To explain, when I experience things that aren’t involved with riding - whether it’s handling a job interview, learning to work a new phone or trying to fix my car - I nearly always come to associate the experience with its riding equivalent.
Allow me to break it down with some examples:
Life Experience: Birth
Riding Equivalent: Your first experience with your preferred type of riding
Why they’re the same: Much like birth, any rider’s first experience in what will become his or her favorite discipline is usually an epic eye-opener. Because I love downhill, my life as a bike rider began at 27 when I pointed my first real bike, a used and poorly spec’ed 2001 Specialized Big Hit, down the first hill I brought it to.
Sure, I had ridden a cross-country bike to improve my motocross fitness before, but I’d never had that much fun on it. After one run on my eight-year-old DH racer, I knew at once that, as a bike rider, I was meant to go downhill as fast as I possibly could. Turns out I wasn’t going that fast on the Big Hit, but to me it felt like a winning run down Mont St. Anne. There it all began.
Life Experience: Your first day of school
Riding Equivalent: Your first race
Why they’re the same: Many of us begin our riding lives, much like our normal lives, in something of a bubble. When we’re children, we live among our parents and maybe some brothers and sisters. And when we begin riding, we might surround ourselves with some similarly familiar characters: your buddy from high school or the guy from accounting who rides a 1999 Cannondale.
But like the first day of school, your first race puts you in a much larger and more varied environment. Being thrown into a brand-new vortex with a bunch of people you’ve never met can be an intense experience, and whether it’s racing or school, it can go either very well or very poorly. But either way, at the end of the day, you may realize that your world will never be the same.
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| In these photo captions I'll do a little reverse math: riding situations and their real-life equivalents. Cracking a nice whip like this is like saying something clever in the presence of a pretty girl. It's only momentary, but the experience will still put a spring in your step for a few minutes. |
Riding Equivalent: Test riding a new bike
Why they’re the same: Compatibility is the key word here. With dates and test rides, you try to bring your best self to the experience - the last thing you want to do is turn off your date or drop your as-yet-unpurchased ride on the pavement in front of the shop - while simultaneously observing enough to see if your new acquaintance is worth pursuing further.
Best case scenario, a first date or test ride could be the start of something beautiful. Worst case scenario is usually a simple “great to meet you; see you around!” parting. And then you just hope the bike doesn’t call you again.
I may have lost track of my metaphor there, but you get the idea.
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| Crashing is a part of riding, and its real-life equivalent is having someone break up with you when you thought things were going well. You're usually surprised and often hurt. |
Riding Equivalent: Riding with an injury
Why they’re the same: Bad-asses that we are, riders tend to view injuries as no more than a bothersome inevitability, much like the rest of the world views common illnesses. Strangers are always taken aback to see the state of my shins or elbows, yet to me these marks seem no more avoidable or noteworthy than a stuffy nose.
Also, both circumstances tend to breed skepticism. I dislike calling in sick to work for the same reason I dislike trying to explain a bad race by telling everyone about how sore my wrist is from a bad stack the week before. Everyone knows you’re full of it - even in those cases when you’re not.
Life Experience: Marriage
Riding Equivalent: Deciding you’re going to ride the same bike for the rest of your life
Why they’re the same: Hold on a sec…no one does that second one, do they? Unless, of course, you happen to get married to the wrong girl, in which case she may make the decision for you.
I was lucky to avoid this trap, but still: be careful, kids.
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| The life equivalent for building a sweet double is pretty obvious: it's like baking a delicious cake for all of your friends to enjoy. |
Riding Equivalent: Showing a friend a trail
Why it’s the same: If there’s anything that good parents are aware of, it’s that children are vulnerable and need their parents to carefully watch out for them at all times.
You know who else is vulnerable? The buddy who you just told to “follow me” down Dogbone at Northstar. If you’re a bad caretaker, you won’t tell him about the rock garden after Slabs and you’ll just let him figure it out when he gets there. If you’re a good caretaker, you’ll take a few pauses to show him the safest lines so he doesn’t die against an igneous boulder.
If you favor the “Good Caretaker” role above, please feel free to have children. If you think it would be funnier to be the “Bad Caretaker,” it’s probably best you seek sterilization now.
Life Experience: Death
Riding Equivalent: ?????
Why it’s the same: Because I’m still alive, I can’t authoritatively name an equivalent on this one. But I suppose it might be something like a concussion, of which I’ve had a few, except that instead of waking up in an ambulance surrounded by EMTs, you wake up on a cloud surrounded by your grandparents and your pets from childhood.
But again, that’s pure speculation.
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| When you finish a climb on your bike and are now looking forward to a ripping descent, it's much like finishing your homework as a kid and realizing the rest of the day will consist of blissful playtime. |
Riding equivalent: Saying goodbye to your buddies at the end of a ride
Why it’s the same: We’ve all been there: you go for the parting fist-bump but your friend comes in for the handshake. At the last minute, you both try to switch to the opposite, but you’re still screwed. At some point you just end up doing an awkward hybrid fist-caress that makes everyone present uncomfortable.
Essays are much the same. I’ve been both serious and silly in this essay, so you may be expecting one sentiment or the other for this last part. So now I’m torn whether to come in for the high-five or bro-hug.
I guess it doesn’t really matter, though, so long as we made it through the experience in the first place. Whether it’s an essay or an epic ride, a cold drink afterward is usually enough to smooth over any awkward bits anyway.
