Cycling along the river

About the sense of existence and other pursuits…

The sun after all had come out from behind the clouds. Pieter van der Plaats walked to the shed at the back of the garden to get his bicycle. On quiet days, even if the weather was not warm, he liked to make a tour on his bicycle. A good walk or a nice bit of cycling was what the doctor had recommended. Pieter had had serious heart trouble in the past. That was how he discovered cycling. It was relaxing and he could quietly think about the most different issues. He had some favourite routes and one of those was along the small river winding through the landscape.

After getting his bicycle from the shed and leaving the garden by the gate he walked between conifer hedges along both sides of the path between gardens. Arriving at the road he mounted his cycle and rode calmly on. Pieter wasn't one of the youngest anymore. He'd passed seventy some years before. He was able to cycle so slowly that one of his sons had once made the comment, 'Dad, you're practically standing still, you should pedal or you'll fall down'. Pieter didn't mind such-like comments, he enjoyed himself.
He cycled along streets and squares out of the town. The small waves in the river bounced back the sun-rays like tiny diamonds. It had turned into a beautiful day, being autumn. Pieter had grown hot and pulled both hand-brakes, where after his bicycle with some creaking came to a stand-still. He dismounted and took off his coat which he tied up on the luggage-carrier and continued on his way. Down by the dike washing was flying in the wind next to a farm. Thus man is always busy; washing his clothes, dirtying them to wash them again, etc. Etc. The same goes for his food, during his whole life. Occupations which make man live in an established rhythm. The rhythm of life. So is that the sense of life, Pieter thought. Repeated actions to stay healthy and alive. The daily bustle of moving, eating, working to go to sleep at the end of the day every day again.
Terribly boring if viewed this way, if that should be all and not very useful. But there is of course much more that makes life engaging. Maybe the sense of life was about being there for others?
A lonely life is unworthy. Except some individual, a hermit who's lost his way years ago, but the rest of us mortals cannot live without others. We need each other as support and aid in grief and illness, but also to exuberantly celebrate. Still sometimes I doubt. Sometimes we run on when we're together. On a nice summer's day the whole mass goes to the beaches to spend hours in traffic-jams all together before getting there at last. The same goes for pleasure-grounds, zoos and even garden-centres. Has being alone become so scary then nowadays? I myself love to ride here in this indescribable silence, Pieter mused.

Pedalling steadily he cycled on. The green polder scenery rolled past his gaze.
All the work of man, he thought. Yet in our daily life we need each other. If only to be fed. I don't see myself slaughtering an animal or growing wheat to bake bread. If I had to live like primitive men would I be able to enjoy life as much? No bicycle trips, which I'd feel like a great loss. But I might not know the joy of cycling and what you don't know you can't, after all, miss. It's lucky that so many people know the sense of life, because being so clumsy I'd swiftly get the worst of it.
Imagine surgeons, at the moment they'd have to operate on me didn't much feel like living, I'd soon not be there at all. Pieter enchanted a smile on his face. I'd better be thankful for the sense of life, he thought.

A small boat came sailing along, making waves in the river. Behind the boat's cabin the naked upper body of a rather stout man was to be seen. This pot-bellied man steered the boat like a captain on an ocean-going liner. Now he spotted Pieter and raised his hand. 'It's turned out to be jolly fine weather' he sounded over the water. The pot-bellied man laughed. Pieter nodded and politely waved back. 'Well, having a nice cycle' it sounded again. Now he realized that we don't always need each other. The pot-bellied man needed him, but he didn't need the pot-bellied man. 'Oh yes' cried Pieter while applying some more force to the pedals to be rid of the man.
Now only the ploc, ploc was to be heard from the little boat's motor. Both went their way, each in a different life. Pieter had lessened his speed again. The front of a beautiful house on the shore was mirrored in the water. Far away he saw a wind-mill. Mills so typical of the Dutch scenery. The ones who dried the polder centuries ago. Now splendidly set against the autumn sun with menacing clouds behind them. That could be a considerable shower, Pieter thought and stopped his bicycle. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose, turned his bike around on the narrow cycle-path and started on his way back. Now he looked over the water, down-stream, but the pot-bellied man in his boat was not to be seen anymore. Would he be out of sight, disappeared over the horizon, or had he gone ashore somewhere.

On a landing-stage stood a man who was fishing. Pieter knew the man by sight and sometimes stopped to have a chat, but with the menacing change in the weather he just exchanged a greeting. Pieter cycled on. On the other side of the river was a tea-garden. A cosy café for holiday-makers and neighbours. There was the pot-bellied man's boat at a jetty. Did Pieter hear the fat man's voice from the café? Pieter rode a bit slower and listened carefully. Indeed it was him. In his fantasy he saw the man slapping visitor's shoulders exclaiming, 'It's turned out to be jolly fine weather'. He'll get caught yet when the shower breaks loose. Or maybe he would, while stuffing himself full of food, stay at the café until it stopped raining. Maybe that happened to him often and the man's big size was because of the rain.
Pieter stood on the pedals to set a good pace. Two swans glided stately over the water.
His bike's tyres swished over the tarmac. Far away he saw two young women. They were walking quietly along the water's edge, although they were wearing a fast outfit. They were part of the sporting population. They who were driven to usually jog along paths, forgetting everything else, so that Pieter had to use his bike's bell more than once to pass them. But now they walked with a calm tread. He was only about a dozen metres away from them and he saw their fine young fragile bodies. Moving lightly as if hardly touching the pavement. 'That's the sense of life, that is what it's all about' Pieter thought. Love between people, beautiful people. Now he passed the two women and couldn't fail to greet them cheerfully. They greeted him as cheerfully back. He turned left, leaving the river behind. Almost home, he sighed. He though about his sweet wife with whom he'd been living for dozens of years. A relationship with many highs and few lows, but definitively a relationship densely underlining the sense of life.

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