Pedal, Deliver, Write, Repeat
Life, for me, has always been caught in a cycle. Not the cycle of alarms, office shifts, and deadlines that most people wrestle with, but a cycle much simpler—and yet, infinitely deeper:
Pedal. Deliver. Write. Repeat.
It sounds mechanical at first, like a program running in the background of life. But if you live it, if you feel it, if you let it shape your days, it becomes more than repetition. It becomes rhythm. A rhythm that hums beneath my tires, whispers through my pedals, and echoes in the words I carve onto paper long after the ride is done.
The First Loop – Pedals as Teachers
On a century ride, when the road stretches like an endless ribbon and the city’s edges blur into countryside, the pedals never stop whispering. They speak a language only the legs and lungs can truly understand.
At first, in the opening kilometers, they tease:
“Fresh legs, light strokes, you think you can conquer us today?”
By 40 or 50 km, the whispers sharpen:
“Slow down. You’re not a machine. Find rhythm, or we’ll teach you pain.”
By 80 km, they begin to sound like prophets, demanding respect:
“You can’t rush through life. You can’t skip steps. Each turn matters. Each crank must be earned.”
And when the century is done, when sweat has salted every inch of my skin and fatigue sits in my bones, the pedals whisper softer:
“See? You survived because you listened. Not because you fought us, but because you flowed with us.”
Riding with a Group vs. Riding Solo
There is a strange truth about riding in Chittagong: it feels like two different worlds depending on whether I’m in a group or alone.
With a group, the ride becomes a symphony. Wheels hum in harmony, conversations spill between breaths, jokes and encouragement weave the kilometers together. The pace is smoother because it isn’t just mine—it’s ours. Someone pulls ahead, another drifts behind, and in that constant ebb and flow, the ride feels lighter. Even pain feels shared, and somehow, shared pain is easier to carry.
But riding solo—ah, that’s the sacred loop. Alone, the city feels like it belongs only to me. Every rickshaw bell, every bus horn, every crow cawing from an electric wire becomes part of my private orchestra. There are no words exchanged, only the dialogue between my pedals and my mind. Alone, I am exposed to every doubt, every whisper of weakness, but also to every spark of clarity that only solitude can ignite.
Pedalling Through Old Town Alleys – CTG’s Hidden Gems
Chittagong’s Old Town is not a place most cyclists dream of for a century ride. But for me, it’s where poetry hides in plain sight.
The alleys are narrow, paved with stories more than with asphalt. Rusted tin roofs lean against each other, laundry flutters like flags of everyday survival, and the air smells of fried snacks, cardamom tea, and salt carried inland from the port. Pedalling through those tight spaces, dodging rickshaws and stray chickens, I realize: life is not about smooth highways. It’s about navigating chaos with grace.
Sometimes, I stop at a tea stall I’ve visited a dozen times. The man behind the stove recognizes me—not by name, but by the bike, by the sweat, by the ritual. “Another long one today?” he asks, pouring tea into a chipped cup. And in his voice, I hear the city’s embrace: a reminder that even in the busiest maze, you can find stillness.
Keeping Pace in Traffic-Heavy Streets
If the Old Town is poetry, then the main roads of CTG are percussion—loud, relentless, impossible to ignore.
Traffic in this city doesn’t flow, it crashes. Buses swing their weight like blunt instruments, CNGs dart like mischievous insects, motorbikes carve lines that defy geometry, and pedestrians walk as if protected by invisible shields of faith.
In that orchestra of madness, I ride. Not by overpowering it, but by finding the gaps—the rhythm within the chaos. My cadence matches the heartbeat of the city. My brakes, both front and back, act like punctuation marks. Every red light becomes a comma, every green light a new stanza.
And inside my head, poetry forms uninvited:
Horns blare,
Tires hiss,
Sweat beads,
Patience thins—
Yet in the traffic’s roar,
I find my quiet.
It’s strange, but the worse the traffic gets, the more meditative my pedalling becomes.
Riding Past Familiar Places That Hold Memories
Every cyclist in Chittagong knows this feeling: a road is never just a road. It’s a scrapbook.
Passing Chowdhury Hat, I remember delivery shifts—26 km round trip, repeated so often it feels carved into my calves. Passing Bhatiary, I recall the rides where I tested myself on climbs, lungs burning, but spirits soaring. Passing those kitchens, I smile at the kindness of being allowed to wait for food, a small mercy that lingers longer than calories ever did.
Even empty stretches of road hold ghosts: the accident I had. Each place isn’t just geography—it’s memory stitched into the tarmac.
And so, when I ride past them again, I don’t just pedal through space. I pedal through time.
CTG Hills vs. Flat City Roads
Some days, the hills of Chittagong call me. They rise like challenges, daring me to leave behind the comfort of flat ground. On a fixed gear, especially with 48×17t, the climbs are brutal, honest, unforgiving. Every rise is a test of willpower. But the descents—ah, they are prayers answered. Legs spinning fast, heart leaping, gravity and chain conspiring in wild harmony.
The flat city roads, in contrast, are steady teachers. They don’t thrill me, but they discipline me. They make me practice cadence, pacing, patience. Hills teach me courage; flats teach me consistency. Both, together, remind me that life isn’t all peaks or all plains—it’s a shifting balance.
The Rhythm of Pedals and Words
By now, I no longer separate riding from writing. One feeds the other.
On the bike, words form with every crank:
Push, pull, breathe, repeat.
Off the bike, the memory of cadence becomes sentences:
Whispers, wheels, miles, meaning.
My diary and my Strava feed are just two sides of the same coin. One records numbers—speed, distance, time. The other records feelings—struggle, doubt, triumph. Both matter. Both are true.
The Infinite Loop
And so, the loop continues. Pedal, deliver, write, repeat.
Deliveries keep my body sharp. Writing keeps my soul awake. Long rides stretch my limits. Short commutes sharpen my instincts. Rain reminds me of fragility. Sun reminds me of strength.
The pedals whisper lessons every day, but the biggest one is this:
Life isn’t about escaping the loop. It’s about embracing it.
Because the loop is not a prison—it’s infinity. Each ride leads to words, each word inspires another ride. Each delivery leads to another story, each story keeps me delivering.
The road goes on, and so do I.
So when I am out there, somewhere between Old Town alleys and Bayezid Link Road, past the port cranes and under the shadow of the green hills, I hear the pedals whisper again:
“Don’t chase the finish. Don’t fear the repeat.
Just ride the infinite loop, and write what you find there.”
And I smile, because I know that’s what I was born to do.
ENG
