“Stop tailgating me!” my friend John yelled as he screeched his bike to a halt in front of me and I almost crashed into him.
We were on our annual spring mountain bike sojourn to Moab riding Porcupine Rim, the classic 14-mile trail that’s popular for its long, screaming descent from the precarious heights of the sheer desert mesa into the Colorado River basin. It might not be the best choice for the first ride of the year, but we always do it anyway. We’re gluttons for punishment and pain, mostly because it makes all that beer we drink around the campfire afterward taste so much better.
I was the only girl on the ride again this year, which always makes me a little nervous.
“Don’t forget about me,” I warned the boys at the trailhead. “Will you make sure to stop every half hour or so? Just so we don’t get too far apart?”
Then the funniest thing happened. I started passing them – about half of them. But the best part was when I passed John. I’d go so far as to say I schooled him, left him in the dust.
It’s not that I’m competitive, it’s that my 17-year foray into mountain biking has been long and arduous. Even though I’ve always loved anything that gets me out in the mountains for a long, exhilarating day, I had always thought mountain biking was a raw deal.
“It’s hard going up and it’s hard going down,” I told Mark when he first got me into it.
Mark was my mountain bike boyfriend. One year, he bought me clipless pedals and bike shoes that were at least two
sizes too small. Then he took me to Moab. Not only was it my first time riding with clipless pedals, it was my first time riding in Moab.
He thought doing the long loop on Slickrock might help me get used to the pedals. What he didn’t expect was to see me freeze at the top of a steep incline only to tumble down, feet still in pedals, until I landed at the bottom stuck to my bike and totally helpless. He stood over me, trying his best to stifle laughter at the sight of me in a heap, both wheels still spinning like a beetle on its back.
When the ride finally was over, I cried, but I did it quietly, my face pressed against the
passenger-side window so he couldn’t see me. When Mark saw the bruise that ran from my butt all the way down the back of my leg, he felt bad.
“I didn’t realize you crashed that hard,” he said, gently rubbing my back.
“Well, I did,” I said, my eyes welling up with tears all over again. I wondered if my mountain bike career might be shortlived. I wondered the same thing about our relationship.
Somehow, the relationship lasted (all through college, at least), and my love for mountain biking endured, too. But for some reason, that long-awaited breakthrough – the moment when I finally learned to feel truly comfortable on a bike – didn’t happen until last year.
Maybe it was because I actually rode my bike almost every day, even if I did tend to ride the same trails over and over again. Maybe it was that I finally figured out how much air pressure I like in my tires and how and when to shift into the right gear – who knew the middle ring could be my friend on technical climbs? – and how to not only let go of my brakes but actually pedal toward technical sections on the downhill.
A quarter-mile from the end of the trail, John came to an abrupt halt above a triple-tiered rock drop he thought was too hard to negotiate. Somehow, I managed to steer around him and clear it, the perfect end to the best ride of my life.
A smile still plastered across my face, I took a corner too hard and my front tire went into a large rock. It slammed me on my side before I had a chance to get out of my pedals, much like that ride on Slickrock 17 years before.
Blood dripped down my knee, eliciting oohs and aahs from people in the parking lot. I collapsed into the car, my wound throbbing and tender, feeling as humble as ever.
In the end, it wasn’t John who had been schooled but I. I realized that is what has fueled my mountain bike career all these years. It’s sort of like life – the lesson never ends.
Freelance columnist Alison Berkley can be reached at alison@berkleymedia.com.
