Let's Hear It for the Boy

I admit it: I have been unfair to mountain biker boyfriends and husbands.

I have previously expressed the opinion that males are incapable of teaching their female counterparts how to ride a mountain bike well.

"Tell me to pedal harder one more time. I dare you."

This assertion is not entirely without reason, however. I have heard many stories of women being put on mountain bikes with pedals to which they are not accustomed and taken on rides too far above their skill level at the time. Further evidence of this practice can be found in abundance on Craigslist, where countless posts begin with some iteration of “I bought this for my girlfriend/wife. It only has a couple of rides on it.” (Subtext: “I took her on a ride that was too hard, she cried, and now she never wants to touch this bike again.  I’m not going to get any action until I get rid of it. Help.”)

Nonetheless, I owe a serious debt of gratitude to my husband Mike, without whom I may never have thrown a leg over a real mountain bike on an actual mountain. I can give myself some credit for persevering after my bumpy introduction to trail riding, but Mike is largely responsible for fostering my enthusiasm and creating opportunities for me to push myself to become a pretty decent rider.

Now I’m at the level where I’m teaching other women the fundamentals of mountain biking. I love that they continuously get their minds blown by basic skills that they’ve been doing wrong for years. In some cases, they have been told to do the exact wrong thing by the gentleman callers in their lives; for example, when I told a woman in Hurricane that she should neverevereverevereverever grip her saddle with her inner thighs when coasting or riding downhill, she said her husband had told her to do it. I asked for his phone number so that I could yell at him.

"You have a specific set of very terrible skills..."

But you know what? He may be solely responsible for getting her on that bike in the first place. I would take her being on a mountain bike with terrible form than have her never get on two wheels at all. And who’s to say that my metaphorical trial by fire of being thrown into the metaphorical deep end with only a metaphorical punctured rubber ducky for support didn’t make me the capable rider I am today?  We’ll never know. What I do know is that Mike is my forever riding buddy, and that makes me happy.

Even when he's a zombie.

So to be fair, I will update my assertion that husbands and boyfriends are abominable mountain biking coaches to this: Spouses/partners/lovers should not coach each other.  For whatever reason, we just don’t want to hear advice coming out of the same face that we wake up to in the morning. Go to a VIDA clinic or on group rides with your friends for progression and encouragement. Then when you go shred with your honey, the only things you need to say to each other are “Nice job on that gnarly switchback/sick drop/smooth non-technical doubletrack” and “Your buns look scrumptious in those shorts, darling.”

I just saved your relationship.  You’re welcome.

So let’s hear it for the spouses and romantic partners who introduced us to a world of awesome that we may not have discovered otherwise! Thanks guys and gals.  We heart you.

smoochies!

(And, of course, to those of you who picked up mountain biking on your own: you go on with your bad selves. You rock.) 

And everybody watch this video, because it's funny:

Forget UFOs: the ColoRowdies are the real invaders at the Sedona Mountain Bike Festival!

The ColoRowdies came out in force to celebrate at the Sedona MTB Festival last weekend.  The CR MO proceeded as usual: establish an enormous base camp in the desert, have a dance party around the campfire until much later than is prudent, then emerge blearily into the sunrise and drink coffee until it's time to strap into the chammies and GO RIDE BIKES!!!

A few Rowdies (and CaliRowdies) arrived Thursday evening to secure the campsite, and they were joined on Friday morning by several others for a solid tour of some trails on the south end of Sedona.  Liz Cunningham kindly provided these photos of the day's adventures, and since I wasn't there I will now attempt to caption them in absentia:

Wait a second, Liz is friends with identical twins?

So many spiky plants here! Don't fall right.

Synchronized trail stretching is so enduro.

Sadly, the crew had to split up on Saturday, since Rowdie ladies Liz, Tricia, Brittany, Bri, Betsy, Sarah, and yours truly had taken on coaching duties for the VIDAmtb skills clinic taking place that day.  We awoke early and started cooking several pigs' worth of bacon and brewing gallons of coffee in preparation for a long day of not-riding as we watched hot air balloons full of tourists rise above the desert like hung over bumblebees. Apparently hot air balloon piloting is not an exact science, because on our way back to town our progress was repeatedly hampered by retrieval crews:

We fought through the fallen gasbags and proceeded to have an excellent day of clinic-ing, with only a few instances of cactus-on-rider violence:

Teamwork makes the tweezers work.

The rest of the crew buckled down for a ride on Hangover trail, one of Sedona's most iconic routes due to its beauty and technical difficulty:

#soenduro

The Rowdies crushed the challenge, took a brief break to also crush an inordinate amount of Mexican food, and decided to engage in bad parenting by taking their bulging food babies over for a pedal up and down Hiline, another famously tricky trail in south Sedona. We were later told that there was a harrowing incident on the climb, wherein Garrett from Durango caught a handlebar on a tree and went tumbling down the steep hillside, saving himself from further disaster by grabbing hold of a bush about twenty feet down.  Sienna captured the aftermath:

The damage was surprisingly minimal, and after finishing the ride they arrived back at camp, thoroughly worked but grinning like fools, to trade war stories with the coaching contingent, who had each ridden less than five miles of actual trail that day but were pretty mentally exhausted by seven hours of nonstop instruction.

Everyone settled in for an evening of campfire, food, beer, and music under the supposedly UFO-riddled Sedona night sky, and the proceedings were later dampened but not damped by a brief rain squall sometime around midnight.  Bed was sought by those who wanted to be (relatively) fresh for the next day's adventures, and tequila was sought by those with a primal need to stay awake until dawn.

On Sunday the crew split again: four poor souls who had to be back in Denver for the grind on Monday lit out early to pedal hard and get back on the road:

ColoRowdies Matt, Eric, Don and Brittany

The rest of us eventually made our way to Broken Arrow trailhead and met up with a few Rudeboys for a lap or three on Pigtail.  The trail that took us there, Hog Wash, provided some excellent photo ops:

Pedaling to the good stuff

Ben shreds an optional rock roller

There is a wonderfully built little drop on Pigtail that we spent some time on, taking photos and following each other off of it in a delirium of happiness about being back on bikes with good friends in such a beautiful place.

Pigtail drop-in with Arturo, Colin, Ben, and Meredith

Tricia drops it like it's HOT!

Rowdie train!!

The crew shrank again as more Rowdies had to return to the real world that evening, but on Monday we still mustered a respectable group of 11 riders for a morning assault on Hiline. About two miles in, Rowdie Ambassador Ben had a ride-ending derailleur malfunction, and had to retreat, Aaron Gwinn chainless-style, back to the trailhead to do some repairs.

Knee pads are key for on-trail bike maintenance.

The rest of us kept on, took a photo at the tippy top, and dropped in to the descent with much hooting and hollering.  We stopped several times on the descent to work on tricky sections and take photos:

Obligatory jump photo! Tricia, Betsy, Meredith, Liz, and El

Liz on the drop-in to the gnarly stuff

Almost got a good photo of Tricia. Almost.

Suddenly, a cry went up from higher on the trail: it was Ben! Back from the dead, with a new derailleur and a burning passion to rejoin the ride! He swooped through the gnar on a fusion tail of rainbow unicorn farts, and the Hiline crew was complete once again.

Ben's butt!

The day was a particularly good one because several of us rode sections that we hadn't attempted on previous occasions, and besides the derailleur, there were no incidents.  It was the perfect way to cap off the weekend, and the only thing that would have made it better was having the rest of the Rowdies out there with us. Here's to next time!