It’s always the way. You arrange a ride out with someone in the suns shining rays, and by the time the ride out comes around, the rays are no longer shining, and instead the air is filled with the damp wet reminder that you are on the British Isles and nothing will ever be predictable with the weather. Turns out, the riding is not that predictable either.
I’d read trail grades depend on the weather. I never appreciated that until today. In fact, I’ve learnt many things today including how frikking fast a mountain rescue helicopter can fly when it needs to.
The car park at Gisburn was uncharacteristically quiet. It wasn’t raining that hard and it’s been dry here most of the week so we didn’t think much of it. Some brake fettling later (mate rides a hybrid, swapped slicks for knobblies last night, didn’t go too well) we were ready. In the process I heard a couple having the same conversation me and Al have every time we go out alone and no one is listening ‘why am I doing this, do I have to, I’m going to get covered in mud, this isn’t fun’. She was riding a Trek of some kind, nice bike, slip of a thing, and in passing I registered that perhaps it doesn’t matter how small you are, only how fit you are, and that confidence or the lack of it can bite everyone no matter how small they are. That was lesson one.
Lesson two was that, as quickly became glaringly clear, our mate was epically fitter than us. I made the mistake of trying to keep up. Bad move. I should know better by now, but we ride with other people so rarely due to my hideous levels of self consciousness when it comes to my fitness level that I missed the trick.
The third lesson was that the first bit of proper singletrack on the blue had turned from a smooth rip roaring rollercoaster into a disintegrating wheel shifting nightmare in the wet. Fell off. Twanged wrist, twisted hip (though I didn’t notice for a few hours afterwards), dented confidence. Decided to take the shortcut and go home – mate was long gone by this point and completely missed this little detour.
The fourth lesson was a rather more serious one. I don’t like Northshore at the best of times, as previously documented, though Scotland cured me of some of my dislike. Gisburn has a nippy bit of singletrack which is awesome fun, and then you’re thrown into the forest on this silly path constructed of horizontal tree trunks and small ones at that. It’s twisty, turny, shares itself with the red route, and for good reason. It turns out, it’s easier and safer with a covering of snow. Rain turns it into a bit of a slipfest, especially with no chicken wire on it.
So we round the first corner to find a chap sitting on the side of the wooden track. My first thought is ‘what a frikking donkey, what the hell is he doing’. My second thought is ‘there are some people here who really don’t know what the frikking hell to do and who are looking a little bit shocked’. Turns out, man sitting on Northshore has flown off the side of the Northshore and neatly created a second ankle above the first one with a very neatly broken bone.
Friend of A (I’m not putting his name here, it’s not fair) returned and explained the farmhouses were all locked up, which we’d just passed. So he went off to find signal in the car park and phone for help. The other people milling around sodded off. So there seemed nothing else to do but to plonk down next to A and do the only two things I know what to do with broken people, which is keep them talking, keep them with me, keep them warm and keep them from passing out and try, desperately, to stave off the shock for as long as possible and when it hits to distract them so much they wont notice.
Time passed. People passed. I tried to keep them moving on because I remembered something about not crowding people and he was feeling horribly self conscious, I think, though I’m only guessing but that was the impression he gave. Al sorted traffic control, kept an eye out for ambulances and friends and more time passed.
Seems 30 minutes passed, though it seemed longer. We talked, we made silly jokes, the rain fell, he shivered. Another person turned up who knew what they were doing because they were a mountain biking leader, who had a shelter to wrap around A and some sensible advice and calm words and who very blatantly knew exactly what he was doing. We piled all the clothing we had onto him and the shivering stopped. We heard tales from passing bikers of the ambulance going the wrong way, so the same bikers turned around and dashed off to retrieve them. The sound of a helicopter floated across.
Lesson five. Nothing on frikking earth is a more welcome sight in the middle of a forest, than a number of green and high vis bedecked people, some from ambulances, some from air ambulances. A took pictures for his website, to explain to his cycling club why they donate to mountain rescue teams. He fretted about returning fleeces and waterproofs. He passed on his email address and fretted some more. Shock.
At which point, because there was nothing else to do except get in the way, we retreated – back to the safety of the singletrack and the quick way home, not along the Northshore. I’ll email, not because I want my clothes back, I couldn’t care less, but just to touch base, just briefly, with someone I learnt a lot about in 30 minutes in an effort to keep him focused, talking and conscious. I succeeded at something that I couldn’t have not so long ago – keeping calm. And I retreated because bits of me go white in the cold and I was damed if I was going to be no 2. I still feel bad about that, you can probably tell.
So we land back in the car park. There’s a note from mate who no doubt has wondered where the hell we’ve got to – he’s gone to ride the red route. The helicopter flies by with A on board at a speed I’ve never seen a helicopter travel at. The girl who didn’t want to go out riding but did anyway landed back in the car park, doing the comedy ‘I’m frikking knackered I am’ stagger but grinning her face off – I grinned back, because I know how that feels, our mate arrived back at the car park with a badgered back brake to add to the front brake he’d left with and tales of falling off the Northshore in exactly the same place as A had just got lifted from, but he’d somehow landed on his feet, and finally, the mountain bike leader and A’s mate got back to the car park, where the friend looked supremely uncomfortable and didn’t say much and the mountain bike leader, J, was lovely at me because I wobbled a bit at him.
The sixth lesson?
Mountain bikers, whether they ride their road bikes during the week and only bike at the weekends, are mountain bikers. I don’t care what you ride, I don’t care whether you ride faster or slower than me, whether you can’t ride slow or you want to bomb around the track, you’re a mountain biker. I don’t care about anything, except that if you fall over, you get looked after. You get sorted. People stop and care. People stop and offer help. A very very small amount make it clear you’re an inconvenient obstacle in their way. They weren’t mountain bikers, for that attitude alone. Mountain bikers wear different colours, come from different backgrounds, go out in trainers and t-shirts and Adidas tracksuit bottoms because they can’t afford anything different. Mountain bikers go out on days like this because we want to ride our bikes and the need to ride our bikes sometimes overrides any sense. Mountain bikers are friendly, caring, supportive, insane, loony, sound as hell, have varying levels of passionate enthusiasm but there will always be some there. Mountain bikers are probably some of the fittest people you will ever meet, who will only ever bother the NHS when they break something mountain biking. Helicopters cost money. The first thing mentioned from Mr Broken Ankle today when he heard the whir was ‘oh my god how much does one of those things cost to send out, oh no’. But I resolutely, absolutely, and totally believe that that man will cost the NHS less in total than most during his life.
Mountain bikers deal in risk. Whether we acknowledge it or not, think about it or not, there but for the grace go I. I know this, I accept this, we all do, I think. But you can’t stop walking across the road because you might get hit by an out of control stolen car. You can’t live your life like that. Life is for exploring, pushing, breathing, adventuring. It’s for doing whatever it is you need to do to have fun within reason. It’s for knowing you are alive to some. Not everyone needs to do this, not everyone wants to do this. I do. I am one among many.
But today I learnt mountain bikers come in every shade under the sun that wasn’t shining. 99% of them have a heart of gold. Cheers folks, you restored my faith in the world. I hope I am a sound enough person to belong to your tribe, because it is a tribe that I assure you, you can be very very proud of.
