Issue 142: Last Word | My Ride Pal

Hannah has found a new friend to ride with.

I have a new ride buddy. I’ve known him all his life and when he was younger he rode quite a lot, but somehow life got in the way and he’s only quite recently got into mountain biking. From time to time we’ve ridden together, but usually it’s more of a case of me driving us to a bike park and us being in the same place at the same time rather than really riding together.

It’s only recently that the dynamic has changed. Now we ride up together, with occasional squeaks as we get our line choices wrong. I go in front, towing him up and keeping the momentum going. Together we ride along, noting the clunks that emanate from our bikes and signal that perhaps we need to give them some TLC. We chat about the merits of dropper posts, sticky shoes, and waterproof socks. Sometimes we rue our choices, and stop to help each other adjust hoods and buffs as rain or hail
assaults exposed patches of flesh.

At the top of a climb, if the weather allows, we’ll stop for a snack and take in the view. I tell him the names of plants and birds; he tells me the science behind the cloud formation, or the history of some local landmark. He’s still learning the trails, but sometimes he’ll recognise a path where he’s been before while out walking or running. Sometimes it’s a trail we’ve done before. These flashes of ‘I know where I am and where we go next’ always show themselves as a little boost of confidence as he gets the feeling that he’s not totally new to this, and that I’m not leading everything.

He’s still new enough to it all that I’ll give him a bit of a heads up of any potential surprises on the trail ahead – I don’t want an unnecessary crash to interrupt the arc of his progress and confidence. Once we’ve done chatting, dropped our saddles, and are ready to head down the trail, I let him go first. I don’t want him to chase me beyond his ability, so I let him choose his lines at his own speed. He’s not particularly slow – if I rode a gravel bike I’d likely be pushing it to keep up with him. He’s also really good at reading the trail – there’s no need to tell him to look where he’s going because he always
seems to be miles ahead of where my brain is at. His preferred trails are those divided fingers of singletrack and ruts, where line choice can make the difference between flow and a dead end. He likes to wiggle his way through smoothly, gathering speed until he can hit a little kicker to get some air. I follow behind him, well within my ability, but always impressed at how infrequently he gets caught up in a path that leads to a bog of doom, or a dead end rut. Somehow he reads the terrain ahead and unravels the labyrinth before him; the flow in the trail opening up before him where I might well push through with brute force and dicey cross-rut switches. I love to watch him ride. He looks smooth and fluid; he looks confident and comfortable.

As we hit the end of the descent, we slow and compare notes and whoops. Sometimes we exchange fist bumps, with only a hint of irony. There’s the ‘did you see when I nearly lost it?’, or ‘how high was that jump?’. I complain how he’s spattered me with a spraying of mud and he laughs at the chunk that’s stuck to my eyebrow. Mostly we exchange exclamations about how great it was. Sometimes it’s so great that we go back and do it again.

I wonder how much longer I will be able to chase him so easily. I wonder how much longer he will be my ride buddy. Perhaps before long he’ll won’t need me to show him the way and he’ll find his own gang. I’ll be sad when that happens, because there’s something really special about these moments we get together on the trail. We leave our stresses and distractions on the doorstep and for a little while it’s just us, the bikes, and the landscape around us. It unites us in a bubble of shared joy and experience, and the happiness it brings us follows home through the door. These might just be the best rides yet.

My ride buddy is 11 years old, and he is my son.