A geezer's smile — hardtailing down a steepish hill in Germany

© 2017 Peter Free

 

05 April 2017

 

 

Rewarding trivialities

 

At senior age, it does not take much in the way of minor accomplishment to make me smile. A couple of days ago, I successfully rode my (rigidly punishing) hardtail mountain bike down a hill that had previously defeated me 5 times, over two years.

 

In the past — riding in normal cross country riding position — my center of gravity had been too high to negotiate it. (Which is not to say that a younger or more skillful rider would not easily zip down it.)

 

The steepish incline's combination of gravel, mud, stone-filled ruts and two small boulders proved too challenging to negotiate all the way down. Even my recklessly inclined psyche recognized that I was flirting with quadriplegia and death's maws.

 

 

Motivation

 

Moving from Germany in a few weeks meant that getting down this logging region slope was now or never.

 

 

Enter a 5-year old's common sense

 

With my customary seat position marked and then drastically lowered, descending proved to be easy.

 

Brake modulation became less important in dealing with sliding gravel. Slips in the mud, trivial. Weight and direction adjustments, no problem. And navigating my slippery way between the two "death boulders" proved to be no more difficult than eating warm pie.

 

Quite a difference from my earlier (high seated) "bail before dying" attempts.

 

 

Just to prove that all was well — Fate threw me a test curve

 

I managed to get out of the between boulder gully, only to collide with a brick-like rock outside it. The impact threw me right back into stone-filled rut — whose slippery bounces encouraged me to stay off the brakes. Speed escalated quickly. Was this day (like a fair number of others) destined to end in noticeable injury?

 

Fortunately, the stony groove ends in a sharply curved run-out at the bottom of the hill. A bit of firm braking, and I avoided flying off into the trees on the down-slope side of the curve.

 

 

The moral? — Yay!

 

Two years of defeat corrected.

 

Such surprising satisfaction from a trivial accomplishment. Five-year olds can relate. Which, at geezer-ish age, is probably as it should be.