Do You Ride, Bro?
These words arranged as a question are like steroids for my anxiety..
The first time I rode a real mountain bike in the mountains, a couple of the guys took me down a black diamond (Lee's Way) trail they had no business putting me on. I went over a jump and crashed hard. Got up and kept riding anyway. That was at a bike shop in the Vail Valley, ( The Kind Bikes and Ski's) where I worked long enough to ride the demos in the evenings and on my days off, which was about as good as a broke twenty-something got.
I've never actually owned a mountain bike at the level these people ride. Most of what I buy needs some kind of return, a camera, a car, a computer. The Xbox during COVID is about the only exception I can think of. I did buy a road bike once, eight hundred dollars tops, and ended up selling it back when I needed the money more than I needed the bike. And I've owned several bikes over the years. They tend to be used, found on marketplace, or literally scrapped together from the boneyard.
I don't have a specific number in mind for what I'd spend on one now. I know you can find something used or new in the two to twenty-five hundred dollar range that actually holds up for a few seasons, with a frame worth building around later, instead of something off a big box shelf that isn't worth putting money into at all.
When I'm out shooting and somebody asks if I ride, it's a harder question than it sounds. The honest answer is yes, but not right now, or yes, but my bike can't handle any of this. I don't like renting, because it feels like money I could be putting toward owning one instead. I don't like borrowing, because if I break somebody's bike, that's on me. So I'm out on the trail with a camera and no bike of my own, and there isn't really a clean way to say that.
It's not just an awkward answer. It's the reason I feel like I don't fully belong out there. Everyone else showed up to ride. I showed up to watch and shoot, which puts me half a step outside the thing I'm trying to capture. I can nod along when someone talks about a line through a rock garden or why they run a certain tire pressure, but nodding isn't the same as doing. There's a difference between understanding a trail and having ridden it that morning, and riders can usually tell which one you are.
That gap matters for the photos too, not just for how I feel standing there. The shots that actually work, the ones where you can feel the speed or the commitment on a drop, come from knowing where a rider is about to be before they get there. That's not something you learn from the sideline. It's built from time on a bike, reading terrain with your own hands on the bars, not just your eyes. When I'm dialed into that, the work is sharper. When I'm not, I'm guessing, and guessing shows up in the frame whether anyone else can name it or not.
Having worked at that shop means I can usually hold my own in those conversations, talk components and geometry, ask the right questions back. But all of it is pulled from about ten years ago now. I still feel like I'm borrowing that, too.
