Do you know that feeling when you do something you’ve been working towards for years? That’s this story. This is a story about butterflies in your stomach, about pushing your limits, and about the power of friendship. 

The day at the bike park starts off normal. The sun is shining so I’ve got my reflective goggles on and I’m wearing the Hawaiian shirt I got last week paired with my red racing pants. I cut quite a figure. I’m with my friend Nick smashing laps down our favorite jump trail, and on a break in between laps he introduces me to his friend Seb, who’s a tall guy with sandy hair, and a look about him that says, “I know what I’m doing.” We plan to meet up later in the day.

For a while now, I’ve been contemplating riding Tombstone, a gnarly double-black diamond trail with a 13 foot drop and a 20 foot gap jump afterward. A gap jump has an empty space in the middle, so that you have to make sure to have the right speed, or else you’re landing flat. I had not ridden Tombstone yet for two reasons. One is that I didn’t think that I was good enough, the second is that my bike wasn’t good enough. I was riding a cranky and creaky cross country bike that had definitely seen its years. Pretty much the opposite of what you’d want to send Tombstone with except for a road bike. Tombstone as a trail is short but sweet, and it's popular among the elite bikers at the park because the two features on the trail are big, trickable and close together, so it’s a short hike up a hill to session them. For ever,  Tombstone has been the one that I’d always watch everybody else hit, while I hit the kiddie jumps to the side. But then I got a new bike, which was a much better fit for hitting jumps, and then one of my excuses for not hitting Tombstone was gone. Also, I knew that I had gotten better at biking so now I had no reason to keep avoiding it. Today was the day.

After lunch, Nick and I meet up with Seb. Nick mentions that I’ve been thinking about sending Tombstone, and Seb graciously offers to help me out. He’s hit Tombstone before, and he can walk me through what I should expect. When you’re biking, trying to hit a new feature is easier if you have somebody with you who’s done it before and knows what they’re doing. They can tell you the speed and what to expect from it. The most important part of it for me is being able to follow them down the trail, or train them. Following somebody boosts my confidence a lot, and it's my favorite way to try something new on my bike. 

On the way up the chairlift, I remember something I once heard a professional mountain biker say. He said that before he does a new trick, he tries to visualize it in his mind until he feels like he’s already done it. And once he’s done that he feels ready to try it in real life. So while sitting on the chairlift, I’m just imagining what it’s going to feel like to hit Tombstone over and over again. And by the time I get to the top, I feel like I might have a slightly better idea of what it might be like. 

We reach Tombstone, and I ask Seb to train me down. With a marching band playing inside my chest, I take a deep breath, taking in the smell of fresh dirt and my own sweaty helmet. I stand up on my bike and, taking one hard crank right before the end just like Seb told me, roll off the drop. I land hard, harder than I thought it would be, but I have no time to think because I’m already in the air again, flying and gripping my handlebars like they’re a pair of winning lottery tickets. I land heavily again, with my back wheel falling on the back of the landing, but I roll away with a big grin on my face.

I pull up next to Seb, pumped with adrenaline, and he gives me a fist bump. I think that’s one of the best fist bumps I’ve ever gotten. I collect some more fist bumps from a couple other guys standing around at the bottom of the jump. Nick comes over and congratulates me, and we chat excitedly for a few moments about how it went, and what it looked like from his perspective. (Bro, I thought you were gonna case the jump so bad!) I’m psyched that I hit Tombstone, but I know that I can do better on it, and I’m already toying with the idea of doing a no-hander off it. But that’s a story for another day.

That rush of adrenaline you get when you hit something for the first time is part of what keeps people biking. You keep looking forward, smashing glass ceilings, mentally and physically pushing yourself to be better, to perform better. Until you hit one ceiling and it pushes you back. Hard. But you pick yourself up, better because of it, and the next time you go on that trail, you shatter that glass ceiling so hard it turns to dust.