Chipps urges us not to wait for the bad times to remind us what’s important.
The five-year anniversary of Covid-19 took me by surprise. Surely it hadn’t been half a decade since everything changed? And yet, despite the genuine tragedies of the time, and the travel restrictions and the ‘hour of exercise’ limits, I found myself quite nostalgic about those ’rona days.
I’d – fortunately – had a busy start to the year, with a sunny bike riding holiday in Spain in January, getting out a few great live gigs and magazine assignments that took me to the snowy Lake District and to a cactus-strewn Baja, California. 2020 had been shaping up to be a great year.
Even at a muddy Hit the North race in Manchester in the middle of March the idea of a looming pandemic still felt abstract. We left our friends with a cheery ‘Might have to see you in a couple of months!’
And then, of course, the world shut down… My girlfriend and I were fortunate as we had a veg box delivery, a small garden and, by heading up the hill behind the house, we could be in the countryside and ride without bumping into anyone.
It was then that the extended Singletrackworld forum family really came into its own. With many people furloughed, thousands of forum users took to their laptops to worry together, swap stories, offer help and to talk bollocks in the time-honoured tradition.
The world slowed down. There was suddenly time to watch that box set, read that Sherlock Holmes compendium, reorganise those LPs, build a wheel, make those Tamiya scale models or to finally learn that Whitesnake riff… But more than that, it forced us to reconsider what was important. For many of us, that appeared to condense into friends, bikes and food (and drink…). I was lucky that I could ride out the back door, and even when we were limited on time and/or distance, there was enough local variety and elevation that I actually got fitter, rather than slower. Stripped of the daily routine, bike rides were to be savoured. Combined with our accidentally healthy, near-vegan diet (the cheese shop was shut, the pubs were shut and the veg box was just that), I was probably in my best riding shape ever.
But it was cycling friendships that I found brought into sharper focus. And the sudden improvement in internet speeds and Zoom-like products made video-chats both important and easier to arrange. We arranged Zoom-beers with friends we used to ride with. We arranged FaceWines with more distant friends we never used to see anyway and we GoogleCoffeed others in the US and Canada.
With its limitations, lockdown showed me that a lot of the things that I had considered everyday at the time were more valuable through their sudden rationing. It obviously changed how people worked, but also how people approached work, life, offices and free time. As lockdown (eventually) eased, I realised that I’d not really been into the office for two years, apart from to use the workshop on weekends, and that helped me realise that I probably wasn’t as essential as I thought I was.
What I did realise was essential, though, were those friendships I’ve had with casual mountain bike buddies over the years. And those seemingly throwaway interactions we’d had on a Monday night at a hilltop gate, or in the pub after a ride, or in a field at Ard Rock or Mayhem – those were massively more important to me than I’d given them credit for. That was what Covid had threatened to take away, and yet we found a way round that, with forum chats, unsolicited ‘Alright mate?’ texts and virtual pints. And that’s something that I’ve continued to this day. It turns out, you don’t need regular face-to-face time to keep friendships alive.
We don’t need another pandemic to remind us: we’re only as strong as the friendships we nurture. And they’re worth hanging onto – whatever the world throws at us.