ANOTHER POSITIVE INTERACTION WITH MY MOUNTAIN BIKE

Since all my bellyaching after riding the Jay Hoggs trails at Georgetown Lake (okay, maybe it was the all the bean tacos I've been eating), I redeemed myself to my bike and again feel worthy of owning such a complex yet simple machine. Evan and I nursed our egos with a short, spry 15 mile road ride around the farm towns just East of Austin. Again ready to face our two-wheeled friends, we tried our luck at Walnut Creek, Northwest of Austin. It was a Sunday, around 11 a.m., and the park was absolutely packed. We talked to a lot of riders, including cyclists associated with the Austin Ridge Riders group ride (though the ride itself had already taken off), and set out exploring. The trails were much more in line with what I'm used to riding: punchy uphills with lots of turns and not a lot of visibility, some creek crossing, and more roots than rocks. It felt like riding Pittsburgh during the best day of the year, when the trails are dry but not decimated, all the dogs are on leash or otherwise controlled by their human friends, all the cyclists are happy to be out and see other riders, and the trails are fast and swooping and hold onto tires not like peanut butter but like a well-made wooden roller coaster whose bearings have been properly greased and maintained (dig?).  Rickety but the leap of faith isn't totally unwarranted. I felt alive! Really!

After that, I felt like I had made up with my bike, whom I'd previously embarrassed at Georgetown. Evan and I spent the rest of our time in Austin taking care of errands and riding bikes around town when we could, enjoying local paved trails and the joy of warm air. We left Austin a few days ago and headed to Marfa, which was unfortunately not the place for us outdoor kids, and after one night decided to keep moving down to Terlingua, Texas, outside Big Bend State and National Parks, and home to the Lajitas trail system.

It was an adventure getting the camper down there, and had a few moments where our hearts stopped as the camper and van slowly pushed up hills too steep for some cars I've owned. Once in town, we stopped into Desert Sports, a great little mountain bike shop and all-around outfitter run by some old hippy types. Dogs ran around the showroom while Major Tom antagonized them and we tried to get some information from the large map of Lajitas (the local trail system) Mike pulled out for us. He showed us all best trails and gave us very helpful advice on everything related to the trails, natural environment, Terlingua, and even some life advice, whether or not he meant to. Meanwhile, one of the women who worked there called around the gas stations to see if anyone still had gasoline. No one did.

At the recommendation of the fine folks at Desert Sports, we stayed at Rancho Topenga, a new tent campsite in the area. We were the only ones staying there, and again had some problems maneuvering the camper into the tight spot down a ridge and on a cliff, but we survived and through on some cycling clothes to hit the trails, which were a mere 2 miles away.

The storm could be seen rolling in over the mountains to the Southwest and wrapped around to the North. The trails were all facing Eastward so we took our chances and rode the Trail Loop 3, the best trail in the park. Lighting bounced from cloud to cloud and the sun shifted dramatically above us. It sprinkled intermittently, pushing us to pedal harder to make it back to the van before the rain. We made it just in time, and had to sit inside our van back at the camper to wait for a relative break in the winds and rain to make a run for it.

Lajitas, as a whole, was the most fun I'd ever had on a mountain bike.

Despite the Wind Advisory boasting 40 mph gusts, we headed back to the park to ride the whole thing (with a few jeep roads emitted, because they did not look awesome). Every part of the trail system delivered something magical. Whether it was incredible speed, swooping whoop-dees, challenging rocks, ridges, and downhills, impressive climbs, or just epic scenery, there was no part of the ride I would have done without. I say this now, after having whined about the relatively flat, open section that Mike referred to when he warned us about "heeming and hawing" for too long, while the strong winds gave us a headwind that decimated any speed we might have maintained through the very gradual ascent. Evan convinced me to keep riding, though, pointing at a section of the map up ahead called "Fun Valley."

"C'mon, don't you want to go to Fun Valley? Yeah, you want to go to Fun Valley." Of course I did, I'm not a monster.

The wind came back in my sails and of course, eventually we changed direction and the headwind again became a crosswind and then a tailwind to take us back to the van. It was a good ride, and the first time in a long time that I felt like a mountain biker, like a person who knew how to handle her bike. I rode a lot of sections that would have been too difficult in other parks, because I was having enough fun to try them, and maintained enough speed to succeed. At these times, I thought of an article in Mtb4her.com that I read the day before, called, "Don't Take It Personally, but Maybe You Need to (HTFU)" (Harden the F--k Up). It was true. During the first challenging descent, which I knew I could ride but physically had a hard time not shifting my weight forward and trying to put my foot down, I kept going back to the top and forcing myself to do it until I just rode it. A few other sections were the same way.

When I used to ride a fixed gear, a common romantic notion was that the bike is a part of the rider and vice versa. While it was too nauseating to actually admit publicly, I did agree with the sentiment to some degree. In the case of mountain biking, it's more real than that. Arms are no longer arms. They are extensions of the handlebars and fork and you have no control over them; any control you try to maintain will only cause grief. Eyes are part of the wheels. You need to look where they are going, not where they are. You are a brain, a set of lungs, a set of legs, and a gigantic, beating heart. To think anything more of yourself is to fool yourself. We have to give ourselves to our bikes if we want them to do their jobs, and if we don't want them to do that, why don't we just give them to someone who will?

What's This Rock Doing Here, and other things I said to myself today

Over the past month, our bike riding had declined as we were fully immersed in closing shop in Pittsburgh and preparing for life on the road. We had been staying with a good friend of ours who lived just a little bit outside of town, so commuting by bicycle wasn't always an option when we were on such a tight time schedule. However, the place we were living was also fairly close to Frick Park, and we did manage to hit the trails a few times to find ourselves, away from the clutter and chaos that comes with moving, among our more comfortable setting of the tight, short, steep climbs of trails that are enclosed from ground brush and Sugar Maples. On riding one of our favorite trails, Iron Grate, I realized that I can't turn left, just like Zoolander, and also very similar to my dog Major Tom. I have almost no problem attacking switchbacks that turn right, but those left-leaning ones leave me tabbing my toe and holding my breath. I chalked it up to something to work on this winter on our epic voyage, as I train to ride down the Continental Divide.

Evan and I have been living in our camper for a week now, and it's been a lot of fun, though the first half of that was spent driving through the rain. There was a lot of sitting (and donut eating) and by now I am really jonesing for some miles on my bike. I mean, we did pack six of them. We are currently staying with a friend 10 miles outside Austin, Texas, who has a large yard and a generous heart, but his street is too busy to ride bikes on safely for any distance longer than a mile to grab snacks and come home. Even walking the dog feels perilous. We drove the bikes into town the other day and rode ten miles along riverfront trails to see a friend at her Butter Days caramel cottage factory. The trail was a joy and on my redesigned Redline, with an Origin8 Space Bar and Paul basket, and I felt like a kid riding through sand and around the twisty features of the park.

Today, Evan and I went mountain biking at Jay Hoggs Park at Georgetown Lake. The experience was not at all similar to the whimsical path. I felt less like a child and more like a baby who has not learned to walk. What a demoralizing experience! I tried to be aware of my shortcomings, to make an effort to look forward rather than down, to lean back on my bike and let the front wheel and fork do the hard work, to trust the bike, to pedal with my butt. Oh, if only I could pedal! The trail was unlike anything I'd ever ridden before. I probably only got 5 to 10 pedal strokes in at a time, tops, before having to put my foot down, or occasionally dismount all together. I had been really excited about riding some fast, dusty singletrack with a few rocky sections and some gravelly double track dispursed throughout, as the trail's description had said. Maybe by doubletrack it meant the trail disappeared? Or by rocky sections it was referring to those few relieving sections where the rocks were so big they were actually a fairly flat, though off-camber surface?

All I could think as I was riding was, how on earth am I going to make it down the Continental Divide with my pal Meghan if I can't even hang on this section of trail in Austin, with front suspension and no bags attached to my bike. The worst part was when we had been riding for a considerable amount of time and Evan says (when I catch up to him), "Okay, so that was a little over a mile, we can go a bit further before we have to turn back to meet your friend." UUUGGGHHHHH.

Eventually, we turned around and road the same section home. Originally, we had been planning on riding a whole loop. But we left too late, no longer used to having any sort of schedule to keep, and anyway there is no way we would have been able to do the whole loop with the time restraints we had, even if we had left on time, because it took us considerably longer than anticipated. On the way back, I found there were some sections that were much easier to ride, and others that just felt impossible. The spirit crusher is that I know they are very possible, just not something I can wrap my brain around, given my skillset. A couple times I tried to figure out how I was even supposed to get myself between that rock and this tree, or over that obstacle from this angle, or why I was able to see my own butt while going around this bend.

The trail was flat, and if it was anything at all like what I am used to riding, that is to say, if it was something I was at all used to riding or had ever even approached before, it would have been an incredible ride and fairly fast. the bright Texas sun was in full blast as we rode in and out of dark shade, and when it was bright enough to see, the trail occasionally opened enough for me to identify there was a trail there, and short cacti lined each side like a well-groomed walkway. The water and the sky were both a rich blue, and it wasn't too much of an effort to remind myself that I do like this, even though I couldn't do it, and it was a beautiful day, and in this extraordinary life there are more brilliant and hard days to come, hopefully many of them. The only thing that will make the riding easier is to keep on putting in the effort, even if the miles don't stack up as quickly as the hours, and even if the noises coming out of my mouth aren't fit for innocent ears.

Back at the car, Evan told me with some regret that the trail we'd ridden wasn't a black diamond, only a blue square. It made sense to me. It wasn't dangerous. If I fell (which I did, actually, but was moving so slowly it only bruised my ego), I would only cut myself on the rocks or something along those lines. I want to get some kneepads, which received a big eyeroll from my partner in biking, because really that's the worst that could happen on that trail unless I really, seriously messed up. That's the sort of thing I need to keep remembering. Falling isn't everything. Speed isn't everything. Keeping on pedaling and trying and moving forward is what really makes a bit ride enjoyable, what makes me love this sport after 29 years and endless incarnations.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank my parents for buying my a bike for my fifth birthday and for taking off the training wheels on my sixth birthday after months of begging. Sometimes we just know what we want in life, and have to decide to not be afraid.