Cycling in Montevideo: Ella Zimmerman
Today, on my ride, I had the chance to ride with friends and enjoy spending time with them on a bike. We rode to Estes park and back, and we experienced just about everything–sunshine, rain, wind, sweat, hunger, thirst, tiredness, anticipation, and best of all, joy–and none of it required vocal communication. It creates a special bond to go on adventures with people you care about. A special bond formed over smiles, laughs, pats on the back, and ultimately just shared experience. The experiences we have through cycling (and through sport at large) can change our worlds. Recently, I had such an experience during my study abroad in Montevideo, Uruguay.
Okay, okay, okay, don’t leave– I realized I just name dropped a place that most people have not and will not visit in their lifetimes. But you don’t have to! I want to share part of my experience with you, and you’ll only have to take a few minutes, seated wherever you are, to (hopefully) share in some of the joy. Maybe you’ll even be reminded of a similar experience in your life that you too can share with others. No matter what, I’m excited to write for you.
One of my studies in college is Spanish. One of my goals was to study abroad. I figured I would have an easier time traveling to Europe on my own in the future, so I decided to choose a program in Latin America, in a little city called Montevideo, which is populated with about half the entire country’s population. It is a much smaller city than Santiago (in Chile), which I thought would suit me better since I grew up in the country. That, and it was right by the beach. Like a 3 block walk to the beach. In a life full of opportunities for adventures, I decided to choose this one.
About two weeks before I headed out on my trip, I started to do some research on things I could do in Montevideo. As it turned out, there is a velodrome in the city about 2 miles from where I would be living. I contacted the program director and apparently it was operational and open to the public, but I still had one problem: I didn’t own a track bike! I frantically searched the web for a track bike that would fit my short self, but I couldn’t find anything in the area. Where I did find one was in the United Kingdom, where they offered to ship internationally and did so in an incredible 3 days. Without having tried the bike out for size or anything else, I loaded it into my bike bag, packed about 10 pounds of my extra essentials (yes, this included clothing and shoes) and hopped on the plane.
On the second day after arriving, I put the bike together on the patio connected to my new room with my little hand tool kit and a borrowed wrench from my host mother. It took me about another week to procure a pump, and then I had to get a health certificate to ride there, but after about 2 weeks, I found myself riding a new track bike in a velodrome halfway across the world. It was absolutely fantastic–I didn’t have to pay to ride each day, which meant I could have plenty of practice time, and it was summer, so I got to ride in the warm sunshine and practice. I initially met a few people there, but it was largely just me. I figured I would essentially have an open velodrome to practice at for the following 3 months. But, as with most stories, it got more interesting.
One of the days I was riding there, I was called over by one of the men running the velodrome and, from what I could understand at the time (the accent was hard for me), I was invited to join a team to do, well, something with. I gave him my phone number, which he passed on to another person (who I later knew as Freddy), and that was that. I kept getting a phone call from a random number that week, but I had no clue who it could be, and they never left a message, so I just left it. About a week later though, when I was riding on the velodrome, I saw a group of people pull in and start unloading track bikes. Nice, carbon track bikes at that. Sure enough, after talking to one of them, it was the team I had been invited to practice with, and they offered me to stay and do a workout with them. Sure, I had class at ten that morning, but nevermind that. Some things are just too important to miss for class, and I felt this was one of them.
That first day was one of the cooler ones of my life by a fairly large margin. Although I only understood about half of what was being said, I could see just how much everyone cared for one another and the joy they got by being there. We warmed up with a paceline behind a motorcycle, which was something new for me, and got to practicing some other drills together. They offered me water and fruit, and Facu, one of my now friends, passed around a snack that he made for everyone. I had felt a bit lost in Montevideo beforehand, but all of a sudden I had stumbled upon people with the same interests as me. It was truly amazing. I had a smile on my face for the rest of the day.
For the rest of my trip, we mostly practiced twice a week together, and as I got to know them all better, I realized just how lucky I was to have met them. We were coached by an ex-pro cyclist, we had multiple national champions riding with us, and we had paralympians, all practicing with a big group of us that ranged from 16-60 years old. We had a mechanic and a bike fitter/sports performance analyst with us as well, all of them volunteering their time to help us learn and grow. It was through them that I learned that watching others grow and achieve their goals can be just as rewarding as you yourself doing so. It was such a blessing to be part of a group that worked to elevate, encourage, and help one another, without personal gain in the back of their mind. The group will forever represent all the good that sport can offer in life. Some of the things I learned from them that I believe can applied elsewhere:
Invite people and give them the opportunity to grow and even surprise you.
We go much further when we work together.
You never know a person’s journey in getting to practice (or wherever) with you, so always be grateful to have them, even if they were later/different than you expected.
Sharing the love of sport with others can transform much more than the physical part of their lives.
Cycling is challenging, hard work, requires others, but ultimately, is FUN!
My trip to Montevideo didn’t always feel easy–in fact, many of the days I struggled with a language barrier and simply being away from a place where I felt everything was second nature. The beautiful thing about that though is that we all have felt that out-of-place feeling at least once in our lives. What is important is that we keep trying, have courage, and reach out to help others who may be in the same position. The next time you go on a ride, think about how you got to where you are today. Did you do it alone? Probably not. So the question comes to mind: What can you and I do to share our love of cycling with others, or to just help them along whatever path they may be on? Kindness is everywhere, and you don’t have to be in a foreign country to find it. Maybe it just starts with you.