Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Solstice


The cold chill of winter is upon us. Freezing to the bone on the way home from work, I longed for those warm days and nights. Summer has always been my favorite season. When I was a child, I never went on any fancy vacations with the family, but that didn’t put a damper on things. Summer still meant freedom and adventure. It meant being able to ride your bike from dawn to dusk, exploring as much of my little corner of the world as my two wheels could take me. For a few short months, there was no responsibility of classes or homework. It was all about where I was going to pedal next and what I was going to discover when I got there. A time where the Verdugo Hills were my Alps.
As I grew older, my primary mode of transportation changed. Internal combustion stretched the boundaries of my world tenfold. It let me cover ground faster, and see and experience more than I ever could have imagined in my post-training wheel days. But the more intricate the form of transport, the more complicated it becomes. Maintenance, insurance and the cost of operation are necessary evils. And that’s when the simplicity of two wheels, two pedals and one chain came calling again.
Combining a bike with a fossil fuel burning vehicle then became an ideal means of escape, and summer was the best time to put responsibilities on hold for a few weeks and hit the road. Loading up the Hyundai/Mitsubishi Precis hatchback, custom built chicken-wire grill built by my father ,praying with Short-stack , hoping the 4-cylinder box with no air conditioning makes it to Mammoth Mountain. Crammed in the back of the truck cab, Talin's gleaming smile as we headed towards Yosemite. She almost burned down Mammoth itself with a marshmellow fire-ball, hence the big smile. The memories I have of those adventures are some of my most valued possessions. A quest for adventure, armed with bikes, in the companionship of friends old enough to know better yet still young to care, gave me enough adventure stories to break down an entire generation of grandchildren to tears of boredom. The roads to singletrack in Washington , races in Arizona, the legendary trails of Utah and a few detours in Oregon are some of the highlights. Different friends bring different memories.
Lately, it seems like another stage of that cycle has hit. A handful of summers have since passed those daysm and it seems like my friends and I find the road trips fewer and farther between. Like riding your way into racing shape, the career, the relationship, the mortgage require time in the saddle, and we all know that theres only so much of that in a given day.
It may have seemed pathetic, but on my last trip to Mammoth Mountain with the team, I visited some of the same places I went on a previous mountain bike journey couple of years ago with three friends. The landmarks were still there – a fresh coat of paint on the greasy spoon, another owner running the same local shop- different yet the same. It made me realize that another summer will be coming soon, and maybe its not too late to get the band back together one more time. Off-key and a few beats behind isn’t an ideal way to spend a summer, so I wouldn’t recommend it, but whatever you do, make it count.

Thursday, November 10, 2005

Flow Like Water


People think television is the root of all evil, devils creation to brainwash us. Others, to the contrary, think the glowing box is a wonderful source of entertainment and information. Smack dab in the middle of this curve are the people who realize that television isn’t the end-all, be-all, and that it can be both a temple of worship and shining example of blasphemy , depending on the content beamed forth. Personally , I think I fall into the latter category.
I realized there are many more constructive things to do with my time, yet I’m still drawn to the television like those people who crane their necks and slow to a crawl checking out highway wrecks. I have yet to develop the self-discipline to deflect the tractor-beam-like pull of the TV, but at least I feel like I watch “quality” programming. Call it rationalization, or even denial. You can even call it no big deal, since the majority of people in this country are glued to the glowing screens anyway. But the point is that during one of my “quality” television-viewing sessions, I saw something that changed the way I look at biking. It was a documentary in the life of martial arts master and movie star Bruce Lee, call A Warrior’s Journey.
True , I could have spent those two hours actually pedaling instead of vegetating, but in hindsight, I feel it was time well spent. The highlight of the show for me was when Bruce Lee was being interviewed about his theories on fighting techniques. Having studied philosophy in college, Lee had a creative analogy to describe it. He stated that the goal was to be like water, since it has flow, a continuity of movement. Water conforms to the shapes that contain it , and it moves smoothly around or crashes over objects in its path, depending on their shape. It constantly adapts its path to follow the most continuous one.
Although Lee was describing methods for optimizing flying kicks, rapid-fire punches and sparring with opponents, it’s a theory that applies just as naturally to riding. As strange as it sounds, when tackling a tricky rock garden or a tight, boulder-strewn technical turn, imagining how water would flow through the area somehow helps the two wheels beneath me float safely between the jagged granite slabs and carve the proper radius through the next turn.
But for some inexplicable reason, when I think about the ideal application of the water theory, as applied to bikes, I envision a ribbon of perfectly buffed singletrack. I see the rhythm of moving from twist to turn, shifting weight and lean angle from left to right; tire’s side knobs grappling the terra firma, teetering on that razor’s edge between the limit of adhesion and imminent disaster; pumping from apex to apex, momentum pulling me toward the next corner like a big rubber band. Continuity of movement, TV not included.

Inspired by Stickity-Stizle