I returned to mountain biking after an extended hiatus, a vacation courtesy of a new job, a growing family, and bike thief. In my decade absence, however, the biking aficionados complicated the sport. In college, when I wheeled my Rockhopper to the trails, the regimen was simple: ride up lung-busting hills, ride down sphincter-puckering slopes. Since then, however, the practitioners of the sport have invented, among other things, the skills section, a mountain biker’s playground complete with skinnies, teeter-totters, and other nefarious wooden devices.
Skinnies are land bridges, thin planks that trail builders set from nowhere to nowhere. Standing anywhere from three inches to several feet above the ground, they challenge the rider to ride a narrow line; falter from the two-by-six, and you either jump or fall off the edge— onto dirt or mulch, if the trail engineers are kind. Teeter-totters are…well…teeter-totters. Aim your bike up the ramp, keep your balance, and either wait for the other side to drop you to the ground, or launch yourself into the ether, using the plank and fulcrum as a launch.
On my first ride after the extended vacation, when I first saw a skinny (and a beginner’s skinny at that), I snorted.
You’ve got to be kidding,
I said to David, my riding partner. He smirked.
Wait till you see what comes next.
He rode it perfectly. I tumbled off the side within the first two feet.
Practice followed, and if perfection hasn’t, comfort certainly has. I’ve ridden the skinny numerous times since then; the beginner’s bridge doesn’t raise my pulse, nor does the teeter totter— at least, not in the novice section.
Still, I appreciate the land bridge in a way that I couldn’t several years ago.
(Forgive me, dear reader; in my real life I’m an English teacher, so I tend to see symbols quite often. Here goes.)
Simply put, the skinny symbolizes balance. We fear the lurch off the edge, but we ride through the anxiety, eyes focused on the six-inch wide piece of wood in front. Stay on the board, remain relaxed, move forward. Nothing else— not the drop to the side, or the teeter in front, or the issues at work— nothing else matters.
All of us have experienced the aura of balance and the tension of crashing. Most of us know, instinctively, that we have to wave hello at our worries, but then we have to watch the path in front of us. Yet we are distracted by the drops at the side-the phone calls, e-mail messages, politics at the office, demands and complaints and assertions that pull us off the plank. And we crash, whether that means spending too much time in the bar or on the computer or in the office, staring at something other than our lives.
Exercise reminds us how to stay on the path. It is the pure distillation of what we know, but what we need to be reminded of: ride the skinny, and keep your balance. It gives you confidence for what comes next, even if it’s a teeter-totter.
Robin Follet lives, teaches, and cartoons in North Carolina.
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October 1st, 2008 at 9:03 pm
Great metaphor. I love the imagery about the slopes!
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