Round Pegs Make Round Holes

Mountain biking, or any worthwhile endeavor that requires self-mastery through consistent effort, sacrifice, and dedication will at some point ask for more than can easily be given. The request usually comes at the point of physical exhaustion, imbalance, or mental fatigue. It never wants anything except absolutely everything you have and whatever is left after that too. 

The trail post that marks the beginning of a wicked single track bears a sign with one of the most ominous trail monikers, "Braveheart". Just to begin requires a hard swallow, a gut check, and a sternly worded pep talk. To start is to commit fully, there is no stopping and getting off or quitting once the front wheel rolls over the top ridge of the trail head. 

The ground falls away from the bike so steeply that I am completely off my seat with my arms stretched to their limit as I try to counterbalance the quickly descending bike by nearly sitting on my rear wheel. My bike speeds, tumbles, and bucks down the face of this fifty-foot luge. The side of this hill is packed with jagged stones of various sizes and shapes. These misshapen blocks force my direction and at multiple points they actually drop off completely on the downhill side by a foot or more. 

Under normal conditions this trail is technically challenging to say the least. Add to that the fact that the Northwest has been saturated with rain for a solid month. This rain turns everything into mush; wet leaves, spongy moss, and gooey forest debris all mix together into this sort of slimy and slippery Vaseline that coats every surface; especially jagged stones of various sizes and shapes. 

In situations such as this descent, foot position on the pedal is critically important. But with all the other things I was trying to manage, navigate, and control (like NOT killing myself) it slipped my mind. Mountain biking made me pay for that lack of attention in-full, plus interest. About halfway down the face my front wheel leapt from the top edge of a drop and slammed hard on an unyielding block and my ill-positioned left foot slipped off the pedal. The results can be seen in the picture above. I didn't crash, I just kept going, riding, pedaling and pushing myself up the next hill. 

Sloth

I do not intend to do all seven deadly sins but I simply cannot avoid this one: sloth. I never understood why laziness would be listed in the top seven bad habits that warranted the moniker of "deadly", until now. I rode heavily this past summer. It felt great. But it's been over two weeks since I've even looked at my bike. I have, however, riden the couch in front of the TV like a mad man. 

The body atrophies quickly with lack of exercise. I have done more harm than good by resting for as long as I have. Now when I go back out to ride it will feel very much like the first time. It's not going to be pretty. In fact I am so bored and disgusted with myself that I don't even have the motivation to write this blog entry. How sad is that?

At some point, even the sloth has to get up off the dirt and forage for food right? Right? He does eventually get up. I am pretty sure that other animals don't actually come serve him meals like ordering room service at the Fairmont Hotel, which sounds really good at the moment. 

If we let our inner sloth take over, then the view never changes, if we never challenge ourselves we never learn anything. We grow through doing, not sitting. It's been raining pure sadness here for two weeks straight and so that makes it crazy hard to get up the motivation to go ride in the muck. But into the muck I must go. My sanity depends on it.

Okay, so I have resolved to not let my slothfulness be the death of me. I am committing to myself and the throngs of my devoted followers (all four of you) that I will rise up this weekend and ride. But not before I eat something. Hey what's the number for room service again? Let's all say it together: ice cream is my friend!

Lust

Being listed as one of the seven deadly sins can hamper a word's image. Add to that several centuries of religious dogma declaring it a tool of that rascal Lucifer and it can be rather confusing to see our culture embrace it with such reckless abandon. We live in a culture of conspicuous consumption. Lust is the icing slathered on top of every salacious news report, advertising campaign and Hollywood romantic comedy. It is inescapable. It seeps in to our subconscience despite our best efforts against it. 

With that said, I have a confession; I have lusted after YETI mountain bikes for longer than I care to admit. Now they have really outdone themselves and I find myself starving for something I didn't know I needed, until I saw it: the YETI SB66C (C is for Carbon Fiber). The frame weighs 6 pounds and boasts 6 inches of rear travel. What?! Plus, they've spent the last two years engineering their new "Switch Technology" platform. I won't bother to describe it here, suffice it to say: it's bitchin!

The question I always ask myself, when it comes to spending more money to upgrade to something different: Does it really make a difference? In this case it's not a matter of throwing done a few hundred bucks or even a thousand. A real top-notch build out of this frame would set someone back about eight grand. Wow! Now, the bike magazine editors would have us believe that it makes all the difference in the world. These guys ramble on for paragraphs about how they can detect the difference in a bike's weight change of just a few miserable ounces. Uh huh, sure.

The problem with giving in to lust is that once the seal is broken it cannot be fixed. The gash never heals and in most cases the opening just gets bigger and bigger until one day it just flows through without resistance. So how much is enough? When is good enough acceptable? Even if I do decide that enough is enough and that my current ride is more than acceptable, how do I turn off the craving, or at least dial it down so I can get some sleep?

It's a pretty straightforward choice at this point because I can't really justify laying down that kind of cash. That doesn't mean I've stopped thinking about it. It doesn't mean I've stopped trying to justify doing it anyway. I've come up with some awesome rationalizations. None of which have passed the muster of trying to convince others that it's important. Because even if I had unlimited resources I'm not sure I could bring myself to spend that much money just for the sake of lust. It is dreadfully tempting though. I guess that's why it's still on the deadly sins list. Lust:

 

See more delicious pictures of the SB66 Carbon here 

Dirt Rag Magazine

I haven't posted  here in awhile. Not for a lack of riding, even though the weather here has conspired to make riding a challenge. I've been poring all of my creative juices into a single piece. Every year Dirt Rag Magazine holds a Literature Contest and I was determined to enter something this year. I'll post here first if I win and if I don't then I will post the story that I entered. 

Thanks everyone for the support and stayed tuned, I'll be riding and writing very soon.

What it is

When I tell people, "I'm into mountain biking" they look at me with this blank stare like I've just said, "I'm into eating cereal for breakfast". They are completely unimpressed, uninterested and begin looking for an exit. If I dare make an attempt to elaborate, I notice a heavy glaze stretch their face downward as if some invisible force is pulling a nylon stocking over their head, bank robber style. 

Today I realized why; context. When I say mountain biking I mean one thing but when most people hear it they think something completely different. Why? Because everyone knows what a mountain bike is, they have at least one themselves, hanging from the ceiling in the garage, on the deck or in a tool shed. They've been meaning to ride it but they never get around to it. So there's a disconnect. 

I'm going to fix that disconnection here, with pictures. When I say mountain biking this is the image that pops into everyone's brain:

Ha! Maybe if you're some 80 year old retiree living out your last days in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. 

This is what it means to me:

Darker than a Raven's Taint

Crash, Caution & Princess' Bike

The theater is solemnly dark and mostly still. But somewhere the sound of shuffling, stirring, and rustling can be heard. Shapes, shadows and figures are just blotches here without the light from overhead. 

A thick, ink-black, plush-velvet curtain, drawn closed at the outermost edge of the stage has a small hole in it. The hole shines bright from the light it leaks. A bright beam from beyond, as if shining from the crown of a lighthouse.

Grab the fabric taut with both hands, peer through to see beyond the engulfing darkness. But only bits can be seen, not the entire stage, not all at once. Pivoting the view reveals different aspects, sections, parts and pieces but never the whole stage production. Never enough to get a true sense of where this belongs, or that sits, or how these things relate to those things. Sharp greens, bright yellows, deep oranges scatter the floor and bright white drops shimmer under the harsh spot light and give only a hint of their true nature.

Riding in the near-dark of dusk, shrouded by the thick canopy of century old pines is one thing (see earlier post: Riding Braille), but riding in the dark black of night is entirely different. Day and night different? No. More like the difference between coffee with cream and sugar and black coffee.

This is how I chose to spend my birthday. Me and my two friends, Crash and Caution, with lights strapped to our helmets, rode off into the sea of black. Paradise was empty, completely, save our trio. 

I love riding at night because the problem solving of day riding is amplified at night. With only a small spotlight punching a hole through the deepest darkness its difficult to see the whole problem. Only parts and pieces, sections and samplings but never the whole thing. Never seeing enough to get a true sense of the next obstacle, or corner, or where the actual trail is. Rain-soaked leaves cover the ground with sharp greens, bright yellows and deep oranges. Beautiful but slippery dangerous. I can't wait to go again.

Crash

The black speck at the crest is Lee

By any standard of measurement, riding to the summit of Tiger Mountain is difficult. From the upper parking lot the ascent is over 4 miles on a loose-gravel service road. The incline is relentless and constant, there are no flat or downhill breaks from the 30 degree ascent, in fact, the only change comes when it actually gets steeper. It takes over an hour to gain over 1700 feet of elevation, pedaling the entire time. Which I did not do.

But mountain biking is like that: difficult. When it 's approached with serious devotion, with intent, and in a way that leads to mastery; it's hard, it's painful, it's dangerous and more often than not, it's crashing. 

Most of the time a crash is scrapes, bumps, and bruises but sometimes a crash is breaks, blackouts, and permanent damage. Crash, is also the nickname of my best friend and faithful riding companion, Lee. I've been friends with Crash since the 80's but he only just received his mountain bike name this summer. 

Ride after ride, he would crash, usually in very spectacular ways but always without drama. He simply gets back on his bike and rides on as if nothing happened. 

Consistently crashing on a mountain bike (several times each ride) usually means that the rider is out of their depth, or their skill set is less than the conditions demand, or they quickly find themselves in an unsolvable problem. In Lee's case it's different. Lee crashes not from inability or inexperience; he crashes with intent. That is not to say that he deliberately sets out to go ass-over-tea-kettle. No. 

He rides with abandonment and with the idea that every ride is an opportunity to become better, to push himself past his limits, to break his old-self into pieces so he can carry them forward into a place of mastery. This unrelenting effort is difficult to match. Combine all that with his iron will, the endurance of a Kenyan marathoner and the result is that I frequently find myself on rides with him where I watch him disappear ahead of me down the trail without effort. 

The ride on Tiger Mountain was a typical ride with Crash. I struggled up the road with everything I had, I dismounted often, I walked my bike (shameful), and I cussed. Not Lee, yeah he struggled too but his determination and tenacity kept his pedals moving when mine stopped. I am reminded of that brutal ride today because we rode 12 crushing miles at Lord Hill this morning and once we started on a trail I saw very little of Crash. Only at crossroads, he'd patiently wait, as if he'd been there all day. 

Crash to Master.