Riding with people who are less experienced cyclists or just less aware of the rules of trail etiquette can reveal a lot about yourself. And it’s not all pretty.
Case in point: a female acquaintance I’ll call Kendra. She’s a little slower, a little less likely to make it up the steep and rocky trails. “No problem, Kendra,” we all say. “We’re in no hurry,” we assure her. “Nobody gets left behind,” we proudly insist. When I say these things, I really mean them. Of course, there are a few strings attached. For Kendra’s part, she is supposed to realize (I think) that if she’s slower, she should stay at the back. But Kendra doesn’t get it. After every rest stop made on her behalf, she bolts out ahead of the crowd, to be passed by each of us before long, in the order of our ability. On a wide open forest road or pavement, this wouldn’t pose a problem, but on singletrack it can take a while to find the right spot for overtaking Kendra. In the meantime we all resort to Kendra’s pace. It doesn’t take long for the queue of frustrated riders to compress as the slower and faster ones all converge behind the frustrating obstacle that is Kendra. If we’re riding up that steep hill or through a tricky rock garden and Kendra can’t make it, she gets off and walks – in the middle of the track. She’s oblivious to the possibility of moving aside so that others can keep riding.
Now, Kendra’s been on lots of group rides. Why doesn’t she know the rules? The first few times I rode with other mountain bikers, I quickly got the message that the cliché “Lead, follow, or get out of the way!” is alive and well in this sport. And if the implicit message of feeling someone’s impatient breath on my neck as I struggled through the basics of technical riding weren’t enough, the explicit request made by a fellow cyclist once as we pulled away from a rest stop, “Do you mind if I go ahead of you?” was enough to cement into my consciousness that a slow rider ceased to be a comrade and became an obstacle if she didn’t know her place in the rank and file. Now I know how to insert myself at the proper place in the pack so that I’m ahead of slower riders and behind faster ones most of the time. It makes the ride more pleasant for everyone, and I still wish Kendra would get a clue and start practicing this simple rule too.
But more interesting to me, in retrospect, is to investigate my own reactions to Kendra’s behavior – to try to understand how it is that my patience can evaporate so quickly, like when I’m in a movie line or at the grocery store, where people have been known to block the yogurt aisle for days, in an apparent trance and unable to pick what they want and move away. Or enduring 10 minutes of cheesy Muzak that would make even Barry Manilow want to slam his head into the grand piano, when all I want to do is find out what that mysterious $27 charge is doing on my credit card bill. Why is it so vexing to me that Kendra isn’t following the rules?
My ego, helpful as always, comes up with multiple suggestions. In the kindest of these, Kendra just isn’t as smart as I am (“Hurrah!” says the triumphant ego, “I know something you don’t know, therefore 10 smart points for me and 0 for you.”). In less magnanimous versions of this little ego drama, Kendra harbors evil intent towards me, and blocks my path just to prove that she can. “Wait!” Ego says. “Maybe it’s even worse than that. Maybe she actually believes that she’s faster than you, better than you. “If I can’t make it up that hill, you certainly can’t either,” Kendra must be thinking. “So how could I be in your way?” Of course, I never asked Kendra the reason. Broaching a topic like that would be rude. Far better just to harbor unkind thoughts and allow them to torture me, leaving Kendra unscathed.
After my most recent ride with Kendra, I came across a teaching from Jack Kornfield that invited me to imagine everyone I encounter in a day as an enlightened being, whom the universe has sent to me at that moment to teach me exactly what I needed to know. The appropriate response to these people is gratitude, says Kornfield. What a fascinating idea! The yogurt-monopolizing man at the store, the creator of Muzak, and Kendra-the-trail-blocker have all been planted purposefully in my path—and not to frustrate me, but to give me opportunities to becoming a more enlightened, more peaceful, more accepting person. People like yogurt guy and Kendra have been unrelentingly devoted teachers, putting up their small stop signs in my daily life, usually when I feel least inclined to slow down and take stock of my inner world. “For Chrissakes, I just wanna buy some YOGURT!” my frustrated ego complains.
I can’t honestly say that I’ve taken Kornfield’s teaching fully to heart, and that I now feel only gratitude towards Kendra, yogurt guy, or the muse that gave birth to Muzak. But I can say that in my more enlightened moments, I am able to replace frustration with calm, to realize that that life is not something to be sped through, and that 15 seconds of mindful breathing and looking around me (whether at the beauty of a forest or the bounty of the dairy section) is vastly better than a seeming eternity spent in frustration that this moment isn’t living up to my notions of what it should be. These sometimes maddening little “interruptions” to my day are living lessons that a small empty space can be a great opportunity in disguise.
What Muzak is meant to teach me, I still can’t fathom.
