Story Time: When Bikes Aren't the Answer

Words: Henry Quinney
Photography: Tom Richards

Three Tragedies Away from Homelessness

My father, half Monty Python caricature and half purveyor of anecdotal wisdom, believes that any of us are only ever three tragedies away from homelessness. He once told me about a family friend who had spent most of their life in middle-class comfort but ended up living on the streets. Something about that reinforced my understanding of the human condition—that any of us could suffer misfortune, and that recovery was as much about timing and balance as it was about healing your wounds.

I think a lot about the privileges bestowed upon me. In the landscape of media, it's something we try to be cognizant of, and rightfully so. “Middle-class white guy who's only ever known comfort explains why electronic gears are a must-have” isn't exactly compelling reading. Privilege extends to many different places though—where you're from, the people you've known, the company you've been granted, and the resources you've had access to.

The greatest privilege I've ever known is coming from my family. We didn't always have all too much, but I wouldn't have had it any other way. Coming back to your centre after being knocked is a lot easier with the support of another's hand, and bracing on your good leg is easier still with the crutch of sympathy.


The Privilege of Independence

I began running when I was seventeen. It felt strange to have a hobby that wasn't reliant on other people; I didn't have to organise anyone to play, I didn't have to keep time with anyone, or wait at the rugby field. I could just run until I didn't have any running left in me. I wasn't particularly good, mind you, but I would run around the rural lanes that I grew up in.

I had some £15 tennis shoes that I felt I had gamed the system with by buying them a size too big so they wouldn't rub, and some £4 shorts and a bright yellow cycling jersey that I got off eBay. The chaffing and friction were, as you can imagine, unpleasant. I'm sure at times I was nothing short of a mobile fire hazard as cheap nylon met puckered flesh.

I remember my first marathon distance was 13 times around the two-mile block. From then on, I just wanted to go as far as possible. Never very quickly admittedly, but I would fill a backpack with cherry-bakewell tarts and head into the countryside until coming home when I felt something had been satisfied. Everything would have a dull ache as I lay there on my side, watching Formula One on Sunday afternoons.

At a similar time, I got into road cycling. Again, I wasn't particularly good but as a seventeen-year-old, there was something just amazing about riding what felt like huge distances in a single day.

I didn't finish the UK equivalent of high school and a wave of independence suddenly came over my entire life. I worked at the local hospital making sandwiches for the patients and for the first time in my life I had disposable income. Again what an example of amazing privilege, that my introduction to the world of work was more about enjoying my earnings than putting food on the table.


I would obsess each night on ChainReaction over the details between Sora and Tiagra, researching with incredulity that “compact” referred to what seemed like seven different aspects of design in road cycling. I eventually bought a bike, a white Trek 1.2 with red accents, for £525. I’d never had anything so nice or new before. I couldn't believe it. As a cycling-obsessed teenager, I was fascinated with Lance Armstrong and there was a silly allure to riding a Trek. Their scandals notwithstanding, Lance’s high-cadence style seemed so much more elegant than the slogging of Indurain, Ullrich, and the other riders that featured in early YouTube montages dedicated to them.


Alex

My cousin Alex later introduced this thing to me called mountain biking. He taught me to aim for the V in the roots, and that you could get different tyres to suit the conditions. It was wild to me, like some strange fairytale experience where you could suspend all of the rules about what you should or shouldn't do, and just do exactly what you wanted. Go fast, go slow, crash, burn—managing all these things and their proximity to your own experience felt like a new frontier of liberation.

I got an entry-level Specialized Pitch hardtail (not the good one, sadly) and became obsessed with working on it. Needless to say, I broke everything as I tried to customize or tune my bike for the local bridleways that were almost exclusively flat.

I soon found mountain biking is a funny thing. Unlike road cycling, there wasn't a widely held understanding that we are all nerds. One half was 40-year-old men wearing translucent lycra, getting into arguments with horse riders over who has the right to ride a footpath, when in fact neither of you do. The other half was about being cool.


Alex exposed me to a side of bikes that I never knew about. He was far more comfortable with danger than me. I remember him once riding along a frozen canal near Congleton as if it was nothing. He always had the ability to do things that were just the right amount of stupid - an ability I’ve always moderated with too much caution and fear.

We once went to a race in Wales. At the time Alex was working his regular 60-hour week, and running on fumes was something of a lifestyle choice. He picked me up at a service station just off the M5 motorway in his mother's tiny Peugeot 205 and we must not have arrived until 2 AM.

During the race, and I don’t think Alex would mind me saying this, we were significantly outgunned. Alex's rear brake stopped working halfway through the day. At the top of one of the stages, a somewhat self-important-know-it-all approached Alex to tell him that his rear tire was on back-to-front in not a particularly kind way. I thought the man was an arse, but Alex casually told him that considering that he only had one brake the orientation of his tire was the least of his worries, and we all laughed.

I was always very envious of Alex’s relaxed nature and ability to make strangers laugh with his honesty. He could always do it without even trying, and it’s something I’ve been trying to replicate for years without it ever quite feeling natural.

On the following stage, Alex's front brake caliper snapped clean off, sending him headfirst into the rocks. We laughed about it a lot that night, despite both of our weekends being an absolute disaster.


Being cool is never something that has come easily to me. I tried it once in 2013 and, after a brief dalliance with a backward cap, I realized it was never to be. With Alex, however, I’ve often had suspicions that he was quite cool.

It was never just one thing but rather a myriad of clues—the tan-colored work boots that were somehow clean yet rugged, which even grandma liked. Or maybe how as a teenager he smoked and drank, but managed to look like an adult while doing so, whereas normally it manages to infantilize. Alex was also far more easy going than I was. For instance, he didn’t view skateboarding with the skepticism it clearly merits, and could be friends with just about anyone.

Growing up, even though he was the oldest cousin and I was the youngest, Alex only ever treated me as an equal. And let me tell you, when you’re the youngest, that’s a very significant thing—especially from somebody as cool as Alex. I always looked up to him, he took me under his wing, and he’s been the closest thing I’ve ever had to a brother.


Bikes Didn’t Fix Everything

If you were riding in Squamish in the last year, and you heard a strange sobbing noise coming from the trees, you weren't hearing the misgivings of an ent-moot or sasquatch scratching their parts. It was me. When Alex died I started a journey with grief, and it has affected me deeply.

The sadness I felt was like placing a towel over a typewriter and still trying to type quickly. When somebody dies it's just not one single thing that you grieve. It's the music you know they loved, it's miniscule French 3-door cars, it's birthdays, it's places, it's foods, it's silly sayings. And in my case it's bike riding.

Riding bikes is all I've ever really known to handle any element of pain, of frustration, of anguish. And suddenly I couldn't even do that. I found thinking and using my body difficult. There was this invisible barrier between my body and brain; between the trigger and firing pin. I would ride the bike park and always be relieved if I had a gondola to myself just so I could cry in solitude on the way up.

I've met a lot of people over this last year, and haven’t covered myself in glory. I'm not proud, and if I seemed like a miserable prick, it's because I have been one. I miss that man terribly, but I am also very thankful that I have things in my life worth grieving, and love worth not wanting to lose.


It may sound odd, but things got easier for me when I started riding less over the summer. And then coming back to it in the Autumn, riding began to feel more normal. Naturally, some days are harder than others but I tend to enjoy it more often than not.

As passionate cyclists we tend to think it's the cure to all the world's ills—and for some of us it may well be. But I suppose I'm also trying to remind myself that too much of something wonderful can quickly bleed in the wash. Overlapping layers of pain and grief and letting that dye run to places you never intended.

As we round out this festive period and ring in the new year, I’ve been thinking of how, as children, Alex and I would take the strips out of Christmas crackers to tape them over my bedroom door, all in the hope of catching Father Christmas red-handed. And I know I won't have been alone in grieving something as precious as it is lost. And for the others out there, I hope bikes are helping. If not, let it breathe for a moment. It will come back, I promise.

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