Ali's Rocky Ride

by Molly Hurford

  It’s like Phoebe gets it. When I talk to my dad or brothers—if I talk to my dad or brothers—they never seem to understand where I’m coming from. And Phoebe made a good point. I guess I haven’t really been telling Jen how I feel, telling her that her choices for me are stupid. I mean, I think most of them are, but I suppose I can see how that might be hurting her feelings a little too. If she is just trying to be nice helping me pick out clothes, it’s not like she’s intentionally trying to make me uncomfortable.

  I sigh before nodding. “I guess I’ll talk to Jen,” I say.

  Phoebe smiles and unfolds herself from her perch. “Now I am out of coffee, which means I am out of reasonable advice,” she says, and heads for the door.

  “Thanks,” I say, and follow her in, promising myself that I won’t let Jen drive me crazy. At least not before nine a.m.

  And we almost make it. The clock over the stove reads 8:55 when Jen looks up from her magazine at the table.

  “You have the gnarliest knot in your hair,” she says to me, motioning to the right side of her head.

  I put my hand up and feel it—that’s the side I sleep on—and roll my eyes. “It’s just going into a ponytail anyway,” I say.

  “You can borrow my detangler, and I can lend you one of my new hair bands so your hair doesn’t get so tangled throughout the day,” Jen continues. I see Phoebe glance over the top of her book at me, and I bite my tongue—hard—even though I want to snap back and tell Jen that my hair is none of her business. I guess I see what Phoebe meant. Jen really isn’t trying to be mean; she’s blunt. She probably is trying to help.

  “That would be great. Thanks,” I say, and I mean it. I do kind of hate using the elastic bands that come wrapped around the asparagus that Dad gets at the farmers market, and Jen’s hair bands are pretty cool. They’re bright colors and squiggly rubber that doesn’t ever seem to rip her hair out when she takes one out.

  But when she offers to braid my hair in this new style—something about a modified fishtail for my shorter hair—my brain rebels a little.

  “Maybe after we practice on the pump track outside,” I say, and start shoveling cereal into my mouth and trying to look busy.

  As soon as I swallow my last bite of cereal, I basically sprint to get changed to ride, leaving no room for debate. I may not be actually mad at Jen now, but I’d like to keep it that way.

  Jen and I make it down to the backyard first, and grab our downhill bikes from the garage, where we stashed them yesterday when we got home. “Want to do a few laps?” she asks, and I nod.

  “Go ahead and go first,” she says, like a peace offering.

  “Why don’t we practice wheelies instead?” I say. “Maybe I can help you with yours.”

  “That would be aaaaaaaamazing!” Jen says excitedly. This is how I can pay her back for the fashion advice, I realize. She’s good at the style stuff—and has some great go-hard racing tips—but bike skills are where I really shine.

  “Okay. Show me your wheelie again,” I say, and Jen pedals quickly in a straight line before yanking up on her handlebars to lift her front wheel. It pops up in the air, but she almost immediately pushes it back down.

  “I’m a little nervous today,” she admits. “After flipping backward, I don’t want to do it again.”

  “Everyone turtles at some point or other,” I say, giggling a little, remembering her stuck under her bike with the wheels still spinning above her like a grumpy turtle that can’t get off its back. “That’s how you learn where your limit is.”

  “My limit is not wanting to flip over again,” Jen says.

  “It’s better to get the backward fall out of the way early—and it didn’t really hurt, did it?” I ask. She shakes her head.

  “So, the secret to a good wheelie is to stay calm and slowly continue to pedal even as your front wheel is coming off the ground, instead of waiting until you’ve popped up your front wheel to start trying to move forward,” I explain, hopping onto my bike to demonstrate. “It sounds complicated but it’s not really as tough as it sounds.”

  I’m pretty nervous as I hit my brake gently and lift my front wheel off the ground. It’s one thing to explain a good wheelie, and another thing to actually execute a good one. I manage to stay up long enough to pedal forward a few strokes before letting the front wheel come back down.

  “See what I mean?”

  “That was awesome!” Jen says. “How long did it take you to learn that?”

  “About eight years,” I admit. “I was trying to wheelie before I could ride in a straight line. Leo and Steven were already doing awesome tricks when I was learning how to pedal, so I’ve always been working on tricks.”

  “I just thought biking was about going the fastest from point A to point B,” Jen says. “And I used to think that was the only reason it was fun.”

  “It does help when you’re winning races,” I say. “But didn’t you ever play on bikes in your driveway or in the yard for fun?”

  She shakes her head. “I only started riding because I saw my neighbor leaving for a race a few years ago and begged my parents to let me go too. I knew how to ride a bike, but not much else.”

  I can’t imagine a life where bikes were only tools, but that’s sort of what Jen sounds like she’s saying. “So, you went to that race, and what?”

  “I won, of course,” she says. “And I kept going back, and then my dad got me a training plan to help me get faster.”

  “So until we met at the bike park last month…”

  “I’d never ridden a bike for fun,” she says, finishing my sentence.

  “That’s…that’s so sad!” I say, and genuinely mean it. It sounds so lonely—and makes me realize that Jen might not have a lot of other friends she hangs out with, which could explain why she doesn’t understand when she’s driving me or Lindsay bananas.

  “Well.” She shrugs. “Not much I can do about it now—except work on getting better at these wheelies. They’re fun once you get them, right?”

  She looks so hopeful that I can’t help but smile at her. “They really, really are,” I say. “Now let’s try again, but don’t pull on the handlebars so much this time!”

  I actually surprise myself by having fun with Jen working on her wheelies. I’m not entirely sure she’d say the same, but she did laugh a couple of times when she was almost able to keep her wheel up in the air and managed to not flip over again, so we’re calling it progress. I think we also made some progress on our friendship….And I think I’m starting to understand her a little better.

  CHAPTER 12

  After we finish our wheelies and everyone else has made their way outside with their bikes, we quickly realize one problem: the pump track is great, but way too small for our whole crew. We ultimately decide to divide and conquer. We each will spend an hour on the track, with Phoebe and one of my brothers working with us. I volunteer to go first since I’m ready to roll and motivated from that wheelie session.

  A few minutes in, I realize that I underestimated today’s session. I didn’t quite get how many times I’d be going around the pump track, how hard it would be on a bike twice the size of my little BMX bike, and how full my stomach was from breakfast. I’m quickly regretting my enthusiasm to ride first. But that doesn’t stop Leo from yelling advice.

  “Ali, butt back,” he calls from the deck as I ride around the pump track for the hundredth time today. “What are you doing?! You’re riding like you’ve never been on a bike before.”

  Why can’t he leave me alone? It’s like he flips a switch in me with his criticism, on top of my whole-body tiredness. Suddenly my annoyance with him comes roaring back, along with my anger at Jen, and even at Phoebe for not siding with me, and at Lindsay for refusing to take sides.

  “My butt is back,” I say through gritted teeth when I pop onto the deck.

 
“Not correctly,” he says, and steps onto his bike to demonstrate.

  “That’s what I was doing,” I protest, because he’s in the exact same position I was in.

  “Trust me, it wasn’t.”

  I watch him closely. He’s hovering over his bike, keeping his butt barely over the back of where the saddle is.

  “It’s different than when you were on the BMX bike at Joyride,” he says, skidding to a stop in front of me. “These bikes have suspension, and they aren’t as rigid.”

  He says this like I haven’t been riding bikes my entire life, and I roll my eyes at him.

  “Hey, if you want to get good now, you need to take what you learned at the BMX park and bring it back to the trails,” he says.

  “How so?” I ask, injecting as much sarcasm into two words as I possibly can.

  “The pump track skills translate to riding downhill, but it’s way harder to get good speed when you’re on a downhill bike instead of the tiny BMX bike you usually use on a pump track,” he says, and lightly shoves my helmet.

  “I don’t think it feels that different,” I say—which isn’t 100 percent true, but he has me feeling argumentative, with his always-right-ness.

  “Follow me around and try to stay on my wheel,” he adds, and pops back into the track.

  I’ll show him, I think, and tear off after him. For a few feet, I’m right on his wheel—but then, as we hit the first whoop, he hits it smoothly while I bump over it, and I try to pedal to speed back up. But it is a lot mushier when the bike’s suspension is expanding and contracting over each bump and sapping my energy.

  By the third whoop on our little track, he’s already a few feet in front of me. My muscles are on fire from the effort, I’m wheezing, and I’m about a millisecond from making a major mistake.

  It’s a feeling I know pretty well. I feel almost dizzy, and my hands feel shaky, even though I know they aren’t actually shaking. I’ve gotten this feeling before, trying to keep up with him on tough trails, and I got it during the competition at Joyride, so I know that when it happens, it’s time to start backing off. I know that I’m running a pretty serious chance of crashing because I’m going over my limit.

  So I settle into following him a whoop behind, even though in the back of my head, that little voice is shrieking that he’s going to be a giant pain in the butt about this.

  He pops out of the pump track and onto the grass a couple of seconds ahead of me, and when I get up and pull my helmet off, I’m expecting him to make fun of me immediately. Instead he actually smiles.

  “Good job,” he says, and I’m stunned.

  “You beat me,” I say flatly.

  “Yeah, but you dialed back when you needed to. That’s how you get better, and that’s how you eventually win races,” he tells me, and looks like he means it. “And you really are getting better,” he adds, before he ruins it by squirting a water bottle directly in my face and hitting me square in the nose.

  I can’t help the smile that spreads over my face. I look over and see Phoebe smiling on the porch, giving me a thumbs-up. “You’re really getting it!” she says, and it looks like she means it too.

  “Thanks,” I say, grinning even wider.

  “Jen, you’re up!” Phoebe yells in the door. “Hit the showers, Ali,” she says, and winks at me as I roll my bike into the garage, shouting a good luck to Jen over my shoulder. And I (mostly) mean it.

  TRAINING LOG

  TODAY’S WORKOUT: Skills sessions can be emotionally, physically, and mentally draining…so after you get done on the pump track, I want you to take ten minutes and write about what you learned, what was frustrating, what you did better on, and what you want to work on next. It’s a good idea to get this done while it’s still fresh in your mind! XO, Phoebe

  YOUR NOTES: The session on the pump track was harder than I thought. I figured that building the track meant I knew how to navigate it perfectly, but turns out, I still have a lot to work on.

  The biggest thing is making the bike work with me, not against me. Right now it feels like I’m fighting this downhill bike in a way that I didn’t fight with my smaller BMX bike on the whoops. I need to regain that control again. And I need to not let every small thing that Leo or Jen says stress me out—especially not in the heat of the moment when I’m on the bike.

  When I was upset with Leo out there, I could feel my heart slamming in my chest, and I felt much less shaky once I got moving and put it out of my head. That kind of stressed-out attitude (like I’m in the middle of a test I didn’t study for) is only slowing me down. I will not let them bother me. I will not let them bother me. I will NOT let them bother me.

  (Okay, maybe that’s not a great mantra to have, but it’s the best one I can think of right now. It’s a little hard to feel centered when everyone around you is making you want to scream.)

  CHAPTER 13

  We’re all chowing down on sandwiches when the switch flips. Leo’s useful, almost happy mood seems to vanish, and now he’s telling me all the ways I could get better and faster—and every little mistake I made.

  No, really. He actually made a list. (Like the list I just wrote in my training journal wasn’t enough.) First thing: arms not relaxed enough. Second: knees bent a little too much. Third: not leaning hard enough into corners. And it keeps going after that.

  It’s as though he hasn’t already told me, and I haven’t already spent the morning working on exactly what he’s talking about. I tell him to leave me alone a few times, but he just keeps pushing it and pushing it with “helpful” advice until I snap.

  Well, I guess the “I will not let them bother me” was a good idea while it lasted. I tried.

  “Leo, you’re driving me crazy!” I scream at him after he says “and another thing” for the fourth time in a row. I don’t wait for his response. I get up and walk out, slamming the door to the back porch.

  “But you still need to understand how the suspension works,” he shouts at my back. “I made a diagram!”

  Of course he did.

  When I get outside, Phoebe is sitting on the porch swing. She must really hate how loud we all are, because it’s pretty chilly out. She’s wrapped in her giant hoodie and even has a winter beanie on, so she looks more like she’s our age than an adult. Her tattoos and earrings make her seem so old compared to us, but I guess she is only ten years older, which makes her a couple of years older than Steven and Leo, who seem like six-year-olds most of the time.

  “What brings you out here again?” she asks, smiling. I guess I’m not one of the people she’s trying to get away from, though I try to keep my voice quieter, since I’m pretty sure high volume is what makes her go into hiding.

  “The usual,” I say. “Trying to get away from Leo this time.”

  I assume she’s going to lecture me about how my brother is such a great guy and I can learn a ton from him, but to my surprise, she breaks into a grin.

  “He’s getting on your nerves again?” she says.

  I nod.

  “I can see that,” she says. “I know he can be a little frustrating for you sometimes, but I think if you saw him when he was your age, you’d understand him a little better. He wasn’t always a rock star biker, you know.”

  Honestly, I’m a little shocked. Normally when other bikers know Leo, they tell me how great he is and what talent he has and how lucky I am to have him as a brother and teacher. Blah, blah, blah. It’s extremely annoying, especially when he’s around to hear it.

  “I didn’t know you knew Leo before you came here,” I say.

  “Sure. We’re only a few years apart in age, and we’ve done a lot of the same races….Plus, if you’re in the bike scene, you get to know everyone. It’s kind of annoying sometimes, honestly. But your brother is a special guy.” She sighs and sips her coffee like she’s gearing up for something. �
��Let me tell you a story….”

  I sit back and mentally prepare myself, because I’ve heard stories from a couple of his fans in the past, and I always find them frustrating. “Yes, yes, Leo is sooooo great. He’s not irritating or frustrating at all.” Ugh.

  “I remember meeting Leo a few years ago, when he was still pretty new to the sport,” she recalls, steam rising out of her coffee mug and making her look older and more like she’s imparting wisdom instead of ratting out my brother.

  “He was really talented, but he was also really unfocused. He’d be at races and jumping around, but not where or when he was supposed to be. I remember him missing his call-up in a competition that he easily would have won and that had a huge prize purse, but he ended up disqualified,” she says.

  “And he was so, so angry at himself after that. Since then, he has completely changed. He got a lot more rigid with everything, from training to race-day prep, so when he’s driving you crazy, he doesn’t mean to. He thinks that everyone will make that same mistake he did. He doesn’t understand that you’re not like him and you’re already comfortable at races. Right?”

  “Well, maybe I’m not always comfortable at races,” I admit. I think back to the last race I went to with my family, where Leo had to sprint back to the family van to grab his gloves for me because I couldn’t find mine at the last minute.

  “So, Leo has helped you get better?” she asks, and I can tell it’s a leading question, and she wants me to say yes. So I try really hard to think of a way to say no, but I can’t seem to come up with anything.

  “I mean, I guess I might have forgotten my shoes if he hadn’t made me double-check my bag yesterday before we left for the mountain,” I say, thinking back to the day before and our other screaming match. “But he didn’t have to be such a jerk about it. I wasn’t being dumb. I only forgot one thing.”

  “You’re right about that,” Phoebe agrees. “But did you ever explain to him that he’s hurting your feelings?”