Claire’s climbing a steep pitch on a trail called Sticks & Stones when her rear wheel starts to slip. She stands up and drops her hips back, weighting her rear tire, hunting for traction. The knobs of her 24″ DHF are spitting loose pebbles but the frozen ground is relentless. She starts to roll backward, grabs her brakes too late, her front wheel stands straight up in the air, and she loops out head first back down the trail.

It’s terrifying. Stood at the bottom of the hill there is nothing I can do. And, as light as her SQ24″ build is, it is still close enough to half her body weight that the Clairebarian is being taken for a ride. Instincts built over hundreds of smaller bails kick in and she manages to twist, tuck, and roll. She even mostly separates herself from her bike. 

She’s over the side of the trail in a heap. Crying. But as fast as I’m moving to get to her I know she’s okay. When she’s really hurt I can hear it in the tone. She’s shaken up, frightened. We’ve all been there and soon enough, like any experienced mountain biker, she’ll write off her good fortune to a turn of luck.

Crediting luck. It keeps us from having to admit that we’ve eaten shit so many times that our bodies have a pretty good idea of how to protect us from our worst mid-flight impulses. 

We hug it out and then she’s back in the saddle. Balancing her weight expertly on a pair of Five Ten shoes that are much too stiff for any size-1 rider’s tiny feet and lithe form. Somehow she manages to stay glued to her Radar pedals until she stalls out hooking that 24″ rear wheel on a root or rock that wouldn’t slow a 27″ or 29er hoop, then she shoots a foot down in a blast to catch herself. 

Except when she doesn’t. Or her foot fails to find friction in a slippery reminder that not all Five Ten rubber is created equally. Then it’s her relatively massive rig driving her body into the ground like a welterweight riding an Avalanche MTN-equipped Brooklyn TMX. 

Claire’s pedaling up around a steep switchback corner when she stalls. She manages to drop her seat post – making dismounting and restarting easier – but her foot slips on an unfriendly root and she rotates making first contact with the ground by planting her backside straight into an unforgiving rock. She grunts, grits her teeth, and her eyes start to well. It’s too much, a second hard hit on the same night, and climbing up no less. 

Within a minute or so we’re laughing about how impressive her “butt bruise” is going to be, then it’s off again. First cautiously but by the time we top out on our climb for the night she’s found her flow again and the descent ends up being easily her best run in the dark to date. 

It’s any given Monday – just with a bit more crashing than usual – and we’re driving home when Claire asks me about when Uncle Crash Test and I were in grade 3 (which I’ll note I completed a couple years before my brother did). It’s weird to her that we didn’t mountain bike when we were kids. She looks incredulous when I tell her she’s riding trails as hard as I was riding in my early 20s (on a hardtail with larger, 26″, wheels and stickier tires). I’m actually not certain if she believes me that the Good Sir Martin climbing trail was built in her lifetime. 

When Kevin and I were around Claire’s age we’d moved to the ‘burbs and our house was a few hundred meters of uneconomical swamp away from some forested airport right-of-way. We spent endless hours playing street hockey or hacking blackberry bushes with wooden ‘swords’ made from worn-out sticks. I’m not saying we didn’t get hurt, I broke my arm in grade 4 & grade 5, but I certainly wasn’t Claire-tough, mentally. 

There’s no sitting one out or taking a break to go inside to play Lego for a bit when you’re mountain biking. When your hands are freezing and you’re ten minutes from the car, your hands are freezing and you’re ten minutes from the car. When you hit the ground, even when you’re completely okay, you still have to summon the willpower to get back on your bike and keep going. 

Another night. It’s been a clean ride but mountain biking is sometimes just an endless series of small coin flips. Claire slips her front tire on a well-frosted ladder and rocks her hip, just above her knee pad, and roots her bicep, just above her elbow pad. I can tell just from the sound of her hitting the ground that it fucking hurts, her timbre and tears reinforce that conclusion. 

I lift her up and we have a big cuddle there in the middle of the forest. Lights off to save juice, and it’s pitch black. For all we know we’re the only two people on all of Mt. Seymour. She says before I ask that she wants to keep going with our ride but maybe we’ll shorten it just a bit because “that really hurt.” Okay, are you certain? This would be a good spot to exit. She’s adamant, after all, “we’re tough.” 

Are we? Sure I’ve hit the ground, hard. And I’ve had to finish a ride in discomfort or stumble out in pain. I’ve had to adjust my attitude to get the most out of a ride where I didn’t seem to be able to manage to keep the rubber side down. I’ve had to argue with my dead legs after too many days of activity in a row. But I actually don’t know if I have as much grit as my eight-year-old. 

Impapaster Syndrome.