Bicycle Love -- Brianne Goodspeed

In her essay, Goodspeed maintains the theme of when embarking on a seemingly scary journey, alone, at a time of despair, can teach one self discovery and change the way one thinks about certain things. Goodspeed left feeling as she had no direction in her life after big life changes. Despite being afraid, she still sets forth on her journey and comes back, "...forever changed by it."

Two sentences that stuck out to me were, "I almost crashed admiring how good they looked, how strong they felt, and how worthy they were of such a powerful bike," and "I felt the rush of power that a man must feel as he grabs a girl around the waist and scoops her up unto his horse." Both lines show how Goodspeed is emotionally and physically stronger she is after this journey.  The parallelism in the first makes it easy to see her emotional and physical growth in self love and the imagery in the second shows how strong she has gotten making a hard task look simple.