Suffering As a Foundation of Friendship

It was hot on the morning of the day my friend Scott tried to kill me and it was even hotter in the afternoon when it became clear he would, despite a great effort, fail.

The year was 1993. Scott was an absurdly strong cyclist. He was the first person I knew who had a suspension fork on his mountain bike and the first who rode with a heart monitor. He was ahead of me in fitness, tech, and experience, and when he suggested we ride up the highest point in the Santa Ana Mountains, twin peaks known as Saddleback, and try to reclaim an old, overgrown scar of a trail dropping from the saddle, I didn’t think twice. I probably didn’t even think once.

The temperature was in the nineties when we started. I had one water bottle (“what is this thing you call ‘hydration’?”) and a single PowerBar, sealed in its gold metallic wrapper. Saddleback is nearly six thousand feet. “We” were slow. It took hours to the saddle and what felt like hours thrashing downward through steep, prickly chaparral. By the time we gained rideable terrain, I was so knackered I had to get off and push my silver Cinelli at the merest hint of an uphill. Did I mention I was meeting my soon-to-be father in law Marty later that afternoon to move furniture?

It became a desperate slog. Scott took my bike, rode it to my truck, and met me at the closest trailhead so I could keep the date. He is, despite ushering me into the hurt locker and giving me my first truly epic bonk, one of the nicest people I know.

Today, as I sit at the cusp of summer, plotting adventures between now and fall, I’ve been thinking about the differences between what we chase and what we catch. Me, and maybe most of us, I’m after sensation. From my very first mountain bike ride, a demo loop in a bike shop parking lot in 1981, I was hooked on the sweet combination of rolling and swooping. With skiing, it was that seemingly frictionless glide, as if I were skating on mercury. And with surfing, it was the ineffable, animal thrill of tapping into ocean energy. Much of my life has been spent seeking such feelings.

But try as I might, I can’t remember the details of most of my rides, or my hikes and runs, my paddles or my climbs. The specific sensations have disappeared and been subsumed into a fuzzy golden orb of happiness, with ill-defined edges and crackling electricity. Which is awesome. But it makes it difficult if not impossible to recall that moment on that bike or that wave, which is kinda funny given my single-minded pursuit.

Instead, what you remember—what I remember—are the elements that accompany the sensations we so fervently chase, the byproducts and incidentals. The shark that body-bumped my leg as I was waiting for a wave at a break called Old Man’s. The aluminum ting of Mike tapping his ski pole on mine before we dropped into one of the deepest, longest powder runs of my life, in the Monashee Mountains of British Columbia. The way Sinuhe and I every morning made three peanut butter and honey sandwiches each to get us across the miles of cycling between San Juan Hut System cabins on the Colorado Plateau. The laughter of my friends when a digestive emergency had me scrambling from the driver’s seat into the sage, the truck still in drive, as we crept along a Nevada mining track in search of a hot spring.

That hot day long ago, I was late for moving furniture, and in a fog when we did. But I made it, and I didn’t collapse until the last chair was in its new home. The rest of the weekend was spent mostly in bed, recovering from bonk and heat exhaustion, and I remember it about as well as I remember the time in the saddle, which is to say not at all. Instead, what remains is the sharp, bubbly, life-saving taste of a cold Coca-Cola bought at the gas station nearest to the trailhead and a friendship, like so many others, built on beautiful and unexpected moments.