Back in the saddle ... and learning to like it

Ron Judd
Back in the saddle ... and learning to like it

At some point in our lives — alas, all too often after spending 40-some years exhausting every other available alternative — we come to a stunning realization:

Deep down, we really do know what's good for us.

Tricking your mind into getting your body to do it is pretty much the rest of the battle.

I thought about this one day last week when, pulling into the garage, I happened to see my mountain bike, Big Brownie, hanging there on the wall where she always is.

The bike, a hybrid "comfort bike" creature, sharing properties of both a mountain bike and a Barcalounger, is a funny-looking thing, with upright geometry, big tall handle bars and an old lady's seat, but a front shock fork and knobby tires.

"It looks sort of like a circus bike," my friend, Emjay, one of those serious cycle fiends with 2.5 bikes in the garage, said about it upon first examination. She quickly caught herself.

"But it looks totally to scale when you're on it."

Thanks. I think.

It got me to thinking about Big Brownie and the fact that she had spent a lot of last summer in the garage, which was sort of sad. I thought further back, remembering feeling the wind in my hair, seeing the countryside and breathing the fresh air — and feeling, the next day, as saddle sore as an overworked extra in a spaghetti Western.

"Do I really want to ride that thing?" I wondered aloud.

Right then, I knew: The answer — "not really" — could be turned on its head with a bit of reverse psychology. The best way to get myself back in the saddle, I reckoned, was to take away the opportunity to ride.

I took the bike off the wall, threw it in the truck, and hauled it down to my local bike shop, from whence it came.

"This thing needs a tuneup — or something," I told the kid at the front desk.

"What's wrong with it?" he wanted to know.

"Uh ... something that should take about a week to fix," I said.

Amazingly, he seemed to get this. So I left her there and went home. Sure enough, the next day, I drove into the garage and there it was — a big, open space where Brownie used to be.

"Man," I thought. "I sorta wish I had my bike. The weather's perfect, and ... "

It was already working.

By the end of the week, I didn't just want to go on a bike ride. I needed it the way a fish needs water, a cow needs grass, a teenager needs anytime minutes. I picked up Brownie on the seventh day and wasted no time — well, other than the helmet-location ordeal — heading out on a perfect Northwest summer evening.

Rolling out of Escrow Heights, I hit a local rail-trail and spun through a dark second-growth forest. The bike, freshly tuned — or something that cost 60 bucks — was purring along, and so was I. At least until the first major hill, when I realized just how not fun riding a bike uphill can be when you're woefully out of bike shape.

An hour later, this had not changed. I was rolling along OK, to be sure. But a fair amount of pain was working through my 40-something limbs, which were in the midst of a prolonged argument with my brain about whether they really had enough juice left to get back to the barn.

The nay side was beginning to win this battle when suddenly a deer popped up onto the trail. A yearling blacktail doe, she was a lovely specimen, with a full, fresh coat and those gobstopper eyes that you feel like you could drop into and swim laps across.

The doe saw me coming and surprisingly didn't bolt. I slowed down, heading right for her, and when I came right alongside her haunches, she started trotting down the trail.

I cranked a bit harder, pulling up alongside her again not three feet off her starboard side. The doe, realizing, much to her consternation, that we were going the same direction, ran faster. I pedaled harder. She ran faster. And so on for about 100 yards as we continued down the path, side by side like two sprinters stretching for the tape.

Nobody will believe this, I thought, puffing. It was beyond cool, and, of course, a fleeting thrill. As soon as the doe saw an opening in the thicket, she sprang for it, leaping off into the woods. I braked and looked back as she took a final look, then disappeared up the slope and out of my life.

Standing there alone in the woods, grinning, I patted the funny-looking bike on the back and knew right there the question had been answered, with the certainty only nature can provide.

I really do want to ride this thing.

Sometimes, how you got there is a lot less important than where you wind up.

Ron Judd's Trail Mix column appears here every Thursday. To contact him: 206-464-8280 or rjudd@seattletimes.com.

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