I Thought You Said You Were Good at This

A rock. A single rock. Not a rock garden. Not a slick rock. Not a rock wall. Not even a big rock. Just one rock, the size of a shoe box, right in the middle of a smooth, flat trail, with ample space on both sides. Given that this single rock was the only one to be found on this wide, fast stretch of dirt, it’s worth asking why it was even there.

But these are the questions you ask afterwards.

In 1997, I had a Stumpjumper M2 Comp and thought I was hot shit. I was young and not yet soul-tired, blissfully unaware of all the ways a mountain bike could break your body (and your heart).

At the time I was working as a mostly ineffective middle-manager in the software industry and spending most of my leisure time flogging my local trails with whatever level of skill a young person could attain on a 26” hardtail with 80 amazing millimeters of front travel.

Then one day my boss, a guy twenty years my senior, announced he’d bought a mountain bike and wondered if I’d like to show him how to use it. I had told him all about my riding, implying if not stating outright that I was pretty good at mountain bikes. Here was a chance to demonstrate my expertise. I was still young enough to think that was a thing I needed to do.

How cute.

So off we went on the next Saturday to a state park near his house, the parking lot filled with families and dogs and no other mountain bikers, likely because this was not a great place to ride, the trails all sort of straight and flat and free of natural obstacles. Despite the paucity of challenges, I was regularly dropping my boss and having to circle back to find him.

He was a nice guy, that guy, and he apologized a few times for being so slow, to which I replied, “No problem,” because that’s what you’re supposed to say. Really, I ought to have just slowed down, made nice and tried to have some kind of casual conversation with him, but as I said, I was young and dumb and felt like I had something to prove.

Which is what I did next.

Passing a young couple with a dog, I came around a corner into the aforementioned, wide, flat section of trail, the dirt packed perfectly, and there I spied this single rock sitting dead center in the middle of proceedings.

“I will bunny hop that rock,” I thought. It was a small challenge, but I was desperate for any way to show off. My boss was somewhere behind me, but this small bit of skill, a throwaway moment, would be enough to stave off my increasing boredom.

Here’s the thing. I was so in my head, so above it all, so much better than all of this, that I never even bothered to lift my front wheel. In a space that must have been at least six-feet wide, I chose the line directly through the rock, planting my front wheel firmly into its taciturn face and launching myself forcefully over the bars.

Imagine my surprise.

I’d expect to sail up and over this sad little rock, landing rear wheel first and perhaps even managing a short manual on the other side. That’s probably why I failed to get my arms out in front of me and instead landed chest first with an audible THUD. 

Thereupon, all the air left my body.

The young couple promptly came around the corner, looked at me there, pancaked face-down in the dirt and asked if I was ok. But of course I couldn’t make words. The expression is “winded,” which makes it sound so much more benign than it feels. So they stopped and were still standing there, over me, when my boss finally came onto the scene.

Quietly, kindly, compassionately he asked, “Are you ok?” To which I croaked, “No.”

Eventually, as my lungs decompressed and the shock waves running through my body slowed, I sat up, smiled and began to explain what I’d done. My boss, this sweet man, smiled beatifically at me, and then he said, “I thought you said you were good at this.”

In retrospect, it was a cheap lesson. My collarbones remained intact. My back didn’t break. I don’t even recall feeling sore the next day, which is how you know I was still young. No. Just a bruised ego, the sort of injury you hate to sustain but desperately, desperately need to go through if you’re ever actually going to get good at anything.