I VISCERALLY REMEMBER MY LAST RIDE. It was a Saturday morning in April two years ago, and a buddy and I were riding to a breakfast spot a few towns over. Twenty miles tops, all of them flat. I thought I would be okay.
By the time this ride happened, I could no longer remember what it felt like to ride a bike without pain. It would start within the first five, maybe ten minutes of a ride, spreading like a hot liquid from a specific spot in my low back, close to the spine. This was happening on every ride, even the easiest spin to the coffee shop.
Sometimes I would tell the people I was riding with that it was happening. Sometimes I would try to hide that anything was wrong because I didn't want to hold up the ride. Interrupt anyone else's good time. Be a "burden." Or maybe it was because I was trying to wish it out of existence, and if I just pretended hard enough that everything was fine, then it actually would be.
But everything was not fine, although, at the time of this ride, my last ride, I didn't yet know that. Or at least I didn't want to know.
I opted for "pretending everything was fine" for as long as I could-it was such a nice day, after all-until we were getting close to home. That's when I shared with the person I was riding with that it felt like someone was jamming a screwdriver into the right side of my lower back, right above my hips and next to my lumbar spine. That it was excruciating and that I was getting scared that something was seriously wrong.
He shrugged. "Yeah, but did you die?" Thankfully, shortly after that, the ride was over.
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