Write and Ride for Fun
Tags: Cycling, Mountain Biking, Writing

“I think it’s so cool that you enjoy writing for fun.”

We’re in the parking lot after our ride, Anna’s laying across the downed tailgate with her eyes closed, soaking up the warm early spring sun. I’m on my bike with the seat lowered to a nearly BMX position so I can comfortably reach the ground, rolling back and forth slightly as we wait for Tyler to quit tinkering with whatever it is that has him riding slow, interrupted circles around the lot, a concerted look on his face and multitool in his hand.

“Well I mean most times it’s not really fun,” I pause and consider what my motivation is to write when there’s no monetary or deadline incentive to do so. “It’s challenging and a lot of times I hate it. It’s frustrating and sometimes seems pointless, but if you don’t use it you lose it, and I don’t know, maybe someday it’ll be worth it.”

We’d finished a ride that had been exactly that — disappointed that the weather wasn’t cooperating for skiing, we trucked out east for a few miles of fresh air and energy burning. The unseasonably warm and dry winter had us frequent visitors to the arid trails of our neighboring Badlands, a small network of dirt singletrack keeping mountain bikes in season all year round.

That morning was a struggle from the start, huffing through climbs and struggling through technical sections we’d navigated easily days ago. On top of the physical challenges, neither one of us seemed mentally invested enough to drum up the gumption necessary to tackle the trail instead of getting eaten up by it, and we spent 30 minutes of uphill work cursing ourselves and dreaming of lazy Sundays that involved bloody maries instead of bloody shins.

Once we finally reached the top I didn’t feel the usual combination of relief and anticipatory thrill that saddling up for a descent usually sparks. I stared unfocused down the trail while we switched into downhill mode in a cloud of “alright well let’s just get through this” antipathy.

I pulled caboose, Anna ahead but just out of my periphery, slowly and quietly navigating the drops and twists and runaway steeps that have never failed to dump a dose and a half of adrenaline into my veins. Unconcerned about having fun or trying hard or how much further behind I was, I cruised into the fork where Anna and Tyler sat waiting, silently. They looked at me as I looked at our two options — left to go down to the truck or right to go up for another lap — and I could tell I was the swing vote. Anna seemed equally as disinterested in everything as I was, and “always down for one more” Tyler wanted to know if he was doing lap two solo or if we were coming with.

“Let’s go for one more. It sucks but maybe it’ll get better. Right?” I choked on shock and regret as the words spilled out of my mouth.

Anna grumbles but agrees, and we start pedaling before I can retract my vote. But something surprising happens at the first obstacle, a short but punchy climb littered with a variety of rocks in all shapes and sizes. It requires just as much mental acumen as it does grunt work, neither of which seemed to have made it onto the trail with me that morning. But the simple act of being the driving force for this second lap kicked my enjoyment responsibility into a new, now slightly positive gear. I failed quickly and spectacularly, bashing my shin on my pedal and nearly toppling into a spindly sage bush, but the effort of those couple lively pedal strokes turned my whole mindset around. All of it was a choice, obviously — I wasn’t kidnapped to go on this ride, nor was I ever forced into mountain biking in the first place. But sometimes things need to have a twisted level of pain and suffering to remind you that you really enjoy them. Like, “if I’m willing to hurt this way for this thing, I must really like it.”

And you do.

I do.

Somehow the universe always knows right when you’re at that place, that tipping point of making the effort to progress or slowly slipping in unmoving futility. As obnoxious as it is, once you commit to trying the sun always seems to part, affording a stunning summit view you weren’t expecting, or you clear that tricky rock section that always trips you up. The littlest thing can reward your desire to try, instilling just an ounce of happiness that reminds you why you’re out there suffering for it.

A few minutes later a rocky multi-pitch stalled Anna right in front of me. She’d taken the left line and for some unconscious reason I’d taken the right, uncharacteristically deviating from my approach of just doing whatever she does. There was just enough space for me to grunt past her, our handlebars almost kissing as I threw my weight forward praying my bike would follow me up and over the rogue boulder I hadn’t meant to attack.

“Go! Go!” She’d dismounted to hike through but encouraged me to keep going, a good friend and even better riding partner. Sport naturally comes with a healthy dose of competition, but keeping that competitiveness motivational (to be better, try harder, keep going when you wouldn’t on your own) as opposed to inflammatory (“I need to be better than her!”) is a complicated task, especially between females for some stupid reason. Clearing that segment of trail was not about moving up the pecking order in our lineup and only about moving my enjoyment and confidence meter. I knew that, she knew that, and the high five when we finally came to our rest and reconvene point solidified it.

That small win was a snowball. I felt my stance become more athletic, my approach into obstacles more dynamic, my commitment to having fun tighten. The ride was no longer happening to me, I wasn’t a victim of the trail and its obstacles. I was making the ride happen. Conquering it. Enjoying it.

Although I’m not wearing giddiness atop my baggy knee-length shorts like usual, my enjoyment is quietly adding up as we start our second descent. I sense it in Anna, too. When we get to the technical drop at the bottom of the trail that both Anna and I have deemed “unrideable” (despite watching Tyler ride it easily multiple times) I see the curious cockiness of someone about to try something crazy in her eyes.

“You thinking about it??” She’s straddling her bike staring down the drop, her eyes focused on the line she knows she needs to take. She looks back at me and they dart uncertainly around the rest of the rubble, back to the line, quickly considering the variety of hazards, back again to the unconquered obstacle.

“Yeah. I think I can do it. We can totally do it.”

I excuse myself from the opportunity, laying my bike down and climbing down the rocky drop to offer either video or a spot. Tyler’s picked up on what’s happening and climbs up trail to offer helpful beta while I pull my phone out of my pocket and line up my shot.

“It’s just right through here,” he all but drags a guide line in the thin layer of sand coating the rocks with his index finger, “lean back and try to stay off your front brake.” As an afterthought, “and just don’t hit that rock on the right.”

Anna false starts twice, stating annoyedly that she’s too scared each time she pulls her brakes to a full stop just above the drop. She carefully climbs down carrying her bike, looking frustrated and defeated. Tyler says something that on any other day might be motivating tough love, but today hits like a derogatory dig. I retreat up the rocks to retrieve my bike as I hear another note of regret sing out in her displeasure with his comment.

As I’m grabbing my bike my eyes go back to the line Tyler’s drawn through the dirt. I pull on the taller handlebar to bring the bike upright, and let it casually roll to the top of the drop before squeezing the brakes. Standing at the top, a step away from walking down to meet them, I look at Anna in what I really don’t intend to be a daring way. But just as the vote for another lap spat out of me without my brain’s recognition, “You’re right, we can totally do it...” Her glare softens with intrigue. “C’mon, let’s do it,” blurts from my lips as I squeeze the rear brake, pull my front tire high off the ground, and spin around to find our start line.

She follows, because that’s our rider friend agreement — one or the other always instigating or motivating another mile, another attempt, a “fuck it, I bet we can do it” blindly ballsy challenge. It’s like ‘hold my beer’ and ‘I believe in you!’ rolled into one, as we both hand our cans to someone else and high five our fears away. Up the trail a few feet from our obstacle, the responsibility of making this lap enjoyable now shouldered on the decision to attempt the unrideable, I straddle my bike and look over at Anna for confirmation. I want her to say that this is the right move, that she is going to follow, that we won’t maim ourselves trying to salvage this otherwise unmemorable ride. My eyes dart back towards the rocks, at the tip of Tyler’s helmet peeking out from beneath them. In a mindless instant I lift my left fist to hers and my right foot from the ground to the pedal. I don’t give my brain a chance to tell me otherwise. I hear Tyler shout, almost alarmingly, “weight back! WEIGHT BACK!!” and I’m pretty sure I close my eyes, completely abandoning the line he’s prescribed to us and gripping the handlebars as hard as I can, resisting every urge to clamp onto the front brake. I lean right early, afraid of the ravine Anna was worried about tumbling down to the left, and clank my pedal hard on the rock that was to be avoided at all cost, knocking me off balance and pointing my tires straight at Tyler who’s attempting to act as a ravine barricade. I feel my back tire hit the flat ground and pull both brakes with every muscle of my being, my whole body now desperately compensating in a right tilt, and I skid into a 180º turn, coming to a stop perpendicularly across the trail. I’ve been holding my breath, and when I realize I’m not only still upright but that I’ve ridden the unrideable, I exhale.

Anna follows, upright and overjoyed, a much smoother and more tactful performance (I am ever the bull in a china shop) and we spend the rest of the mellow pedal back to the car out of our minds with bliss and aggressive adrenaline. Such a shitty, shitty ride, redeemed by one three second section.

That’s how I feel about writing most of the time. A single sentence, one I’m proud of and fought hard for, even if no one else will ever read it, can make an entire session seem worthwhile. A few words lifting an entire paragraph like Atlas holding the sky, an unrideable boulder near the end of a written-off ride. That sentence is feeding something bigger, giving hope that even if momentum won’t come to swoop us into pages or miles of top-notch performance, that at least the potential is there. Maybe not a novel, maybe not a top-to-bottom fully upright ride, but something, that at some point, will make all the practice worthwhile.

And until then, the beers and sunshine and risidual giddiness in the parking lot are a good way to wait it out.