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!