When I started writing this blog my business card simply read, "Bicycle Enthusiast Extraordinaire." But times have changed my friends! Now on each imaginary card I'm handwriting in a second line that says, "and Firefighter 1."
Some people my age train to run a marathon, others go back to school for advanced degrees. Middle age is the perfect time to add a new line to your business card, so I'm adding firefighter. But this is still a bike blog so for this post I will try to provide some clumsy parallels between fire fighting and mountain biking.
Obviously there is the thrill seeking aspect, the adrenaline rush. Then there is the camaraderie, the feeling of belonging to a subculture, an interconnected tribe. I will also add the concept of 'embracing the suck' the feeling of looking up a trail and seeing only climbing. The mindset of pulling all your thoughts into one simple goal, keep going.
I haven't experienced much true hardship as a firefighter, I definitely had some exhausting days training at the academy, and I've caught glimpses of hard simple tasks that must be performed. Rolling hose for instance, whether I'm helping test all the hoses on a truck, (which I've done) or mopping up after a massive structure fire (which I haven't done) wet, heavy canvas hoses need the water drained out and then they need to be rolled up and put away. It's a sucky physical task that suddenly becomes fun when another person next to you is doing the same thing. Much like climbing a mountain.
Gadgets and cool mechanical contraptions can also be found on a mountain bike or a firetruck. Multipurpose tools, anodized aluminum, knee pads, gloves and helmets, gimme, gimme, gimme! Both endeavors require careful attention to pressures. My bike demands I maintain the right pressure in tires and shocks, while fire fighters need specific pressure on the hose and in their air tanks.
Problem solving falls into this category too. Bike rides often throw new challenges at you that cause the original plan to fall apart. Rides can suffer breakdowns, injuries, changes in weather or trial closures. As riders what do we do then? we adapt, we evaluate the situation and determine the next course of action. A phrase I learned in academy is that "plan B is not plan A harder." Sometimes what you're doing simply isn't working and you need to try a new way.
As a biker, I often see the world from a bike perspective. If I spot a particular long set of stairs, I'm calculating whether or not it's a possible stair gap. If there's a banked surface leading to a wall I'm picturing the best angle for a wall ride. When I tackle a new physical challenge sometimes I correlate it to something similar I've done on a bike. Maybe I make connections that aren't really there, but hey, it's my mind, broken as it may be.
One of the big challenges I faced in academy was "throwing a ladder" This is the move a fire fighter can use to raise a ladder from a horizontal carrying position up to a vertical working position. A 24 foot extension ladder is heavy, long and unwieldy. Getting the balance wrong can easily lead to the ladder falling or taking you down. We learned a safe, slow technique of placing the ladder feet against the building and walking the ladder up from the far end. Another option is using two people to raise the ladder.
It started to become clear that the slow way and the two person lift were not the "real" way to do it. A firefighting instructor explained that the slow way is good enough to pass the test, and the two person lift is nice when you have two people, but what if you don't? He said, you guys are doing rural volunteer incidents, you might be the only ones on scene. If someone is leaning out the window of a burning house, what are you gonna do? I had to learn to really throw a ladder.
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| Jab the ladder down like a pole vault.. |
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| ..and the momentum carries it up. |
Here's where the biking experience kicked in. I remembered one of my earliest biking challenges, way back before mountain bikes. This was a rite of passage for both bike riders and skateboarders and we called it, Dropping In. The half-pipe in my backyard was six feet tall and made of plywood, it had almost a foot of vert at the top. We begged our Dad to build it, we showed him pictures of half-pipes from a Thrasher skateboard magazine and he made something similar.
Hundreds of hours were spent riding that ramp and a bunch of kids learned to drop in on it. The secret to dropping in is total commitment. Biker's and skater's first instinct is to lean way back so you are closer to the ramp surface and you have less distance to fall. This sets you up for failure and everyone watching below can tell you didn't fully commit. Success only comes when you point the wheels straight into the void and lean all your weight forward. If you believe you can do it you will.
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| 'lil brother |
I took this same mentality to the ladder throw, it took me a while to build up the courage. I watched some others figure it out before me, so I knew it was possible. Then one night, the adrenaline was flowing, I had just put out the practice fire and my partner and I were called to the ladder site. I grabbed the ladder, hefted it onto my shoulder and ran over to the building. I used the momentum to rock the ladder up into place with fluid motion. An instructor said, "Yes! that's what I want to see."
Fist bumps were thrown and I had the same feeling of accomplishment I had when I was fourteen straddling my bmx bike.
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