It's like riding a bike...

Actually, it IS riding a bike. But as fast as you can. Over jumps. With other people. BMX racing that is.....

Like a lot of kids I got a bicycle when I was 5 or 6. Unlike a lot of kids I didn't learn to ride it until about a year later. Riding a bike really should only take about 2 weeks to learn, so I guess I was a slow learner or didn't get much help in the process.

I had the normal young kid on a bike experiences of building ramps, crashing an riding home bloody and so on. Nothing special.

Later on I got a ten speed style bike, I can't remember if it was new or new-to-me, but I remember riding it around at age 14. Goofing off with friends and on my paper route. About this time my brother raced bmx a bit and he even built a wooden half pipe in our back yard! We weren't little skate or bike punks, but we did like them.

For my graduation gift to myself from high school I pooled all of my money and bought a mountain bike. This lead to a few beginner mountain bike races and a string of better mountain bikes through the years. Heck, I even got a second job at a bike shop for a few years, right before college.

After college I had the money to buy my first really nice mountain bike. Two years later it was stolen. And then I just didn't ride really. Until a few years ago I got a mountain bike as a Valentines gift. A bit of 'just riding around' lead to getting better bikes, which lead to racing again for two years, which lead to working at a bike shop again for almost two years.

If I think hard, my bike ownership goes roughly like this:
-1st bike
-ten speed
-Trek 8200, my HS graduation gift
-Specilaized Rock Hopper -Barracuda somethingorother -GT Avalanche/Zaskar -Specialized Stumpjumper M4 -Giant Reign 1
-Trek Remedy 9.8 -Trek Session 8 -Redline and Intense bmx

Can you tell bikes have been a part of most of my life? But I'm not really a cyclist. It was always just a part of life, never really my only focus. One year I did OK in my racing season, but that was it.

Notice in the above narrative that I never had a bmx bike as a kid. I never raced any kind of bike as a kid. I didn't learn how to ride a bike until 7 years old. So here I am as an adult novice with that kind of history, surrounded by 6 year olds who have been racing for 2 years already. Fifteen year old kids who are experts and have been racing for almost 10 years. Or dads at the track who used to be one of those kids.

HA! I really am a true novice at this but am also the only one. So when people at the track tell me, "Oh, you'll get it. It's just like when you were a kid", they don't know I had zero experience at this as a kid! A bike is not a bike is not a bike. Especially when you are trying to race them!

What's the point you say? I don't know if there is one. All I know is it is fun to learn something new that has elements of speed, competition, danger and with the possibility of a trophy at some point. My ego can take the beating through this process. But it sure would be nice to race against people like myself. Last night my class was me, a Novice, mixed in with two teenage Experts and one Intermediate guy my age.

I never had a chance. But my dna has a 'two wheels' section, so I'm going to keep coming back!!