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HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOUNTAIN BIKE
Here's to another season of fun
dear bike
To celebrate the end of your second year as my bike and the beginning of a new season together, I’d like to take a moment to look back at all the fond times we’ve shared. The trails and tribulations, the crashes and magnificent falls. The rare flowy singletrack that I could actually descend, as I hammered your brake pads learning to go around switchbacks and not over the handlebars. It had nothing to do with your capable 29 inch wheels or your beautiful lime green accents, which I know are for speed, but my own ineptitude as I learned the ways of what our friends call “brown pow”.
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it's been a long road
There is no amount of sun-flare I could add to these photos to represent the sunburns I’ve fallen victim to while riding on your dirty, dirty white seat. And I know that you’ll agree when I say the scars from our time together are lasting, like the four inch scratch on your fork from the time we stacked you on top of another bike in Crested Butte on a bumpy dirt road, or the time your handlebars bent in half when you got dragged on the highway over Independence Pass, or how your clip-in pedals are nearly illegible due to practically every trail we’ve ever crushed.
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but i forgive you
And when I say crushed, oh, I mean it. We crushed into that one rock in Durango with impressive force, and you fell in the parking lot once or twice – sorry. I forgive even the weird things you’ve put me through, like that one little wire that likes to rub all over your wheel no matter how much I tweak it back into place. Or the time your derailleur mysteriously snapped in half while rolling on a flat dirt road. Your tires were pretty decent until that one blow out on the sidewall, but I probably deserved that. And I didn’t treat you special when the guy at the bike shop told me your brakes were worn to metal on metal, and I let him install that stupid red pad. I’m sorry you now look like Christmas.
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c-heere's to more
So as we continue down this trail called life I’d like to say thanks for the fun and the bumps, and teaching me how to ride a bike. I’m going to replace you piece by piece for a smoother ride, but don’t take it personally. And don’t worry, you’ll soon have a whole new set of scratches to look back at the good times and think wow, we really crushed that brown pow.
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