The Return of Stupid - Opinion

Well, crap.

I’d like to say that I had a more thoughtful response on hand for the occasion, but as it stood, I was flat on my back. Upside down. And wet. The wet part is crucial to this story because wet is how I got here in the first place. Here, in turn, being a patch of mud a country mile away from my bike.

Given the circumstances, crap would have to do.




You could argue, of course, that the wet I was feeling, this damp cold seeping up from the mud and through the back of my jersey, wasn’t to blame for my fall. There was, after all, the ugly root just above me on the trail. But the root wasn’t the culprit here. It has a full-time job: Anchor a tree to terra firma. Pimp-handing the occasional mountain biker to the ground? That’s just a hobby.

Moreover, during these past four months, that ugly knot of roots and I had been the best of friends. I called it Larry. Larry, in return, let me boost a little air off its back. We got on famously. Larry hadn’t rag-dolled me in months. Four months, to be exact. Right about the time, it stopped raining around here. One good fall rainstorm, however, and Larry and I are the best of enemies. Again. The root mutely giving me the finger and me flat on my back.

Goddamn you, Larry.


My bike is crouching sheepishly, somewhere in the bush. After a bit of hide and seek, I stagger back aboard and get on with it, but before I do I find myself wondering, when did I forget how to properly ride the wet? More importantly, how the hell can I possibly forget the most crucial of skills each and every year?

Crashing isn’t frustrating, per se. Crashing, again, and again, every time the rains return, year after year, as if I’ve never gone through this wet-weather metamorphosis…that’s what’s frustrating.

I’m more than familiar with mud, slimy roots, and evil-slick rocks. I’ve spent the past 18 winters in corners of the United States that get their fair share of vile weather—Buffalo, New York, Humboldt County, California, Bellingham, Washington—and every year I stumble along to the same stupid dance.


Every fall, I go through a two-week-long humbling in which every root in the forest—even the little buggers you can hardly see—seems to vie for the opportunity to send the bike beneath me in entirely new and painful directions.

But after a couple weeks of repeatedly dry-humping the forest floor, I begin to unconsciously correct for the wet. Three weeks into the rainy season, I’m back to some level of competence—subconsciously making the myriad minute-but-necessary adjustments that keep you upright no matter how much rain is coming down. The exact angle that you hit those roots, when to feather the brakes and when to keep that index finger the hell away from your brake levers, that perfect balancing fore and aft of your bodyweight…. In less than a month, it all comes back.


What stumps me is that this continually hard-earned knowledge of mine always seems to depart my skull each summer without my ever being aware of it. If winter riding skills are a matter of muscle memory, I’ve got all the memory capacity of a Commodore 64. Two weeks of July hero dirt and it’s as if the previous nine months of righteously-earned skills just went—poof!

Crashing is something I can live with. Crashing for a month straight because I’m a perennial idiot? As I wobble back down the trail, I’m finding it harder to live with that fact. But after 18 years of this cycle, I know that the next few weeks are going to be filled with more of the same.

Hello, mud, slick roots, and rocks. I’m sure we’ll meet again. Face first. At speed. Until then…

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MENTIONS: @vernonfelton

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