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I pressed my back against the tree trunk, hoping it was enough to hide me from their view — whoever was approaching with the click of spinning freehubs. I glanced at my companion-in-arms, Liz, who’d taken cover behind a laurel bush. She gave a slight nod. Every muscle in my body tensed as the bikes came into view. The riders were chatty, oblivious, foolishly vulnerable. I reached into my bra, where I kept my ammunition: raw eggs.
Liz gave a mighty yell and jumped into the trail. I followed her lead, hurling yolk-filled grenades at our opponents.
“Retreat! Retreat!” They turned tail and pedaled away. We high-fived. We had defended our team with valor. It was the Fall Classic — an annual alley-cat race. It’s a day filled with nonsensical tasks and ridiculous antics on mountain bikes. The best part is that all my friends are there.
I have a lot of close friends. Some are younger than me, some are older. Richard, for example, is more than 20 years my senior. I witnessed his first and only tattoo — a bicycle on his upper arm — during a ride where we were dressed in leather and bandanas as a “biker gang.”
We like costumes. Richard and I wore matching elf onesies for our holiday lights ride last year. Come to think of it, on the list of things that mountain bikers like, costumes are up there with stickers, trail beers, and discussing the friction coefficients of wet versus dry chain lube.
I don’t see my friends who don’t ride bikes anymore. What are they even doing? I’ve completely forgotten how normal people spend their weekends. Wine tasting? Trivia nights? I have no idea. If an activity doesn’t require a helmet, it’s not worth my time.
My bike friends and I like to play outside, even when the temperatures are horrendous. One night, in the woods, we declared ourselves lost. That wasn’t unusual. I pried my water bottle from its frosted cage and held it in the beam of my helmet light.
“It’s frozen!” I said with a laugh.
“Mine is too!” my friend Tyler said. His shoes were wrapped in plastic grocery bags for added insulation, and they made a swooshing sound every time he pedaled.
“Here’s a bit of courage.” Someone to my left passed me a miniature bottle of Fireball Whiskey. It was not frozen. We all turned off our lights and took a moment to just be in the dark woods with our breath coming out in clouds. We tilted our faces toward the branches. A shooting star lit up the sky, and we gasped in unison.
It’s these magical moments that I will cherish forever, brought to me by mountain biking. It’s mountain biking that puts me deep in the woods after dark. It’s mountain biking that gives me a profound sense of accomplishment in building my skills. And it’s mountain biking that gives me my friends.
My friends are doctors, lawyers, farmers, and artists; all driven in their own way, all strong, but most importantly, they’re all kind. See, mountain biking breeds a culture of care. We ride together, we explore together, we build trails together, and we crash together. And even when we’re off our bikes, we take care of each other. I didn’t have to cook my own meals for two whole months after a major accident last year. My community fed me.
There’s nothing like chasing your friend’s wheel in a party train through the trees at top speed. The wind on your face, split-second decision making, feeling like a total sender. It’s still fun even when it doesn’t work out.
At the top of a muddy tech chute, Sam turned and said, “Let’s Blue Angel this.”
“Heck yeah,” Lee said. He went first, then slipped out immediately. Sam ran over him. When Lee stood up, a perfect muddy tread pattern from Sam’s tire crossed the back of his jersey. We all cracked up.
It’s hard to explain this kind of thing to someone who doesn’t ride bikes: the pride you feel when you walk into a store with a dirt-splattered face, the hilarity that ensues when you get caught in a rain storm and you’re slipping and sliding all over the place, how you feel the joy of a little kid when you hit that jump just right. When I try to explain these things to normal people, they just respond with blank stares.
“You liked how you kept falling over?” they’d say. “I don’t understand why you take those kinds of risks.” And I want to say to them, “Well, I don’t understand why your clothes are so clean, or why your hair isn’t frazzled, or why you aren’t bored to death right now.”
Let’s be real. Mountain biking is not a reasonable sport, but it’s the most fun I’ve ever had. I didn’t know what “stoke” was until I got behind a suspension fork and pointed it downhill. Because of mountain biking, I’m not normal anymore. Instead, my life is filled with mud and grease and bear sightings, wild orchids in the spring, trailside berries in the summer, waking up in tents, and hiding bruises at my day job.
I’m not normal anymore, and that’s okay. That’s fantastic. Because at any given moment, I can call up one of my friends and ask: “Wanna go out and play?”
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