Category: Living on the Road

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Falling in love with Mountain Biking

People who have known me most of my life would agree that I have not always been the most athletic person. Actually, that statement makes it seem as though occasionally I was athletic, but lets’ face it, I was not. I played basketball in elementary school on a team consisting of five girls, plus a sub, until eventually the sub quit. We had to beg the coach to let us play without her. I rode my bike around the block I lived on, in the parking lot next door to my house and under the overpass down the street.

When my family moved to a new town and I entered middle school, I became paralyzed with shyness. I literally got D’s and  F’s in P.E. because I wouldn’t participate in playing any games that required me to run, hit, or throw. In highschool I toyed with the idea of joining track because it appeared to be what most of my friends were doing but I never followed through. After highschool I joined a gym and while I was running on a treadmill one day, and a guy I graduated with came up to me and said he couldn’t believe I was running.  So, it was clear, I wasn’t the sporty type.

About a month into the road trip that my wife and I took, we realized we were in major need of bikes. Hiking and biking seemed like the things to do when you are exploring cool, popular hiking and biking destinations. Duh! So we went to a bike shop in Helena, Montana. I was excited to own a bike, I just wasn’t really sure what I was going to do with it. I had not ridden a bike since I was about ten years old. Unless you count the brief encounter I had in my late teens/early twenties. I rode a friends bike around the parking lot of the condo he lived in. I was embarrassed by how clumsy I felt. I was unbalanced, awkward and afraid I was going to fall. Turns didn’t come naturally, I felt too high off the ground and once I picked up speed, I was done! So when we walked out of that store with our mountain bikes you can imagine my apprehension. I hadn’t even admitted to my wife how long it had been and how bad my last experience was.

We took the bikes back to our campground and went for a ride. It is hard to describe the feeling I felt riding that bike around. I was not the same fearful, timid person I was before. Hell, I just quit my old life and was living on the road, traveling the country. I was in friggin Montana and now, riding a bike.  It was the most fun I had had since I could remember. Sure, I was a little rusty and shaky at times but my prominent feeling wasn’t fear, it was absolute delight. Any trepidation I had, I rode through and it went away. I didn’t want to get off my new bike. It was like I was a little kid again but it was better. I felt free, happy, and excited, but this time I had something to compare it to.

I love when the mundane things, the things that get easily taken for granted become extraordinary moments in life. Riding a bike is something we all learn to do as kids. And then there’s that saying about learning to ride a bike; once you learn, you never forget. They don’t say, you’ll never forget but if you wait too long you might be so scared that you vow to never get on one again. You just assume it will be easy. You assume you can do it. I spent life NOT assuming I could do anything. In fact, I assumed I couldn’t do most things. I let the unknown become the un-do-able. Clearly and thankfully, that’s changed. Throwing yourself in the deep end can do that to you.

Moab, Utah is one of the best places to mountain bike in the country. There are hundreds of trails from beginner to advanced. We were not advanced riders at the time; we didn’t even have the right kind of mountain bikes for the trails we decided to ride. We had “hardtails,” meaning there was no rear suspension. So when you ride over a rock or land a jump, you land hard. Your ass comes down on the seat like a ton of bricks and if you are lucky it will stay on the seat. If you aren’t lucky you sort of bounce off of it and the nose of the seat jams into your inner thigh or more sensitive areas I need not mention. I had no shin pads or any pads for that matter and I was wearing running sneakers.

We were wise to upgrade our pedals, which provided better grip from the little metal pegs that stick to the bottom of your shoes, except not so wise to not upgrade our footwear as running sneakers have nothing to grip so my feet kept slipping off and I would get a flying pedal to my shin. This left me with lovely little puncture wounds where the pegs dug in. It also left me with marks on the back of my calves from when my foot would slip off the front of the pedal causing the pedal to rip up the back of my calve. Keep in mind I was wearing pants, the damn pegs went right through my pants!

 

While my ability improved the more we rode, I still managed to fall or slam into things frequently. But we were riding on harder trails and I was getting better and better. Even though I was bruised and scraped up, I never wanted to stop riding. I just got right back on and kept pedaling. Me, the girl who got scared of falling in a flat, paved parking lot was zooming through single track trails (it was more of a slow zoom, I won’t get ahead of myself), climbing up and gliding down slick rock. Every decent feels three times as steep when you’re looking at it from atop a bike. Scraping knuckles and elbows on trees and falling into thorn bushes. I didn’t give a shit. I loved what I was putting my body through.  Physically, it was the hardest thing I had ever done.

We would ride for hours. There were definitely things that scared me or made me nervous. There were times I had to get off and walk my bike. Sometimes, when I couldn’t make it up something, I would get off and go back and try again. It might have taken five attempts, but eventually I would make it up.  My thighs burned like never before and it would feel impossible to push through but I would. At the end of every ride my legs would be wobbling. My palms would ache from gripping the handles. And I don’t have to tell you how my ass felt. Devastatingly, our bikes were stolen in California but after mourning their loss we got ourselves new ones, with dual suspension.

Despite my fear and lack of athletic ability I became a mountain bike rider and I loved it. My family could hardly believe their eyes when we would send them pictures.  I don’t think anyone would believe it. I could hardly believe it myself.

For the first time in my life I felt powerful and strong and I felt fearless. Being fearless for me didn’t mean not having fear, it meant having it but pushing through it. It meant having fear and using that fear as fuel for determination. It meant being afraid to do something and doing it anyway. For the first time in my life I felt fearless, like I could do anything and like I was free to have fun while I was doing it!

 

 

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The Love of a Motorhome

This afternoon we drove the motorhome around for a little while. It had been sitting all winter at the next door neighbors (they were gone for the winter and let us store it in their driveway). It was time to move it to its new spot and make sure it still had some life in it. It has been empty for months, alone, bare but not forgotten. It could be seen from our yard and every time I left the house I looked over at it and said hello. I wanted to make sure it knew we were coming back for it.

We drove it only 30 minutes or so, sitting in the passenger seat, as I usually did, brought many feelings with it. I could barely get myself to look over my shoulder, not wanting to acknowledge its emptiness. I miss this home. That is what it was, a home for over a year. Our first home we bought together. But it was much more than just that. It provided more than shelter, more than a way of getting around. It even smelled of emptiness. It smelled cold, damp, and musty. It smelled like a camper, like when we first bought it. Its walls were stripped of magnets, no cork boards pinned with pictures and notes. No keys dangling from hooks. No pots banging around in cabinets. No colorful pillows on the couch. A naked mattress on the bed. Our clothes were not in the closets and drawers. It was hollow. And it felt hollow. I started to feel as though I could cry. I missed it so much.

It is hard for me describe what living in that tiny space did for me. It gave me so much, I feel grateful to it. There is a connection like I have with no other space I’ve known. Initially, I admit I was a little afraid of it. I had rarely ever been in one except for checking out my father-in-law’s when he would come to visit. So owning one and living in one was somewhat scary. It was unfamiliar. There was a lot to learn and we didn’t exactly give ourselves a ton of time to do that. So, at first there were many holy shit moments. Like, holy shit I just bought an RV and holy shit this thing is huge.

The first weekend we ever spent in it was a test run. We spent two nights at an RV park on the Cape. We had no clue how anything worked, what anything should look like/sound like/smell like. And in just a month or so we would be living in it full time. It was also a way of testing the water as far as space went. Meaning, the lack of it. What would it be like physically living in this tiny rectangle for an extended period of time. Would I hate it? Feel claustrophobic? Keep bumping into things? Would it literally feel like I was living in a shoe box? After we hooked up the water hose, sewer hose and power cord we had some time to just chill out, have a beer and eat some snacks.

There is one moment that stands out to me. I remember as if it happened yesterday. There I was, sitting on the toilet (whose pedal flushing system I was leery of) going pee in the bathroom which was also the bedroom (unless you closed the accordian-like partition door). I was looking around, at the cabinet door which would serve as our closet, the little sink across from me, the bed which was bigger than the one we slept in at our condo, the fridge which could be seen through the doorway to the left. I was so happy I could have cried. I believe I said to myself out loud, this is your new home, you’re gonna live in this. I could not wait to have all our stuff in there and live in it for good. I absolutely, without a doubt, loved it.

I continued to love it. And it continued to kind of scare the shit out of me, because we were learning as we went. Every time we set off to a new destination I was nervous. Checking the side mirrors to make sure nothing was flapping around or little doors were swinging open. Turning the rear camera on to double check the Jeep was still attached and the tires were rolling. Trying to decipher between a tire about to blow or a bumpy road (harder than you would imagine). Hoping a pebble wouldn’t hit the propane tank and cause an explosion. Every little thing was nerve racking, because we were driving around a friggin house! With a Jeep towed behind it! We were in charge of 50 feet of moving vehicles. It might as well have been a tractor trailer truck. It was insane and amazing.

We could go wherever we wanted to and be home when we got there. We had our own bed to sleep in whether we were in a campground, RV park, truck stop, rest stop or Walmart parking lot. I felt so safe inside that shoebox. It sheltered me through my fears and nerves, rain and lightening.  It was my cocoon. It was there when I stared in awe at the Teton mountain range, when I cleaned up bloody legs from a day of mountain biking. It was there when I could barely move after a full day of hiking and then missing the shuttle bus in Zion National Park; we had to walk an additional 8 miles in pitch dark back to the visitor center. It was my house and my car all in one. It kept me in place and on the move. It was like magic. Like a best friend that you have no matter what, a pet that’s always happy to see you. It was everything for me and it did it all so well. Never complained, never rebelled. The peace I felt sitting at the kitchen table (which was also in the living room) drinking a cup of tea after dinner or having coffee in the morning was unbeatable. I wanted for nothing.

We left behind so much and found that we still brought too much with us. Most of the clothing we brought we didn’t even touch, the extra “just in case” stuff sat unused in bins. What was unexpected to me and what felt so incredible was realizing how much I didn’t need. Things that I held on to for years. Things I thought I cared about and loved. Things I thought I would miss. I needed none of it, wanted none of it, I didn’t even think about any of it. Clothes, shoes, knickknacks, coffee mugs, makeup, hair products, fancy kitchen gadgets. None of it fit, none of it had a place and none of it mattered. I was the happiest I had ever been. In that small shoebox of a house on wheels, I was the happiest I had ever been.