By Heidi Swift

As cyclists, we spend a lot of time riding in circles. Big circles on the weekend with friends. Medium-sized fast circles at the local weekly circuit races. Small circles through mud and grass and gravel during cyclocross season. Even smaller super-fast circles when the menu calls for criterium delirium (I have a friend who calls these “idiot cirles”).

Around and around and around and around. In the end, we always end up exactly where we started (albeit one adventure stronger). They say that the meaning is in the journey and not the destination, but sometimes it would be nice to actually get somewhere, right?

I am a person who trains. This word is critiqued and vilified and dissected, so let me define my terms: I set a goal and then ride my bike in specific ways in pursuit of that goal. I very much enjoy training – I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t. But it does mean that I spend a lot of time riding in circles. Every once in a while, it gets to me.

The summer of 2010 was one of those times, so I did what any impulsive, fun-employed writer-lady would do: I threw my leg over a touring bike and pedaled “east”. That first day I pedaled just over 120 miles, riding right up until dusk. Then I pulled into a camping spot, set up the little tent I was hauling and passed out. I repeated this process for eight or nine days, riding between 70 and 90 miles a day. Every morning, I woke up somewhere new. Every day, I transported myself to a place I’d never been before. No circles. No training. Just the methodical bike-powered relocation of my body and mind.

The experience of point-to-point riding was refreshing and re-setting. Though I most often experience the bike as a recreational vehicle, it’s nice to be reminded of its original purpose. Bikes can move us in all kinds of figurative and literal ways, but no amount of emotional or mental “transportation” can give you quite the same feeling as leaving one physical location and arriving, minutes or hours later, at another. It’s rooted in our first experiences with bicycles: that sensation of freedom and independence. We can go wherever we want to! Under our own power! Just try and stop us!

My daily 28-mile commute to work does not compare to a rambling solo bike tour into the hot Central Oregon desert, but it does channel elements of that adventure: physical exertion harnessed for utility, suffering with purpose, a daily journey that does not end where it began.

No circles. Now we’re getting somewhere.

Heidi Swift is a freelance writer and photographer based in Portland, Oregon where she lives with two mean cats and one rad Sicilian man. In addition to being cyclocross-obsessed, she enjoys good whiskey, romantic rain rides, and frequent international cycling escapades.  You can follow her misadventures atGritandGlimmer.com or catch her on the tweets: @heidiswift.

Look for another “Lightlife” piece from Heidi Swift next week!