I’d just been diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis when I first read Lance’s book (Armstrong). It was back in 2000 and I was on a mountain bike trip to Durango, Colorado. It’s Not About the Bike. But for some of us, it really is. Like one of my favorite American treasures Bill Walton, “The bike is my gym, my wheelchair and my church.” I’m not sure any ten words have ever resonated more.
As a kid in North Idaho, the bike is how I explored. When we moved to Western Washington it’s how I learned my Eastside neighborhood. The bike always represented freedom. But after my spondy diagnosis (ankylosing spondylitis), it represented so much more. I remember my first mountain bike well. It was pink and it loved to climb. For my nineteenth birthday, after my AS diagnosis, my folks got me a blue K2 1000. It was a forty-pound tank of a full suspension bike that I rode for over a decade.
We loved The Tour (my dad and I) growing up. I remember working as a ranger in YNP, during those early years, between 2001-2005. I lived in a sardine can of a trailer without TV, but every few days, during the hot month of July, a package of VHS recordings arrived at the post office; in it, were stages of the Tour de France taped by my mom. I didn’t see every race during those years, but I didn’t miss a stage in the mountains. I’d come home from a long day at work, watch the tour, and then go out on my 40-pound mountain bike and climb until it got dark—reliving each stage. Once we moved into our own house in Gardiner, I repeated this all summer long, summer after summer, some nights on my mountain bike, others on my knobby tired cross bike. Night after night I climbed.
I’ve always been a climber. As a kid on the bike, I always had to be the first to top out on the saddle up Beauty Creek. All through college I tackled the local routes around CDA. As a ranger in Yellowstone, it was all about reaching the summits. And for nearly a decade in Gardiner, I rode the hill up to Mammoth Hot Springs four to five times a week (sometimes more), six months a year. It wasn’t the smartest training—time trialing up the 1,200 feet from the desert basin to park headquarters night after night. Every evening I tried to top my previous best. Legs spent, lungs ready to burst. But I wasn’t training to win races, I was simply doing it for the love of the climb, the love of the bike, the burn, the quest for the PR. I was doing it because I love to feel fit, strong, lean, mean and sinewy, because ankylosing spondylitis can make you feel the opposite. Fitness gives, spondy takes. Some nights, when I was really hurting, I climbed as a middle finger to spondy.
We play the cards we’re dealt to the best of our ability. That’s life. That’s being a spondy and migraine warrior. For me that means I ride, I swim, and I lift. Those are the three things my poorly shaped hips allow me to do. But my sanctuary is the bike. My sanctuary has always been the bike.
I’ve been through many bouts of depression in my life, most often during times of injury (periods where I couldn’t ride), and each winter here in Bozeman, Montana, where winters are long and harsh and relentlessly drag on for eight months a year, I fight the winter blues, not from a lack of exercise (because I get after it every day in the gym, in the pool or on the trainer), but from a lack of exposure to nature, to dirt, to two wheeled adventures. That’s the thing about riding a mountain bike, you can’t be depressed while pedaling down a trail; you can’t not smile when riding single track or a dirt road. My brother-in-law nailed when he said, “There’s magic in the flight the bicycle allows, something close to what a bird must feel.” There is indeed ‘magic’ that occurs in the saddle. There’s something inherently uplifting about riding a bike, whether you’re a roadie or a knobby tired mountain biker (or both). Think about it:
b i k e. r i d e. love.
Those three potent four letter words are loaded with meaning for those of us that love the ride.
It’s the bike that keeps me up at night. It’s the long saddle sessions that helped me navigate my divorce and journey as a single dad. It’s thoughts of long summer days in the saddle that inspire my winter solstice smudge. It’s for saddle time that I routinely drive 2 hours round trip, just to ride my favorite trail. It’s the bike that inspires me to rise early all summer long (to beat the bros and brahs to the trailhead) for my morning ride. It’s exploring the desert on my bike that inspires multiple treks to southern Utah each year (for twenty years running). Whether it’s multi-day trips or single-track adventures, it’s one of my favorite things I share with my wife and daughter, our time riding knobby tires on dirt trails. I sure saw some special country on the bike in 2019, and have some big goals, dreams and hopes on the bike for 2020. And for that, I’m grateful.
The bike is the great equalizer. Sure, there are some ailments so severe that even the bike isn’t possible (and for those people that can’t ride, my heart truly aches); but for so many of us battling injuries, ailments, chronic pain associated with inflammation, arthritic conditions, depression or addiction, the bike is the perfect vehicle from which to explore, to dream, and to be our best, strongest, most verdant selves. I have no doubt that riding a bike makes me a better person, a better father, husband and friend. And it most certainly makes me a happier, more joyful and content human. The bike exposes me to the wild and scenic landscapes of the West, landscapes and wildlife that have been one of the greatest motivating factors in my life.
I’ve got dreams on the bike that I’m not sure if I’ll ever pull off (that’ll depend upon how my body cooperates, how my ailments heal, how my ankylosing spondylitis progresses). I want to ride the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route, from Canada to Mexico, traversing the spine of the continent (something I first professed and began scheming in 2005, over a decade ago); I want to ride The White Rim Trail in a day; I’d like to ride the BC Bike Race, The Butte 100, The Dead Swede, The Gold Rush, the Crusher in the Tushar and maybe even Leadville (though that might be more of a scene than I’m able to tolerate). I’d like to pedal out a long day in the Flint Hills of Kansas. I’ve got multi-day routes I dream about in Escalante and Idaho. But I’m more than content, just to ride.
It’s never been about racing for me, it’s simply been about pushing myself and exploring on the bike. I’ll take my 90-minute cross country rides on my favorite single-track trail all day, every day, if that’s what keeps me in the saddle. I’m not obsessed with training plans, watts and power meters (though it makes the indoor winter training sessions more interesting); I’d rather just get on a trail and ride, especially solo (with my rez dog), because that’s where I find the greatest therapeutic value in being on a bike. That’s what keeps me—and other riders like me—dreaming and spinning on a trainer all winter long.
The thing about the bike is that it really sums up the best of any relationship: the more you give to it, the more you get in return. Remember the words of Bill Walton, “The bike is my gym, my wheelchair, my church.” I vividly recall the first time I read these words. I was thirty-three, in the middle of a perfect storm of injuries (and a wicked spondy flare): achilles, hip tear and wrist injury. I’d undergo a half dozen procedures, surgeries and experimental treatments that year. I was down, depressed and dejected, and my dad brought me an article about Bill Walton’s physical struggles (few athletes have endured more) and his love for the bike. That’s the beauty and essence of the bike. There are so many different ways to utilize its power, so many ways to push ourselves and explore, so many different styles and approaches that inspire us to ride, so many ways it can make our life better and more complete. It gives now, it gives when we reflect, and it gives us something to dream about; it gives us reasons to be hopeful, it inspires goals to shoot for. The bike is my refuge. That’s awfully lofty praise for a two wheeled piece of carbon machinery; but the bike is oh so deserving of this admiration in abundance.
My message: when in doubt, ride my friends. Ride. Because sometimes, it really is, all about the bike.
WNbL, mwl