Bicycle Love Response (1)

Hey everyone! I'd say an interesting fact about me is that I've had seven different hair colors since 2010.

I believe that Goodspeed's theme in "Bicycle Love" is finding yourself through times of independence— in this case, solo travel— when reality becomes difficult to manage and navigate. Traveling independently allows you to discover things you may have never known about yourself. When she decides to embark on her solo journey, she is coming from a place in her life where she is unsure of her direction and looks for validation and security from others (her previous boyfriend of five years, her parents). Traveling alone forces her to seek the answers she needed within herself instead, and she learns to push her physical and mental limits farther; for example, Goodspeed writes about how she biked for miles and miles up rigorous hills with no sense of direction. This did exhaust her at the time, but by then she had already become a much stronger person— physically and mentally— and pushed through it. It requires moments when you truly have no one else with you to test your abilities because you only have yourself to rely on.

I truly appreciated how honest Goodspeed is in her essay; she is open about her many moments of struggle and does not portray her trip as the ideal vacation, but instead admits that there were times where the journey was just as difficult to deal with as her life back in the US. She repeats how many times she thought about how scared she was, emphasizing her fear of being alone and facing the unknown, both during the trip and in her life. In the beginning, she sees her bike as "a limitation" and an enemy that is holding her back. She is completely honest about her hesitation about the trip as it became a reality for her, confessing that she even went to "the famous twelfth-century cathedral inspired by the Virgin Mary" because she "sought comfort and refuge" despite not having a very religious background. She started out lost, confused, and unsure of herself and her decision to bike through France; however, she ends just as honestly as she started by explaining the rewards of her trip. She writes: "The bike— which at first made me feel vulnerable— now empowered me." She discovered a strength within herself that she never knew existed, and realized that this strength could exist without the need of anyone else.