Grimy Handshake: The Seldom Seen Scene

This column ran in the June issue of Bike. Click here to subscribe and support print.

"A body at rest will remain at rest, and a body in motion will remain in motion unless it is acted upon by an external force.” ~ Newton’s first law of motion.

“Haven’t seen you out in a while,” he said, giving me one of those long up-and-down looks that felt to me like I was being inventoried. “You not riding bikes anymore?”

Hmm. Is it my stomach? Dude, I’m 54, and I like beer. Stomachs happen. Maybe it’s the past couple years of ranch living and a steady, relentless diet of heavy shoveling. I don’t look much like a cyclist anymore, all top-heavy with shoulders and back, and that stomach. But still, what the fuck?

“Been riding plenty. If my legs had any say, it feels like a whole lot more than last year.”

“Oh,” he shifted weight from one foot to the other. “It’s just that all your pics on the ’gram are of dogs and gardening. And none of us see you out on the trails anymore, so I wondered …” His voice trailed off.

Ah. The ’gram. Instagram, and our society-wide need for validation and kudos. An insidious combination of technology and convenience that taps straight into the very heart of our social id and traps us all like flies in amber, caught staring at ourselves in an endless scroll. The great FOMO machine. A modern Greek myth; Narcissus and the selfie stick. Or, in the context of my friend’s query, the fun-house reflection of our alleged reality. If I am on Instagram, but not posting pictures of myself riding bikes, I must therefore not be riding bikes. Because, apparently, what we post on Instagram is who we are.

“Yeah, about that. I am riding a lot. Just not really into stopping for photos these days.”

These days? Shit, I never really liked stopping for photos. There were rides in the early days of Bike, when we would be scouting out new places but also actively trying to harvest visual content, that would start before noon, cover maybe 20 miles, but still somehow not get us back to the trailhead until it was well dark, because of photographers and their insatiable thirst for the damn golden hour. Ride a few minutes, stop, scope out a shot or a line, ride the section of trail over and over again until the guy with the camera was happy, move on to the next spot. Warm up, stand around, cool down. Legs always feeling like cinderblocks. I did my best to not be on those rides. Seemed like it would always have been a better idea to just go for a damn ride, then come back at the damn golden hour and futz around shooting the photos then, since those were the only images that ever made it past the light table.

Riding for the camera, from then to now, went from being a pain in the ass only if you had friends with expensive photo gear and a healthy budget for film processing to being a pain in the ass for just about everybody. Along the way, sessioning features became an increasingly common part of mountain bike rides. Because now that we have these fancy cell phones that take pictures, we can all catch Billy right as he jumps off that old rotten stump on the ridge trail. And we can all catch Jimmy as he tries the same line and breaks his collarbone and a couple ribs. Might have punctured his lung too, hopefully we have cell reception so we can call 911 from our fancy camera phones.

Celluloid courage has now become digital courage, and in spite of the rampant proliferation of camera technology and ease of access to it, there’s something cosmically reassuring that the percentage of people who will immediately ride beyond their limits the second a camera is pointed at them has not changed one bit. Darwin might have been onto something. Would he have accurately predicted how willingly those same people would post the images of their botched jumps and collarbone X-rays onto Instagram? Who knows?

“Not my circus, not my monkeys,” as my mom likes to say. For me, riding was and still is about moving. Start pedaling in a direction, become a body in motion, obey Newton’s first law and remain in motion until it is time to stop. I have never really considered cameras a valid form of external force.

Because of this need to set in motion, then stay in motion, albeit at a consistently slowing pace as the decades scroll by, I tend to ride alone most times. There’s a head-cleansing rhythm that solo rides can generate, time and space to let thinking completely unravel to some place where words no longer exist and it’s just muscle and breathing and sweat and reflex. No stopping on someone else’s whim for photos, or to session features, or smoke weed, or drink beer, or snack. Just rolling out and staying in motion until I’m done. There’s nothing wrong with sessioning features, or smoking weed, or drinking beer, or eating snacks per se. It’s just not what I am seeking out most of the time that I ride.

And so, most of the time, I ride alone. Out the door, down the hill, turn right along the valley, climb, descend, climb, until the pedals feel heavy and it is time to turn around and come home. Or, lock the van, crunch out the gravel of the parking lot, dip into the shade of the oaks, follow my nose for a few hours until I am out of water and grinding up the last sandy climb back to the van. Check for ticks, swab off the poison oak, savor the taste of sweat and the cold beer in equal measure. Might get home in time for the golden hour, when it’ll be just the right lighting to post up a few pics of carrots. Or dogs.