Summary of Carry On, Warrior: The Power of Embracing Your Messy, Beautiful Life - Book Summary (2016)

Part IV. HOLDING ON

Chapter 33. On Crying and Pedaling

For Robert

I think what we’re supposed to do down here is bring heaven to earth, and I saw that happen once. I experienced heaven on earth.

Years ago I participated in the AIDS ride as a fundraiser for AIDS research. Thousands of people raised money by pledging to ride their bicycles 280 miles from North Carolina to Washington, D.C. I was one of these thousands of people.

I was not the most likely candidate because I’d never done anything for charity, ever. Unless you count my spring break trip to an Indian reservation, but that was mostly to score peyote. Decreasing my candidacy further was my absolute hatred of physically hard things.

For example, trying to unlock a door that won’t unlock has been known to leave me on my front step in a puddle of tears. God, I hate that. The finding of the keys in my purse, the identifying of the correct key on the ring, the continuous turning of the key, the trying of the other keys, the dropping and retrieving of the keys, the juggling of bags and the whining kids and the sweat. Life is so hard.

When Chase was eight, he started asking about “bad words.” We decided to teach him all of them so they’d lose their allure, but I couldn’t bring myself to say the F word out loud. Chase said, “It’s okay. I think I know that one. It’s the one you say when you can’t get the door open, right?” Yes. That one, I said. Don’t say that one.

Still, I agreed to do the AIDS ride. I’m not really sure why. I think I just wanted to be the sort of person who did those sorts of things. I think it’s nice that God makes things magical even when we do them for lame reasons.

Most of the AIDS ride was hellish. Partly because I hadn’t even sat on a bike since I was seven. I didn’t even have a bike. Every time Dana asked me to train with her, I’d remain on the couch, close my eyes, and tell her I was training through “visualization.” And although I did quit smoking and drinking as part of my preparation, I didn’t officially start quitting until 2:00 a.m. on race day. This quitting method was less helpful than my drinking buddies had promised it would be.

Also, we rode our bikes one hundred miles a day in ninety-five degree heat. Our bottoms were so blistered and chapped that hourly we had to apply a product I’d have preferred never to discover called Butt Paste. At the end of each godforsaken day we rolled into “camp” and peeled off our soaking bike shorts to shower alongside other riders in a TRUCK. Honestly, I don’t know if I’ve ever even ridden in a truck. Then we had to go to sleep in a field. It was like Woodstock with no music or drugs. Just pain. And there were terrifying Wizard of Oz-like storms at night and our tents leaked. So we lay in our own personal freezing ponds all night until we heard the fire alarm indicating it was time to ride again. Then we stood up and put helmets on our soaking heads and put our blistered, red, screaming butts back on our bike seats. I spent most of each day pedaling and crying. Crying and pedaling.

I wasn’t the only one crying. I might have been the only one crying because of severe alcohol and nicotine withdrawal, but there were lots of tears. Tears from the sun’s brutality and from witnessing the relentless resolve of other riders. Tears from passing families on the side of the road blowing bubbles and whistles and holding posters that said: “YOU ARE A HERO.” That’ll tear you up. It tore everybody up. You can’t be called a hero when you’re at your absolute weakest and not cry. You just can’t. So you just cry and pedal.

Dana, Christy, and I lived together at the time, and Christy thought that we were nuts to be doing this AIDS ride. She was mostly annoyed because it cut so deeply into our trio’s nightly wine and Jeopardy! ritual. Christy wasn’t used to four days without us, so she drove to North Carolina and brought cookies to our camp site. Then she left and slept at a nice hotel. I begged her to take me along but she said absolutely not and promised that one day I’d thank her. It’s been more than a decade since the ride, and I still haven’t felt like thanking her. The next morning Christy found us again and drove beside Dana and me for half the day at two miles per hour, top down, smoking cigarettes and blasting “Eye of the Tiger” and “Livin’ on a Prayer.” Waving other cars around her for hours. Flipping them the bird when they honked at her. That’s a friend.

There were rest stops along the way. Every few hours we’d pull over and find huge tents set up with volunteer medics scurrying around to bandage wounds, oxygenate wheezers, and take the sick to the hospital. I used these rests to inhale Power Bars, cry more, and pop zits. Sweating constantly causes acne, and this was distressing because there was a cute boy rider who was checking me out. So I kept a mini-mirror inside my bike pants even though it was extremely uncomfortable, and as soon as I hit each rest stop, I whipped it out and popped zits before the cute boy found me. Dana watched this routine in disgust. She’d gasp for air and pour bottled waters over her head and say: “Look at you. We’re DYING and YOU’RE PRIMPING.” And I’d say, “Well, THERE IS NO NEED TO DIE COVERED IN WHITEHEADS NOW, IS THERE? ” Got myself a post-ride date too. Yes. I did. Got me some digits on the AIDS ride.

Still. There were stretches that went on for hours. Just hours and hours of nothing but scorching sun and pain and regret, and all you could think about was taking back your decision to do this crazy thing. And then, in the midst of utter despair, you’d see a mountain. A mountain would appear on the horizon like a sick joke. Over and over. Mountain after mountain. Just when you’d think, we have to be done. There can’t be another one. There’d be another one. And I’d get so angry. SO ANGRY. WTF God??? Really, another freaking mountain now? Now when things are already SO DAMN BAD? Now, WHEN WE’RE TRYING TO DO SOMETHING NICE AND GOOD?

The problem was that there was no quitting. Even quitters like me couldn’t quit. Nobody said it; we all just knew. Even so, I’d also know that I just couldn’t take this next mountain. I just couldn’t. My soul was willing, but my body was close to dead. So I approached one of the mountains, already defeated. And a thin, gray-skinned, baldish man on his own bike rode up beside me. The man had hollow cheeks and eyes that were set too far back, like caves. His leg muscles looked painted on. Just muscle and bone. So skinny and small, like a jockey with a vicious flu. I made confused eye contact with the grayish man and he put his hand on my back. He read my pain and said, “Just rest, I’ll push you.” And I cried and rested my legs and let myself be carried. I didn’t understand how he was doing it, how he was pushing me up that hill, riding his bike and my bike, one hand on his handlebars and one hand on my back. But slowly, together, we made it to the top. And I squeaked out a thank-you, and he looked right at me with his cavey eyes and said: thank YOU. Then he turned away from me and rode back down the hill to carry another rider who couldn’t carry himself. And I turned back to watch him go and saw that there were at least twenty of these angels—twenty men with hands on the backs of other women, other men twice their size, pushing them forward and upward. They stayed at the bottoms of the biggest mountains along the route, the mountains they knew we’d never climb on our own, and they carried us. One at a time. Then back down for another, and another, and another. ’Til we were all on the other side of the mountain, together.

I later learned that they were called the AIDS angels. They were so sick. Many were dying of AIDS. But they were at every AIDS ride nationwide. Waiting to help the healthy riders over mountains.

Do you see? They were dying. But they were the strongest ones. The weak will be the strong. I still don’t understand it. But when those men carried me to the tops of those mountains, I felt heaven.

When we arrived in D.C., to our finish line, I felt heaven again. There were thousands of us and thousands of them. The streets of D.C. were lined—ten, twelve, twenty people deep, cheering and screaming and crying, and the sound of the joy was deafening. It all became white noise, so through my tears I just watched them, because I couldn’t hear them anymore. They showed up for us because we’d shown up for love. Because we’d done something really, really hard, and they wanted to say thank-you, and be a part of it all. I saw my friends there, in the crowd, with signs that said, “WE’RE SO PROUD OF YOU, G!” And I saw Sister and Bubba and Tisha and they were holding signs too, but I don’t remember what they said because I can only remember their faces—overwhelmed with the goodness and the power of the moment. The crowds whistled and rang bells and yelled WE LOVE YOU! through megaphones. Cheerleading squads leaped and fire trucks blared their sirens and kids held signs that said: “GOD BLESS YOU, HEROES—GOD BLESS US ALL,” and there was no rider, not to the left or the right or behind or in front of me, who was not weeping. When we could steady ourselves long enough, we’d grab the hand of the rider beside us because it was too much to take in alone. And our tears and sweat would get all mixed up with the tears and the sweat of the others. And we’d grab the hands of the children who wanted to touch us and pass on the tears and the sweat. And it didn’t matter anymore if we were gay or straight or young or old or healthy or dying. We’d been through something real. It had hurt like hell, but we we’d finished. Together.