The Dirt Field

This is the story of how I came to be riding my bicycle up and down a six-story parking garage the other night in thirty-five degree weather.

As I have mentioned in several posts over the last few months, I got really involved in mountain biking this past summer. It started casually enough – I bought a bike, did a few local races, bought a nicer bike, raced some more – and now it has become an obsession. I’m a board member of my regional bike club, I own two bikes, I have raced in seven races, I ride with half a dozen different riding buddies, I subscribe to a biking magazine and own eight different bike-related books, and I am currently in possession of three separate bike store gift certificates. This has all happened in just under six months, which means if I continue at this rate, two years from now I will have turned into a bicycle.

I know it seems like I may have rushed into this sport a little quickly, or that I’m devoting too much of my time, money, and energy to something so new. Those who know me have good reason to be concerned; commitment and I haven’t exactly had a steady relationship in the past. Law school, anyone? Marriage? My $700 guitar purchase in eleventh grade? So I understand being worried that I’m going to wake up tomorrow and decide that biking is boring and I want to start learning to quilt.

But this is different, I’m certain of it. When I bought Kobe almost five years ago, my mother was secretly worried that I’d lose interest in caring for a dog and he would be forced to live in my closet and eat drywall for nourishment. That never happened. I grew to love him tremendously and look forward to seeing him each day; sometimes I forget to take him out and he responds by pooping in the house, but generally I’ve been committed to caring for him. Biking is the same thing. I love the feeling of a great ride, the camaraderie between bikers, and the excitement of learning about bikes. It’s gotten to the point where I can’t remember my life before I started mountain biking, and why would I want to? It’s all just a haze of sitting around, smoking occasionally, drinking a lot, and watching a lot of television.

None of this, however, explains how I ended up in the parking garage the other night. I’m getting there.

Bobby and I were hanging out back in late August, and in a moment of playfulness, he started tickling me. I shrieked and giggled and squirmed, and in doing so knocked him into the back of the couch, throwing his full weight into my knee sideways and causing something in my knee to pop. The pain was excruciating and after waiting ten minutes for the agony to subside (it didn’t), Bobby called 911. It was mortifying – the EMTs came into my living room where I was sprawled on the couch, sobbing intermittently as the pain fluctuated from horrible to unbearable, and tried to talk to me rationally about my knee. After realizing that moving = screaming, they loaded me onto a stretcher and took me to the hospital.

I guess the emergency room was very busy that day, because the EMTs rolled me straight into the packed waiting room and lowered me into a wheelchair to wait with everyone else. Bobby sat patiently with me as tears dripped down my face and I repeatedly winced in pain, until finally my need to pee overwhelmed my need to never move that leg again. He rolled me into the bathroom and straight into a stall, where my neurosis took over and I stretched as far as I could to grab a toilet seat protector. I’m a steadfast hoverer, but that was not an option, so I figured a dozen or so seat condoms would have to suffice. It’s a good thing I’m crazy like that, because in the process of reaching, something in my knee popped again and suddenly the pain was reduced a hundredfold. Almost to the point that I was human again and could remember words like please, thank you, and I’m sorry I slapped you for accidentally touching my leg.

I’ll cut to the chase at this point – the final diagnosis of my knee was that I had pinched my cartilage in the joint, although the orthopedic surgeon was never able to make a concrete decision. The result was that I was out of biking for several weeks and had to miss the final race in an important series. That was a difficult time for me; I was so excited about biking and so desperate to spend the last weeks of summer on the trails, so when I couldn’t ride, I became miserable and the depression started eating me alive. It was during that time that I watched “Off Road To Athens”, a movie about eight world-class mountain bikers competing to represent the US in the 2004 Olympics. Suddenly I had a new goal: to train and race to the highest level possible, ideally the Olympics.

That probably sounds nuts, right? I work in government contracts, I’m already in my twenties, I wanted to be a lawyer until six months ago, and now I’m trying to go to the Olympics. Even I have a hard time talking about this dream, because I can practically hear people snorting with amusement. But this is what I want to do, this is what I am trying to do and why I am out riding my bike at odd hours in terrible weather. It is not easy, and as winter sets in and the days are short and cold, it is rarely enjoyable. I have many workouts that are incredibly hard and grueling – rides where all I do is go up steep, long hills until I want to cry from exhaustion and frustration. During these training routines, I can practically hear my body shouting, “Seriously? SERIOUSLY!? WHY? WHY ARE WE DOING THIS? WHY? WHY?” But I think about that movie and the idea of someday racing all over the world in hopes of going to the Olympics, and I remember that I am doing this because I want to be the best, and getting there requires work. And steroids.

So that’s where I’ve been lately, and why I haven’t been writing. Between working, training, doing other bike-related activities, and eating endlessly to keep up with the amount of exercise I’m doing, I haven’t had a lot of time for writing on here. And to be honest, once I stopped writing for a while, it got harder and harder to imagine going back because I had so much to tell that there was no good place to start. I don’t want to shut this blog down, though, because I enjoy writing and there are probably some of you who are still nice enough to stop by occasionally. And if you can take the time to come by, surely I can put down my eighth meal of the day and make time to write something. And also, this bike thing might not pan out, and I’ll need some activity to keep me busy the next time Bobby decides to put me in the hospital.

There you have it. Now you know that I want to go the Olympics, and now I know that I have to do my best to follow through with that, if only so you’ll stick around here to see how it all works out. It’s hard at times like this morning, when I peeled off my thick wool socks after a bitterly cold morning ride to reveal toes that were turning black at the tips and on the undersides; a big part of me wants to give up and stop forcing my body to do things it so clearly dislikes. But then I remember that those toes? Nobody has ever had anything nice to say about them, so if I lose them, is it really that bad? And then quitting no longer seems like an option.