The 5:38 Question
Cycling for Caregivers: Finding Balance
Cycling for caregivers can be a transformative experience.
Opened my eyes. Still almost blackness. I glance at my watch — 5:38 AM. Thursday morning. A riding morning.
And right on cue, my brain does what it always does. It starts building the case against going. The 9:00 AM virtual meeting in the home office. Another at 10:30. You need to prepare. You should review your notes. You haven’t eaten yet. The chain probably needs cleaning. The list assembles itself quickly, the way excuses always do — efficiently, persuasively, dressed up to look like reason.
I do the roll-up crunch and heave-ho. Forward. I am standing on the bedroom floor.
Deb must be asleep in the other bedroom. I check. She is. Good.
I force my thoughts toward the ride. And then I ask myself the question that cuts through everything else, the one that has never failed to get me out the door: How long am I going to live?
That question is not morbid. It is clarifying. It is the key that unlocks this moment — and the two hours that are about to follow, outside, just me and the bike. No caregiving. No meetings. No to-do list. Just motion, air, and the quiet company of a Thursday morning that most people are still sleeping through.
I put the water on for coffee. I am committed.
The bike comes off the fitness lanai. I check the tire pressures — good to go. I make a mental note: clean the chain Sunday. A bike with a clean chain is a smooth-moving machine, and there is something almost meditative about that kind of maintenance. It is care you give to the thing that takes care of you.
It’s still dark. I get into a short bib and wait for the bathroom to call — because last Saturday was a full-blown fiasco and I refuse a repeat. That morning I had to stop at a bakery mid-ride, and what followed was the kind of logistical comedy that only a cyclist in a one-piece bib can truly appreciate. Everything ended up on the bathroom floor. Keys, wallet, phone, the tripod attachments — all of it, pooled around my ankles in a pile. I stood there in that tiny bakery bathroom, half-undressed, thinking: this is why people just go for a walk. But they don’t feel what I feel on the bike. So I’ll take the occasional bakery incident.
This morning goes smoother. The athletic bag is packed — two water bottles, each half-filled with frozen water from the freezer, then topped off. In Florida, ice doesn’t last. The sun and the humidity are relentless, and with my sweat rate, I drain bottles faster than most. Cold water on a hot ride is one of those small, reliable pleasures that never gets old.
Bag in the car. Bike secured on the back rack. Let’s go.
Pulling into the trail parking lot, I step out of the car and take a long pull of that humid, cool 70-degree morning air — the kind that sits on your skin like a damp cloth and somehow still feels like relief. The light of day is just beginning to wax, that first pale suggestion of color at the edge of the sky. Not sunrise yet. Something quieter. The world deciding whether it’s ready to begin.
The lot is empty. Perfect.
Helmet first — then everything else. The Garmin mounted. Front light clipped on. Both Polar bottles locked into the cages. Garmin set to road bike mode, Forerunner watch to Bike 2. Everything synced, everything ready.
I roll to the Pinellas Trail, turn right, and head south toward Gulfport.
The moment the wheels find their rhythm, something happens that I cannot fully explain but have come to completely depend on. The noise inside my head — the meetings, the caregiving logistics, the low-grade hum of chronic responsibility — doesn’t disappear exactly. It just falls back. It loses its grip. The pedals turn, the breath deepens, the cool air rushes over me, and suddenly I am not a caregiver or a business owner or a man with a packed schedule. I am just a person moving through a beautiful morning, and that is enough.
About six miles in, the Boca Ciega elevated is just ahead.
Still riding, I reach back and pull my phone from the jersey sleeve. No one on the trail. Not a soul. And I know what is coming — that life-giving ball of fire, just barely cresting the horizon, doing what it has done every morning since the beginning of time, indifferent to schedules and caregiving and virtual meetings. Up onto the elevated path I go, fenced on both sides, the bay opening up around me. I take a panorama with my left hand — sweeping slowly right to left and back — the sun rising on my left over a lush green border of mangrove, the burnt sky tinged amber and gold, the water below holding the light like it doesn’t want to let go.
That shot is my Instagram post for today. But more than that, it is the reason I asked myself that question at 5:38 this morning.
The herons are standing still in the shallows, patient as ever, as if they have figured out something the rest of us are still working on. I put the phone back, both hands return to the bars, and something ignites. I want to move. I start pumping the pedals, shifting up, adding watts, building speed. The elevated drops away behind me and I am flying — not literally, but in the way that matters, in the way that fills the chest and quiets the mind and makes the body remember what it was built for.
This is what the bike gives me. Not escape — I know the reality waiting at home and I am not running from it. What it gives me is perspective. It gives me the sensation of being fully alive in a body working exactly the way it was designed to work. It gives me that 19 mph rhythm between 22nd Avenue North and 5th North, legs turning, lungs open, mind finally quiet.
Eighteen years of caregiving has taught me a great many things. https://ourtimeislife.com/about/the-transformation-chapters/ One of them is this: you cannot pour from an empty vessel. The bike, the trail, the morning, the pulsating rhythm, the steady sound of wind against my jersey — this is how I refill mine. In this beautiful, unscripted string of moments, moving through a world that is waking up just as I am.
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