Climbing on the Bird is finally less-than-utterly-pathetic. My legs and balance are coming around. There are ~10 big ups on Somo from Javalina to Buena Vista, and each ride for nearly 10 years their ticks have located a climbing performance meter in my head. I think i got 4 last ride, which was 3 more than the first time on the Bird. Coupled with a vigorous pace chasing Chongoman up the mountain, i declared myself a winner!   40 minute sprints up the McDs and 2 days at Rancho are paying off in enough balance and strength to power over challenges, and enough confidence to commit to finishing them. Each of the last 5 rides have been better than the one before it. Descending is so copacetic it hardly merits the attention to type. I’m developing a trust in the big fat fork and the stiff sticky rear end, learning to jump safely jump into chunk. I got the s-curve on 24th St. for the first time in far too long, and on Highline let the bike take me down through danger by going faster. Paradise Wash time trials are pushing me into new comfort zones of speed. Last run was 7:59; descending the AZT in Flagstaff was a rainbow of emerald and olive and moss and malachite.

I’ve started again picking the girls up from their school(s) with the bikes and Kila. I slam a beer on the ride over, its like happy hour, where fatigue and anxiety slip away in adventures with my pack. G’s climbing gets stronger, less sprinting and more spinning. Sometimes she zig-zags lazily up the hill while we talk about her school day.   She too unwinds, kindergarten happy hour on 2 wheels. At the Hill Park she followed me down a 5-stepper. She stopped and asked before trying it — can i do it? When i told her no problem, and reminded her how, her body language spoke her understanding to unweight the front and trust gravity. Summer PT days have sharpened and relaxed her to   ride out the momentum.   She can climb every table at Rage and knows which to avoid at McPump, absent are the out-of-control backward flops, finding her comfort zone between attacking and retreating from a big up. She finishes our sessions filthy, shweaty, unscathed, and starving!   The last time rolling home from the Hill Park she shot off the front, stopped and looked at every intersection, and then pulled out of sight on the long descent. I half-expected to find flashing lights and twisted metal at the bottom, but I found G waiting for me before crossing Thompson Peak, just like she knows to do. A 2o yard skidmark led up to the intersection. She said she made it on purpose. Gnar junkie unleashed, the downhill is what inspires her to climb.

Alana can barely reach the pedals, has no balance, and the slightest shift of the front wheel knocks her over, but she can’t wait to ride bikes. Sometimes riding means dressing up in helmet and pads, sometimes its cheering wildly from the back of the trailer, sometimes its standing around holding her bike and admiring the fresh set of streamers that to a 2-yr old make it all seem brand new.   It seems fanboy and voyeuristic, but its not her fault she can’t fit the 12 incher yet. She’s still 6 months ahead of where G was on that bike. She’s happy to get propelled around the pump track, barely a dozen laps for me hurts a lot more after pushing Alana around another 15 times.   She cheers and squeals and diabolically giggles when a tumble almost happens. Someday she will pedal, sometimes she goes down the street and back, her psych is the triumph that presupposes all the others.