Ride like the wind
Getting your mojo back – on, and off, the bike

The day the word “surgery” was thrown at me, I felt sweaty-palmed and brave all at the same time. I’d been seeing doctors for years, trying to solve what a friend so lovingly suggests I call “stomach issues,” and I finally got a doctor to sign off on an action item. It was no longer, “Let’s try this and see if it helps. Let’s make another appointment and see what we can find.” It was surgery; hopefully a period on a long-unanswered sentence.

The declaration came at the tail end of a list of events that made my legs a little wobbly. I’d gone through a breakup after enduring a long-distance relationship, moved houses – again, and had more-than-shaky job circumstances. Anything that used to feel like a sure thing, suddenly wasn’t. I felt like there was a big question mark lingering over my head. And so, as many of us cyclists do, I rode to feel better.  

I pedaled all the trails that I can easily ride, the ones that are my favorites, knowing they would put me in a better mood because I felt confident on them. I raced down the flowy paths and hit fast technical spots at a higher torque than usual. When I felt really good, I rode trails that were a little more challenging but super fun, and that’s when I fell straight on my face; literally and figuratively. 

One day in particular, I toppled my way up a trail I can usually (almost) clean and stood at the technical sections that I know by memory. I was suddenly scared. I kept falling over at spots that I’d never fallen on before, and I just couldn’t position my body in that loose-yet-aggressive stance I should have been in. I was caught between all my life’s unknowns, and for whatever reason, this left me catching rocks on my pedals or not catching the air I was trying to catch. 

It was pretty easy to see that somewhere along the way, between breakups, job shakeups, doctors, pre-ops and the trail, I had lost my ability to be brave on my bike. I had allotted all my brave tokens toward making sure my career was in order – that I was doing a good job and not making mistakes. My brave tokens were being spent in the doctors’ offices as they probed, prodded and told me to uncross my legs when taking my blood pressure. I even used a couple of my brave tokens to go out on dates. 

My brave tank was being emptied on all the practical portions of my life, and I had, somewhere along the way, abandoned that giddy voice in my head that says, “You got this” and “Weeeeeyyyaaayyy” when it came to pedaling technical rocks. 

Around the time I was flailing all over trails, a friend reached out wanting to go on a bikepacking trip. My initial reaction was (and usually always is) “Hell yeah!” and then it slowly turned into “Hell no” because I remembered I didn’t actually have the capacity. My tokens were spent. But then this weird thing happened where I couldn’t think about anything without also thinking about bikepacking routes: “I really need to go to the grocery store … I wonder if anyone I know has looped that route in Utah.”  Monkey brain. 

I found myself staring into the glow of my phone late at night, while work emails pinged in, searching for a route my friend and I could do that would be challenging, but not too challenging. Hard, but not too hard. I wanted to pack for an awesome adventure, to plan an amazing bikepacking trip, but like, not too big and not too much planning.

I had a few weeks before my surgery, which would knock me off my bike for more than a month, so I finally said “Hell yeah … let’s go big!” But like, a medium amount. You know?

I whiplashed the hell out of my friend. I would text her bikepacking routes at 10 p.m. that were 180 miles, riding five days four nights, where we had to drive six hours and stash water along the route just to make sure we didn’t get dehydrated. Then the next day, I’d send her a route that was almost in our back yard and asked if she wanted me to look for an Airbnb so we could hang and chill. 

Bless her heart, what a saint to hop on with whatever I threw at her.   

I finally settled on a route another friend sent me that looked like a chill two-day, one-night out-and-back not too far from town. The route went along a river, so we didn’t have to worry much about water, and it was on a dirt road surrounded by BLM, so it wouldn’t be technical, and there would be plenty of places to camp. We could go as far or as close as we wanted, and this, to me, sounded perfect. 

We got a little bit of a late start the day of and began pedaling in the heat of the afternoon. The first few miles were heavy, with long, 8%-grade descents on rutted, loose gravel roads. My lightweight mountain bike was fully loaded, and it was top heavy. When I hit a bump wrong, I fishtailed and slid all over the place. That made me nervous, and so when I stood at the top of some of those hills, I looked at them the same way I did at a scary technical descent: shaky and nervous with the distinct feeling I was going to go over my handlebars at any second. It took longer than it should have to make my way down the dirt road, so for the rest of the ride, my brave tank felt low. 

I just couldn’t pull myself together and, while I was still having fun, I couldn’t seem to fully relax. My shoulders were tense, my brain was wondering if I’d packed the ingredients for a flat tire, and I couldn’t move my bike the way that feels natural or effective; the way I know riding a bike usually and should feel. 

When we got to camp, we made dinner, laughed about life, looked at the stars and went to sleep.

The wind started almost the instant my eyelids became heavy and I clicked off my headlamp. My tent walls started to flap violently in the gusts and as I tried to count sheep to fall asleep, I instead counted images of my bike being tossed by the wind into a tree. 

There goes one bike, there goes two bags, there goes three socks.

The wind never relented and by the time the sun came up, my rainfly had become unhinged from its stakes, and everything in camp was covered in red dirt. Luckily our bikes were still intact, and we didn’t lose any gear, but that was the only gift the wind gave us. 

We ate breakfast, packed up our bikes, turned around and headed back toward the starting line, but this time with a headwind.  

Who knows … maybe 50-, 60-mph head- and crosswinds pushed us backward and sideways. I would be riding in a straight line, and then suddenly, my bike would be pointed up the mountain and toppling back down. When we rode across a long flat field, I tried my hardest to stay on course and – blast – got knocked over as if I was hit with an arrow. Fully flat on the ground, lying in a field of cactus.

We couldn’t help but laugh even though hurricane-like winds were blowing in our faces while we were forced to hike our bikes on flat terrain just so we wouldn’t get knocked over. Or, at the very least, so we could move forward. 

A couple miles into the ordeal, a weird thing happened. I finally started to feel normal on my bike again. I was finally getting my brave legs back – maybe because of the laughing or the adrenaline. Or maybe I just thrive in chaos, but, as the wind lashed around us, my shoulders relaxed and all my requirements for being brave at business meetings, at doctors’ appointments, on first dates just sort of went away, and I remembered how to ride my bike again. I hit the steeper techy spots with more ease, and I climbed the big hills like I usually do; steam engine, full-speed ahead. When the wind gusted in my face, I pedaled harder. When it started raining, it made me more excited. The more challenging the ride got, the more maniacal my laughter became, and the harder I pushed. There were butterflies in my stomach, my stoke had returned, and the brave tokens were back in my pocket, and I was ready to keep going forward.