Do tires crunch on gravel? Really? Do they grind? So little “gravel” is actual gravel. What is the sound then? This is 32 – 45mm of rubber, deformed according to its pressure or lack of, rolling over a variegated substrate. It hums and natters and pops. Freewheels whirr, except when they’re silent, engaged. All of it has the sound of a home printer, stirring to life and churning and girding its loins to print your kid’s homework assignment. Leaves shuffle and crackle in the breeze. Someone is mowing their lawn nearby.
Road sounds are easier. In the best-case scenario, when your bike is tight and tuned and right, it just sort of whispers across the pavement. Sometimes, almost unconsciously, you roll the pedals over backwards to confirm the mechanisms are all still engaged, a brief ratcheting clickety-click. Above that, you get ambient traffic sound. Somewhere, far off, a dumpster being emptied. Maybe cicadas, worrying away at themselves. Or just the wind making its fuzz in your ears.
Unless you’re with friends. Chit chat distracts from all this auditory input, focusses the mind. You battle the wind to discern the words streaming out of your companion(s). Sometimes the words reach you on the draft, muffled and indistinct, like dogs and cats must hear us as we babble at them about something other than food. You shout, “What?” into the flow, only to have the message repeated at the same volume. You smile. Silently. And give up. There is also, on many days, the too loud huffing of my breath, as I work to keep up.
The mountain bike is the hardest one. Those tires do tend to crunch, as if masticating the ground beneath them. That sound punctuated by chain slap, a jarring ping of metal against the frame. Full-suspension bikes also give you pedal strike. If chain slap is jarring, then pedal strike is convulsive, metal on stone, a sharp crack or worse, a scrape. Soft tubeless tires compress and bottom out against their rims. Shocks reach their limits. There is so much snap, crackle and pop some days, you’re mildly surprised the bike remains rideable, right to the end. Some people “Whoop!” as they ride; others curse none-too-softly to themselves. Someone falls off and it sounds like bubble wrap popping, like shoes tumbling in a dryer.
I don’t always hear these things. How is it the mind works? We are, most of us, fixed in our eyes, always seeing, always processing visual input. But also, as if there’s a mixing board mounted between our ears and an engineer adjusting the levels. Let’s bring in the dog barking from its upstairs window. Let’s feel the first, little needles of wet, as unexpected rain flecks our arms. Let’s smell the proximity of livestock or a restaurant’s open backdoor.
Increasingly, the sounds we hear are digital. One or zero. On or off. We stare into monitors. Wear headphones. And it’s almost as if, riding out the driveway, clicking into gear, I have to relearn to hear the world as it is. Analog, fluid and diffuse.