Speed Trumps Line

The wicked man flees though no one pursues, but the righteous are as bold as a lion.  (Proverbs 28:1-6)

            I fell.  For perhaps the twentieth time that day, I fell.  I was riding through a field of rocks and hit one that stopped my momentum cold—and down I went.  After my first nineteen falls that day I had scrambled right back up, spitting and swearing, jamming my feet back into the toe clips on my pedals, embarrassed and not wanting to fall too far behind my riding buddy who had cruised ahead of me over and through the same obstacles that had ensnared me. 

But now, after fall twenty, I just lay there a bit.  Maybe riding a mountain bike was something I simply was not born to do.  Maybe there was something wrong with my bike.  Maybe there was something wrong with me.  I was still lying there when my riding buddy circled back. 

“Are you hurt?”  He asked.

“Nope.”

“Why are you just lying there?”  He asked.

“I’m not just lying here jackass.  I’m also thinking.  I’m thinking about killing you because you talked me into buying this crappy mountain bike.”  I said.

“Look Dredd, I know you don’t take advice about . . . well, anything, but I think I know why you keep falling in the obstacles.” 

My riding buddy was right.  I did not take criticism very well at that point in my life—criticism being what I heard when someone gave me advice.  But, I must have been really tired of falling over rocks and stumps that day because I said, “go ahead, tell me the Zen of Rock Hopping.” 

“OK, but first you tell me what you are thinking about when you ride up on an obstacle.” 

“I guess I’m thinking about the best way to get through it—the Line I should follow.”  I said.

“OK,” he said, “anything else?  I mean, what’s your very last thought right before you hit the rocks?”

“To stay on the Line.  Be careful to stay on the Line.”  I said.  That was true.  That was what I thought. 

“That’s what’s making you fall.  Picking a line is fine.  You need to that.  You need to have a general plan about how to get through the obstacles.  But then you need to stop thinking about the plan and start putting everything you have into seeing it through.  A bad plan violently executed beats a good plan with timid follow through every time.  You shouldn’t be thinking about staying on the Line when you hit the rocks.  That makes you decelerate just slightly.  And you need to accelerate into an obstacle.  That is what carries you through.  Speed trumps Line.”  He explained. 

And I knew he was right. I wasn’t committed to the Line I was choosing, I was committed to trying not to fall.  In truth, I was already resigned to the fact that I probably was going to fall.  In a sense, although I acted like I was going to make it over an obstacle, I had actually surrendered to it before I even started—as if failure was inevitable and I just needed to make a good show going down.  Why did I do that?  Why was I so timid?

“So what’s your last thought?”  I asked my riding buddy.

‘Banzai you bastards!”  The darn nut shouted. “Lookout obstacles, Righteous Rider coming through!”