Timebomb, Part 2

July, 2019

Eventually, what you realize is that the metaphor, the timebomb, doesn't blow up.  It grows up, or at least he starts to.
Rowan has a scar the color of a pearl across his hairline and one to match it right below his chin, and halfway between the two rests his huge, toothy smile.  But his balance is otherworldly now.  He's deft, fast on his feet, he dances on the pedals when he climbs the hill between my house and Shawn's.  He stands up when he climbs, I understand, because I stand up when I climb.  But where I'm a masher still at 41, he's light on the pedals like a feather, like Contador.  

I'm well aware that comparing ones child to Contador isn't healthy, for anyone, but I see what I see.

For now, we ride together.  As they say, the family that rides together stays together.  They also get chiggers together.  They run out of chain lube at the same time and sound like a nest of hungry mice together.  They fight over who gets which clif bar today, and where are my fucking gloves, etc.  It's not all sunshine and Saturdays.

"Where's mommy, "Avery demands from over my shoulder.  I'm sitting on the couch, exhausted, and she's draped across the back of it, like a bored cat looking for trouble.
"Mommy is riding, sweetie," I tell her.
"Why is Mommy riding so early?"  The swish of her tail.
"Because Mommy is doing the Hundo this year."
"What even is the Hundo?" Avery groans.
"The Hundo is part of the reason you exist."
She doesn't click that link, not yet.  For now she tolerates simple answers.  But someday when she does I hope she'll understand that what we're doing out there at this hour isn't riding bikes so much as it is becoming a more complete person, one who has been somewhere.

I try to explain the abstract to Rowan, that as a culture we are now so far removed from real, natural adversity that we have made it a recreation - something we pay for - no longer something that, like life, just happens to us.  It's a game we play so we don't forget how.  He eyes me, skeptical of my story, but I show him how to sharpen a chainsaw, or plug a tire, or clean fish while the latest bad news streams 24/7 on a television that we pretty much don't even turn on anymore, and I hope to God he doesn't need it.

When your wife becomes your riding buddy, your world changes a little.  We cover details now that we didn't get into before: Pre-race bathroom habits.  Soil color as it relates to traction.  Chaffing.  We spend two huge, dreamlike days in The Forest together, riding big miles and enjoying the freedom to love each other with no one else around, just a huge green blanket of summer leaves overhead between us and the bright blue sky.  We are afforded this, I know, because she's chosen it.  I'm proud of her, but also, selfishly, I'm in my happiest place with my favorite person, something most people never get the chance to do.

There is worry, of course.  I follow her down Dowel's draft, careful to point out from behind her all the places that the trail wants to eat you, pull you down into the forest on your left, end your day.  There are just so many obstacles.  The bees near the top of Bridge Hollow.  The way your valve stems can fill with sealant and leak all day.  The pizza at aid 5.  So many of these lessons, I got to learn as a 20-something kid out in Colorado, where the consequence of my mistakes were just so...I'm not sure. But all of the errors that I survived then, I'm determined to guide my wife around them the easy way now.  But why?

You forget, narrator, that the metaphor barely applies now.  The timebomb never blew up.  It's taken some falls, sure, but it's wearing a $300 helmet.  The people you love in your life simply have to make their own mistakes now, learn their own lessons.  You can't shortcut the hardest, most important parts of the truth.

So I try to ride behind them, watch the world roll out before them.  I see their tracks sometimes in the dirt on trails I've already taken, some of them my line and some of them...not.

The trail splits and dowels's goes left, but magic moss goes right.  Make no mistake, you're straddling your bike at one of the best places on this planet, and sure, there's one direction you'd prefer over the other.

But they get to choose.

Up, up, up.