Something squeezed my heart like a lemon
Jumps, trails, a bike party, dark energy and a Sex Pistols sing-a-long
Day 6 of my drive east to deliver custom bikes and riding stoke. New riding spot #5.
Lake Fairfax Park, Reston, VA
What a great spot. Nicely built pump/jump lines and gorgeous, flowing woods riding.
If you’re a normal person who likes to ride your bike on trails, get a workout, maybe catch some air, but it’s just a hobby, this might sound like a lot. But you see I’m on a mission to rid myself of all fear, to reunite with a state of pure love and joy — oneness with God, a return to Source, insert what works for you — then show a path for those who want to follow. Along the way I teach people how to corner, jump and enjoy mountain biking.
At this point in my riding life, I dearly appreciate that I’m strong and healthy (enough) to ride these trails free of pain and fear. I walked up the rock gardens, soft pedaled the traverses and flowed the descents with ease. I felt wide and free. Big and easy.
What a gorgeous place to ride a bike.
On one descent I caught some riders. At the first glimpse of dust and calves, something squeezed my heart, and BLAM! I needed to overtake. That competitive need felt like squeezing a lemon. Closed and bitter. The opposite of open and sweet. No Lee. No. Let it go.
Open. Soft. Expand. Open soft expanse. Feel the slow flowing stream, the rustling leaves, the kids playing soccer on nearby fields. As a rider I did everything wrong. I sat on downhills, let my bike run into things, let my healthier left leg handle most of the work. I noticed how damn perfect the bike is, how it lets me be so imperfectly perfect. Wow I love riding like this.
After a timeless experience that took exactly one hour and 57 minutes I grabbed snacks at the truck and sat under a tree. More and more I find myself sitting quietly, nothing to do but be. Surrounded by and intertwined with the energies around me, closer and closer to oneness. I enjoy being alone, but I’m not alone. I feel more like one in the all, all in the one.
I’d run into a fan on the trail. I love meeting people I’ve helped with my work. He told his son, You know that book we have on mountain biking? This guy wrote it! He told me he uses my lessons with his son. I followed that shredder and yeah it’s working. Bro rode my Mistress and was blown away. Once you feel that easy balance … I put you in a sale pending column. He and others invited me to the Bike Lane’s 25 year anniversary party — a huge accomplishment for an independent bike shop — so I, with nothing to do but be, went.
Arrive to a sea of bike people, a cover band, $25 endless beers and some food trucks. OMG I’m hungry. I get a low alcohol something and start sipping while I wait in a very long sandwich line. I was mildly buzzed, one of many waves in a sea of bike people, perfect content where I was, when I felt a painful, familiar tinge behind me and to my right.
Ouch. I turn my head and a woman walks up. Her energy is sludgy and black, tinged with toxic green. I feel it pulling at my light blue — it hurts! — and I close the channel. I was married to this energy: my partner in self abuse and ultimately My Great Teacher. I say a friendly hello and she ignores me. I’m not cool enough, I have nothing to offer, and, energetically speaking, if I’m not a source I’m a threat.
Some bro walks up and tells her, “Hey you need to meet so and so.”
“Why do I need to meet them?” she asks.
“We’re cool and important,” they say.
FLASH! She turns on the lights and starts impressing them. This and that and him and her, with the same exact dance moves as my great teacher.
“What kind of bike do you ride?” they ask.
“Oh, just a Cervelo S5,” she humble brags, and they are duly impressed.
Wow, I thought, this woman is playing the same exact game, with the same exact energy, as my great teacher. Including moving forward to talk with these people then cutting in front of me in line — and taking the last chicken sandwich!!! OMG I’m so hungry!!!
I decide to let it go. It’s not worth any trouble. And yet my stomach tightens and anger wells up. That old trigger has been flipped and it feels just like before. Gawd what a horrible feeling. Clearly I’ve created distance but have not fully healed.
If you pay attention life presents us with these moments. Pure joyful expansion framed by dirty sad contraction, easy flow and hard stuckness. While I’m here as a person my work requires me to clean out my limiting beliefs, my pain, my fear.
To ignore my trigger is to give it power. No more. So I sit there on the curb nursing a beer. I let the sadness fill me. Deep and dark and wide. I let a tear flow while white folk sing along with a Sex Pistols cover. Yeah buddy, that hurts. I’m sorry, Former Me, but we’re here now and all is good. The feeling fades and another thread of the corset evaporates.
Slightly more open, big and free, I join the sing-along.
“We're so pretty, oh so pretty... and we don't care.”
Have fun out there,
Lee
Ride a bike that makes riding easy
Mistress and Dialed bikes are
Inherently safe to ride.
Comfortable.
Confidence inspiring.
Rip a downhill PR, win an enduro, or let it all go and have a great time.
This is rugged “stuff in the basement” (as Rocky Balboa put it), Lee. I look forward to the upcoming Joyride book that talks about a metaphysical journey, as well as a physical one!