Last week I rode a bike for the first time in almost a decade. Pathetic. I know.
And as embarrassing as it is to admit, I never learned to ride a bike until I was halfway through kindergarten. While all the neighbourhood kids were peddling around on two wheels, I was the 'chicken' who clung to four.
This should speak volumes about my lack of courage, which still lacks at times even in my mid 20s.
I'm sure this is surprising to anyone who reads my columns often, as I write a lot about the next 'extreme' sport I'm trying to learn.
Remember trying is the key word here. I never said I was any good. My whole lack of courage, which followed me from my childhood, still haunts me from time to time when I try something new. Keep in mind, the things I do try aren't for the true chickens of the world.
Take last week for example. The first time I rode a bike in almost I decade, I rode down a mountain.
A real mountain too. Not one of those small hills in the flatlands us Prairie folk call mountains. No this was as real as a mountain gets.
My significant other and I decided downhill mountain biking would be an adventurous way to spend a week-long summer vacation. Interestingly enough, I was so excited about the trip I seemed to forget the fact it had been years since I rode a bike.
In fact, it never crossed my mind until we were in the store in Whitefish, Montana, where we decided to buy bikes instead of renting, and the salesman asked if I wanted to take the bike for a rip around the parking lot.
When I walked it outside and went to hop on I felt a moment of uncertainty as I realized I had not rode one of these things in years. But the moment of uncertainty was immediately followed by one of those moments where your brain and muscles take over to perform a remedial take. You never forget how to ride a bike.
The next day we loaded our bikes onto the chair lift and road up the mountain. When we reached the top, we hopped on our bikes and started on the eight-mile journey down.
Now let me be the first to say, downhill mountain biking is not for the faint of heart. It's quite intense actually. And though I stayed away from the 'black diamond' runs, I still found my way onto narrow trails with dips and climbs over rocks and through trees.
There were times when we were riding on the side of the mountain on this narrow gravel path where if we would have slipped out we easily could have slid halfway down the mountain. I mean, if I looked down (which I couldn't unless I stopped otherwise I would have slid out because I was going fast) these were the double black diamond runs in the winter I stay clear of unless it's a powder day.
Despite my usual lack of courage, I managed quite well on the mountain, cruising along at a pretty good speed by the second day of riding. I did have one good wipe out though; thankfully it happened in the trees instead of on the mountainside. It could have been a disaster.
Besides the highlight of riding a bike for the first time in years, the vacation was definitely one for the books. We went on the "Tree-Top Walk," where we walked along platforms - some as high as 70 feet in the trees - and we went on a zip line tour. One of the zip lines was 1,900 feet long and 300 feet in the air and oddly enough, I never once felt scared. But how could I when one of the women on our tour could have been my grandma. What a brave woman!
I overheard a conversation between this woman (who found herself stuck in the middle of one of the zip lines after failing to gain enough speed) and another older woman on the tour. The woman said being stuck never bothered her because she did all sorts of "extreme" things in her younger days. The other woman's response was, "If that were me, I wouldn't need any fibre for a week!" It made me laugh.
So it got me thinking, if this woman did all sorts of "extreme" things in her younger days and didn't find zip lining intimidating in her later years, I can only imagine where I'll be when I'm her age. I may still be a little chicken, but I foresee a parachute and an airplane in my golden years.
