1 . Winter _________ Eastern Canada into a deep freeze. We sat at home, waiting for the COVID-19 cases to decrease and for the weather to improve. Each of us looked forward to something to keep us _________ the isolation: seeing friends, eating in restaurants, watching a movie at a cinema ... My hope has quietly been _________ dust in the garage since November.

My bike got stolen within months of moving to Toronto. I rode my old bike faithfully for almost 20 years before getting the replacement, which then got stolen, forcing me back to Old Faithful. The faint of heart might have _________ biking completely at that point, but not me, _________ what biking means to me: freedom.

Every spring I take Old Faithful down from the rack, clean it, lubricate it and pump up the tires. As time goes by, the old gal has started showing her age, and now there are more replacement parts on her than _________ ones. But with all bike stores being _________ on new models as the pandemic has swept them clean, she is all I have.

On my bike, I’m limitless and unshackled by gas tanks or batteries; as long as I’m alive and eating, I’ve got fuel and can pedal to the ends of Earth if I want. No _________ is impassable. Jammed roads mean nothing: I can still weave between cars in traffic. This memory means even more to me with the experience of _________.

Society gritted its teeth (咬紧牙关) in the knowledge that we just had to __________ it out for a year to get to the other side. Then Delta hit. Then Omicron. A year __________ into two, and that’s when the walls really started closing in. That’s when we really needed hope. So, I count the days until I can return to my bike. On my bike, I achieve another state of mind. As ridiculous as it sounds, in the old days when I __________ up a hill, in my mind I became the leader in the Tour de France and that inner-city hill became the Alps. I would push myself to reach the top each time. I wanted to feel that little __________ of making it to the summit, knowing that doing so told me once again that I could go anywhere and that nothing could hold me back. I was free.

Every few years I add a new ache or pain. I am starting to get old. At some point, I won’t be able to tackle those hills the way I used to, but biking is a time-limited undertaking and is worth every __________. Therefore, every time I encounter a hill, I don’t give up. I never want to lose this sense of __________. I’m waiting for that first warm day when I’ll escape the pandemic walls. I want to put on my helmet and for one brief, beautiful moment, be free again.