When first we meet a mountain bike we have only a limited vocabulary to communicate with it, just what we’ve been taught by our road bike maybe. Perhaps we bring some faltering BMX to the mix, one of our original languages, but one we haven’t practiced since we were kids.
So how do we move forward?
Most people speak front wheel. Turn the handlebars. Guide the front wheel through the obstacles as needed. It’s simple stuff, but it gets you around. This is the equivalent of being able to order a beer and find the bathroom in another country. It’s rudimentary. You can have a good time, but you might really be connecting.
If we keep riding together, pretty quickly we’re picking up body English, an ability to steer as much with the body as the handlebars. This tends to be an intuitive process rather than an academic one. You don’t get it in phrase books. It just comes from you and the bike trying to understand each other day-by-day.
You begin, maybe, to develop an ear for what the bike is saying. One day you realize the back wheel doesn’t go where the front wheel goes. They’re connected but also chart their own paths. Slowly. Little-by-little, you begin to understand that, at any given speed, the front wheel will go there, the rear will go there. It’s like learning idiomatic expressions. You’re using the same words as before, but with more nuance, more creativity.
There are two higher-level tests of language skills, and they are sincerity and humor. Can you communicate your true feelings without resort to cliche? Can you make original jokes? In mountain biking, the equivalents are learning to employ the front shock in technical situations and learning to use the rear shock to enhance your management of the rear wheel.
Through time and immersion, you become more and more fluent in mountain bike. You spend less time having pantomime conversations with hand gestures and facial expressions. The two of you are really talking. You come to understand each other on a deeper level. You get to be friends.
This is the power of language.
