Check this shit out from Collegehumour. It’s poetic and meditative.
I’ve ridden BMXs or Mountain bikes for close on three decades. My brothers and Dad I have competed in 24-hour races and I’ve done a lot of off-road travelling – in New Zealand, Vietnam, America, Spain, the UK, Tasmania and 3000km up the Bruce Highway (Brisbane to Cairns)… which was a bit insane and rather boring in bits.
Something happens about 20 minutes into a downhill run, like the one above. You get into a flow. Corny and new-agey, but the bike becomes part of you. It’s this idea of being so incredibly focused (your life, or at least your face, depends on being razor sharp) that nothing else enters your experience. A perfect single-pointedness. And then all the cerebral stuff, the head chatter, the doubts… they drop away. And you glide down the run, slinking down drop-offs, clinging to narrow passes and ebbing and flowing through trees with a subtle twist of the shoulders. There’s a suction!
I have an adage with riding that crosses over into everythingness:
Where the mind goes the energy flows.
If there’s a 10cm gap between two rocks and you focus on the gap only, then your wheel will naturally flow right through. You don’t have to steer. Or think about it. It just is.
This is flow.
