Chapter Twenty-Nine: Breaking the Cycle of Mom Guilt
Tyler on his first mountain biking expedition in Tucson, Arizona
“Hey Mom, want to go mountain biking?”
I did not, in fact, want to go mountain biking. But as any parent of kids will tell you, we can’t take another sleepless night of worrying about this pandemic’s robbing us of positive memories as we race against the clock of their childhoods. Framed in this light, I had no other choice, really, but to agree to Tyler’s request.
We were in Tucson, accompanying Hubby on a legal conference, when Tyler saw the advertisement for mountain bike rentals. A woman sporting a large ranger hat and dressed in head-to-toe khaki greeted us warmly at the rentals desk. “You sure are lucky!” she exclaimed as she grabbed the last two bikes available: a kid-sized 8-speed bike and an adult-sized 21-speed bike. “I had to send the last two people away because I’ve only got the big one left!”
The friendly ranger handed the kid-sized bike to Tyler who immediately declared it much too small. Seeing as I am taller than Tyler (at least for a couple more months), and that there weren’t any other bikes available, I began to think that the universe was recognizing my reluctance to embark on this mother-son journey and was providing me with an easy way out. And I could have gotten away with it, if it weren’t for that one look at my son’s super disappointed face, and the omnipresent mom-guilt resurfaced. Before I knew it, I was hunched over the handle-bars of the 8-speeder as we embarked on a 16-mile expedition through the Arizona desert. Armed with a couple water bottles and a series of vague directions, we set off at about 3 p.m. on what the kind ranger assured us would be an easy two hour long tour.
Indeed, the first three miles were a jaunty ride downhill on paved ground, so everything started off swimmingly. We arrived at the trailhead at about 3:15 p.m. and took in our surroundings. The Tortolita Preserve Loop is a narrow, sandy trail which has been carved out of what appears to be a dense forest of cacti. And these aren’t your run-of-the-mill cacti; they are saguaro cacti which are 20+ feet tall, with large protruding arms, and which are quite simply majestic. Nature’s obelisks, if you will.
Seeing as neither of us had ever been mountain biking before, the first downhill section, with its curve backs and rocky-terrain, was slightly intimidating to say the least. Tyler set his bike down and raced ahead so he could film me attempting it. Needless to say, that video will never see the light of day. After mercilessly laughing at my ineptitude for what felt like an eternity, it was finally Tyler’s turn, but his laughter quickly turned to tears as he too scrubbed, but worse than me, because his bike fell on top of him and injured his leg. After recovering from a near fainting spell, which was cured by downing one of our two bottles of water, Tyler was ready to resume the ride, but I glanced at our odometer and realized that we were only 0.5 miles into the 10 mile-long trail. “Are you sure you want to keep doing this?” I asked Tyler, “we can still turn back and call it a day.”
“I am not a quitter,” Tyler replied curtly, and it was then that I knew all hope was lost. We were doing this thing, no matter what.
We pushed on and the next 5 miles or so were a gradual incline of approximately 500 feet with me huffing and puffing like I was the Big Bad Wolf on steroids. It turns out that my 8 speeder had only two real functioning gears, and it also turns out that I am really out of shape. I stopped at one point to catch my breath and started involuntarily retching into a bush before I knew what was what.
“Did you just throw up Mom?” Tyler asked me disgustedly.
But, there was no way out at this point. So we kept going. With our one bottle of water.
We rounded a corner and approached a small herd of cows who were freely grazing, with one cow brazenly blocking our trail. I had no idea what to do, because I don’t regularly interact with cows, but I recalled reading about a woman who was trampled by a moose in a similar situation and so I commanded Tyler to stop riding. We hopped off our bikes and cautiously approached the road-blocking cow, who immediately fled from us in terror. Back onto our bikes we went.
Thankfully, we had reached the top of our ride and it was all downhill from there. The next several miles were an exhilarating rush of roller-coaster-like terrain. Until Tyler’s bike hit a rock and his chain slipped. So there we were. In the middle of a cactus forest, with the sun setting in the distance, and a broken bike which neither one of us knew how to repair. I glanced at my watch and started to panic at the time. Hubby and I had a gala to attend that evening, thrown by the conference organizers, and its start time was an hour away, and here I was a sweaty mess, with no way out. I couldn’t even call Hubby because he was stuck in conference meetings.
Thankfully, Tyler thought to FaceTime my father who is an avid biker. My father immediately coaxed us through the process of pushing the derailleur down and guiding the chain back into position. As Tyler was readjusting the chain, he suddenly shot up from the ground, and started jumping up and down in pain. I looked at his backside and saw a round, extremely spiny cactus attached to his butt. We later learned that it was a jumping cholla, whose name is not derived from its effect on its victim, but because it literally breaks off and jumps onto anyone passing by, and sticks on with a vengeance. We hastily hung up on my father who must have been bewildered by all the screaming and jumping. The next ten minutes were a harrowing mix of tears and expletives as we attempted to remove ourselves from this sticky situation. Tyler finally managed to get the cholla off his butt, we fixed his bike chain, and we pressed on.
The rapidly setting sun in the distance began to really stress me out. I pictured all kinds of wildlife, like coyotes and/or giant tarantulas, attacking us. As I was silently freaking out, Tyler says, “hey mom, are those goats?” Nope, not goats but what appeared to be a half-dozen wild boars foraging 50 feet away from us. “Holy shit, Tyler, let’s get out of here!” I commanded in a loud stage whisper. I started peddling like the wind. Later found out that they were harmless javelinas, but I had a gala to get to nonetheless.
We finally returned to the trailhead and I heaved a major sigh of relief. My relief, however, was incredibly short-lived, because, as jaunty as the first three miles were on the way down, they weren’t so jaunty on the way back. My joints, every which one of them, hurt, my back was killing me from being hunched over my too-small bike, and my butt was pretty sore from the too-small seat. I could only imagine how bad Tyler’s butt felt. I eased off my bike and walked it the remaining distance to the resort until I flagged down a security guard and begged him to call us a shuttle to transport us the final two miles. We returned our bikes to the ranger station and I got back to our hotel room with 15 minutes to spare before the gala. So, we were pretty late to the gala. But, Hubby and I had a great time, and I didn’t even have to drink any wine because I felt incredibly high off all the endorphins running through me.
The next day, Tyler told me, “that was super fun, Mom. I’d like to do it again.” And for one teeny-tiny glorious second, I didn’t feel the mom-guilt, and so even though I am not sure that I like mountain biking, I am pretty sure that I’ll be doing it again.