Redemption

(Originally posted as a Note on facebook. Pictures may be added later)

I don't know if you really know what this means to me. I am not really certain that I know what it means to me yet. But four years and 13 days ago I wrote a note called "The Whole Story" in which I detailed the aftermath of what happened the last time that I rode a mountain bike on single track. I say the aftermath because, among other things I woke up in the hospital with, I woke up in the hospital with amnesia and to this day do not remember anything about the accident. I just know that a few days later I looked like this.



The only think I remember about that night was mounting new tires. Knobby ones to replace the file tread that was slipping in the sand. Who knows? If someone had told me that maximum pressure was not the best tire pressure for single track, then I might not have changed them. I might not have crashed that night. I might not be where I am today. Regardless I tried out my Specialized Hardrockers that night. I tried them out, but don't remember if they were worth the investment.

After that accident, my second serious MTB accident, my wife at the time put a prohibition on me riding a bike...well...ever again. We didn't realize it until almost 2 years after the accident, but we broke our marriage on May 22, 2007 as well. Our marriage took longer to completely break that it did for my body to heal, but when it finally did, so did the prohibition against riding bikes.

I took the knobby tires I had no memory of riding of the bike I had not ridden (Michael put some miles on it in LaCrosse), put on the file-treds I had removed on May 22, 2007, and started riding again. It was about that time that I started a new relationship. A relationship with my local bike store. The GT needed a new chain and rear cassette, a new wheel set because I snapped two irreplaceable spokes, new tires because those file treads were paper thin and I was replacing inner tubes twice a week, and finally after all that investment and upgrading and finally running out of components to break...This happened.


The bike that tried to kill me twice finally died. A fatality. I went to the local GT dealer trying to get it repaired or replaced. No dice. The fact that I bought it off Ebay invalidated the warranty. So I went back into friendly neighborhood bike store and showed them my problem. They had a solution. This.
The Falcon
So I got it. I rode it a lot last summer. In the fall I did this.
© William Draper
Then in March I did that.
Barry-Roubaix 2011
Then in April I did this.
The QuBe arrives.
And here it sat for the last few months. Waiting for an opportunity, trying to find a place to get dirty.


The last two weekends I have "tried" to find rides to "local" races. My efforts included posting a single facebook status update hoping for a ride, and messaging teammates looking for someone else to accompany me on an ill-concieved last minute plan. I have waited to the last minute in part because of other complexities in my life. There have been a series of plans that have been continuously delayed. But at the same time, I have been held back by fear.

I have been afraid to leave my house alone to go and do something I used to love doing alone or with someone. I have been afraid of trying this new-old thing without someone there to keep me company and to keep me sane. Between the accidents and the marriage crashing there has been so much baggage attached to this activity that I have been afraid to try to do it without someone there to lean on and keep me strong. But this weekend was different. This weekend I decided when my Plan A fell through that I would "fake it" until I made it. Friday night at almost midnight I made a reservation to pick up a car at 10AM on Saturday. Saturday I woke up early, and packed almost everything I needed in two bags, my new 14 gallon capacity Mission Workshop backpack and the bag I won for finishing second at the Chicago Bicycle Film Festival gold sprints. I strapped my two almost new hardrocker tires onto the backpack, threw it on, and I rode to the Enterprise on Shefield. Gabe upgraded me to an SUV (it was all they had), I threw my bike and bag in, and drove southwest to outside of Peoria.

I made it to Jubilee College State Park, I toured the whole park, drove up and down every road looking for mountain bikers or mountain bike trails. I found none. I started to wonder if it was the wrong weekend, the wrong place, or maybe I was just the wrong person. I crashed emotionally. I panicked. I fell into the deepest darkness. It has been a hard week at work, and I had all that I could bear. I was hoping to find some sign, literal or figurative that others were gathering to mountain bike the next day. I couldn't find anything or anyone and left the park wondering wether or not I should just turn around and head home. Thankfully I have a partner who was there to help pick me up. I texted her, and she called me. She looked up the pamba.org the website (I also didn't have phone signal), and found the place where I needed to be. She picked me up, dusted me off, and sent me on my way with a text-message-kiss (:-*). I went back to the picnic area and found the sign marking the trail head. I had looked at the sign from a distance, but did not read it. I unloaded my bike, put on my team Johnny Sprockets kit and dove into the woods.

It's a silly little thing, but I also drew strength from knowing the words "Try Not to Suck" were pressed into the back of my neck as I clipped in. I had found a group of really cool, like-minded people who had welcomed me into their small circle with open arms. I had a place to take my bike if it broke, and people to talk with about how it got broke. They taught me to build and fix my own bike, and knowing that I was represented something larger than myself, that I had their implicit and explicit support also gave me strength.

So two paths diverged in the woods, and once again I took the road less traveled by. The path to the left was double-wide and marked with hoof prints. I took the path to the right. Narrow, twisting, overgrown, with a single dirt line wrapping that wrote it's sweet poetry around trees and over the undulating landscape. I dropped onto that line, and read that poem.

There in the woods west of Peoria, i found myself again. Zooming through the trees, with green lush vegetation slapping and scratching at my skin, I felt alive in that way that only a select set of activities make us feel alive. I don't know why I am wired to enjoy XC mountain biking so much, but I am. I rode the outer perimeter and found no signs of a race happening that night. I went up and down the steepest and scariest descents in the park. I found the trails that were closed and the trail that should have been closed (oh, hello fallen tree!). I had ridden all the trail loops I could looking for signs of a race, and as I dropped onto the last stretch of trail, about 45 minutes after I started, I came upon my first piece of red-tape and a sign with an arrow. This way it point. So I followed it, and eventually caught up with the two men who were there to mark tomorrow's course. Finally I felt like I was in the right place at the right time. I asked them a few logistical questions, and found my swagger again. I followed the loop, back out to the parking lot.

I found the starting line, and another guy was there unloading his bike. His name was Mike and we chatted for quite a while. He showed me where the start line was, and I followed him across the bulk of the loop. By that time we got back to where I ran into the two men flagging the course, I had already exceeded my hour time limit for riding. So I stopped and I let him go do a loop by himself. I cut across the tape to where the loop came out, and stood waiting for him for about 20 minutes. I stood in the quiet woods, and listened. I was not riding hard, just standing and reconnecting with the green and the quiet life of the forest. Feeding on the solitude, and feeding the mosquitos. When I realized the bug-spray had worn off I decided to wait for him by the cars. This was the Qube after that ride.



This was the first "real" single track mountain biking I had done in more than four years. I cleaned up the bike with the brush I bought at the Ace in Peoria on the way through town, and set it on the tarp I had bought to protect the rental car. I felt like a genius for thinking enough to stop at the hardware store and get a tarp and a brush before the race. The only problem with the QuBe after it's first real test was a flat tire, and the shifting was a little off. I went into Peoria and found a Dick's Sporting goods and bought some tubes, and made a game plan that if it rained that night I would change from file tread to Hard Rockers.

The next morning I was up at 7AM, I ate breakfast at the hotel, packed my bags, and was on my way to the car. It has rained, so I knew I had to change both tires, not just fix the flat. I went back to the State Park and was one of the first to arrive. I went about my race prep. Putting on the tires and new tube on the front. Yes, those tires. The tires that I put on the night of May 22nd. The tires with only one doomed ride on them. How is that for tempting fate? I mounted the tires and tuned my rear-derailuer (Phil and Justin would be so proud!).
Before: New tires and race number
I then put on "my" new team kit, and started rolling around in the grass with a camera in my hand.
Before: New kit
As I was warming up I started to see the competition for my race arriving and starting to prep their bikes. Like any good cyclist I started to judge them all...by the quality of their bikes. There were some nice bikes, I started to worry. 29ers and 29 in Specialized in different models. But when I saw a few of the novice riders warming up with a pre-race cigarette, I started to laugh...at myself. "A rabbit? I nearly wet myself." I reminded myself that I was at a local MTB race in Peoria. I had ridden almost 140 miles that week, and yesterday's hour and 15 minutes in the woods did not even leave me sore. I was probably going to be okay. Heck, I might even win! Win! I could do that! Win! Win! Win! Opps. That's not a good mind-set either I thought.

So I took a deep breath, and stepped away from that line of thought. I got back to what I needed to do. Maintain good speed into the uphills, downshift early, downshift often. Riding my own race, and don't blow up riding someone else's. I was doing such a good job of getting in the right state of mind and not psyching myself out that I made a beginner's mistake. I was not paying close enough attention to the starting line. They made an announcement that there was 8 minutes to the start and it was already too late. The starting line was packed and I was relegated to the back of the heap. It was me and a 10 year old boy side-by-side at the back of the pack. The countdown was quick and an airhorn signaled the start of the race.

I rode hard. I made up some ground on the leaders, took a gamble and tried to pass some people by dropping off the road into the grass on the outside edge of the turn. The gamble paid off as I was able to maintain acceleration in the grass and pass some people. By the time we hit the narrowing and the sharp left hand curve onto the course I was in 5th place. This is where I knew that I was going to be in a good position at the end of the race. During the first 400 yards, on a pretty easy section of course, I had to ride the brakes to keep from running up the back of the guy in front of me. The first quarter mile was narrow, so there were few passing opportunities, and I was okay with sitting where I was to catch my breath after the start. When the course widened out at the finish line I jumped forward into 4th place. I grabbed the wheel of number four and followed him all the way down the big drop (the one thing I had trouble with the night before) and again recovered my breath.

I knew the course flattened out and widened out at the bottom along the stream, and there would be plenty of room to pass on the bottom. So I waited patiently storing up energy. When I hit the bottom, I shifted into a lower gear and started to spin faster and build up speed to pass two people to move into second place. The leader of the race had opened up a small gap on second place when I moved into that position, but we were coming to the first really "big" (relatively speaking) climb. The big climb was double track, and I pushed myself into the pain cave to get past him before the top. I knew from watching his initial descent that if I could get into the lead going into the long single track loop, I would be able to pull away from him on the downhill. I dug myself a pretty deep hole, on that first hill, but recovered nicely on the downhill and was able to continue pushing forward. It wasn't until the big hill on the second lap that I started to break down.

I really pushed myself into the red making the second climb, trying to open the gap further, and even on the descents I could not get my heart rate down out of the 160s-170s. Climbing back out of the valley I started to break down mentally and was wondering where the hell was the top, just wanting the race to be over, and not knowing if I could finish. I could not catch my breath. It got so bad that on one particularly steep part of the ascent I did the unthinkable, and dismounted. I had to push my bike during a race. The choice was that indignity or vomit. I was that deep into the pain cave. As soon as I got around the next switchback the course leveled out, and I hoped back into the saddle and continued limping back up toward the finish. When I hit the double track at the top I started to recover mentally because I regained my sense of how much more I had left to go. I also knew that my nearest competitor was also far behind. I could no longer hear his disk brake squeaking. Tt was like the day before when I was all alone in the woods. Just me and the QuBe.

When I came through the opening into the finish the small gathered crowd of wives and children and sport/expert racers cheered courteously. I pumped one hand into the air as I went under the inflatable blue arch marked "FINISH". I wanted to go freaking ballistic. Not only had I finally entered a MTB race more than 4 years after I first had the idea, but I won said race. I wanted to scream and yell and jump with joy. I wanted to celebrate like I had just won something more important than a local novice mountain bike race. I wanted to celebrate like I had just won back a part of myself. But nobody there would have really understood that. So I refrained from an outward display of emotion. But now maybe...just maybe you do?

This was my bike post race.

These were my legs post race.


Who's the chief-sandbagger now bitches?

This guy.