Bicycle Love Response

Hello everyone! I'm Yufei Qu and I'm totally new with blog-I guess that's a fun fact about me. I'm from China, this is my third years in the States, and I love my experiences here in America very much. I have a deep love for travel, and I think it is influenced by my parents because we have a tradition to visit different places every year began when I was in kindergarten. I certainly miss these days spent with my family.

Now let's talk about Goodspeed's essay Bicycle Love:
 
1) I think the theme of Goodspeed’s essay is pursuance. Goodspeed did not know the meaning of the trip when she first started it; she was simply pursuing a different experience. Then, when she actually peddled the bicycle, she started pursuing a destination. Along the trip, her growth on her personality and ability to travel is noticeable: emotional changed from terrified to unafraid, physical ability developed from poor to efficient(rode more than ten hours).  The purpose of this trip is not simply pursuing a destination anymore; rather, it is pursuing a better, stronger self. Furthermore, as she searched different routes to bike, she was in fact looking for a direction for her own: when she was wondering around and lost in the way, it is similar to the situation that she had no idea what to do with her life; when she found the best bike to travel with, it is like she found the best way to live herself. In the end, she was not only pursuing the destination for the trip, but pursuing an accomplishment of her own.

2) The language that struck me is where Goodspeed wrote about she just graduated from college: “In the same month, I ended a five-year relationship with my high school sweetheart and canceled a nine-hundred-mile backpacking trip we had been planning together…I quit my job and gave up my department. I was loath to return to the world I had grown up in, but I had suddenly forsaken the one I’d created.” She wrote paired sentences which relate to each other and are structured the same way, providing effective and impressive description to her situation. I also find it is interesting how Goodspeed used French quotes in the essay. Although Goodspeed did not translate them word by word, by reading her following reply or narration, I, as a reader, can interpret and still under stand the context. This is another language use which hits me in a different way.