An opportunity for friendship 
Being a Shreveport native, I try to become involved in as much as I can so that I can give back to and enjoy a city that has given me so much.
I love volunteering with the Louisiana Film Prize; I foster dogs when time and money allow; Junior Achievement is a great organization to volunteer for during the school year, and most recently, I have become involved with Bike Shreveport.
Although I cannot participate nearly as often as I’d like, whenever I am able to meet up with Bike Shreveport for a ride, I find myself meeting different people of Shreveport-Bossier City and ultimately making new friends.
Such was the case with Jennifer Harvey, an Alexandria-born woman who moved to Shreveport in May 2013.
To put it bluntly, Harvey is a beautiful woman. I first met her at Noble Savage, and to blame it on my erratic insecurities as a woman, I assumed we’d have little in common.
I gotta say, though, ever since the night I met her, if I see Harvey out and about or while she’s working (She works at the Robinson Film Center and Chicago in downtown Shreveport,), she makes it a point to say hello and genuinely ask how I am doing.
While our conversation has never surpassed small talk, I had the pleasure of riding bikes with Harvey just a couple weeks ago en route to a Bike Shreveport Co-Op Sunday at The Bike Container on Texas Avenue. In between directing us within the streets of downtown Shreveport, Harvey told me a chapter of her story.
It all started with me asking, “What brought you to Shreveport?” “School,” she said, as she wanted to become an occupational therapist, in addition to her degree in human resources management from LSU in Baton Rouge. She had worked for two years in HR, but her love for biology drove her to enroll in grad school at LSU Health Shreveport with additional classes at LSU Alexandria.
And she loved it – classes were going well, her boyfriend at the time was also in school, and the level of stress she had was considered normal for any grad student.
But at three semesters in, the stress turned into headaches, and the headaches brought on blurred vision. Knowing something wasn’t right, Harvey went to a doctor to be later diagnosed with a pituitary tumor, which is the gland that controls all endocrine and hormonal function of the entire human body (It sits directly under the optic chiasm of your eyeball.).
Also being a Type 2 diabetic, Harvey, for months, began taking more medications and having blood work and MRIs done, all while not knowing whether the tumor was benign or malignant.
She applied for medical leave, and for one year, focused on her health.
“It was the most life-affirming [year] … most human I’ve ever felt in my life,” Harvey said. After a year of doctor visits and tests in both Shreveport and Alexandria, she found her life both improved and well “ruined.”
“I had quit grad school, lost a relationship and had to take a year of my life to treat [the tumor] and get healthy,” she said. “The negatives are there, but all the benefits that it taught me are so much bigger.”
Soon after having her health back, Harvey got on a bike in Alexandria. In fact, it was then her and a good friend built the bike she’s riding during our conversation. A few months later, December 2014, she found SBC Bike Social, now known as Bike Shreveport.
“I had no real connections with grad school students, and no real friends,” Harvey said. “Immediately after I started riding a bike, all of the sudden I had friends. The Bike Shreveport community just took me in. These are people [in Bike Shreveport that] on the day-to-day I may have nothing in common with except we both like to ride bikes.”
Then we both wondered if openminded people choose the bike, or if the bike chooses the open-minded people? Hmm.
Our conversation then turned to the misconceptions people can have of one another in a city our size.
“There’s a ton of niche groups [in Shreveport],” she said. “I would like [Shreveport] more if it didn’t have groups or cliques. It does suck being identified as the bike girl with rainbow hair that bartends – I can’t be seen as someone with multiple degrees that went to grad school and actually held an office job where I wore a suit every day for two years.”
Adding, “I feel we could really be more united by getting involved with the myriad of events and activities that bring so many different types of people here.”
Such events and activities include what Bike Shreveport has created, where she isn’t just the girl with rainbow hair. She’s Harvey, and everyone I’ve seen connect with her enjoys her beaming positivity. It’s contagious, and you’ll wonder how you, too, could have her energy and beauty – both inside and out.
“I break it down like this, [Shreveport is] a small town, and you’re either from here, or you’re not,” Bike Shreveport organizer, Stephen Pederson said. “I’ve gotten the chance to experience, in a way that I think no one else has, how people view the City of Shreveport. I’ve been able to show them the way I see Shreveport – on two wheels. It’s an all-around better experience and it has resulted in Shreveport-ers new and old also seeing their city in a completely different way. “ “In Jennifer’s case, she yearns for likeminded folk, and the relaxed lifestyle of South Louisiana,” Pederson added. “I’ve been able to show her what Shreveport has to offer and actually learn to like it, dare I say love it, when she hadn’t in almost two years of living here. It took her two years to hate it, and two months to love it.”
We all know everyone has a story, but it’s what you choose to do with that story once you’ve heard it that matters. I learned several lessons from Jennifer Harvey that Sunday – lessons in determination, strength and an ability to roll with the punches. Meeting people like Harvey is one of the many reasons I like to take part in putting #buttsonbikes.
