Keep it Simple, always
This has been a very simple warm weather season for me in my 53rd year. So today, I found comfort on my birthday in what many might consider to be a rather unusual way to spend it after work, a killer solo mountain bike ride on one of my favorite loops in the hood. Nate had kind of planned on going but he broke his one million dollar carbon Yeti mountain bike two days ago so he was out, and it was a last minute plan so nobody else was really on board, but I like riding solo, at my own pace, with no worries, on rippin singletrack, with a good beer in my jersey pocket. It's very simple....
And I've gone back to the roots of what it's supposed to be all about, and what it used to be all about, you and a bike, with nothing to prove. I've quit riding with my MP3 player for good as it just ruins the experience I ride for. I enjoy hearing my tires on the dirt and rolling over the leaves that have fallen the past couple of days. It's sweet to hear the critters scampering just off the edge of the trail instead of blasting Metallica into my head out there like a spoiled little brat in the back seat of the car who wants to be detached from the real world. And I like to think while I ride and not worry about catching or being caught. This was a great birthday ride today. Keep it simple, laugh at the old school reflector I see every time I climb up Tick Alley and know that someone on some old, crappy and tired bike broke that off a pedal earlier this year, and it still sits in the same place. Check out the tire treads in the dirt and try to guess who they belong to, and then you see a tread mark that is from a way old school tire from at least 10 years ago, was that a Velociraptor I saw out there? And then you run into a couple of riders who are way old school, with old school bikes that still roll the same shit you are riding, and they are psyched and having the time of their lives as we exchange "what an awesome night eh!" And then you get up to the shit you really like and there are very few new tire treads there, and you sit down, and you crack the great beer you saved from the 24 Hours in the Sage that some VERY cool people gave you which was saved for a special occassion as it's the last one I had from that race. And then, with that perfect one beer buzz, on your 53rd birthday, you let it rip all the way down to town on some of the most fun single track on earth. And it's just you and your bike, and it's rolling perfect tonight, with absolute perfect tire pressure and the fork dialed in, and you smile the entire way, because you know you just stole another day away, and you how damn alive you are on this day which is your birthday, and there is no one else there, and it is simple, and it can never be taken away.......bloody perfect I say.
The new fallen leaves always remind me of when I was a kid in New Jersey, and the leave sweepers would make huge piles of leaves out in the street that myself and the other hoodlums would dive into, of course until the first one of us hit a big pile of dog shit in there somewhere, instantly turning the fun into a gag fest. Somehow I always seemed to be the lucky one, happy birthday to me.
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