They are the only ones who motivate me. I am the only one who tightens them. Two biking shoes with weathered bottoms and discolored soles. Two who lie beneath my bike. Two shoes there to carry me on. From my classroom I can hear them, but my classmates don’t hear a sound.

Their enthusiasm is extraordinary. They get disappointed at those unmotivated. They clip in and they clip out and grip the pedal between their weathered bottoms and discolored soles and push me forward and never quit their motivation. This is how they pedal.

Let one forget his reason for being, they’d pedal all day like bikers in the Tour de France, each going faster as they pedal on. Pedal, pedal, pedal they whisper in the wind. They work.

When I am too tired and too unmotivated to keep pedaling, when I am a small person against the world. When there is a dead end. When there is nowhere to go. Two who pedal with the wind. Two who motivate in tough times. Two whose only reason is to keep me going and going.