There's always one more back story

Over the course of 17 years, I raced a lot, but I almost never raced.  Give it a moment.  There's a reading of that sentence that makes complete sense.  Wait for it...wait...got it?  See, I almost never started racing at all, almost never knew it existed.  While I'd seen the Tour de France and Paris Roubaix as a kid on TV, there was big ocean in the way, and more importantly, my child mind never conceived of the stepping stones to European pro racing.  Somehow, I must have thought those guys sprang forth, fully formed, born with a leather hairnet "helmet" already in place.  My awareness of sporting options was limited to the typical town league compliment of ball and stick athletics plus running.  My family was all runners.

Then in the fall of 1988, on my first day of geometry class, I met my first same-age mountain biker, Steve.  Three years earlier, my dad had bought himself and me our first genuine mountain bikes after banging around in the woods for a couple years on an 1950s Shelby Flyer and a 20" wheel coaster brake bike respectively.  Secretly, I'd yearned for a motorized dirt bike, but knew that was a non-starter with my parents, the kind of equipment-non-grata request that would bring a disappointed scolding just for my asking.  The next best option was to pedal bikes on the same trails, so I'd talked my dad into those early outings on our ragtag gear until, in 1985, we somehow learned that the intentional all-terrain bike (ATB) actually existed.  Even late in 1988, very few people hiking New England trails had ever seen a mountain bike, and my dad and I would often be met with bemused surprised for riding bikes off the road.  So, when Steve showed up in class wearing a Specialized T-shirt, I had to ask if he rode mountain bikes.

He did!  And soon we did, and then did a whole lot more.  I was excited to ride in the woods with someone my own age, and he was happy to find someone who didn't complain even when the going got tough and he'd leave me in the dust.  We became and still are good friends (bikes seem to help shape that kind of bond), and he also was my window into the world of bike racing.  He knew local, amateur racing racing existed.  These were the pre-internet days when race schedules were printed in the monthly issue of VeloNews, which existed only in bike shops with strong ties to racing, but Steve's older brother had worked in the local shop and done some racing, so Steve knew exactly where to find events, and after two years of riding together,  on April 1st of 1990 we entered our first race together, the inaugural Fool's Challenge in East Hampton, CT.  There was no junior category, so we raced our one lap with the adult beginner men, Steve in front of me for most of the race until he crashed off a narrow bridge at the lowest point of the course.  I have no idea what place I finished other than nowhere-near-the-front, but it was awesome, and next year, after of winter's maturation, I came back to the same season-opening event and won the newly instituted junior category.  

That was also the day I learned about the first ever New England Mountain Bike Championship Series, and that I was leading it!  I'd go on to win the junior title that year, taken under the wing of the Fool's Challenge race promoter Mike Lachance, a Merlin team rider who shepherded me to races and introduced me to his teammates like Carol Waters and Rich Labombard who won the women's and men's categories and were the best role models possible for being a fast racer with personal grace of character.   In fact, many of the crew at what was then Merlin, who would eventually spawn 7 Cycles, were racing mountain bikes and incredibly supportive of this gangly kid that Mike had in tow.  There were also others at the races, Ginny Prince and Greg Cliff, to pull a few names from my memory bank, who were always there for the juniors to offer a bit of advice and an encouraging word.  I still remember Ginny's wisdom before a big race at Mount Snow after I'd complained that all my competition from arid parts of the country were still good enough getting down the wet, rooty descents that I could no longer count my handling skills as much of an advantage.  She replied, "Yes, but unlike them, you'll be having fun."

Fun is a big factor in racing, or at least it should be if racing is more that just a way to vent some deep seated anger at the world.  It is also, presumably the reason we start and continue mountain biking in the first place, even those of us secretly twisting the right grip when our parents aren't looking.  Fun also had me meet up yesterday to ride local trails with my partner Adele and our friend Mary Lynn, and it was on our way into the woods that we met Angela, Anna, and Nate as their parents were dropping them off to ride.  Our two trios quickly became a sextet, and after following me through the first section of snaking singletrack, Anna commented that I was really fast.  I pointed out that I had the advantage of riding a mountain biking for longer than her crew had BEEN (on later reflection, I realized my retirement from racing likely preceded their births), and that experience helps a lot, but then I asked the important question, "Are you having fun?"  They all wholehearted affirmed, YES!  "Then you're all set," I told them, because after a rider makes it through those initial struggles of gaining any headway through the woods on a bike, when there is a knowledge base of zero, then the riding grows just easy enough to feel fun.  Well, from there it just happens.  You like riding, so you ride more, and it become easier, so you ride even more, and a positive feedback loops like that is hard to stop.

I'm used to mountain bike rides being fun, but yesterday was an absolute hoot.  While Adele and I are distinctly in agreement about not producing offspring, the energy of young people is infectious, and I found myself riding along with a grin so wide it almost didn't fit through the singletrack between the trees.  I love this sport, and it means a lot to me to help pass it along with tips and support for new riders, just like others did for me when I was 17.  The crew we met yesterday was really good, and they'd been riding only about a year.  If riding stays fun, I trust they'll stick with it, and in time, they'll be crazy good, and then better, and then even better than that.  I look forward to trying to hang onto Anna's wheel.