The epiphany of a derailed ride

An allegory on the eve of Halloween.

Happy Halloween, you cycopaths. I hope you all were able to get a ride in, between the trick-or-treating and jack-o’-lantern carving and candy munching.

I was able to get a ride in, though it was cut short because of a bizarre mechanical issue. Have time for a short story? Ah, sure. You’re here anyway.

In my evil-genius attempt at hooking my friend onto the infinitely lovely pastime of mountain biking, I lent him my best MTB a couple days ago when our schedules happened to line up for a shared ride. He and I typically ride the road, but on this particular day we felt woodsy.

You may have seen it pictured in Friday’s Weekly Cyco Gallery. It’s the full-squish 2019 Specialized Stumpjumper Comp Carbon beast of a machine that is oh, so smooth. It laughs in the face of danger. Is that a boulder roll coming up? Yep — let’s jump it. A hairpin turn on a 16% incline? Ha! And that jagged rock garden? Butter.

I wanted to him to swoon. To say, “oh, wow. Yeah, I need one of these.”

And so I lent him my steed, while I rode my hardtail — which is of a less polished vintage. The narrow handlebars make it seem unsteady. The crank arms are scuffed. The wheels are not so true and the disk brakes are not hydraulic. The tires are not as knobby and the grips are not as grippy. And the suspension fork’s rebound is in need of some serious attention.

I couldn’t possibly let him ride the old Fuji.

So off we went, pedaling through the leafy single track on a beautifully aromatic fall day. We both had time, and so we meandered our way through the woods like two wild mustangs running freely through horizonless prairies.

And then the ride stopped.

I looked back and my friend was looking downward, puzzled. He reaches down, fiddles for a moment and looks up, eyes scanning.

I come over to see what’s happened and discover that the Stumpjumper’s rear derailleur is fixed in an unnatural, horizontal fashion. The bottom jockey wheel had somehow lodged itself behind a spoke.

I managed to get the jockey wheel out of the spoke, but the derailleur was bent. Without hesitation, I attempted to bend it back into place. As I did this, the force was too much and the small arm-like piece snapped. Just like that.

We looked at each other in disbelief. There were no tools in my pack that could fix this. The ride was over. No more mustanging through the woods on our knobby tires. We hiked the bikes back to the car, loaded up and went for an extended hike instead.

Thinking back, the whole thing is poetic, really.

I assumed that because the Stumpjumper is an expensive, sophisticated bike, surely my friend could not properly enjoy his time MTBing on anything less than that.

And then, as a parent reprimands his child, I got slapped with a stinging reminder:

Bikes reap the same amount of joy. No matter the size, shape and color. No matter the price tag. No amount of scuffs to the crank arms or scrapes to the frame can demean time in the saddle.

Oh, also: bikes are meant to be ridden. And when you ride bikes, sometimes they break.

I reassured my apologetic friend that everything is OK. Things break. It’s all good. The piece that broke is an easy replacement. The LBS ordered it that day and the part, miraculously, is due to the shop tomorrow.

And so, fellow cycopaths — let this be a reminder.

A bike that is rideable should be ridden, without hesitation or discrimination.