I think that I’ve ridden a bike 4 times in the past 15 years. I wish that were an exaggeration, but it absolutely is not.

So when we decided that we wanted to cover Mountain Biking as part of Rushmonkeys, I knew that I had a long road ahead of me. Luckily, Josh, one of our new Monkeys, has been riding for years and agreed to show me a thing or three before we headed out on some real trails.

First off was gear shifting. I had no idea how often you shift (a lot) or that it’s bad to be in some gears because they place too much torque on the bike chain. Also, I’ve started to make the shifting of gears more automatic, so that it isn’t as much of a distraction. I know that when I’m flying down a hill in dense underbrush I’m not going to be able to take focus away from the trail to mess with gears, so getting used to shifting on relatively flat terrain is a must.

So, why the video? Why go through the trouble of posting something that isn’t particularly exciting? Well, I’d like to show those of you out there that we aren’t some super-people that go out and do cool things all the time. We’re average Joes that are taking the time to learn. And like most people that start from the beginning, they pretty much suck at it. And that’s me. I’m awful. But hopefully a few months from now when I’m a gung ho, die hard biker, I (and you!) will be able to look back at these videos and see where the journey started. Hopefully they’ll be an inspiration to someone else getting started because they’re afraid of being bad at it!