Life By a Thousand Cuts

We've all lost a lot of blood to this love affair. Skin too. And nerve. We've dislocated thumbs and shoulders, even hips. Cracked clavicles, smashed teeth, concussed brains, and bruised everything at least twice, usually more. There has been much pain.

It seems we've all suffered greatly also, pursuing this romance. The never-ending climb. The bonk way out in the bush. The loss associated with breaking, losing or having something we cherish dearly stolen from the back porch. Cracking the fat off of a lazy winter, getting whipped by our "friends", sucking terribly on a section we usually rail.

And while they're both quite different, pain and suffering, it's odd that mountain biking embraces both. In fact, necessitates both. Sure, suffering might have an end in sight, an exchange of sorts: the climb delivers the descent, the training makes you strong, the stolen bike gets replaced with one all shiny and new.

Pain, while quite extreme, is usually short lived. The shin bang is the worst f*cking thing ever and then all of a sudden it's completely gone. Even the worst injury: the blown knee, the ruptured spleen, the mawed jaw, the split ass, the shattered wrist, all eventually subside with the advent of time.

Now think of other outdoor sports like kayaking, climbing or skiing. Very few deliver both pain and suffering with such regular frequency as mountain biking. Kayaking, unless you're a wild and crazy waterfall dropper, includes very little of either. It's scary as shit, sure, but you're just going down while pleasantly immersed in the giant bubble wrap known as whitewater.

Climbing is hard, sure. Fingers get cut, arms get pumped, but for the most part, it's just good old fun. It gets too hard and you just come down (really, you have no choice). Climbing only really engages pain and suffering for those who have to endure their friends dying because, unlike mountain biking, climbing doesn't suffer mistakes.

Skiing neither approaches pain or suffering in any real frequent, colloquial way. Unless you're a psycho mega charger taking huge risks, (or have rag dolled down a groomer) it's pretty hard to bruise yourself, let alone draw blood. Even ski touring is a leisurely, slow paced endeavor that rarely hurts in any significant way. Just walking, really.


But mountain biking? Well, consider one afternoon ride. The climb's a doozy. It hurts, and it's long, and even if you can't make it pedaling, you have to push and lug and drag your bike to the trailhead. Big climbs, especially if you ride it all (which is the code), with super fit friends, are sufferfests.

You drop in. A rock kicks up and hits you in the shin. A branch pokes you in the eye. Thorny bushes scrape your arms to tattered shreds. You miss a corner and go ass over tea kettle, cartwheeling through rock and root. Bruises, blood and broken bones. Slip a pedal off of a jump and blow your ankle. Case a huge jump and squash your testicle. Scorpion off a stunt and tear ligaments in your ass, or worse.

Investigate the body of any mountain biker and you'll see the scars. Shins look like a patchwork of rose-hued skid marks. Elbows and forearms look like they've had third degree burns. Hips look like they've been ground with a high-grit belt sander. And that's just the pain.

We've all collapsed from exhaustion on more than one occasion. We've seen our friends drool in delirium. We've dragged ourselves off the trail with only our arms thanks to legs that have gone rigor mortis due to cramping. How many times have we cursed in our minds that we will never ride with this a*shole ever again? That this sport is stupid because the hurt never, ever ends.

It makes you wonder if we like it. The pain and suffering that is. If we all have some sort of masochistic, self-defeating disorder that actually revels in the idea and the reality of subjecting ourselves to endless, constant self-dismantling. After all, this is no soft venue we play in. Sure, it's not necessarily life threatening at every turn. There are no deep water holes that aim to suck us in and never let us go. There is no 1,000-meter cliff dangling between our legs. No giant, bus-burying avalanche lurking under every turn. But for each life-threatening possibility inherent to other outdoor sports, for the mountain biker there's a million smaller, peskier, ever-present disturbances to fill that void.

So what does that say about us? That we're pussies who would rather die of a thousand cuts than by of one brisk fell of the sword? Or do we like the interaction? The rough brush of nature as she wrestles us into her wood and rock and gravel-laden bosom? Rather than position ourselves on the void, maybe we'd rather fall back into the cover of the thicket, hidden from "the edge", however much that retreat chastises us with scars and disfigurements and long bouts of mental turmoil and physical distress.

Skiers don't bleed. Climbers don't break. And kayakers don't cry. Mountain bikers do all three on a regular basis. Which might make us weird. Odd anyway. But unlike many sports we get to do more than most. We get to go up, we get to go across, and we get to go down. We also get to do it everyday, in a million different ways: from pump tracks to stage races, World Cup downhill tracks to sick gnar singletrack.

Throughout history there are a great many stories of sacrifice in the context of reward. Cultures who whip and pierce and beat themselves for the glory of God. Drag themselves across mountain ranges for 72 afterlife virgins. Starve themselves for the delivery of righteousness. Maybe we're just that. Pilgrims of a higher order. On a path that requires we sacrifice our flesh and well-being for the arrival of that great gift we all can't seem to live without.

The ride.

By Mitchell Scott

Top photo by Richard Mortimore