I’m back on the bike! And it feels SO GOOD! This was the view from Friday’s ride before starting a most spectacular descent. (Then we got turned around trying to find our way out of the mess of trails at the end and got an extra hour of cardio in.)
Sunday afternoon, I rode a trail I’ve never ridden before. A friend took a shot of me riding a loose chute and of course nothing looks nearly as steep and committing in photos as it does in real life, but I was definitely a little nervy as evidenced by terrible body position and hanging off the back of the bike.
While the shoulder niggles still, the brain is screaming on high alert. “TOO SCARY!” she says. “TOO RISKY! You could hit that tree! Or wash out there! Or catch a pedal there!” I want to tell her, “I KNOW! Now STFU and buckle up the big girl pants to ride!” but I don’t. I am frustrated by the brain. I know all the features I’m walking around are things I am capable of riding, and riding well. I know they are comparable to things I have ridden before. And yet. And yet. I suppose self-preservation isn’t all bad. But the little trembling chihuahua in my brain is.
Monday Night Rides had the benefit of pushing me to ride things that were scary. I was often the only girl, and the weakest rider. Everyone was showing me how to ride things, and stoked for me when I did. But lately, I’ve been hanging back. Walking things or taking the ride-arounds on things I’ve ridden before. Why? Because it’s all in my head.
It will come, they say. The confidence will come back. Just keep riding.
Keep riding the hard stuff, because if you’re not continually looking down something steep, it starts to get scary again.
But instead, I think, it’s too much adrenaline right now, so I go to the airbag and practice tricks. The airbag is an absolute joy with very little consequence.
Here’s a fuzzy screenshot from a video, but I managed to get the 1 footers down. (That’s me! With my right foot decidedly not on the bike! While in the air! And I got it back on in time before landing!) I managed a few no-footers too, but not consistently. And managed a seat grab and tire grab and all round felt like I accomplished something. I also met this woman who is not only gorgeous with really great teeth, but friendly/famous AND an absolute shredder and she complimented me on the one-hander I did, then outlined the steps to do a Tbog, but um.. I’m working on step two. And it feels like there’s a pretty big gap between step two and three.
I also haven’t been reading anything but patient files and legal reports so I haven’t been able to write anything. Well, anything good. Or anything that doesn’t read like a medicolegal report or an irritated email to some poor receptionist who has nothing to do with it, and then trying to soften it at the end because it’s not her fault a firm is sending files 500 pages more than advertised a week late. It’s not her fault I have to sit here all weekend and review files while I fail at being a mother and give my children over to Minecraft and Taylor Swift music videos.
Please mum, it’s for a good cause. Just one quarter. Please? You’re just standing in line to pay for groceries anyway! Drop the quarter in. Watch it roll, ’round and ’round and ’round. ‘Round and ’round some more, and it continues longer than my attention span will tolerate. Little feet rise on tiptoe, watching it fall, finally, into the abyss below. *Plink.*
My shoulder range of motion is excellent, but the stability isn’t there. My clavicle rolls and I feel little tendons shift out of place as I do my physio exercises. To compensate, every muscle surrounding my shoulder is doing its misguided best, and each and every day is spent willfully ignoring the tight, screaming spasms they produce. Today it’s my teres major and my levator scap. Yesterday was the trap and infraspinatus. I can identify each and every muscle based on pain localization alone. I tell my physiotherapist this, and he proceeds to stick needles in every sore muscle, chit-chatting while I try not to cry out, while I focus on breathing. I leave with tape holding things in place, and, for the first time in a week, an ability to fully turn my head without pain.
I post a positive thinking post to social media. I have successfully, for the hour surrounding that post, managed to talk myself out of feeling sorry for myself.
A friend calls the next day. “I read your post, and you know what my first thought was? You’re a f*cking liar. I know you.” she laughs. “But really, how ya doing? Did you hear? The Swede broke his hand. All my riding buddies are dropping like flies.”
I message the Swede. Surgery pending. 2 months off the bike. He is annoyed. I tell him to book a ticket to the next local race apres, a riotous annual party at a local bike manufacturing shop. I’m just going because I miss everyone. Not even going to ride the race beforehand. We can show up as our gimpy selves and see our friends. He does not commit, but jokes that maybe he will ride the race on a unicycle; no hands needed.
How am I though? I’m kind of a miserable cow. And, because I’m not doing much by way of sweating my little heart out in the sunshine whilst pedaling up and down mountains, I went and got my eyebrows touched up. If you didn’t know, I get my eyebrows tattooed on. This requires touch-ups every year or two, so I figured I may as well, since I’m not doing much anyway. The thing about eyebrow tats though, is that they are REALLY dark for the first few days until it flakes off and leaves behind a more natural looking shade. Until then, though, I look like an insane Chaplin-esque Kardashian. Well, that’s how it feels anyway.
Combine this with my ridiculous work week and four hours sleep last night and I kind of just want to lie on the floor. I also feel like this time, my brows are a bit asymmetric. To match my shoulders, I suppose.
The Dentist Project isn’t even giving me joy. “Would building your bike help with the crushing pain of not riding?” says the bike friend who is helping me with my build. No. I have decided. It would not. So tomorrow, instead of building a bicycle, I’ll just work, I guess. The wheels still aren’t here anyway. Crushing indeed.
He is nine tomorrow, but every night, like tonight, he yells from his bedroom, “MOM! SNUGGLES!”
His hair is damp from his shower, and his gangly pre-pubescent body is cartoonish in length. He folds his limbs under a duvet that has slunk down into its cover, leaving a frustratingly empty handful of fabric in his fist as he pulls it over himself.
He is at a stage in his life where the chatter is incessant, and today, it is about the Legend of Zelda, the school bake sale, and the project he’s been working on for his dad for Father’s Day. It’s as though he’s forgotten it’s his birthday tomorrow, so excited is he about his Father’s Day project. He’s been online, and found his dad’s business website. “You’re on his website; did you know that, Mom? Only you’re young in the picture.” I laugh. I would have been five or six years younger, yes, but to him, that’s two thirds of his lifetime.
The blue-tinged light from his alarm clock casts shadows onto his tired face. His chatter quiets, and I kiss his forehead and give his skinny, small-boy shoulders a squeeze. “Goodnight buddy, I love you.” “Goodnight, mom. Love you too.”
There is a pause. Then, “DAD! SNUGGLES!”
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I am ten, and my left fourth metatarsal is broken. It’s been a long, tearful night, and I am exhausted. First, the diary is stolen, then I’m leaping down four steps to try to get it back, only I slip on landing, and the rest of my body weight lands on the folded foot still under me as I tumble into a heap at the bottom of the stairs. It is a sharp, breath-taking pain in my foot, and in the half hour drive to the hospital where I’m diagnosed with a hairline fracture, every bump in the road brings tears anew. All the family friends who have come for dinner have prodded at my foot, ultimately making the decision that I am not, indeed, a drama queen.
A fluorescent yellow fibreglass cast is placed on my leg, and my mother has tucked me into bed with a children’s Tylenol slowly dissolving into my system.
I lie on my back, in the dark, and lift my newly casted, heavy leg, straight up into the air, sole pointing at the frilled pink canopy above my bed. It is a deep, miserable throb. I’m in a sweat, anxious at the school I’ll miss. I squeeze my eyes shut and two angry, hot tears squeeze out the sides of my eyes, trickling into my hair. I slowly lower my leg down, as I drift into a fitful sleep.
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She’s five, and her bright, sunny, self is skiing with her class on the mountain. There is a magic castle, nestled into the woods, where the kids can take a break to run around.
Today, there is an instructor dressed as a dragon at the castle, and he chases the kids around. The clomp-clomp-clomp of ski boots on perforated metal grating is mingled with the laughing screams of red-cheeked children, running with their runny noses away from a roaring dragon.
But a stumble, and a fall, and pile of children falling on top of one another. One scream, higher pitched than the rest. She is hauled down the mountain in a tobaggan after a small dose of ketamine, bundled and strapped in tight as a patroller skis in graceful arcs to the base, where she is transferred to the medical centre. The colouring page she is given reflects her ketamine high; dizzying brown and black spirals circle the serene faces of Disney princesses.
For her spiral fracture, she is encased in a hot pink cast that goes up to mid-thigh. Her little leg, with its little muscles developing under baby fat, is suddenly forced into stillness.
She is propped on the couch with pillows, a long t-shirt hanging over her kindergarteners body as she decides if she ought to go to bed in bed, or simply sleep on the couch. “This is the worst day of my life!” she exclaims, a big, fat, tear rolling down her pouting face.
She puts a cushion over her face, and asks to be taken to her bed.
It is. It truly is.
*************************
He is mine and I am his.
Because he is mine, I must learn to accept his need for a fan in the room, running overnight.
I picture his mother working night shifts so she can spend her days with her three boys. At night, after a stimulating day, she tucks them in to bed, and turns on the fan so she can sneak out for work unheard. I picture her exhausted upon return in the morning, flicking off the fan, waking the boys, making breakfast and ushering them off to school before she can lie down for a much needed rest.
It’s Christmas, and his mother hands us a box with a smirk.
It’s a white noise machine, and we are both much more excited about this than we should be.
That night, he plugs it in to the corner of our room. “Love, do you want to listen to the rain tonight? A thunderstorm? Or a steady mechanical hum? The hums are named after different colours.” “THUNDERSTORM!”
He crawls in to bed with me, the room dark, the sound of thunder and a downpour in the distance. I can feel him smiling as he faces me, on his side, and no doubt he can feel me smiling back. It’s a simple pleasure, this.
He jumps out of bed. “I forgot to turn the fan on!”
I have had 500 mg of acetominophen, 200 mg of ibuprofen, and a CBD gummy (legal here, and with infintessimally small amounts of THC, so I won’t be tripping anywhere).
Prior to ingesting these, I had a bananas work day in the city.
And now I sit. The more still I am, the less things hurt.
Monday Night Rides. I love it for the fun, the stoke, and the friends, old and new. I learned to mountain bike at Monday Night Rides, and a large portion of my social circle is somehow connected to Monday NIght Rides. So on Monday, it was a smaller group than usual, with two people I’ve never met before. We were slated to ride a couple of classics, but at the last minute, we figured we ought to ride a new-ish trail, still not on the maps, called Bingo Wings.
Hearsay suggests it was originally supposed to be a trilogy, Bingo Wings, Muffin Top, and Cankles, but to date, only Bingo Wings has been built. I rode it years ago when it was first built, and you had to bushwhack a little to find the trail entrance. Last year, they built a new, steeper entrance, on which I washed out and garnered an impressive bruise mixed with scab down my left forearm. It was every shade of green and purple imaginable and took a solid two weeks or so to clear. Because of that crash, I ended up not riding one of the last big features on the trail as my confidence was shaken, and well, my arm was really effing sore. This year, I rode that entrance again. Achievement unlocked.
There are really only two big features on the trail, and maybe a couple of steep chutes, but the trail itself probably only requires moderate commitment. There are ridearounds for everything, it’s close to road access, and I rode everything on it ages ago on a shorter travel bike, and with years less bike experience. I don’t know what it’s rated in terms of difficulty level, but probably on the easier spectrum of a double black diamond I would guess.
So we lead the newcomers in, and the first big feature is a rock where you turn at the top into a steep, straight rock roll with a mildly rowdy run out. Hold strong on the exit, and you’re good.
The new girl decides not to ride it. The new guy wants to, I can see it in his eyes. He lines his bike up and takes a few deep breaths. He sees me watching him, and gestures for me to go first, while he is still preparing mentally. I ride it, another buddy rides it, and the new guy commits and comes flying down successfully. I can see he’s got the adrenaline trembles and the rush and his face is sporting a grin a mile wide. There is whooping from him, and for him, and fist bumps all ’round.
This is what I mean. I don’t even remember his name, but I’m so stoked he rode that rock, and he was so stoked he rode that rock, and I just love love love that we as a group all got to share the stoke. Bikes man, it brings people together.
I can see the girl is struggling a bit, and another friend advises her there’s only one big one left, and everything else is manageable.
We pull up to the last gnarly feature, a steep rock chute with a bumpy step in the middle. I know from experience that this chute looks terrible, but has always been a straight shot. Commit and fire down the middle. I look as I pull up to the entrance. It looks different this season, more eroded, with a deeper gully than before and a curve to the exit. The little steppy rock is still there mid-gully but still looks like I could straight-line over it. I double-check my body position and roll in, with plans to just pull up over the rock, but it is milliseconds after I drop in that I’m finding myself rolling in the dirt in a world of pain.
I have shoulder-checked a tree to my right, hearing the plastic smack of my helmet, and then rolling in to the dirt of the path after. I’m head down on an incline, and instinct is to get up and get off the trail. Only I can’t. My shoulder hurts so badly I can hardly think. I try to push myself up to get up, but it is a blur of pain. My left hand grips my right shoulder, and I feel like an armless lizard, frantically trying to roll onto my side so I can get up. I can hear the hiss of my front tire deflating, and a friend runs to pull the bike off me. I get myself righted and sit trailside, trying to focus my breathing to breathe through the pain. “Where does it hurt? What hurts? Show me.” says a friend. Just a second, Give me a second, I gasp, trying to slow my panting breaths. She asks again. And still, I have my eyes wrenched shut, my body doubled over, my brain trying to figure out what has happened.
Finally, my breathing slows, and I run a systems check. My right shin is bleeding, but I don’t feel it. The new girl is swiping it with alcohol and slapping a bandage on. A friend has found a bottle of bug spray and douses me in it. From the stinging, I think I’ve scraped the back of my shoulder up. It tastes bitter, and I cough. I can wiggle the fingers of my right hand. I can feel everything. I can flex and extend my elbow. But ooh, that shoulder cannot move. Must not move. It is insanely painful. I poke around with my other hand and turn my head to try to see. Doesn’t look dislocated.
I stand, and immediately, I see the blotches in my vision that I get when I’m dehydrated and stand up too fast. I feel a bit faint. Nope. Sit down. “Ugh. You look green. Anyone have sugar?” I hear another friend pipe up, “I’ve got Haribo!” There is more banter about how he’s been holding out on all of us, hiding his Haribo gummy bears. A couple hard gummy bears are shoved in my hand. I lick the dust off my lips. Someone finds a tensor and fashions as sling while my freshly abraded arm bleeds all over the bandage. Someone is picking tree twigs and moss out of my hair.
Hot damn this hurts. I don’t really remember the last time something hurt so badly.
I hike out, with reassurances from this stellar group of people that they’ll get my bike down. Another rides out to get the car to meet us on the road. The Haribo friend walks with me down the trail, chatting all the while about the various injuries he’s incurred over the years.
We get to the road, and in my head, I try to recount all his injuries. I can remember them all. Broken wrist on Danimal. S-shaped scrape from bike park in UK. And others.
There is only a mild graze on my helmet. I check my balance on the awkward sections of trail to walk down, and dart my eyes around. I don’t think I’m concussed.
I call a friend to ask who’s working the ER. “Oh, it’s my hubby. I’ll call him to tell him you’re coming!”
At registration, the clerk takes one look at me and says, “Bike park?” “Nah, trail” I reply. “Which one?” “Bingo Wings.” She laughs. “Oh, I’ve got those!” and she lifts her arms and jiggles them. She checks my health card. “OH! I see your name on all the CT requisitions!” She ushers me back.
Beside me in stretcher six is a guy who’s wearing the same bike shorts as me, but in black, and he has broken his arm in three places and is waiting to get shipped to the city for surgery in the morning. Stretcher 4 is an appendicitis I think, and heavily sedated.
I get some painkillers, a quick exam, get sent for an Xray, and thank GOD it’s only an AC separation. Grade 2.
I am so grateful nothing is broken. I am so grateful I didn’t really hit my head. I am so grateful it wasn’t so much worse.
My friend had gone to apres and got herself a burger. She wolfs it down beside my stretcher and I steal her fries. She hands me my car keys, says she’ll drop the bike for me tomorrow, and I go home in a sling.
Tuesday is a 14 hour work day. I roll into clinic in a long-sleeved knit shirt, only to find my forearm has stuck to it. I gently reopen all the scrapes on my forearm in the process of unsticking, and mentally prepare to get some patient comments as I leave the sleeve up. I find the other two GPs. I want sympathy. One had broken his hand in a bike crash a month ago and it is currently encased in a hot pink cast. The other was the one I rode with last week. I tell them I’ve separated my shoulder, and they both immediately show me their own step deformities in their shoulders from similar injuries in the past. I have joined a special club it seems. The day is long, as I try to do Botox injections and nerve testing with limited dominant hand movement. I make it through though, and the clinic riding friend comes by at the end of the day to say how much it sucks now we can’t ride more before his new baby comes, and that it’ll get better, I’ll be strong again, on my bike again, and just wait.
My bike was actually dropped at the friend’s who doused me in bug spray. He has installed a new tire, cleaned the wheel, packed my rear hub with grease so it will no longer sound like I’m riding with a pack of bees. He’s injured his shoulder like this before too, it seems, and advises ice, physio, and patience.
Bicycle friends are awesome.
Each day I come home to my kids and husband. The kids help me get my shirt off in the evenings, help me tie my ponytail, fold the laundry and put away the dishes. The husband fusses over me like I’m an invalid, brings me snacks and hugs me gingerly.
I’m not getting the sads yet (how could I, surrounded by so much positive energy), but the FOMO is coming no doubt, and to be honest, I just miss the high of riding bikes with good people.
The photo above is from a few years ago, when I first discovered the technicality and joy of dirt jumps. You can tell I’m new because I’m showing too much skin (which, later that afternoon, was handily scraped off my shoulder after a crash). I’m also on a really old bike with a spring fork, which left me with probably very little control.
Last night though (photos aren’t out yet) was the first Ladies Jump Jam of the season.
I can’t tell you how awesome it is to go to one of these things. When I’m often the only girl at the jumps, and usually the only mom, it’s so fun to go with a bunch of girls, some of whom are absolute freeride queens, and just take over the jumps. There were a bunch of BMX bros there, stupidly not wearing helmets, trying to hit the snake line. Our group of ladies showed up, and one particularly rad girl (who I met a few years ago at these events, and is apparently a PhD in chemistry or something in her adult life), went and boosted the XL big jump line like it was no big deal. I’ve also seen her do a backflip from standing, like a boss. Toward the end of the evening, we did a few trains of girls all in a row riding the little gap jumps (photo above) and the more advanced girls doing the big gaps simultaneously, ponytails flying. I can’t want to see the final video of that. The stoke was high, the vibe was relaxed, and it all just came together for a really fun evening. Girl power.
The night before, I’d gone for a ride on a trail I haven’t been on since last year.
Photo stolen from some trails website
This is the sign for the trail. After a techy, twisty little climb that I usually run out of steam for at the end, I end up hiking my bike up, through the trees and mosquitoes, and then the view opens up and if you look at the sign the right way the sky shines through the cut outs so they’re bright blue letters. I only discovered this trail because a friend of mine at work told me about it (it was his bike I rode down the clinic halls a few weeks ago). It’s an old, but excellent trail with technical features and just, as my friend put it, “fun gnar gnar gnar”. Bike culture has its own hilarious and rudimentary language. It’s one of those secret trails that’s off the maps and because my sense of direction is kind of terrible, I need to go a few times to remember how to get there. Last year, I rode it once with the work buddy, fell in love with it, then led another friend down it, but couldn’t remember this season how to get there. Because said work friend is expecting his THIRD child in a few weeks (bananas!), time was limited to get out for a lap. He seems to know where all the secret trails are, and he’s drawn me maps on the backs of prescription pads at work, but I can never find them off sweaty bits of paper in my pocket. It’s just easier to have someone lead you there, and even better when someone can lead you down the trail, and you don’t have to stop at every rock lip you can’t see over to see how it will end, because someone is just yelling back “Gap jump here x2, cut right to skip!”, “Veer right around the tree for best line” or “Steep but rollable here, then bank left for a little wall ride.” Just trust and go! The best.
We finished the lap pretty quickly, then rode back up for another hidden loamer trail that was loose and dusty and fast, flowy fun. He stopped at one point after a steep, long, rooty chute that, to be honest, as I plunged into it, I wasn’t sure I’d make it out. Spoiler alert, I did make it out, but it definitely felt like things were moving faster than my brain could process. I knew it was going to be spicy when I saw he’d stopped at the bottom to wait.
Ahhhh, so exhilarating.
We chat bike parts for my Dentist Project build, then part ways. I open my phone to a bunch of texts from my husband and neighbours, advising that a 300 lb grizzly had been spotted in the main village, and was I still alive? I wasn’t even riding near there, but oh, this magnificent bear. She was a proper unit. Spotted on the Fairmont golf course the next morning, just grazing. Sigh.
That about sums up a most excellent weekend, and now I’m supposed to be working, with my little boy beside me on the couch watching Minecraft videos, and my little dog at my feet, happily chewing on a chew toy. I’ll help a friend tile her kitchen tonight while she makes me tacos, and you know what? Life is good. 🙂
A crooked photo as I try not to drop my paddle or my phone whilst taking this picture.
On Saturday mornings, I wake up early because I am an insomniac, and wander to the lake with my paddleboard. There, I pump it up, feeling the burn in my triceps and the sweat prickle between my shoulder blades in the cool morning air.
The lake is usually glass at this time of day, and it’s pretty spectacular. A friend of mine meets me and we head out together for a peaceful paddle where all manner of life is discussed. It’s a time to pause and reflect, reset from the chaos of the everyday. We talk about our families, our marriages, our children. We talk about our careers, and the things that make our hearts hurt, and then we encourage each other to dream God-sized dreams, to set goals that cannot be achieved without divine intervention. And sometimes, we remind each other that miracles need to manifested in the everyday, and we need to look for them. We paddle back to the dock after about an hour or two, and both head off to start the weekend.
My son has been saving up the past few months for a Nintendo Switch. He was at $400, so I subsidized the rest and we put the order in last week. Since then, he’s been playing Legend of Zelda (his first game a gift from me and his dad). My husband loved that game as a kid, so they’re playing it together.
As a parent, I’ve been anxious about the fact that my children are growing. It happens, as it should, but I wasn’t ready for it. My daughter is ten going on sixteen, and I have been getting moments of startling clarity that if I don’t ensure our relationship is strong right now, she will one day be lost to me. So on Friday, I pulled her out of school to spend a day with her in the city. She doesn’t love the things I do, so dragging her out on a bike ride or a ski date with me isn’t fun for her like it is when I go with my son. Instead, I booked a “beauty consultation” at department store, and they taught her how to put on makeup and all about skin care. Then, we met my friend for lunch on a rooftop patio at a fancy hotel. Said friend is an insolvency lawyer, and partner at an international firm, and was meeting a bunch of her other powerhouse female lawyer friends for afternoon drinks afterward. We ordered cocktails (a mocktail for the kiddo), and I not-so-subtly tried to manipulate the female role models my daughter is exposed to. Then, the kiddo and I shopped for some summer clothes and found a little charm for her bracelet, which, she told me later, was a memento of our most fabulous day together. The drive to and from the city was peppered with conversation in between listening to the most interesting podcast about chickens. Yes, chickens. It was a two-parter. Anyway, as much as I’ve managed to achieve in my lifetime, this day with my daughter was one for the books, and perhaps the first time in an eon where I felt a bit like I was being a pretty okay mom.
I brought the kids to the farmer’s market today, and I bought a mug from a potter who lives in a tiny town a couple hours north. The kids chose a few art prints from a woman and my son, ever inquisitive, asked her how long it took her to do a painting. She was honest, saying that sometimes she would have to re-paint some, because they looked too sad. And sometimes, it would be okay on the first try. Most days, she said, a painting would take her four hours. My son was blown away. We bought four prints from her, and we talked about how artists maybe work extra hard because not everyone understands how much time it takes to make beautiful things.
I’m getting the Sunday sads tonight, but my cup is full to overflowing, and there is so much going on that is and will be stressful, but it’s okay. I can have my ugly cry while doing my intervals on the trainer bike because I missed my dad this morning and wished I could send him photos of how amazing his granddaughter is growing up to be. I can squeeze my kiddos and take a nap and call a friend and sit on the deck and think about all the good things to come. I can dream about the dentist bike build (blue front chainring and black pedals with blue pins? or black chainring and blue pedals? blue grips? black grips with blue collars? how much is too much???), and tomorrow will be the first Monday Night Rides of the season, and a chance to see summer friends again and push each other to ride bicycles down fun and scary things.
Soooo, I might have just spent a large sum of money.
And I’m pretty excited.
This bicycle project is taking up a good amount of brain space, and it’s wicked fun. So expect Dentist Project updates every so often, so that if I vanish, you’ll at least know where I was on the bike build.
The other night was spent making a spreadsheet, listing off all the bike parts I could think of that I need to source, then thinking about options I had, and what I wanted, then pricing them out. This build, if I were to obtain everything at retail prices, would likely top $13k. It makes me a little sick to my stomach. But I am not going to obtain everything at retail prices because maybe I know a guy who knows a guy or something. This is my drug of choice, and I have my dealer. It still might be in the $11-12k range though, which is about how much a top spec bike could be if bought stock, like I might if I were, say, a dentist.
Anyway. The most expensive parts of a bicycle are undoubtedly the frame, wheelset, and suspension.
The frame, in case you needed a reminder, will mean that even if you don’t find my body, you’ll find my bike.
The suspension isn’t that fun to look at, but the fork will be this one, which is just a larger volume version of the one I currently have. Keep in mind too, that decals can always be changed…
And I haven’t decided on the rear suspension yet. Have been reading a lot about progressive, regressive, and linear curves, ratios, and all sorts of physics I haven’t thought about in decades. I’m leaning toward an air shock, but the coil calls upon my curiosity.
Now, the WHEELS. I actually dreamt about wheels last night. There are the ones I’m running now, which are carbon, with a very loud DTSwiss hub. They’re great. But if I want a set of my current wheels with the hub I want (the Onyx Vesper), it’s about $1k more than the wheels I ended up going with.
But why a different hub you ask? Because I can’t hear myself think it’s so loud, and I can’t hear people talking to me because it’s so loud, and bonus, I scare away the bears and warn the cougars I’m coming, but holy hell is it ever obnoxious. I debated a different hub, but it was a higher pitched buzz, with a bit of a whine to it. I’ve been told that if you grease it up, it’ll quieten down, but who can be bothered to be greasing it? A buddy of mine has to do it every 3-4 months to keep it quiet, and maybe I rode his bike down the narrow hall of the clinic just to hear the hub and found it a bit buzzy for my liking before going back to my paperwork. The hub I want is dead silent. It is also known for it’s IMMEDIATE engagement, which I never realized could be so satisfying until I bought the XC bike I rode for the stage race last fall. That bike has a slight lag in hub engagement, and you can feel it and it’s really annoying. Which reminds me, I really need to work harder to sell that bike. Immediate engagement is a step toward making the bike simply an extension of your body.
Then come the rims. I ended up going with these wheels, made by a local (in our province) company called We Are One, also offering a lifetime warranty, but a bit newer to the game. They’re all wavy to optimize spoke angles, which apparently results in less spoke “nipple fatigue” (hahahahahahahah their words not mine, also, I am a child/I had children and had my own version of nipple fatigue) and increased strength.
Pretty cool right? Or clever marketing anyway.
And I found a local company that builds them up with the hubs I want. So I went ahead and anodized them.
Yes, it looks ridiculous like this. But all you’ll see is the blue. The pink widget part will hardly be visible, but is just that little something that I’ll know is there. And maybe it cost me an extra $15. But my own little fun secret for $15 is a steal, in my opinion.
Anyway, I’m having major impostor syndrome, because I don’t feel like I’m a good enough rider to deserve this bike, and I also feel like a morally bereft selfish a-hole because it’s a lot of cash that could probably be better donated for worthy causes outside of my ego. For both of these, I have no remedy but to simply ignore and forge ahead. Life is short and then we die?
I also might otherwise be spending it on anti-depressant/anti-anxiety medication and therapy, and bikes are sort of all that for me.
Speaking of ego, race photos from last weekend are out and this is one of my favourites, because I’ve got a stupid grin on my face, which pretty much captures how I feel about bikes in general, whatever the wheelset.
TL;DR: feel sad, buy things, nerd out (+++) about bikes. You probably have better things to do with your time…Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
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Every now and then, I am reminded of my dad, and the startling revelation that he no longer exists on this mortal plane.
Each time this happens, I am struck out of nowhere, and reduced to tears. Great, big wracking sobs emerge, and if you know me in real life at all, this is not the dramatic stuff I am normally made of. Today, it happened at church service, in the middle of a song, and I ran off to the bathroom to pee and cry.
The last time I did that was at a scientific conference fifteen years ago, and an ex-boyfriend showed up and I held it together just long enough to act like I was fine, after presenting some research to a reasonably large audience and unfortunately sweating into my light-coloured blouse. I ran to the washroom with an ice cream cone in hand (I can’t remember why), where I sat and cried on a toilet. Straight out of a soppy teen movie. Barf. Then I finished the ice cream, went to a mall and bought $80 of makeup. I don’t even wear makeup.
Then, I went with my kids to a local garden centre, and we bought soil and all sorts of flowers to appease my daughter’s adoration of all things bright and pretty. Beans? I suggest. Maybe lettuce or cucumber? Bah. Flowers. Bright pink. Purple. Yellow. And oh, look Mom! Those! Grampa had those at his house! She is pointing at large purple irises. Yes, I say. And the tears well up, and I am sucker punched again. WTF.
We buy one, and my daughter is delicately protective of her special plant on the way home. She later plants it in its own special pot where it stands tall and proud, and she gently kisses the stem after watering.
It is hot out, moving suddenly from interminable rain to thirty degree heat. We wander down to the lake, rife with tourists, and wade knee deep into the glacial melt. My kids play in the sand, and I sit with my dog on a rock, reviewing bike fork options, because it’s been a week, and I have just put a deposit down on this very fuschia frame:
After much dithering, I’ve decided I’ll stick with the Fox 38 fork as pictured, as a friend happens to have it in his arsenal, and is willing to sell it to me for less than the other one I was considering, which has just come on sale.
I want to build my own bike. I know it will likely cost me astronomically more than just buying it stock, but I don’t like the stock build options. I just want to put what I want on it. And I want the pink frame.
I want to put it all together myself. Every screw and cable and ferrule. I will likely need adult supervision, and some extra tools, but it will be mine, and I’ll know it inside out. I am so tempted to go all out and get the coolest boutiquey things, but I don’t have the riding skill to back it up, so I will stick with the great, though maybe not the greatest. Just so I don’t cement myself firmly into the realm of dentist bikes. But maybe I already have…
I feel the need to justify that this is not an impulse buy. I’ve been deliberating for weeks.
I had a race yesterday (the last of the three!), but the day before, when I was supposed to be drinking lots of water and going for an easy thirty minute pedal to loosen the legs up, I arranged to borrow a friend’s version of this bike. I needed to try some technical climbing, and some janky downhill and steep rock with compressions, obviously. I pick a trail I know well and pedal it out.
It’s fun, but not all that different from my current bike. Marginally more hard-charging with the bigger front wheel, maybe. I am mildly disppointed, because with this knowledge, I am not going to spend the money just for a colour change. I message a friend (who had the extra fork) with the verdict. Try the medium frame, he says. Ride mine. It’s a tank. Hm. I should be on a small frame, based on height. Just. Try. It. Okay, can I try Sunday? After the race. I’m supposed to be saving energy. You really ought to try them back to back. Sigh. Well, are you free? Work is fluid. Can you go now-ish? About 45 minutes later, I’m meeting him on a service road where he’ll shuttle me up half way so I don’t have to pedal the whole climb again, but I’ll still get to do some techy climbing to see. And then descend. He’s had to change the suspension for my weight, switch the brake levers around (he runs them opposite) and change a tire on his other bike that he’ll be riding.
Whoa. This is like the first time I tried a downhill bike. I can just smash it into things and it takes it, supports me, smooths it all out. It really is a tank. He’s way ahead of me, but hollers back to go hard, that it’s built to take the abuse. It’s a bigger frame, a bigger front wheel than I’m used to, and while I think it ought to feel like riding a penny-farthing, it is sort of like riding my downhill bike, only I can climb on it. And these brakes, sensitive and controlled. Man I need to bleed my brakes.
We finish the lap and spend another twenty minutes talking about brakes before he heads off to do a lap with another friend of ours (who apparently later compared that bike to a magic carpet ride).
Surely, it’s not just the frame size. No, suspension matters. Componentry matters. But mostly, suspension matters. He’s built the bike up with a different link, allowing an increase in front and rear travel by an extra 10-20 mm, so that it’s equivalent to my current bike’s travel. On the steeps and chunky bits, this makes a very noticeable difference.
Last weekend, I rode a race on a bike that has about 40 mm less travel front and back from my usual bike, making all the trails infinitely more terrifying and teeth-chattering.
The way he’s built his bike up is what I want to do. I’ve been discussing it with a colleague of mine at work between patients, because it’s fun, who also happens to be a bike nerd and has the newest iteration of the Nomad, the “men’s” version of my current bike (called a Strega in the women’s lineup) in a medium size. This fuschia confection I’ve purchased is named the Roubion, which in the men’s lineup is called a Bronson. This colleague has advised that what I’m wanting to do is build a Bromad.
YES. All the Bromads.
The women’s branding is strange. They discontinued the Nomad (aka my Strega) and only have the Bronson (called the Roubion). The men’s and women’s frames are the EXACT SAME FRAMES. Just different colours and logos. And this season’s Bronsons and Nomads are coming out in pretty boring colours, so the fuschia Roubion it is. Only I’m going to make it a Strega/Nomad, effectively. The main change is that the new builds are mullet bikes, where the front wheel is 29″ and the rear wheel is 27.5″. I could talk numbers and geometry for days (yes, maybe I have a comparison chart compiled and saved), but ultimately, that’s why I absolutely had to try riding them first before committing.
Because it’s a bit weird right?
But commit I have. And it is such a great little rabbit hole of options now. Everything from tire valves to stems to handlebars and brakes! (I think I’m going to go with TRPs, for what it’s worth.) OMG I LOVE IT, IT’S SO FUN AND I BET IF MY DAD IS WATCHING ME HE’S ROLLING HIS EYES BUT SECRETLY LOVING IT TOO. Dammit Dad, I really, really miss you.
And meanwhile, my long-suffering husband continues to nod and smile politely when I start talking. What a champ.
My disclaimer is that I was one of two people in my age category. And the other woman had never raced an enduro before. I talked to her a bit on the first stage and she is a riot. Whatever, I’m claiming it. 1. Because there were only 21 women between the ages of 14 and 45 in this race, including pros, out of 150 people. 2. Because there were only the two of us over forty. 3. Because we raced a few trails that are physically and technically demanding, and I didn’t flinch and didn’t hurt myself. (My heart rate almost hit max on the descents! The climbs were practically recovery.)
I’ve never won anything competitive before. Ever. Much less athletic.
The day started with a few good-luck-have-fun texts from friends who weren’t racing.
Then, the girls I was going to be carpooling with started messaging.
Please read all texts with a strong English accent. Because apparently nearly everyone I ride with is from the UK.
Then we all piled into my car with all our bikes and gear and trundled off to the race.
After signing in and the racer’s meeting, a whole lotta watches beeped and off we went. Within the first fifteen minutes, I clip a pedal and topple off the edge of an embankment. Haha! We are off to a great start! A few guys pull me and my bike back on to the trail. I’ve bent my derailleur hanger, and now my chain keeps dropping off my big ring. At the top of the first stage, a friend manages to fix it enough for me to get through the day. I still don’t know how to fix my drivetrain, it doesn’t matter how many times I’ve been taught.
Blind racing is amazing. We’ve no idea where we’re going, how high, how long, and where. The first stage went poorly for me, as I bumped into a stump and had to get off my bike, then I missed the race line and took the long way around.
As we arrive at the finishing tape, we’re hustled onto a shuttle bus after loading our bikes on another vehicle.
What? Where are we going?
We are shuttled to another zone about ten minutes away. NO ONE has been practicing here, because NO ONE could have anticipated we’d be racing these trails. The arrival is met with confusion. How are we going to get another three to four race stages here? There are only three or four main trails here! Two are rated single black, and the others are rated double black trails, steep and loose, with big, high consequence features.
Ahh, but one of them is divided into three parts, so we race the middle section as our second stage. The upper section is too high consequence to put on a race, I imagine. I haven’t ridden any of it since last August when it was like riding moon dust, with no traction to be found anywhere. By mid stage, my legs are on fire, I’m breathing hard, and trying not to lose it on the tech bits. There’s a slight junction point on the service road, and I hear an ex-pro friend, who’s there supporting, yell my name and then “PEDAL PEDAL PEDAL!”. It’s so crazy how something like that actually makes you pedal, even when I thought my quads were cooked and wouldn’t work anymore. It’s all a blur, and I roll onto a rock that I can’t see over but there are two guys standing beside it and I yell, “What’s this?” to which one answers, “It rolls, but steep!” and all I hear is that it rolls, so I’m on the lip, plunging in. A few seconds later I come up on a girl who had been in front of me, picking up her bike and getting off the trail. She’s crashed, and assures me she’s fine, no need to stop to call for help. There was a rock with a little bridge to ride off one side, and then just a sharp drop on the other side. Nearly everyone missed the bridge, and had to do a deep incline pushup to save it when the front wheel inevitably compressed off the large step. Thank goodness for all my pushup practice. She apparently also missed the bridge, but went tumbling into a tree instead. We finish the stage and regroup at the end. This girl arrives, bloodied, but looking at the results, I think she still ended up finishing.
Stage three is more chill, with little jumps and what feels like an old, off camber riverbed toward the latter third with the odd little jump thrown in. A guy in front of me, who looks familiar but I don’t know, reminds me that on those sections, I’ll want to lay off the front brake. He’s right, it’s a squirrely time, but oh, so fun.
The final stage is the lower part of the three-parter. I remember nothing about it, but that it is more tech, more steep, more rock. I’m tired. I’m trying to loosen up but I’m worried that in my fatigue I’ll make a mistake and crash. I can’t remember where the trail goes. My legs are (still) on fire. There are people at the finish line and I can hear hollering and cowbells and whistles. It’s a steep weave through the trees and a few final pedal strokes to pass the timing radar, then relief. I’m breathing hard and feeling high. Adrenaline is a wondrous thing.
One of the guys we’ve been riding with advises that my friend, the one who hadn’t yet had her bowel movement, had a good crash on one of the upper rock sections. She’s okay, but she hasn’t got a working back brake. We wait, and she eventually appears, having walked down almost the entirety of the trail, carrying her bike. What a trooper. She’s never ridden any of these trails before, and she later said she tried riding a few of the features without her back brake, but didn’t realize that the exit of the feature would spit you out even faster and so she’d go tumbling again. We all cheer upon her arrival, then hop on the shuttle to get back to town. No one is entirely certain the race is over, everyone half expecting there to be one last stage, but there isn’t.
I meet a girl on the shuttle who has won this race for her age category nearly every year. We met last year, but I couldn’t remember what she looked like. She invites me to her house to shower before we head to apres, and I take her up on this, because it was sunny and hot, and the last three climbs were on exposed service road. I’m crusted in sunscreen and salt.
That’s just how these races are though, which is why, despite how intimidating it is for me every year, I keep signing up for them. Everyone is friendly, there to have a good time, grateful for a glorious whole day on bikes, pushing to the limit. We are reminded before the start line that we are to be good humans, that very few of us are going to lose sponsorships if we stop to help someone and don’t win.
And this race? Where we got shuttled off to race trails I’m pretty sure have never been officially raced? It’ll be one where one day, people will say, incredulously, “Remember that one year where the enduro had shuttles? And they raced PhD??”, and I’ll be able to say, YEAH! I raced that year!
I don’t think anyone even cared if they won anything. It was just an incredibly fun day. Everyone legitimately popped out at the finish of every stage sweaty, breathless, and with a massive grin.
But win we did! The three of us in my car all came home with prizes! One came 2nd in her age category, and the girl who crashed? She got the Resilience Award, which came with a massive bag of locally roasted coffee and a print of horses. Just because. (“I don’t even like horses,” she says.)
From the girl who stated that D Day was upon us, she finished it off with this:
“I’m genuinely the most stoked because I feel like we all went into today feeling a bit worried and anxious and we all ended up having a bloody GD time.”
“I just wanted to confirm, did Daddy die?” So says my mother on the phone, all her words carefully enunciated. Sometimes when she’s tired, they smudge together and she has to work harder to make them clear. I sigh. My heart hurts and my eyes burn and prickle with suppressed tears. The sudden-ness with which these can come startles me every time. “Yes, mom. Dad died. Remember, I came and stayed with you? Remember the funeral?” “Oh, yes. Yes. Now that you mention it, I do remember.” I change the topic. “What did you do today? Did you go for a walk?” “Oh, I don’t remember. Today was a nothing day. A do-nothing day.”
I’m later on the phone with my brother. He’s got some work trips coming up and wanted to update me on what’s going on with our mom, the day programs and support workers he has sorted out to ensure her care. He’s crunching away on a bag of chips, and has put me on speaker-phone. “Did you know Costco sells Swiss Chalet Sauce flavoured chips?” He sounds very pleased with himself. “I did not.” “Yeah, I took mom to Costco today. She didn’t tell you?” “No, she said it was a do-nothing day and didn’t remember… She also asked me if dad had died.” “Oh, she did that to me too a few days ago. I think she knows and just wants to make sure she didn’t mis-remember it.”
I tell him about how I messed up my childcare that day, receiving a call mid-afternoon from a friend who found my son walking around looking sad and lost after school, wondering if he was supposed to be somewhere. I thought I had booked him in to after-school care, but apparently I had missed booking that day. I was two hours away, in the city. I called my husband but he didn’t pick up. My friend offers to take him home with her; he can play with her son until one of us can pick him up. I will repay her in wine and eternal gratitude. “Remember that feeling when mom would forget us? E [my son] must have felt like that! I felt so bad!” I exclaim to my brother. “Yeah. Mom forgot me at soccer, at the mall, after school…” “Right? I got left after dance class for three hours while she went shopping.” In the background, I can hear my sister-in-law clattering in the kitchen. “THAT’S NOT NORMAL, YOU KNOW!” she yells.
It was for us. My mom was forgetful long before her brain injury, and until the advent of cell phones, we were just stuck waiting around until she remembered.
I’ve recently finished Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, choosing to curl up on the couch with my dog to read it, while friends were out adventuring on bicycles in the snow.
Grief, when it comes, is nothing we expect it to be. It was not what I felt when my parents died…What I felt in each instance was sadness, loneliness (the loneliness of the abandoned child of whatever age), regret for time gone by, for things unsaid…
Grief is different. Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life. Virtually everyone who has ever experienced grief mentions this phenomenon of “waves.”
(Didion, Joan. The Year of Magical Thinking (Vintage International) (pp. 26-27). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.)
Waves. Yes. She later describes vortices. Swirling whirlpools that suck you in.
Unlike Joan, I once grieved the loss of my mother like I’m grieving the loss of my father, but the loss of her was somehow more frustrating and eerie because her physical being remained, embodying suddenly a child-like mind, my best friend from birth sublimated to nothing but Id. Waves came then too.
But outside of the grief, the loneliness of the abandoned child is tangible. You’ve been left alone in the big wide world to fend for yourself.
Bambi. Dumbo. Littlefoot.
Abandoned. Such a horrible feeling. I made my son feel that the other day. I imagine my mom feels that every day. And me? Is that what it is? Or just grief with a twist of abandonment on the side?
Bikes, Brains, and other Musings 