Ali's Rocky Ride

by Molly Hurford

  When we were at the bike park, Sam told us that girls couldn’t ride. We proved him wrong, but I still get mad when I think about him saying that because we’re girls, we shouldn’t be in a bike park. It makes no sense.

  Being girly has never been important to me—and growing up surrounded by all boys, that was probably a good thing. But when Sam said that girls shouldn’t be riding bikes, it lit this fire in me. I want to prove to him and all boys that being a girl—whether that means wearing baggy cutoffs like me or having purple streaks in her hair, like Jen, or painting her nails to match her bike, like Lindsay—makes us stronger on the bike, not weaker. Having brothers, I know that a lot of boys automatically think girls are not as good at riding bikes, but they’re wrong. Just thinking about it gets me fired up, and I know that’s where my superpower lies, in using that fire to go faster and harder.

  I want to be proudly me….And this summer, I want to be louder about it than ever before.

  CHAPTER 3

  “Time to get up, girls!” Phoebe shouts from downstairs. I’ve already been awake for a while, and so has Lindsay, but we’ve both been hiding under our covers to write in our journals—Lindsay’s is an actual notebook, while I really like using my iPad.

  Lindsay groans a little but gamely swings out of bed, her rumpled Batman T-shirt and baggy shorts looking a little goofy. Of course, my flannel pants and T-shirt from Joyride aren’t much better. We drag Jen out of bed, with only a minor protest, and her pink pajama set looks a lot more put-together than our pajamas.

  After a quick breakfast, we’re ready to leave. Phoebe already had yogurt and granola bowls ready and waiting, and when Lindsay tried to sneak to the coffeemaker, Phoebe intercepted her and handed her a cup of green tea instead. Jen tried to hightail it into the bathroom to do her hair, but Phoebe also intercepted her and slammed a hand against the ladder, barring her from going up.

  Man, she’s fast. And possibly a mind reader. I usually laugh when I think about Lindsay telling us she thought Phoebe was a comic-book-level supervillain, but every once in a while, I wonder if Lindsay was actually right.

  “Trust me,” Phoebe says. “With what you’re going to be wearing on your head, you really won’t need your hair done.”

  Jen huffs her way over to her backpack, where she digs in and then jams her Joyride beanie onto her head, scowling the whole time.

  “Five minutes, and we’re leaving,” Phoebe announces. I’m starting to panic because unlike Lindsay and Jen, I know where we’re going and what we’re going to be riding down.

  And so, we grudgingly get ready to leave for the mountain, all of us overpacking because we’re not sure what the weather is going to be like. It’s warm and sunny here at my house, but at the top of the mountain, it could be cold and rainy. That’s definitely the downside of living in this type of climate. I don’t think I’ve ever worn the exact right outfit for a ride. The key: layers.

  As we pile all of our gear into the SUV, Lindsay notices that we’re missing something. A lot of somethings, actually. “Umm, Phoebe, don’t we need bikes?” she asks.

  Phoebe shakes her head. “Today we’re renting really, really big bikes,” she says with a slightly maniacal grin. Instantly I know she means downhill bikes—mountain bikes with bigger, burlier tires and huge suspension in the front and back. When you go over big bumps as you speed downhill, the whole bike flexes to keep you from getting jarred too much.

  I’ve ridden a downhill bike a couple of times before, jumping onto Leo’s bike to see what it felt like, so I’m not worried…or, not too worried, anyway. The big bikes are pretty intimidating, though, since they weigh around fifty pounds and look absolutely massive, especially compared to the smaller, simpler jump bikes I’m used to.

  When we get to the mountain, Phoebe leads us to the rental building. We hop in line, and it turns out that it’s like an assembly line: build your own downhill mountain biker.

  First we get big kneepads that cover from our knees to our shins. Then elbow pads. Then a chest plate. Next, the massive full-face helmet that looks like what a dirt biker would wear. And finally, the bike, which is in fact gigantic.

  We’re giggling like crazy as we drag ourselves and the bikes outside. We’ve pretty much doubled in size since we went in!

  “It’s. So. Heavy,” Jen groans. “And I look ridiculous.” She kind of does, with her kneepads bunching up around her thighs and her elbows almost stuck out at ninety-degree angles because she’s so packed down with the padding. It’s funny to see her so out of her element, and while Lindsay and I look equally silly, I think we’re pulling it off a bit better because neither of us cares about how it makes us look. (Although Lindsay is looking worriedly at her helmet, like putting it on will turn her into a supervillain.)

  “Trust me, you’ll feel a lot more confident wearing this stuff when you’re going downhill. And look at that guy,” Phoebe says, pointing at a dude about her age walking by wearing pretty much the same gear. “I know him. He’s a pro racer. He’s been doing this for years, and that’s what he’s wearing for practice.”

  Knowing that it’s not just us wearing sumo-wrestler levels of padding makes me feel better, like at least Phoebe doesn’t think we’re huge babies who are going to immediately crash. Which may be the case, but I’m glad that we don’t stand out in the crowd.

  We roll our bikes over to the lift, and Phoebe starts explaining how the chairlift works. We’re at a ski hill, but in the summer it’s a downhill park, which means that instead of chairlifts for skiers, they’re for cyclists now. The bikes have their own separate “chair,” which looks like a weird set of skinny trays. Then there’s a seat for the riders. Then room for another set of bikes, another set of riders.

  The line is already long, and it’s a little intimidating to see how fast the downhillers are all pushing their bikes onto the lift, securing them, and then popping into the seats.

  The lift line goes way faster than I expected, and before I know it, the people ahead of us are racking their bikes. “Watch them,” says Phoebe, and we all stare hard. The three riders push their bikes onto thin racks and pull a bar down over the rear wheel to secure each bike in place. Then they take a few steps backward and sit down on the chairlift behind them. It looks smooth as they do it, but I can see how it’s going to be a challenge for us to do it as easily.

  When it’s our turn, we all nervously walk toward the lift like we’re walking the plank. I try to keep my heart from racing as the chair starts moving closer and the bike rack glides into position. “Have fun, girls,” Phoebe says, waving goodbye to us even though she’ll follow on the next chair.

  The lift guy looks at us, and for a second I think he’s going to direct us out of the line and tell us to return our bikes, but he simply waves us to move our bikes onto the racks. I slide mine on, and it goes into place easier than I expected. Lindsay struggles with her back wheel a little, and the lift guy quickly helps her adjust it, then checks to make sure Jen and I got ours right, before he pushes the bar down. It’s all over in about half a second, and we take a step back and sit on the three-person chair and pull the bar down over us so that we stay secure.

  Then, whoosh!

  We’re heading up the mountain, and with the trees under us and no snow covering the ground, it looks even more intense than it does when you’re going up the ski lift in the winter. The ground looks farther away, the movement feels faster, and it’s actually a lot scarier.

  But it’s also exhilarating, though I can see that Lindsay is death-gripping the bar, and even Jen is trying her hardest to stare straight ahead rather than looking around and down. Under us, I occasionally catch glimpses of cyclists through the trees, buzzing around turns, going off jumps, and hitting corners so fast that they leave a dust trail behind them, like they would if they were riding motorcycles that puffed smoke.

  And right as I�
�m starting to get comfortable, I realize that the lift is about to come to a stop, and the guy at the top is already grabbing our bikes and gently placing them on the ground, while another guy lifts the bar off our seat and slows down our chair barely long enough for us to (almost) gracefully step off.

  The ride up the mountain took about two minutes altogether, but Jen started to look a little green by the end. Lindsay, on the other hand, seemed to grow to love it. “It felt like flying!” she says enthusiastically as she grabs her bike. Phoebe pops off the chairlift with the next group of people and we all grab our bikes and get out of the way.

  Standing at the top of this mountain, I realize just how far down it is to the bottom. I mean, we had to take a ski lift, for crying out loud! Until now, I’ve only ridden on the trails behind our house, which aren’t really proper downhill trails at all. That was all practice for this, and I know that if Phoebe thinks that we can do it, we can. But still. The mountain seems so, so steep. And it’s so, so far to the bottom.

  With the wind whistling around us, I’m absolutely paralyzed. Maybe they’ll take me back down on the ski lift? (I don’t think they do that.) The sky is gray and ominous, but it doesn’t seem like it’s actually going to rain, which is too bad. When it rains, they shut down the lift for a while. Then we could have just gone inside and been done with this, without me having to admit that I’m terrified.

  “Let’s pedal around the top,” Phoebe says, grabbing her bike. We all hop on and start to warm up by riding in small circles around the little loop that’s set up around a big open space. As we get comfortable on the bikes, Phoebe starts adding instructions about getting into the “ready position” that we learned on BMX bikes at Joyride.

  “Get off the bike seat, knees slightly bent, elbows out, head up, and eyes looking ahead, relaxed but not too relaxed,” she shouts over her shoulder as she casually winds through the other riders assembled at the top.

  Well, at least the “not too relaxed” part will be easy. I didn’t think I would be as nervous as I am, but seeing the village looking so tiny all the way at the bottom of the hill is a little intimidating.

  “You do remember the ready position, right?” Phoebe asks.

  We must look more paralyzed than I thought, because when none of us answer, she rolls in front of us and demonstrates. Elbows out, knees slightly bent. “And keep your body ready—remember, GRRRR!” she yells, baring her teeth. She doesn’t expect us to growl the whole way down or anything, but she says doing the growly thing when practicing helps you contract your muscles so you’re ready. Hence, “ready position.”

  A few minutes later, we all know how to shift and how to brake again—it’s easy to relearn once we’ve started moving and the bikes stop feeling so weird. We ride in circles in the flat open area, loosening up and calming down while practicing. On these new bikes, it feels way different from how it did back at Joyride on our BMX bikes. The handlebars are a lot wider, and it’s easier to sit down on these bikes, though Phoebe warns us not to.

  We’ve done a bit of riding around corners, and while I don’t feel ready (despite being in the “ready position”), it’s time for us to start going down the actual hill.

  “Girls, this first run down, take it easy, okay?” Phoebe says. Lindsay looks frozen in place. Jen, on the other hand, looks more excited than I would have expected. “But stay standing as much as you can,” she adds.

  “That’s a long time to stand!” Lindsay says, looking down the hill.

  “Trust me,” Phoebe continues. “If you sit down while you’re heading downhill, it’s going to be really uncomfortable—and kind of dangerous, since you won’t be able to move your body as fluidly.” She demonstrates, trying to take a tight turn around a tree while sitting down and almost falling as she slows down and turns her handlebars to point the front wheel around the trunk, and then stands up and takes the same corner, leaning her whole body as she swings into the turn. No braking, no turning the handlebars, just a smooth, speedy motion.

  She makes it look easy, but I’m not fooled. After she pops off her bike, she makes us try to do the same. When she has us sit on the saddle and try to take a corner, I almost fall over, and Lindsay actually does. But she pops right back up and says that the armor really does work. After a few more practice circles, Phoebe motions for us to follow her to the start of the easiest run on the hill.

  “It’s like the bunny slope in skiing,” she says, like that’s supposed to make the hill seem smaller or less steep. (It doesn’t.)

  “Don’t forget—we don’t stop until we’re at the bottom. But it goes fast. I’ll see you in about a minute!” she promises.

  “Why don’t you go down right behind me, Ali?” she adds, and when I nod (why did I nod?!), she starts pedaling toward the start of the trail and almost immediately drops out of sight.

  I take a deep breath and follow her. I can hear Lindsay and Jen arguing about who goes next, but their voices quickly fade into the wind.

  After a few pedal strokes, I hit the top of the descent and start going downhill. Ahead of me, I can see Phoebe swooping around the first turn, and my heart feels like it’s about to pound out of my chest. The turn is coming, my speed is going up, and I lean into it, forcing myself to keep my eyes open. And suddenly I’m around it and still heading down, but Phoebe is a bit closer than she was before.

  Then I feel something else: fun. There’s that feeling of wind in my hair, I can see Phoebe ahead of me, and I’m keeping up. I’m also managing to stay in the ready position, and it seems more natural out here than it did in the bike park earlier this summer. Either I’m getting better or I’m more comfortable outside.

  The hill takes only about a minute to get down—Phoebe wasn’t lying!—and when I finally pull the brakes to come to a stop next to Phoebe at the end, I’m grinning wildly, and so is she. Behind me, I hear Jen shrieking as she comes to a stop, and Lindsay is right on her wheel.

  “That was amazing!” Jen says enthusiastically, already ripping her helmet off and flipping her hair around (part vanity, I’m sure, but it does get sweaty with your whole face covered). “I didn’t know riding could feel like that.”

  “It really was like flying the entire time,” Lindsay says. “But it was super scary too.”

  “So, who’s up for another run?” Phoebe asks, her hair blowing around now that her helmet is off.

  We all raise our hands—or at least, we try to, but our chest and elbow pads make it hard to do, and we all burst out laughing.

  Phoebe brings us back up and down the mountain on that same run another three times before declaring us “done for the day.” Even though we were going downhill only a few minutes in total, with all the other pedaling around at the top and waiting in the lift lines, hours have already flown by. We’re all feeling really excited and beg for another, harder hill to try out, but she’s being pretty stubborn.

  “I promise you, it’s better to be done when you’re still feeling great,” she says. “When you start pushing past being tired, that’s when you get hurt.”

  She might be right. Now that we’ve stopped moving for a minute, I notice that my legs are starting to feel like Jell-O, and my hands are definitely a bit sore. “I guess that makes sense,” I say grudgingly, and see that Lindsay and Jen look a little relieved that I admitted to being tired.

  As we’re standing in line to return our bikes, a shaggy-haired blond boy around our age is standing in front of us, wearing his full body armor. “I guess everyone really does wear the armor,” Jen says grumpily. She’s definitely not happy with swapping her spandex and leggings for baggy shorts, but of course, she looks like a perfectly coordinated fashion model anyway.

  He must have heard her because he turns around. “Wow, normally this line is all guys!” he says, surveying the four of us. (Phoebe is there too.) But unlike some guys, he doesn’t seem upset about it; he seems m
ore in awe of us.

  “Clearly not today,” sniffs Jen, looking slightly offended, despite his pleasant tone.

  “I think Jen means, ‘Yes, girls also like going fast downhill,’ ” I say, smiling. “Hi. I’m Ali.”

  “Scott,” he replies. “Have you been riding long?”

  “Since I was a kid,” I explain, and we start a detailed conversation about our first bikes. (Mine was a Trek handed down from Leo, so it was pretty beat-up.) As we chat, we quickly move up in line.

  It feels like I’m chatting with Leo and Steven, so talking to Scott is no problem. I think Lindsay is slightly dumbfounded. She had a really hard time talking to Dave when they first met, but I’ve really only ever talked to boys, before hanging out with Jen and Lindsay.

  “So, do you ride here a lot?” he asks. He makes pretty direct eye contact, which is nice—most guys my age that I talk to look over my shoulder instead of right at me.

  “We’re starting to,” I say, a little bummed that I can’t brag about any sweet runs yet. “We’re training for a competition.”

  “Well, if you ever want to ride together, that would be really fun,” he says, scribbling a number on the back of one of the waiver forms.

  “I don’t think that’s what those forms are there for,” I point out, but he still hands it to me.

  “Just in case, then,” he says as he starts to hand his bike back to the rental person.

  He wanders away, looking back over his shoulder and grinning at me one more time. I blush furiously—now that he gave me his number, I feel all goofy about it. After we return our bikes, I grab Lindsay and Jen and hustle back to the car.