CER team member Jason Stewart gives up a glimpse into how he developed his "passion" for riding bikes.
"Two minutes into my first-ever mountain bike race I realized one thing: I still hated bikes.
For most of my life I have hated bicycles. While many of the guys that I compete against have been riding and racing bikes for years, I happily avoided them until well after my 30th birthday. It was an honest hatred that I earned growing up in the hollers of southern West Virginia, trying to peddle my little BMX bike up hills and creek beds. We had no flat ground and I could never make the thing go more than twenty feet without petering out, try as I might. After seeing my struggles, my folks eventually bought me a yellow ten-speed mountain/road hybrid. Hybrid bikes are funny creatures; instead of being poorly suited for just one style of riding, they manage to be equally bad at everything. I didn’t know this at the time, and I immediately took it down to Matheny to ride with my buddy before our little league game. I got it up to speed on a straight stretch of pavement, wobbled into my friend’s wheel and ended up bloody in a ditch with a torn-up uniform, torn-up knee, and a torn-up bike. Bikes, like snakes and monkeys, were clearly not to be trusted.
Years later I was talked into giving bicycles another chance. A good friend of mine in high school was an avid mountain biker and convinced me to go with him. I borrowed a rigid Specialized with no pedal cages, put some Coke in a water bottle and hit the trail. It had been a long time since I had ridden, and knowing this, my pal took me on a treacherous loop through some of the nastiest terrain imaginable. I would ride the bike a few feet, fall off, bleed, pick the bike up and throw it as far as I could, cuss, go find the bike, bleed some more, and try to ride a few more feet. Eventually I did start throwing the bike up the trail instead of over the hill, cutting down on my walking and searching time. Efficiency is very important in cycling.
I happily stayed off a bike for the next ten years or so until I had to clean out an apartment that some of my contractors had rented near one of our drilling sites. The job was done and the guys had returned to Australia or Antarctica or wherever they were from, leaving a bunch of garbage and exercise equipment. Though messy, the Antarcticans are a very fitness-conscious people. I found a rowing machine and what appeared to be a bike. Two skinny wheels, no engine, crappy brakes, and a pathetic joke of a seat, all bolted to a bony metal frame. Yep, that’s a mountain bike all right. Dumpster.
As I pushed the bike toward the garbage pile, a quote from then-President George W. Bush came to me: "Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, shame on, uhh, shame on, uh, well, let's just say there's not going to be any more fooling around". I had been fooled in the past by bikes and shame on somebody if I ever fooled around with one again.
I don't know why I did it, but nobody was looking, so I jumped on, pedaled around in a circle, and jumped off. No crash. No explosions. No blood. It was a shiny blue KHS with a Reba fork and a softail button thingy on the rear triangle. It hadn’t bucked me off or tried to strangle me. The shifters worked smoothly and the fork took most of the jarring out. It was not quite the miserable experience I expected. I ended up taking it home and riding it around my neighborhood. Again, no major crashes, no major blood loss. Another friend (current CER teammate Joe Sheets) took me out onto some local trails that were more suited to my ability level, and I started to slowly build up some skill and endurance.
Years later I was talked into giving bicycles another chance. A good friend of mine in high school was an avid mountain biker and convinced me to go with him. I borrowed a rigid Specialized with no pedal cages, put some Coke in a water bottle and hit the trail. It had been a long time since I had ridden, and knowing this, my pal took me on a treacherous loop through some of the nastiest terrain imaginable. I would ride the bike a few feet, fall off, bleed, pick the bike up and throw it as far as I could, cuss, go find the bike, bleed some more, and try to ride a few more feet. Eventually I did start throwing the bike up the trail instead of over the hill, cutting down on my walking and searching time. Efficiency is very important in cycling.
I happily stayed off a bike for the next ten years or so until I had to clean out an apartment that some of my contractors had rented near one of our drilling sites. The job was done and the guys had returned to Australia or Antarctica or wherever they were from, leaving a bunch of garbage and exercise equipment. Though messy, the Antarcticans are a very fitness-conscious people. I found a rowing machine and what appeared to be a bike. Two skinny wheels, no engine, crappy brakes, and a pathetic joke of a seat, all bolted to a bony metal frame. Yep, that’s a mountain bike all right. Dumpster.
As I pushed the bike toward the garbage pile, a quote from then-President George W. Bush came to me: "Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, shame on, uhh, shame on, uh, well, let's just say there's not going to be any more fooling around". I had been fooled in the past by bikes and shame on somebody if I ever fooled around with one again.
I don't know why I did it, but nobody was looking, so I jumped on, pedaled around in a circle, and jumped off. No crash. No explosions. No blood. It was a shiny blue KHS with a Reba fork and a softail button thingy on the rear triangle. It hadn’t bucked me off or tried to strangle me. The shifters worked smoothly and the fork took most of the jarring out. It was not quite the miserable experience I expected. I ended up taking it home and riding it around my neighborhood. Again, no major crashes, no major blood loss. Another friend (current CER teammate Joe Sheets) took me out onto some local trails that were more suited to my ability level, and I started to slowly build up some skill and endurance.
I did a local triathlon that summer, and by the next spring I was in the bike shop plunking down some cash on my first real mountain bike, a 29” Specialized Rockhopper. I quickly dubbed the bike “Special Ed” due to its penchant for wandering off aimlessly at inopportune times. Ed and I spent a lot of time in briar patches, streams, ponds, tree tops and other non-trail areas that first season, but eventually we were able to keep up with the next-to-last place guy in group rides. Joe kept encouraging me and soon deemed me ready to take the next step in my development as a mountain biker, my first race.
Joe was wrong. Things did not go well. I’ll post that story some other time. For now I will just say that Ed and I survived, Joe forgave me for the terrible, terrible things I said to him afterwards and that the race promoter did not, in fact, cut out the muddy part."
Stew, Special Ed, and a briar patch
Knowing those Anarcticans, leaving that bike for you was probably the only redeeming act of their young lives. The rowing machine was always ridiculous....
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