, everyday life, Jordan was a bike messenger, so he knew how to do tricks, ranging from a track stand to riding backwards (sitting on the handlebars and pedaling towards the back wheel), and his mount and dismount prompted me to spend an entire afternoon dedicating myself to mastering his one-legged swoop (I never managed).

And damn, Jordan could dance. He was funny and was an integral part in making the 30+ of us gel into a cohesive group.

I know, I know - Jordan sounds perfect. And maybe he was. I don't really know. I don't know what he's doing now, because I don't think I've talked to him since that last day in San Francisco, after arriving at the Pacific Ocean.

But what I do know is this - despite all the things that made Jordan what he is, what stands out most in my mind is his ability to become one with his bike; his skills at making that 2-wheeled machine reach it's fully capability were insurmountable, and he taught me that (since the layperson could, in fact, do it), I should strive to be able to do the same. I should care enough, and be less lazy, and although I'm still not a bike mechanic and I still occasionally avoid cleaning tasks, some little bit of me is changed because of Jordan, and in the back of my mind, at least now I know what I should be doing.

I remember saying that quite a few times this summer.

We would stop along the route to get snacks or refill our water or go to the bathroom... and inevitably, someone would ask us what we were doing - our jerseys and bikes and our general psychotic sleep-deprived demeanor made us very obviously outside of the norm.

And so, enter canned spiel: "We're part of a group called Bike and Build. There are 32 of us, and we're biking across the country and building houses for affordable housing groups, like Habitat for Humanity. We each raised $4,000 before starting the trip, so our group raised $130,000 before we left. There are 7 different routes traveling across the country right now, so there are about 210 of us biking and building across the US. We're the Southern route. We started in Jacksonville, FL and are finishing in San Francisco, CA in August. Look, you can see our route on the back of my jersey - we're the yellow line traveling across the bottom of the country..."

And it's not that I wasn't enthusiastic about it; I was - and really, that little speech was part of the whole point of the trip. We were supposed to be spreading awareness as we rode across the country; otherwise, we might as well have just stopped in one place and built for the entire summer...

But, as our legs and minds got tired and we occasionally got frustrated with biking and each other, it was sometimes hard to muster up enough pep in my voice. Sometimes I just wanted to drink my chocolate milk and not think about anything else.

So today on the way back from teaching Spinning, as I stopped at a convenience store to get milk and cereal and got questioned as to why I was wearing spandex and dripping sweat all over the aisles, I smiled and told the guy I was a Spinning teacher at the gym up the road. He started to tell me about someone he knew who rode 80 miles over the weekend. I smiled and nodded (hell, it's more than I did this weekend!), and he asked me if I had ever done that sort of thing.

I grinned, and said yes - over the summer I biked across the country - from Florida to California... and I helped build houses along the way. And I realized I had a note of pride in my voice. I went on with the speech and it didn't feel forced or contrived. I was talking about it because I wanted to - because it's worth talking about. The guy was duly impressed, told me I was a good person, and held the door open for me as I left.

I don't know if I deserve the 'good person' treatment, but I do know that the little time away from Bike and Build has renewed the spark; I knew it was awesome at the time, but it's just easy to get bogged down in the every day trivialities and forget that what you're doing is kind of amazing.

The 2009 Bike and Build applications are online and I spent the better part of an hour just clicking through the different routes and letting my heart beat and mouth water with anticipation... I'm thinking of being a leader next year. There's a new route (South Carolina to Santa Cruz) that features a week long Blitz Build in Colorado Springs, CO where you build an entire house. It's the longest route to date (10 weeks and 4,500+ miles, I've heard), and travels up the Rockies instead of 'just' over them.

I'm not committing yet; I have too much going on right now to know what I'm going to be doing this summer... but it's definitely on my mind. Being a leader would be good for me; both with organizational skills (procrastination, anyone?) and with being able to assert myself in a group situation (public speaking is not exactly my forte; think I could get away with just playing the flute in morning circle?)...

At the very least though, now Bike and Build is novel again, and regardless of what next summer brings, I can't wait to get back on the road and be questioned about what the hell I'm doing in a stinky uniform jersey at a rest stop in the middle of nowhere.