It started on a Sunday morning in early June 2024, the kind of morning that tricks you into thinking the world is kind, that everything is fresh and easy, that nothing bad could happen under a sky so blue. A lying kind of morning.
Chris, the husband of a friend, showed up at 8:30 sharp with two mountain bikes strapped to the back of his hitch, like carcasses hung out to dry. A seasoned rider, the kind of guy who barely breaks a sweat on an uphill, he had that effortless way about him—calm, collected, in control.
Me? Not so much.
I hadn’t been on a real mountain bike, not in the way that actually counted. I was almost fifty, my body still strong but… different. Wiser, maybe, but also full of little betrayals. The stiffness in the morning. The occasional twinge in the lower back. The way my knees sometimes muttered under their breath when I asked too much of them.
Chris rolled the biggest bike over to me. A Giant hardtail and it was a giant in every way. The thing was enormous, unruly, built for someone with legs longer than a politician’s list of broken promises. His wife’s, apparently.
I threw a leg over it and felt the immediate threat to my pelvic region.
“Uh,” I said.
Chris grinned. “You’ll get used to it.”
I highly doubted that.
Chris, on the other hand, had a bike that fit like a well-worn pair of sneakers. A Santa Cruz, dual suspension, and it was clear that he and that bike had been through things together. You could tell by the way he handled it, absentmindedly, like an old married couple who didn’t need words anymore.
I rode in cautious circles in the gravel lot, wobbling like a newborn foal on ice skates. The handlebars were wide, the sitting position unfamiliar. My gravel bike was nimble, a dancer. This thing was a tank. I was suddenly six stories tall, teetering, off balance, waiting for the inevitable crash to earth.
Chris led the way up an incline, a gentle rise in the earth that my legs interpreted as a sheer rock face to hell. My lungs burned instantly. The gear shifter worked in reverse, so the easier I thought I was making it, the harder it actually became. It was a cruel joke, some engineer laughing somewhere in the depths of Shimano headquarters.
Push, stall. Push, stall. The bike refused to move unless I wrenched it forward with brute force, like Sisyphus and his damned boulder. My legs screamed. My lungs joined in the chorus.
Chris pedaled ahead, his breath easy, his shoulders relaxed. “You okay?”
I gritted my teeth. “Yeah, totally,” I lied trying not to pass out.
Finally—finally—we reached the top. Chris was barely breathing hard. I was trying not to die on the spot.
“Nice view,” I wheezed, trying to sound like I belonged there. I hopped off the bike before it could shatter my pelvis into next Tuesday.
Then came the downhill.
I should’ve enjoyed it. Should’ve leaned back, let gravity do its work. But I was too tall, too high up, teetering on the precipice of disaster. The single track felt narrower than my last good decision. A single wrong move and I’d be eating dirt, picking gravel out of my teeth, maybe a broken collarbone to go with it.
Chris flew ahead like a bird on the wind, while I felt like a towering oak ready to be felled.
We crossed the road and climbed again. I had to hop off the bike again. Chris let some air out of the tires.
“More traction,” he said. “More control.”
I nodded like I understood, but it didn’t help much.
A family rode by, two small kids in tow. The youngest looked about five, his helmet tilted slightly askew, his tiny legs pumping hard. His dad pedaled just ahead, glancing back now and then but otherwise trusting his kid to stay upright.
I stared at the small child, wondering what happened when they went downhill. Did they just hold on for dear life, hoping Mom and Dad knew CPR?
More climbing. More struggling. Then—mercy.
On what looked to be our final run, Chris took pity on me and swapped bikes. He gave me the Santa Cruz.
And then—I was flying.
Everything changed. The bike absorbed the bumps, flowed over rocks like water through a stream. I was one with the dirt, the roots, the very pulse of the trail. For the first time all morning, I wasn’t fighting the bike. I was riding it.
I cruised (pun absolutely intended) all the way down, feeling light, free, weightless. Adrenaline roared through me like a second heartbeat. And when we finally rolled to a stop near the parking lot, I was grinning like a lunatic.
I was hooked.
A few days later, Michelle and I rented demo bikes. Real bikes. Properly fitted.
We rode for three hours. Three hours of pain, of sweat, of dead legs and aching lungs.
There were moments of pure joy, when the wheels spun beneath me effortlessly, when the trees blurred past, when I felt ageless and untouchable.
There were also moments of terror, like the time my front tire caught a rut and nearly threw me ass-over-teakettle into the underbrush.
The next morning, my body screamed in protest, but my mind was already planning the next ride.
I wanted more.
Mountain biking wasn’t just a sport. It was a challenge, a fight, a battle against gravity and self-doubt and the little voice inside that whispered, You’re too old for this.
But that voice?
I didn’t listen to it.
