It is a beautiful Sunday morning in Southern California. In our surrounding neighborhood there are families going for walks, breakfasting at the Coffee Bean, or enjoying a lazy morning at home. At any given moment in my house there is a baby attached to my chest and two preschoolers who are either:

a) fighting, b) crying c) asking for something, or d) spilling something.

I have laundry up to my ears and cereal on my kitchen floor. Where, you may ask, is my husband? Ah yes….he is cycling.

My husband and I strive to have a marriage of mutual respect. He frequently calls to ask me if it’s okay that he attend a class in the evening, meet a friend for dinner, or for any reason disappear from the house when I might have needed his help. Sunday mornings, however, are a different story. On Sunday mornings he is cycling. He is cycling if it’s cold, he is cycling if it’s hot. He will cycle when it’s raining. Did I imply that he will go cycling only if it fits conveniently into our family’s plans for the day? No, no. He will be cycling unless someone in our family has spontaneously combusted. In that case he will extinguish them, and then go cycling.

We have approximately 20 cycling magazines in our living room at any time. When my husband is not outside cycling, he is attending a cycling event, or he has his bike on the bike trainer, or he is reading about cycling, or watching cycling, or working on this cycling website. I once joked with him about him ever having an affair and he replied, “Trust me, if I had enough free time to be having an affair I’d just use it to ride my bike.”

Our garage cannot hold our cars because it is full of bikes. The mountain bike, the two road bikes, the triathlon bike, the fixed gear bike, the tandem bike for the two of us (which we still haven’t used), the kids’ bikes, the kids’ trailer, the kids’ trail-a-bike, and the bike work stand. We had to put up shelving to hold all of his biking equipment and biking clothes. My husband has more cycling jerseys than I have skirts.

Though I may sound completely bitter, the truth is that I am not. I am proud of my husband and how active he is. I am proud of him for keeping himself healthy. And in the end, I know that this is what makes him happy, and without a ride on Sunday mornings he is a grump. And who needs piles of laundry, dirty floors, and a grumpy husband?