Early morning is a great time to ride your mountain bike. Animal movement and feeding activity tends pick up during the twilit hours of dusk and dawn, before the sun illuminates everything clearly, and just as it drops over the western horizon.

A long time ago I developed the deplorable habit of getting up early, before the sun rises. It’s kept me focused because I fall asleep just when everyone else is starting to socialize and unwind. This morning, I’m up at 4:40am and out on the road by 6. I’m headed out of town with my mountain bike in the back of my vehicle.

I trained for this. I’m ready for this, but I need calories. Tim Hortons supplies the necessary fuel. I eat at the formica booth quickly shoveling down the white and yellow hockey puck shaped egg thing, and enjoying the lukewarm microwaved bacon.

As I head south out of town my path diverts into smaller and smaller roads, starting out 9 lanes, then 4 lanes, then two. As my vehicle winds through the peaceful back road, my mind goes backwards to other epic rides that I have survived. My lifetime mountain bike journey seems connected to past rides and events, as if this life has become one long series of bicycle rides spanning decades of time.

I never think about the outcome. I never think about riding tough technical terrain in terms of success or fail. My goal is a pure experience free of contrivance. I may sound existential but from an energy working standpoint, focusing physical energy into a positive activity like riding a mountain bike produces measurable positive effects both in the rider and those they are connected to.

My legs spin. My heart beats. The cycle continues as I glide into the forest under a canopy of green leaves shielding me from any direct dawn light. The air is still as I struggle uphill over the rooted path climbing until breathlessly I reach the top of the steep rise. Rolling on later down the trail I dab once when a tree almost knocks me off some duckboards threading through a now dry swamp.

After the long forest traverse I cut back onto the road to ride back to my car. As I slowly climb a long hill in my easy gear, for a few minutes, I’m totally alone here. No cars or planes flying overhead. Only the sounds of birds. Only the sound of my mountain bike tires on the broken asphalt shoulder. The air smells like green alfalfa in the hot sun and I hear insects buzzing all around as the morning sunlight gradually bakes the moisture from the back of my shirt.

When I look back on the entire experience, I fixate at the moment on the duckboards when I took my foot off the pedal. At the time I felt surprised, like “what is going on my foot is touching the duckboards instead of pedaling, what just happened?”

There is no pinnacle of enlightenment. There are levels, the highest of which only a few can deeply understand. Even after performing something for 40 years it is never going to be perfect every time. I think what defines the perfection of this pursuit is the ratio of dabs to flows, and not technique or the equipment that I am on.

Consistency of focus.

This existence is like a school. I can only add that I would not have learned so much in my life if it was not for riding my bicycle and pondering the nature of my life-cycle.

Ride for your life!

Seventy-One

Knowing ignorance is strength.
Ignoring knowledge is sickness.

If one is sick of sickness, then one is not sick.
The sage is not sick because he is sick of sickness.
Therefore he is not sick.

Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu
Translation by Ray Burgess