Issue 159: Last Word – It’s my birthday and I’ll fly if I want to

Hannah’s nerves age a little as her husband chases youth.

There is a rock that my husband has been jumping off pretty much since people started jumping off rocks on bikes. It’s quite a big rock, iconic even: the mushroom drop at Bartlett Wash, Moab. It’s a 12-foot or so drop with a blind take-off, from slick rock to slick rock. More of a mind over matter feature, perhaps, but one that’s caught the imagination of many. Get it wrong and the landing is smooth but hard – and rather flat. Think sandpapered skin at best, smashed bones at worst.

In the week after his 60th birthday, he mentioned to me that he was planning to head out to ride the rock at the weekend. I can’t pretend I was thrilled. The signs weren’t good – a busy week saw him complaining he was exhausted and his fork needed a rebuild before he could head out there. In the time that I’ve known him, the stars have not aligned to allow him to go and ride this particular feature (the stars required involve being in Moab with a fully functional bike, someone to ride with and a fully functional set of bones). Secretly I hoped that maybe the fork rebuild wouldn’t get done before the weekend, and the 60th birthday motivation might wear off a little by the time it was fixed, and the rock-jumping desire might have waned.

Of course, he rallied enough energy to fix the fork and head out on the bike ride. And hit the mushroom drop. He now reckons he’s the oldest person ever to hit it. I’m not going to disabuse him of this notion, it’ll only encourage him. Plus, he did hurt his ankle, blowing off a foot on the landing and hyper-extending it. But, apparently, riding it out means it’s still a success. Which does have me wondering where the line is…

Falling off your bike: definite feature fail. But if you stay on your bike but need to rest the next day, does it still count as success? How about a week of rest? Or, is it all success as long as you stay on your bike and don’t need medical attention? I probably shouldn’t ask these questions, in case he decides to conduct research in the name of answers.

It’s been maybe six years since he last hit this feature, that he’s maybe hit a dozen times in his life. Though being slick rock, it’s not really changing or weathering like a UK trail feature might. The thing that changes is the bike, and they’re only getting better. Is it like doing a wheelie – learn when you’re young and you can do it forever? Or is there a line to be drawn, where time passed and age gained push the probability of consequential injury into some sort of red alert zone, where a health insurance loss adjuster turns up to inform you of your rights before you head out onto the trail?

I suspect the answer to keeping on keeping on lies in consistency. Not to just throw yourself off rocks every decade as a birthday treat, but to do it regularly enough that your body doesn’t forget how. Yet, at the same time, you have to do that consistently enough that you don’t get it wrong and give yourself a spell in recovery – because recovery takes a little bit longer with each passing year. It is a fine line to tread.

But, what choice is there? Once you stop, you stop. What was once attainable is out of reach. Every action is tempered by ‘just in case’. Just in case becomes the barrier to ‘ever’, and before you know it your repertoire just got a whole lot narrower. Occasional black becomes red, becomes predominantly blue, becomes canal path then sofa. Fight the sofa. Reach for ‘more’, and ‘maybe’. And I will remind myself of this when he gets to 70 and says ‘I’m thinking I might…’