velotel
06-08-2018, 04:01 PM
I love riding with my son. Simple as that. Especially given that I’m still able to follow him where he likes to ride, just not at the same speed. I like riding with him not because he’s my son, which is totally cool, but because, beyond the dad/son relationship, he and I are friends who enjoy riding together.
Don’t know if that’s rare or not. I mean with parents and offspring, or siblings or whatever the family relationship, being friends is not an automatic. It’s not like we pick out who we want for parents or kids or brothers or sisters like we select friends. A blind lottery.
My parents and I weren’t friends, not in the sense of them being people I wanted to hang out with, which was maybe mutual. Too many expectations, too many judgments between us, a gap too broad in our perspectives of what life is all about. But we weren’t non-friends either, whatever that might mean. A relationship of distance unbridged with enormous portions of our lives never shared. Just the way it worked out, their histories, my character, their hopes for what/who I’d be, mine for who I wanted to be, or thought I wanted to be, actually still wondering on that question.
With Mat I came up lucky. I like spending time with him. Probably our mutual passion for riding bikes that binds us. I mean if he was someone who likes planting himself on the couch in front of the tele and watching football, baseball, whatever, we definitely wouldn’t have the relationship we have. No way.
Thankfully I never had to cross that obstacle. I doubt I’m capable of that degree of willful flexibility. Even drugs wouldn’t be enough to make me sit and watch football, baseball, whatever on the tele. But hopping on the bike and heading out with him, yes, instantly! I like the lines he picks on trails, the loops he creates out of a smorgasbord of possibilities, the way his eyes light up when he spots some steep as hell climb or some gnarly passage just ahead, the elegance and speed he achieves on a bike, and the fact that his idea of a ‘dad ride’ is one that’s pushes me to my limits. Forget the concept of okay, he’s old, better tone down the ride selection. No way! More like cool! There’s this section up ahead that’s friggin hard as anything, he’ll love it!
That’s what friends do, share their best of the best, challenge each other on pushing the limits, and smile like crazies when the other’s deep in the pain zone on some ridiculously hard pitch. That’s respect. Maybe that’s what our riding has really taught us, respect for the other. A big one to my thinking. Which kind of expands into the rest of our lives beyond the riding bikes bit.
Hard for me to believe this at times but here we are some 30 plus years since he first got on a bike and started riding with me and we’re still doing it, challenging crazy steep grades, weaving over dirt roads and trails up mountains, diving into fast, nervous descents, pushing our limits alone, and yet together, then grinning at each other like idiots afterwards and high-fiving, all because of some silly ride on bikes.
Something else that I think is pretty cool is the history bit of our riding, sort of a legacy, something for when I’m no longer here, which at age 73 is going to be way sooner than later. I like to think that someday these rides, especially the dirt and rock roads in the high Alps, will be these terrific reminders for him of who his father was. Not like in photos of me riding but by him doing the same rides, feeling the same kinds of sensations. Transformating a two-dimensional picture into some multi-dimensional encompassing sense of who I was. Something like that at any rate. Difficult to put in words concepts that are way too ethereal for me to grasp with much clarity. Or at least I imagine it might be like that. I mean there’s nothing I do that either of my parents did so all I can do is imagine what it might be like.
And maybe when he’s spinning up one these albums of memories he’ll be thinking, you know, I really liked riding with my dad, he was the kind of guy I like to ride with. Which is what he is to me, the kind of guy I enjoy riding with. And that for me is way beyond just being a dad and son riding together.
Believe me, none of this was planned. Probably sounds dumb but the only thing I really wished for when he was born was that when he was an adult we’d be friends. The fact that he’s a cyclist I love riding with is pure bonus.
I take no credit for his becoming the cyclist that he is. His mother was, and still is, a fine rider and they rode together way more than Mat and I after I’d moved to France. But I think the strongest influence of all was all these friends of his mother and I who were super talented mountain bikers, most from Marin County, some of the best riders in the country even if they weren’t interested in racing. They’d show up at the house in Moab and treat Mat like another of the guys even though he was just this kid. Their automatic assumption was that of course he’d want to go jam with them on rides. That’s what was happening, riding cool bikes in ridiculously cool places. So that’s what he did.
Nothing’s changed. We’re still riding cool bikes in ridiculously cool places.
Don’t know if that’s rare or not. I mean with parents and offspring, or siblings or whatever the family relationship, being friends is not an automatic. It’s not like we pick out who we want for parents or kids or brothers or sisters like we select friends. A blind lottery.
My parents and I weren’t friends, not in the sense of them being people I wanted to hang out with, which was maybe mutual. Too many expectations, too many judgments between us, a gap too broad in our perspectives of what life is all about. But we weren’t non-friends either, whatever that might mean. A relationship of distance unbridged with enormous portions of our lives never shared. Just the way it worked out, their histories, my character, their hopes for what/who I’d be, mine for who I wanted to be, or thought I wanted to be, actually still wondering on that question.
With Mat I came up lucky. I like spending time with him. Probably our mutual passion for riding bikes that binds us. I mean if he was someone who likes planting himself on the couch in front of the tele and watching football, baseball, whatever, we definitely wouldn’t have the relationship we have. No way.
Thankfully I never had to cross that obstacle. I doubt I’m capable of that degree of willful flexibility. Even drugs wouldn’t be enough to make me sit and watch football, baseball, whatever on the tele. But hopping on the bike and heading out with him, yes, instantly! I like the lines he picks on trails, the loops he creates out of a smorgasbord of possibilities, the way his eyes light up when he spots some steep as hell climb or some gnarly passage just ahead, the elegance and speed he achieves on a bike, and the fact that his idea of a ‘dad ride’ is one that’s pushes me to my limits. Forget the concept of okay, he’s old, better tone down the ride selection. No way! More like cool! There’s this section up ahead that’s friggin hard as anything, he’ll love it!
That’s what friends do, share their best of the best, challenge each other on pushing the limits, and smile like crazies when the other’s deep in the pain zone on some ridiculously hard pitch. That’s respect. Maybe that’s what our riding has really taught us, respect for the other. A big one to my thinking. Which kind of expands into the rest of our lives beyond the riding bikes bit.
Hard for me to believe this at times but here we are some 30 plus years since he first got on a bike and started riding with me and we’re still doing it, challenging crazy steep grades, weaving over dirt roads and trails up mountains, diving into fast, nervous descents, pushing our limits alone, and yet together, then grinning at each other like idiots afterwards and high-fiving, all because of some silly ride on bikes.
Something else that I think is pretty cool is the history bit of our riding, sort of a legacy, something for when I’m no longer here, which at age 73 is going to be way sooner than later. I like to think that someday these rides, especially the dirt and rock roads in the high Alps, will be these terrific reminders for him of who his father was. Not like in photos of me riding but by him doing the same rides, feeling the same kinds of sensations. Transformating a two-dimensional picture into some multi-dimensional encompassing sense of who I was. Something like that at any rate. Difficult to put in words concepts that are way too ethereal for me to grasp with much clarity. Or at least I imagine it might be like that. I mean there’s nothing I do that either of my parents did so all I can do is imagine what it might be like.
And maybe when he’s spinning up one these albums of memories he’ll be thinking, you know, I really liked riding with my dad, he was the kind of guy I like to ride with. Which is what he is to me, the kind of guy I enjoy riding with. And that for me is way beyond just being a dad and son riding together.
Believe me, none of this was planned. Probably sounds dumb but the only thing I really wished for when he was born was that when he was an adult we’d be friends. The fact that he’s a cyclist I love riding with is pure bonus.
I take no credit for his becoming the cyclist that he is. His mother was, and still is, a fine rider and they rode together way more than Mat and I after I’d moved to France. But I think the strongest influence of all was all these friends of his mother and I who were super talented mountain bikers, most from Marin County, some of the best riders in the country even if they weren’t interested in racing. They’d show up at the house in Moab and treat Mat like another of the guys even though he was just this kid. Their automatic assumption was that of course he’d want to go jam with them on rides. That’s what was happening, riding cool bikes in ridiculously cool places. So that’s what he did.
Nothing’s changed. We’re still riding cool bikes in ridiculously cool places.