Life is busy. It’s busy for you and for us and for our kids and for our parents. There is no getting around it, life is busy and presses us all from all sides.

Work is always there looming, crouching like a panther in the dark, ready to spring up with the first chime of your alarm clock much too early on a Monday morning. The work week is there, ready to indoctrinate you once again with cold water to your face, (apologies to the clash).

In the day to day race of never ending errands and work and commitments to this adult life it's much too easy to forget who you are. It’s easy to do. We all do it. We look around at our friends and those we don’t even like and wonder if we are doing as well as we should. We wonder if we could do more, more with our time, more with our attention, always more, the striving for more, the gravity of it can be suffocating. The feeling that no matter what we do it won’t be enough, that we don’t measure up, that feeling that we fall short of what we think we should have or be is crushing. Time marches on. It is the lucky few of us who can throw a leg over the saddle whenever we like and ride and wash it all away.

In this busy life riding becomes everything. It is solace, it is simplicity, it’s moving through life at your own pace, under your own speed, legs the only engine. Grinding uphills or flying down mountain passes or just racing the bike courier home through city streets. Riding connects all of us to the world, it makes us present in the moment. Riding makes us remember who we are. “Non Dimenticare Chi Sei” means “Don’t forget who you are”, don’t forget your joy, don’t forget your love for the road and the freedom it brings, don’t forget the fire that burned in your 14 year old heart. Don't forget that freedom that you found when you knew the world was a big place and it was all new and you didn’t have the answers yet. It means not to forget who you wanted to be and that you can be that person still. It means you can have yourself back, the person you know is there under the crush of your busy busy life.

For us it means not to forget these things and to simply ride, alone or with friends, early or late, but to just ride. Mr Merckx said it best “Ride as much or as little or as long or as short as you feel. But ride.”

The bike is a simple enough machine, it gives more than it gets. Cycling passes onto us a sort of grace where we are connected to the world and each other through effort and exploration. Cycling makes things simple, just to breathe and turn the pedals and to remember who you are. Always remember that person you know is there.

Non Dimenticare Chi Sei.

A portfolio from Simon Winnall

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after hours in the city

June 7th, 2023

A portfolio from Rennie Solis

April 28th, 2023

June 7^th, 2023

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