It's Personal/Bittersweet

I did receive a formal offer for the job at VVS. We are going to pack up the house, hopefully rent it, and make the move. The job starts on October 1. Damn. Bittersweet.

In the meantime, I wrote this story for www.crankcollective.com and wanted to share it. I like it a lot, but it didn't get a lot of love on the site.


Photo: John Chandler

Relationships with the bike are personal. While a bike might be an inanimate object, the circles of folks who influence what one does with a bike are not. Think about the interconnected relationship threads that have come through the bike. Family, friends, shops, terrain, personal head space, and history. From the early days on the tricycle or big wheel to the last ride you had, the circles of people, places, and time are all wrapped up in a strange and beautiful orbit.

It’s personal. On a recent ride on a local from-the-house ride, I knew I had a short window to ride, a storm was rolling across the valley, and I had familial obligations fast approaching. I knew my personal best time on the ride this year and thought casually about trying to beat it. As I rode out and approached the main climb, the storm was on an intercept course over my right shoulder. Deep clapping thunder boomed accompanied by the flash of lightning and tendrils of rain connecting Earth and sky.

Breath came in heavy measured volume as the drive train kept spinning and the bike rolled up the hillside over the jeep track that winded up into the forest. I kept hearing Phil Ligget in my mind talking about a rider I had watched earlier in the day on a breakaway during the USA Pro Cycling Challenge. He was talking about staying on top of the gear the rider was pushing, which the rider was struggling to do. I dug into the store of energy and strength stowed in my body and tried to stay on top of it, not wanting to let the esteemed commentator down.

Fear of lightning striking me down pushed the pace. Riding into the tree line assuaged my concerns a bit, but the rain started to come down as soon as the canopy covered me. The sound of drops hitting the leaves overhead mixed with the cool splash of water hitting my heated skin was calming.

To me, climbing at altitude is a blend of conditioning, ability to understand your threshold for pain, and mental focus to drive hard when it would be easiest to quit. Gravity, weather, and terrain pushed against the thoughts that drove me up. Breath came in and out, full bore, engine running at maximum RPM. This pushing, drawing the most from yourself is a part of the personalized nature of the ride. One does not need to climb like a pro roadie, just ride to create the connection a bike can offer and learn to push your limits.

The next ride I took after the local PR quest brought me to a couple new sections of trail on a six and a half hour ride into the high country. At one point I was a hundred and fifty feet behind Ridinfool, ripping a downhill that was new to both of us, and loving it. The singletrack was red dirt, tacky and perfect. I scanned ahead just in time to see Ridinfool drop over a steep section flanked by pine trees when a hawk flew off a nearby perch and glided over his head – totally unbeknownst to him. They both floated down the valley together. I saw the image and nearly exploded with stoke.

Some rides are like that. It is so much more than the number of miles and vertical – even more than the quality of the trails you are riding. It has more to do with the situation and the way the ride unfolds than the preparation and planning. Light and shadow and interaction with the natural elements fringe the ride with mystique.

Ridinfool and I were 25 miles into our ride when dark, foreboding, storm clouds, ubiquitous during afternoons in August in the Rocky Mountains, started thundering behind us. We peeled off Rosebud, had a snack and talked over the plan. Do we wait for this huge, dark cloud to pass or press on? Which way was it going, anyways? If we were angling this way and the storm was angling that way, we could put the hammer down and hope to skirt the beating the heart of that storm was sure to offer.

And so it was. As we pushed through the kind of terrain and personal challenges it takes to get through such a big ride, we dodged the first storm, and then a second as we contoured along the back side of Cement Mountain on Eccert Gulch. Some days a decision like that would mean pushing through a monsoon rain with lightning strikes and thunder shaking the air between cold, fat, drops of rain driving against you. Some days the chips fall in your favor.

Back on my local ride, solo, pushing hard for the top of the climb, I was sucking air as hard as I could, chest pounding, legs on fire but knowing the terrain well enough to know that I was going to top out and have a quick flat section to recover before the downhill would consume my focus. Red lined, on the verge of a storm, and approaching the apex of the climb on one of my favorite trails, I shifted into a harder gear to get a little bit more. Across the meadow that separates the climb from the descent, rain spit harder and the sky grew darker, but the light inside glowed so bright.

Rain can swamp a trail, turning it to sloppy mud, but it can also apply a perfect coating that a pair of knobbies tear into like a lion into pray. As the meadow gave way to the forest and singletrack twists downhill through the Aspen groves, the dirt became as perfect as it gets. Timing and flow between rider and trail, nature and geography all falling into place. Knowing no trail better than this one, riding it at 100 percent in a dynamic weather situation and a certain amount of motivation to go as hard as I can created one of those rides.

Sections of trail that had been loose with sand and corners that had kept me from the perfect carve were manicured and buffed with the right combination of summer traffic and rain. Being a bit of a spazz tends to send me out of nice turns into a total recovery effort when I change directions, but every once in a while things come together. Body position and aggression aligned to serve each corner, berm, drop, and twist of trail the right amount of English. Energy in equals energy out and pushing the bike through the flowing trail features reaped great reward.

As the trail opened up at the bottom, dumping out of the forest and back into meadow, the rain was starting to over-saturate the soil. Cold rain dropping onto hot skin as grit sprayed off the wheel and up my face and across my back. Part of my mind said to back off and just get home at a leisurely pace, but my animal core grinded even harder against the thoughts. Stand up and hammer the flats, carve the corners and attack the descents as aggressively as the conditions allow. No time to gloat, but it feels right.

Back on the dirt road following the singletrack the rain picked up and I settled into the rhythm of trying to push a big gear without wasting myself for the last climb and flats before home. Each ride presents itself in its own way. Perhaps it was the aggressive nature of the ride thus far, the harsh weather…I don’t know, but a couple cars came driving past me going fast. I felt indignant. How dare they! I gave the second car the bird in a fit of anger then put my head down and grinded even harder.

Then I got paranoid. What if that was some 250 pound meathead who’d been drinking whiskey all day and wanted nothing more than to pound on some bike geek before settling down to camp in the rain for the night. I dug a little deeper. Fear is also a good motivator. But that faded and I kept the hammer down. Time trial position, low and tight. I looked up at the base of the final climb and focused on the summit, put my head down and grinded, and when I looked up again the top was right in front of me. Stand up and hammer over the top and spit some of the grit out of my mouth before tucking back in to the TT position and as big a ring as I could push. The rain kept falling and the dirt kept spinning past.

Down the final descent I eyed a pickup coming from a subdivision on an intercept path with me. There was a stop sign the truck would heed if we were close. I pushed hard with my head down, one eye watching the truck – still looking to be a heat seeker heading towards its target. He has a stop sign. Hammer down. Closer and closer the trajectories converged. My mission couldn’t be unhinged by a careless driver, could it?

The driver slowed ever so slightly, but then drove past the stop sign without pretending to stop. As he came across the street toward me I adjusted my course for the shoulder and let out some kind of obscenity. Without letting up I held a line right on the edge of the road. The driver pulled past me and slowed down enough to say something out his back window. All I heard was the hiss of the water on the road being cut by my tires, the wind in my ears, and the engine of his truck.

Anger is a motivator. The road is not generally where a mountain biker finds his/her golden moments. Rain, pavement, a good ride, and the relationship of time and space brought out the fire in me and I put on the grimace and dug for more through a couple corners and the final straight to home. The physiological pain of acid buildup and the associated burn compounded with maximum oxygen intake and the intense mental focus it takes to push your limits all came to a boil as I drove the final piece of wet road to home.

Why bother? Nobody was watching, and only my wife and kids knew I was out riding. It is the relationship with the bike and knowing that it is a vehicle to feed your relationship with yourself, with nature, with those around you. Its not always wildflowers and tacky singletrack, but it always gives you the opportunity to experience life and living.