Bikin’
Like most people in the world right now, I had my 2020 all mapped out and then COVID came through and wrecked most of my plans. I’m hopeful that I may still be able to ride in the Iceman Cometh Challenge in Michigan this November. It’s a 30-mile mountain bike race in a state that can have some very harsh and unpredictable weather that time of year. These past few weeks, I’ve been back on my Specialized RockHopper getting some miles in and building a base for training throughout the summer and fall. I’d rather take my time preparing and feel comfortable on November 7th instead of “cramming for the test” shortly before the race.
Getting back on the bike has been a really fun addition to my training. It’s definitely a different challenge than trying to squat heavy weight for sets of five. It’s also forced me to explore some new places around the area, which is half the fun anyway. So far, I’ve just been riding the Schuylkill River and Perkiomen Trails. These are beautiful, well-maintained trails, but to call what I’ve been doing “mountain biking” would be a stretch. The trails are paved in some parts and don’t really offer much variety or challenging terrain, but that’s okay. There are a few other places around here that will hopefully offer more of what I look for when I’m mountain biking.
When I was a kid, my friends and I would ride our bicycles everywhere. To ride 15 miles on a summer day was nothing. That was just general tooling around town, meeting up with friends, and exploring some of our favorite haunts. And once we discovered girls, forget about it. This one girl, Erica, lived six or seven miles from town, and my friends and I would ride our bikes down the shoulder of US-2 without a care in the world to go hang out with Erica and her friends. It was great.
It wasn’t until after I moved away from my small hometown in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula that I realized how special the place was and how many awesome and easily accessible outdoor spots we had at our fingertips. I would ride my bike to Fumee Lake or Piers Gorge and spend hours riding the trails and seeing how far I could push myself. Those were special days that I will always remember.
In tenth grade, I got an awesome green Trek SingleTrack 930 with Rock Shox on the front, and I used some of the money I earned bagging groceries to buy these carbon fiber Spin wheels from a kid who was a few years older than me. I LOVED that bike. If it were up to me, I’d still have that same bike, because there was nothing about it I would have changed. But it was not meant to be. In the summer of 2009, I was living in Tempe, Arizona, and working on a master’s degree at Arizona State. I would ride my bike to the science building each morning and lock it up on the bike rack next to all the others. One day, I came out at 4 PM and discovered my bike had been stolen. I know this is a first-world problem, but I was heartbroken. It felt like a part of my youth had been taken from me. Laying awake in bed that night, I thought about how I would never get to take my old Trek flying down the backside of the Fumee Lake North Ridge Trail or out behind the Norway Spring to torture myself on the big hill. It bummed me out then and it still bums me out when I think about it over a decade later. Part of what hurt me was knowing that the person who stole the bike would have no appreciation for what that bike meant to me or how hard I worked at my menial high school job to get it in the first place. For all I know, they just rode it around for a few minutes and trashed it. One of the things I hate most in the world is wastefulness, and my bike being stolen was a complete waste.