The group isn’t what Susan expected. Afterward she admitted that she really didn’t have any expectations about the other travelers, but while on the bicycle vacation she was struck by conditions that shouldn’t have surprised her. There were two dozen other people around, and no one smoked. Some had a bit of extra flesh but no one was obese. All were white and middle-class or richer. They generally seemed happier and healthier than folks Susan saw on public transportation, on cruises, or in casinos. The married folks seemed more in love. This apparent happiness made the group more interesting to Susan than such homogeneity would normally be. She observed them with more attention. She found cracks in the happiness: tales of babies unbegotten, estranged offspring of old marriages, false smiles on salesmen. She saw insecurity in the tanned wobbly thighs of blonde wives and the excessive luggage of all couples. She witnessed weary longing in the faces of males returned to competition. Her observations made her more interested in and tender toward the others, and more satisfied with her own life.

Above everything else, she is surprised at the quality of solitude she has achieved on the trip.

She hadn’t known she would ride alone. But even the wide highway shoulders don’t permit easy companionship; only the engaged couple on the tandem (walking the bike up every steep hill) and the inseparable newlyweds (he tenderly slowing to her frustrated pace) made the effort to converse. Susan saw her fellows, but she spent her days pedaling, braking, leaning, and looking out at glaciation and in at her reserves.

She hasn’t encountered her own heart in a great while, but that happens on this the fourth day of the ride. She knows her cardiovascular fitness; she isn’t surprised that her heart and lungs are up to it, but today she meets her own hearty determination.

Only eight of their 26 opt to ride up the pass. The climb is an unremitting eight miles, into a headwind, and it’s happening after four and a half hours already spent on the bike. Susan and Julie are the only women who try it.

The effort doesn’t take any particular technique, except the trick of maintaining enough forward motion to balance when pedaling in such a low gear. It takes work, and the continuing decision to keep pedaling.

Susan tries to distract herself from her tender crotch and her pushing feet by looking at the scenery. That helps, but it takes more than beauty to start up the third incline. She wonders if Julie is ahead of her chanting “muf-fins, muf-fins.”

Several times she considers giving it up. Once she almost dismounts for good. But she keeps telling herself eight miles equals 12 kilometers equals 12,000 meters; what are 12,000 meters? Do them one at a time…keep pedaling to that post up ahead on the curve…now go for that clump of wildflowers against the boulders…

When she tops the climb and hits the level stretch to the pass marker she begins to cry. These are not anything as corny as tears of joy. She cries hot tears of hard-effort-with-reward. Glorious clean hot tears evaporating in the chill air of the pass, diamonds on her cheeks, as she pumps her fist and tells the world “I did it. Godammit I did it. Like a 20-year old, I can bike. God: I have heart. Yes!”

Greg and Julie and Jerry are waiting for her at the crest. Again. All eight riders made it and Susan is last, but her personal victory is enormous. The cold beer Jerry hands her is the best she’s ever swallowed.

After she and Gregory get to their room that evening, after Susan takes first shower and flops on her bed before dinner, she gets the shakes. She can’t get warm. It’s like her body went into shock after the effort. She doesn’t have much appetite for dinner.  But she has immense self-gratification.

Some of that feeling will stay with her. She has remembered something about the profound relaxation that occurs after hard work. She will improve in shape, but she will fear her success is fragile. She’ll think it isn’t owing to a higher power as much as to a lower one; she’ll believe that with each body lesson she curves closer to her goal, in a race for the rest of her lifetime.

She’ll keep looking fitter, but within she’ll run from the compliments of her friends. She won’t want to replay their praise if she regains.

Julie knows all this. She’s the only woman Susan will ever meet who doesn’t have an eating disorder. She fakes one, chronically, because that’s her entry into relationships with all other women, and she’s observed other women so much that she’s an expert on the subject. She knows the cure. She understands that a sufferer has to assume control over her whole life before she will drop control about calories. And she realizes that behavior modification – whether it’s to eat less or stop smoking or tone down Calvinism or curb shopping – behavior modification is a grief experience, and the modifier has to receive time, support and consolation for the loss of a dear friend.

Julie knows enough not to offer that wisdom until she is asked. And she never is asked.