This weekend I spent some time riding near East Aurora NY. I could not have asked for a better ride.

Single track in its simplest definition is a single path through the woods, meadow, desert, you get my drift. Now, I’m not talking about paths that you can get a jeep or a 4-wheeler on. I’m talking about goat paths that you might think twice before you run down them. Stream crossings, logs and right now in Western New York the vegetation is at peak growth, with a riot of colorful flowers blooming in the meadows and everywhere small bushes and brambles are growing out of control.

I’m riding through, the trail is twisty and the blackberry bushes in this clearing are ripping my sweaty fingers apart on my handlebars with little semi-painless scratches. I can’t really see the trail as it twists and turns due to the undergrowth. The morning sun, getting hot now, is shining directly in my eyes in a stroboscopic barrage as bolts of sunbeams come piercing through the forest canopy. Speed and momentum are my friends. I twist my body left suddenly to compensate, I pop my front wheel over tree roots, over and over.

My mind does not have time to think about work, or my bills, or the boss, or the chores, or technology. They are obliterated from my mind by the sheer will to survive and pedal, pedal, pedal.

The things that I accomplish on my Mountain Bike seem so much more monumental to me than a lot of things I have accomplished professionally. When I’m on my bike I am alive in the most urgent, primitive sense. When I’m in this state I can’t really call what is happening in my mind thinking. The trail is happening too fast to think. I can only ride the experience. I wish I could be that way every day about everything. Perhaps that’s why I keep doing this to myself.

I think what I liked the most about my recent ride is during one moment, heading down hill, I whipped around a slight bend in the trail and suddenly saw a one-foot drop coming up and hit the brakes and dropped it slow and steady. For one brief moment I felt the entire weight of the bike with me on it just settle on the front shock and I felt it compress and roll out, and it was so sweet I get misty just writing about it.

So much fun. Now I’m happy, slightly sore, hungry and not worried about calories and I love everyone. My heart is empty. My heart is full.

Find yourself on a Mountain Bike.

Seventy-Eight

Under heaven nothing is more soft and yielding than water.
Yet for attacking the solid and strong, nothing is better;
It has no equal.
The weak can overcome the strong;
The supple can overcome the stiff.
Under heaven everyone knows this,
Yet no one puts it into practice.
Therefore, the sage says:
He who takes upon himself the humiliation of the people, is fit to rule them.
He who takes upon himself the country’s disasters deserves to be king of the universe.”
The truth often sounds paradoxical.

Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu
Translation by Ray Burgess