“Stop right there!” I yell. “Why?” he shouts back. I know he won’t like the answer and my camera is truly buried so I say nothing, pull my phone from my chest pocket as fast as I can, snap a ‘before’ photo and wait. The suspense is killing me. Crash Test Kevin teeters on the greasy plank. He knows exactly what I’m up to.
With all the grace of a 1983 Yugo and the light-footedness of a three-legged Rhinoceros, he begins to sidle forward again. He reaches the other side and my guinea pig, I mean brother, looks back with the scene-stealing grin of a man who’s purloined the antidote to gravity. I have to shade my eyes to see what I’m doing as he lights up the path before me.
He practically sings: “Are you coming‽ We don’t have all day, you know.”
This exact moment has played out a thousand times in the twenty-plus years we’ve been mountain biking together. Like any older brother cursed to be notably shorter than his younger siblings, any pauses on our rides are part of one long series of jokes about my height, or as CTK would flippantly describe my hike-a-bike-ability, “one giant leap for Andrew, one small step for most other people.”
All that punctuated by a friendly game of Spy Vs Spy. You know, hilarious stuff like the time that just after I walked over an unstable bank, Crash Test edged forward and it gave out suddenly with him sliding some fifteen feet to the bottom whilst calmly holding his bike and standing straight up the whole way. Hahaha.
Kev’s stretched between two slimy rocks as a swollen creek rushes between his legs. I’m chortling with my camera held in focus waiting to see what happens. At this point, it’s only the soles of his FiveTen shoes that are preventing a full-on swim-venture downstream. He’s so extended that it appears neither forward nor back is an option. I say something witty. No response.
He tries to lean on his bike but whatever invisible surface his tires are resting on is apparently coated in Teflon. STUCK. He flashes a smirk in my direction which tells me he’s going for it. He spins around on to one foot, busts out a high-step straight from Monty Python’s Ministry Of Silly Walks, and then somehow breaches the next chasm across to where our old skidder road starts again.
“Yeah I know, I’m short.” I dismiss his victory speech and begin edging forward myself. The Michelin soles on my Shimano shoes might as well be made of soap. It’s possible I could go all in and make that leap between the stones, even with my bike in hand, but the chances of sticking the one-foot landing on that greasy asshole of a boulder are less than zero. He’s watching my every move and occasionally glancing at where his wristwatch would sit if he wore one.
A’ha! There’s a stone in the middle of the two rocks, about 1.5cm below the surface of the water. That’ll make it a breeze. I dance across full of confidence but my slimy saviour rolls out of the way, and begins its trip downstream, a millisecond after my toe makes contact. For an all-too-brief moment, I’m walking on water. You’d need a chainsaw to cut the tension in the air as it appears I’m going all the way in! I push down hard on my bike and before both of my tires know they’re supposed to slide out and dunk me I’ve vaulted to victory. “YES!”
CTK’s back is already turned and he’s walking up the skidder. As soon as he was fairly certain I was home free he ditched before rather than let me triumph in our tie. Touché. We trundle up the trail talking about nothing and waiting for the next hilarious fraternal test.