Hi, I'm Willow Belden, and you're listening to Out There.

This is a podcast about the outdoors, from your window box and garden, to the fields on the edge of town, to the forests, prairies, seashores, and wilderness.

On the show, we explore our relationship with nature, through stories, interviews, essays, and even some fiction. We travel around the U.S. and the world with tales of love and heartbreak, passion and adversity,

desperation, and in particular, how to take a relationship to the next level.

Some couples try to accomplish that with marathon all night conversations, or maybe they dash off on a trip together.

Houston-based reporter Laura Eisensey took a different approach with her boyfriend.

They decided to bike 150 miles together.

This is their story.

Every spring, about 13,000 people get on their bikes in Houston and pedal all the way to Austin over two days.

It's called the MS-150.

Technically, it's 180 miles, but who's counting?

I had never ridden a road bike before, but last year I signed up.

I could say I wanted a new challenge.

I had done several half-marathons and wanted to push myself in a new way.

But the truth is, I did it for a guy, my boyfriend, my biking boyfriend Scott. He often commutes to work on his bike, which is

rare in a car-loving place like Houston, and he's done a hundred-mile bike ride before. He's so

hardcore about cycling, my friend secretly nicknamed him, sexy calves. Was it my idea, your idea?

I think it was both our ideas.

I think we were both thinking about it separately.

And then we were like, oh, let's do it together.

I also knew that you really liked biking.

And I wanted to do that with you.

...