[editor’snote]
Praise the Novice Occasionally I like to venture onto the lesser-known trails in the rolling brown hills east of Gunnison, Colo. The routes are predominantly narrow, aimlessly meandering cow paths; not what you would call purpose-built trails but great riding in expansive country dappled with sage and aspen groves that fade into the distant Fossil Ridge Wilderness. Some would call it the middle of BFE*. On one of these recent ventures, while delicately descending an overgrown drainage—trying to minimize the damage to my shins caused by the grabbing sage limbs—I rounded a corner and there it was, perched indiscriminately in the middle of the trail: a small red reflector. It was the kind of reflector fixed to the spokes of new bikes, usually removed by the buyer and discarded with revulsion at the litigious bloodsuckers who placed it there. The reflector flashed in the sun with a lustrous sparkle as I rode over it. I considered ignoring it, but my conscience compels me to stop and pick up trash on the trail, so I hit the brakes and walked back to get it. When I reached to pick it up, it occurred to me that this little reflector wasn’t trash at all. It was an artifact, evidence of a misunderstood class of mountain biker we call the novice. Who else would leave a reflector attached to his spokes? But what was it doing way out here in BFE? Clearly, the novice who lost it had ventured out far beyond the barren safety of the bike path—proof that the person had a more advanced, unquenchable thirst for pedal-powered adventure than one
18
would expect. I poked at the reflector with my foot, as if that would reveal more about its origin. I’m no archaeologist, but I couldn’t help hypothesize that if this novice had any friends who were experienced bikers, they would have guided him toward more accessible trails for his first ventures and suggested that he remove the reflectors so as not to look like a nerd. This novice was acting independently, and whoever it was exhibits the very drive and desire that spawns champions and heroes. As I studied the reflector, it occurred to me that many of the riders who are winning, or even competing in, events like the 2,745-mile Tour Divide, Breck Epic, Leadville Trail 100 or Crankworx Colorado possess endurance or skill, but more importantly—like the mysterious novice—inner strength and a yearning for adventure not found in the average human being. The champions and bold competitors of these events at one point—maybe not very long ago—were in all probability just like whoever it was who lost this reflector: a dreamy-eyed novice who got hold of a bike and just started riding. Nobody told that person there were limits. I hesitated and then pulled my hand back, deciding to leave the sparkly little plastic artifact in the trail for future archaeologists to find and ponder the society that created it. *BFE: an acronym for Butt or Bum-F*&@ Egypt, defined by the Online Slang Dictionary as any location inconveniently far away; the middle of nowhere.