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Bike Rides 131
Wild Rumpus

Readers: This month’s Bike Rides column features guest writer Grace Heimsness.  Grace is a good friend of mine and a bike mechanic at Rydjor Bike shop. She also majored in English at the University of Southern California and judging from her blogs, she must have been a great student. I hope you enjoy the ride with Grace and I’ll meet everyone back on the trail next time. –Dan

On the way up, there is falling. Somewhere ahead of and above me are fellow wrenches Chad and Rainier. Levis Mound punishes me and my bike with switchback after switchback of tight, sandy singletrack. It’s day two of our Labor Day Rydjor Rendezvous in Wisconsin, and my stubborn bliss falters amid the lung-burning and white-knuckling.

Just over the apex of a climb called “Cliffhanger,” a bead of sweat sinks into my eye, stinging it shut. A branch snags my handlebar and I am catapulted over the front wheel. I gingerly pick myself up and slam my bike upright just as Jens, another mechanic, stops behind me and asks in an uncharacteristically serious voice, “Ya good?”

“Fine,” I mutter, wanting to be more fine than I am.

The one drawback of working at Rydjor is watching customers pedal away on the bike you’ve lovingly brought back to life and knowing it’s only a matter of time before your work is reversed by miles of tar seams, potholes, and the occasional garage door. The mechanic must realize that a corollary of “all good things must come to an end” is that all good things fall into disrepair.

Maybe this sentiment had sunk into our bones more than was healthy. Maybe it was that we’d all come to know a little less that summer, and the unknowns had not yet lost their sting despite having become familiar. Whatever the reason, the idea of absconding to a bikeable wilderness was too alluring for us to wait up.

If you’d asked me at the top of “Cliffhanger,” I’d have said it was a siren call; this hill was eating me and my comically inadequate singlespeed alive. Still, there was the descent to finish, and this was the last chance to finish our wild rumpus in style before heading home, and I just plain wanted a piece of this hill. I swung a leg over the top tube and clipped in, jaw clenched, ears hot.

“Get it, G,” said Jens.

It must have been the rare flow I found myself in on the way down that put me in a philosophical mood. I realized rather suddenly that in knowing little, there is comfort; you can’t go backwards. And after awhile, you get used to working with a lack of experience and information. You learn to wing it. So what if this trail had me out of my depth? So what if I hadn’t gotten the hang of weight distribution or picking lines or how to take that high berm that was oh lord right ahead of me? Jens, who’d crept in front a mile or so earlier, floated up and down the loopy ramp without hesitation. Before I had the chance to think twice, I followed suit, whipping my rear tire around behind me as I cornered, throwing my weight back, and releasing a yawp.

“Did you get it, G?” Jens called back.

“You know it,” I said as we flew around another bend, riding at the edge of control but familiar with the feeling.

Months later, I remember that easy flow that was so difficult to find, and what the Levis Mound sirens gave me, which is this: Some things were not made to be thought twice about. Riding bike is one of them.

Traffic Tip: While some physicists argue over what makes a bicycle so stable, this is what I believe: Because it has two wheels, the bicycle is made to fall over and over, in one continuous tumble. Riding a bike involves nothing more than falling in the right direction.

See more Bike Rides columns at dansbikerides.com
Hear Bike Rides Fridays on KMSK, 91.3 FM at 1:00 pm.

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