At the age of six, I was determined to learn how to ride a bike. My dad, a cyclist, spent hours in our cul-de-sac trying to teach me. Even as he ran beside me, steadying the handlebars, encouraging me endlessly, it was no use. I was convinced I would never learn. Eventually, he gave up, left me outside on my bike, and said he needed to go inside to do laundry.
Sure enough, twenty minutes later, there I was, as he still loves to remind me, riding around and around and around all by myself.
Soon, biking became my favorite mode of transportation. To a kid, a bike equals freedom. I didn’t need my parents to drive me anywhere. I could bike to 7-Eleven, the frozen yogurt shop, or a friend’s house with zero adult supervision. But as kids get older, there are unwritten rules to biking. Cool kids rode in the street. Cool kids sent Snapchats while riding. And the biggest rule of all, cool kids never wore helmets.
Because I was mostly biking with my family and neighborhood friends, I somehow missed this memo. So when I got set up on a “hangout” with a group of girls from my new school, I learned the rules the hard way. My mom drove me to one girl’s house, helped me unload my bike and helmet from the trunk, and waved goodbye. I should have known from the looks on their faces to leave the helmet behind. But at the ripe age of twelve, I knew wearing a helmet was important, so I clipped it on anyway.
As we biked through the neighborhood, I could feel it. The side-eye glances. The whispers. The unspoken judgment bouncing right off my very uncool, very safe head. No one said anything directly, but the message was clear. Helmets were for kids, and I had just broken a very serious social rule. I went home embarrassed, convinced I had committed some kind of middle-school crime. But even then, something stuck with me. I would rather look stupid and protect myself than follow a rule that never really made sense in the first place.
As I got older, biking stopped being just about independence and started becoming a way to see the world. My family began taking biking trips to California, Hawaii, New Zealand, and even Asia, riding anywhere from 30 to 50 kilometers a day. Biking was the best way to experience a new place in a short amount of time. In a single day, I could see the countryside, pass through towns, ride into cities, stop at local cafés and restaurants, and even wander into an elementary school along the way. Biking gave me a new set of eyes. It forced me to slow down, pay attention, and actually exist in the places I was passing through.
Somewhere along the way, biking stopped being about where I was going and started being about how it made me feel.
If you had told me a year ago that I would become what I now proudly call a “SoulCycle addict,” I would have laughed in your face. SoulCycle was one of those things younger me loved to mock simply for sport. The dimly-lit rooms, inspirational speeches, and dancing on the bike all felt way too cult-y. In middle school, I was a full-on tomboy. I played sports at recess, was part of an all-guys four-square team, yes, you read that right, and spent most of my time with my dad and brother. In high school, I gained back some girlishness but was still all-in on volleyball. And in classic third-child fashion, I hated anything my siblings liked, especially because my sister loved SoulCycle.
When I visited her at the University of Michigan my sophomore year of high school, she dragged me to my first SoulCycle class despite the fact that I had a sprained ankle. I never even gave it a fair shot. I was in pain, hated the cliquey, girly atmosphere, and declared it “cult-y” before I even walked in.
But when winter came and the volleyball season ended, I needed a new form of exercise. I started taking spin classes at my local Life Time gym. These classes had the same elements, flashing lights, loud music, and dancing on the bike. There was one key difference. I wasn’t surrounded by college sorority girls drinking the Kool-Aid. I was the woman.
I will never forget my second class, riding on a bike next to my sister, when the instructor turned to me and said, “Jamie, you’re really good. You should consider teaching one day.” And just like that, my obsession with cycling began, because at sixteen, I was willing to do anything to be better than my sister.
Life Time spin classes turned into my love for Peloton. And when I moved to Ann Arbor, the transition to SoulCycle was inevitable. With my slightly more mature, adult-ish brain, I have learned to lean into the cultiness and even appreciate it. I have come full circle, sharing this interest with the same sister I once swore I would never agree with.
Now, biking, and SoulCycle, are not just exercise. They are my outlet, my escape, and sometimes my therapy. As much as I hate to admit it, that culty energy builds a real sense of community. Looking back, biking has always mirrored who I was becoming. It gave me freedom as a kid, quiet rebellion as a teenager, and connection as a college student. So yes, maybe it is a little culty. But if the price of belonging is a helmet, clip-in shoes, and screaming lyrics on a bike in the dark, I will happily keep riding.