all-mountain
— adjective
- of or pertaining to the entirety; every terrain; the whole of the environment
- from cycling, snowboarding, climbing and other outdoor sports; one that will ride all facets of trail capably and with competence
- to suck at everything and be great at nothing
i used to just be happy to ride. happy to roll with Tsaina to Fort Lowell park, pop through the washes and have a smoke, ride Chiva with Larry Heater, ride TRW without crashing. it took me a year of living next to it to have the balls to ride Mine Trail! but i’ve ridden a bike my whole life, so it was inevitable living out here, where there is so much to ride. and i kept riding. I kept going further, up harder, down faster, over nastier, and a funny thing happened on the way to getting better: I got good enough to realize how not-good I was. I could be always be spinning faster, dropping further, climbing stronger, cadenceing smoother, railing harder, gnaring gnarlier. There was always a boundary out of my comfort area, even as the comfort area got bigger and bigger. There was nothing special about my riding, other than I did a lot of it, a lot of it. Some call this above-average, some call this being an enthusist, some call this obsessive compulsive.
what do you ride? I ride everything. and I ride it all badly. I am the all-mountain rider.
Woe, the all-mountain rider