My other bike is...well, a bike
Going riding these days is a little difficult. I still ride about once a week, but the sessions are always abbreviated: an hour of riding after work, 45 minutes of moto before I have to pick up my kids, 32 minutes of shredding before I take out the garbage and fold some laundry. It's a little trying, but I love to ride, so I've filed this dilemma under the what-are-you-gonna-do category and moved on.
Or, at least, I would move on, save for this: I can't sit around every day and live the full-on domestic life. Years of riding a few times per week have conditioned me to want to do something every day. But because I am a man of narrow interests, I only have so many options.
I won't play golf because it seems roughly as exciting as folding laundry anyhow. I won't go road-biking because I live in constant fear of some 16-year-old girl cleaning me out as she reaches for a Rhianna CD on her passenger seat. I won't go skateboarding, which I used to love, because none of my friends skate anymore and I feel a little like a weird old codger when I roll by the skatepark on my own. What's with the kids these days and their super-tight stretch jeans?
Anyhow, I was prepared to go digging for my old hackey-sack when my buddy Nick re-introduced me to something I used to use as a training tool for moto: the mountain bike. I was skeptical when he first suggested we go ride bicycles. But, in the name of being a good friend, I dug out my hardtail and threw it in the truck.
Everything was a bit like I remembered it (read: slightly dull) until we switched bikes on a descent. He took my 15-year-old Schwinn and I took his late-model, full-suspension Jamis. As I floated over the bumps, something occurred to me: this was reminding me of something...something I know from elsewhere.
Ah yes: riding a dirt bike.
Pretty soon after the ride, I dove into finding out more about full-suspension bikes, and before long I was combing Craig's List for something to ride, where I eventually found a Specialized Big Hit. After some pleading with Trisha, I bought it, starting messing around with it, and now I'm riding a few days a week, sans gasoline.
While I've come to like using the bike as a proxy for motocross, it is an imperfect proxy. My 450 puts out more than 50 ponies, while my Specialized only puts out what my stringy legs are willing to give it (always much less than one pony.) And while some of my motocross tactics have transferred to bicycling, many of them also seem to betray me. End result is, I am much more confident on a motcross bike than I am on a bicycle.
Still, my Specialized is easy to load, can be ridden anywhere and costs almost nothing on a per-ride basis. So stealing a ride on it is much easier than it is to drag out my 450. And because I am not perfectly at ease with riding a bicycle, I have more stuff to learn on it. I still would like to learn some new stuff on my 450 before I die too, of course, but a big part of my moto game is just maintenance now. The bicycle actually gives me stuff to learn that is 100 percent brand-new, which is sort of nice.
But the best part is that I may not be totally out-of-breath the next time I attempt a ten-minute moto on my 450 (owing to all those climbs on the bicycle.) The arm-pump will probably be there, but my lungs will be A-OK.
Do you have a proxy for moto when you can't get out? If so, let me know about it. I might need to try it in case the Specialized breaks a chain or something.
