Singletracks

Did you know Jim is having a baby? Dan’s question popped up on Skype mid conversation, and there it was, we were finally getting old, or ‘grown up’ at least. The topic was a metaphorical Trans-Alps away from our typical talk of bike parts, fantasy rides and unprintable innuendo. The 16 year old dirt-bandits inside us were fighting it out with our 30-something bodies, and the old dogs were winning. And to answer Dan’s question, strangely enough I did know that Jim was expecting Jim Junior the first.

I say strangely as until a month ago, I’d barely spoken to Jim in around two years—just the odd SMS or e-mail. Dan was a similar story; we’d been in and out of contact for the past 10 years. Many years prior, all three of us worked together at the bike shop, along with Gary and Mick, and an ensemble of other like-minded riders who were at that ‘casual-labour’ stage in their lives. We rode, joked and worked together for a few years until our careers took us in different directions.

 

Initially it seemed odd, but a recent call out of the blue inviting me to ride with Jim and Gary made sense the longer the conversation lingered. They were planning a riding trip to New Zealand and needed some saddle time. Jim might have done a week worth of riding in the past three or four years. Gary hadn’t been wearing tyres out like the Summer Nats either. A fun ride guided by someone more up to date on trail conditions was a good idea. When the day came I couldn’t decide where we should ride. Thinking back, our old trails were either in disrepair or too technical to put Jim through on his first ride back. I came up with lots of other great trails, but they had recently become conspicuously illegal to ride. Eventually we settled on a drive to a new mountain bike park an hour up the freeway. The last time Jim had put tyre to dirt the idea of a mountain bike park was the stuff of fantasy, but increasingly new ‘officially sanctioned’ MTB trails are popping up. Jim and I both recalled how hard it had been for our club to find somewhere to race. Our old racing venue has closed, but as one door closes a new one opens. We saddled up and got to riding and talking while surfing beautiful singletrack.

 

Three riders and three very different bikes, gliding through the bush like old times. Jim’s bike was showing its age; despite it being no more than eight years old it might as well have been pre-historic. V-brakes, alloy frame, square-tapered bottom bracket axle and a whopping 65mm of fork travel. Gary and I both freaked when our eyes spotted the rangy 110mm welded alloy Control Tech stem. We both knew people that had suffered terrible injuries when their identical stems failed. When Jim bought this bike back in the day, it was the bomb.

 

The contrast was drastic. Gary was perched above the broad and flowingshaped carbon top tube of his incredibly light, disc brake equipped dual suspension bike. Comparing Gary and Jim’s bikes was like comparing a drawn stick figure to an air brushed FHM cover. My bike kind of split the difference; a hard tail but with big wheels and a frame of the latest in steel tubing, covered with hydraulic do-dads and carbon parts.

 

 

When the three of us started riding, 29ers were unheard of, a four-inch travel bike was the domain of whacko freeriders, and carbon parts were considered more dangerous than Jim’s lightweight welded alloy stem. Thing is, that wasn’t long ago. Neither were the times that both Jim and Gary lived in different parts of the city, had different partners, jobs and plans for the next years of their lives. Now I also mentioned Mick earlier, as he was part of our group. I certainly owe a lot to Mick when it comes to mountain biking. He taught me all manner of mechanical skills, was exceedingly patient with my beginner’s questions, and most of all he beat my butt on the bike every damn week, forcing me to become a better and tougher rider. We both started racing club events when Olympic format XC was all that was on offer. By lucky coincidence I bumped into Mick a few weeks ago at a big marathon race—the first time I’d seen him since he’d returned from many years travelling and riding in Europe.

 

When we’d been hooking up for our weekly rides as youngsters, the idea of a 100km race hadn’t yet emerged, and the only long race was ‘the’ 24-hour, as in the original Mont 24 Hour. Mick and I got prepped before this recent marathon race like old hands, filling bottles and applying chamois cream while fighting our early morning haze. I can’t think how many marathon races the two of us have done between us in the last few years, but it must be quite a few!

 

To that end there have been quite a few races on the calendar of late, yet supply struggles to keep up with demand. A few months ago the Highland Fling 100km race in NSW sold out 1,500 spots in just 6-hours, and the Dirt Works 100km Classic sold out 1,500 spots in one day. We could never have imagined that mountain biking could attract thousands of people to events every other weekend of the year, back when ‘the’ 24 hour was the one big event on the calendar.

 

Mick, Jim and Dan were three of my team mates in my first go at the Mont 24 Hour, way back in 2001. When Mick, Jim, Dan, Gary and I met we were all studying at uni. On graduation day the results were unexpected. A finance student that ended up a teacher, a teaching student that ended up in business, a musician who is now in the Navy, a law student that ended up a Lawyer (gasp), and a budding teacher that became a manager.

 

Likewise, mountain biking has switch backed from one clear path to follow other unforeseen directions. From trail poaching to trail advocacy, race hardtail to dual suspension, from alloy to carbon, 100 minutes to 100km. I could go on. Like our careers and lives, none of us saw it coming. As people evolve and change, so does our sport, and it doesn’t take more than a few coincidences or conversations to think back to where we used to be, and also to ponder what might lurk over the horizon. When replying to Dan’s original question about Jim’s family upsizing I couldn’t help but ponder our own horizons. ‘Are you next?’ I asked, to which Dan’s response was ‘not yet’. Yet… coy. And the wife and I? ‘Pretty soon’. Boys or girls, how many, when, where? Only time can answer those ones, but segueing back to bikes, I suggested to Dan that he, Jim and I team our future offspring together into the ‘Training Wheels Race Team’. The reply? ‘For sure!’